Throughout this cookbook, Hamburg is used for various recipes. While intuitively I know this refers to a ground beef, I decided to do some research on the difference between “hamburg” and “ground beef” back in the 1970s when this was published. But the Hamburg vs Ground Beef debate didn’t end in the past.
These days, we go to restaurants like John Howie or Ruth Chris and order a $15 to $20 hamburger made with fancy ground chuck, rib eye, and/or brisket–I use all three of those when I ground beef at home for patties I plan to sous vide. It wasn’t always that way. While the origins of a hamburger is cloudy at best, there is little doubt that “hamburg” was a way to use up inexpensive minced meat. Hamburg meat was often picked up at the butcher who used remnants from the more expensive steaks to create the ground beef. Then large amounts of bread (often 1:1) was added at home to make the meat go even further.
The USDA stepped in at some point and made an actual distinction between ground beef and hamburger, which is basically that ground beef can only contain fat from the meat being grinded, while hamburger can include added fat to create a specific fat content. Personally, I take issue that store bought ground beef, often imported from questionable sources, is safer than that found at your butcher or ground at home, but the USDA bows to the money-heavy beef lobby (and chicken and pork and dairy…and, of course, McDonald’s).
Regional Differences
Now let’s talk about regional differences, which throws hamburg vs ground beef into even more question. I’m a California girl navy brat, who lived all over the country and world. I typically say “ground beef.” In some Northeastern areas, hamburg is still what the bulk ground beef is called. In some areas of the South, everything made with any type of ground beef including the bulk material is called hamburger. When I tried to dig into Buffalo, where this cookbook originated, I ran into “chopped meat” as well. I was just in Boston, and heard hamburg more than once.
Some of you may be familiar with the Hamburg Steak, which is basically salted beef, minced or ground, and shaped into an easy to cook patty. (I grew up eating this style of hamburger without the bun my entire life. Likely a combo of the German Hamburg Steak and the Greek meet cakes.) These are all similar to what we now consider the classic hamburger, and it’s easy to see that the common denominator between all of these is inexpensive beef, saving pork, which had gotten expensive especially during war time, for more elaborate dishes. Since salt is added in all of these recipes, assume that salted beef is not the base of these recipes.
Fe The Cost of Ground Beef
As I peruse the ground beef selection at my local grocery story, I’m finding prices closer to $10 a pound. I expect that to continue to rise. I’ve already seen ground beef at $12 or $14 a pound. It was just a few years ago that a pound was closer to $7 and I could find it on sale for even cheaper I guess the days of bulk 99 cent sales are over. My pug eats a prescribed homemade diet of ground beef and rice, and she often eats better than us these days. So, yeah, ground beef ain’t really all that cheap these days.
Using Hamburg or Ground Beef or Whatever You Have
For the sake of the recipes in this cookbook, I’ve decided to use mostly “inexpensive” ground beef in the 20-30% fat range from the grocery story. I’ll also use the phrase “ground beef” in my cooking instructions. Feel free to use whatever ground beef you have in your fridge or freezer. While so many of my friends grew up with their parents grinding their own meat, my father doesn’t remember his parents ever doing that, so I’m assuming they picked it up at the local butcher. (He also can’t tell me if he ever used the word hamburg to describe ground beef while he was growing up in Buffalo.) Feel free to call the beef whatever you desire! In fact, what do you call ground beef?