Burgers really live and die on their fat content, to me. 20% fat from anywhere on the animal will work, but the traditional shoulder and top/silverside blend you can't really go wrong with.

While I don't doubt a bit of offal in there for flavour is pretty good, I question the claim that it is common practice at any level of the industry. The "best" burger to me is nothing but minced beef, salt and pepper. Binders change the texture too much and again, with 20% fat, the flavour is always going to be there.

Those roadside burger vans have a handy Campylobacter Factor Rating. The more England flags they have, the higher the chance of shits and fever.

>>13430
Lamb hearts were fun the first time I came across them, I didn't realise "heart strings" wasn't just a lovely harp-adjacent aphorism.

>>13433

Food poisoning is a lot rarer than people think.

The usual suspect is e. coli, because it's a hardy little bastard, but things like camp and salmonella are actually vanishingly rare these days. Camp is so piss weak and fussy of an organism that we often fail to grow it in the lab under ideal conditions, so unless you're licking a roadkill pigeon carcass I really struggle to imagine how people manage to become infected with it.

This is why I always go with 1 star hygeine rating takeaways. All the built up grease on the hotplate they haven't wiped down in 16 years is what gives it the flavour.

>>13432

>I question the claim that it is common practice at any level of the industry

Not in the consumer market, but heart is a very common ingredient in catering products. A beef burger patty is only required to contain 62% meat and an "economy burger" can contain as little as 47% meat.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/3001/schedule/1/made

>>13439 isn't heart 'meat'? I mean, it's pretty meaty. I'd assumed that non-meat was mostly gonads, eyeballs, brains and thymus...
Pretty sure that ringpiece counts as meat?

>>13440
Fairly sure it's offal

>>13439

I can't say I've ever come across a catering burger full of heart, but then again, I've never worked in a food van. My assumption would be that the non-meat portion would be mostly bread crumbs, which are cheaper even than heart or other offal.

I'm not trying to say I don't believe you, I'm sure you're right, I'm just curious as to where you've been that this is so common.

>>13445

Go into any cash and carry, find the cheapest box of burgers and have a look at the ingredients list. Odds are that beef heart is fairly high up the list. Rusk is an important bulking agent, but you can't use nearly as much as you could in a sausage without ruining the texture. The really cheap non-halal burgers include a fair amount of pork and mechanically reclaimed chicken.

http://www.royevansandsons.co.uk/cms/plugins/product_store/uploads/product_pdfs/7361424783092TW54ec76f4036a9penny-lane-plf-economy-burger-issue-11.pdf

https://www.brake.co.uk/meat-poultry/frozen-processed-meat/burgers-grills/fast-food-burgers/paragon-quality-foods-ltd-basics-economy-burgers-113g/p/128359

>>13456
7. All finished products are check weighed and metal detected to the following
tolerances:
 Ferrous 2.50mm
 Non Ferrous 2.80mm
 Stainless Steel 4.00mm

Contains no stainless steel shards larger than 4mm. Tasty.
I'm guessing that the high heart content makes for those delightfully rubbery burgers you get.

>>13457

There's a weird sub-industry for metal detectable products, specifically for the food processing industry.

>>13436
>Camp is so piss weak and fussy of an organism that we often fail to grow it in the lab under ideal conditions, so unless you're licking a roadkill pigeon carcass I really struggle to imagine how people manage to become infected with it.

I think the main culprit (apart from people not washing their hands and equipment after handling raw meat), is those people who insist that a chicken has to be washed under the tap before you cook it.

>>13458
Fucking hell, that image gives me flashbacks of working in a sandwich factory. I guess these places all pretty much use the same trays, overalls and tables. They're weird places, literally everything is on wheels. And it's cold.

>>13462

All food industry/catering stuff is the same brushed stainless steel stuff from restaurants to McDonalds to production lines.

Only real difference is in uniforms, and frequency of getting shouted at.

>>13464

Would people think I was a mentalist if I fitted my home kitchen with stainless steel tables? They're really good.

>>13465
No. The one challenge with steel/glass tables is that they are very uncomfortable to sit at though. By all means use them for worktops, but metal/glass is much too cold for your arms to rest on. It's why all those people who have fancy glass desks at work are actually twats, they're almost impossible to sit and type at.

>>13461
There were some people on Twitter (I think black Twitter) who were laughing at people who wash their rice.

I don't get it. If I'm eating it plain, I wash my rice? It comes covered in shit which makes it taste bitter.

>>13467

You're absolutely supposed to wash (uncooked) rice, any Asian person would think you were mental if you skipped that step.

Today I have tried Aldi's vegan steak bake.

It was missing a kick, possibly a bit of black pepper would have done the trick, so it was a bit like eating slightly bland gravy lava with barely discernable chunks of soya protein and onion in it. The filling isn't evenly distributed so around a third of the pasty is biting into hollow pastry.

>>13501
I think I had a Gregg's vegan steak bake before lockdown and I didn't like it. Too much onion compared to a normal steak bake. Onion is grim.

>>13502
I reviewed that before, probably in a different thread. I wasn't keen on it, although I'd rate it higher than the Aldi one, but I wasn't overly surprised by this as Quorn mince, especially the kind they use in ready meals, is shite.

It looks like Aldi have changed their vegan sausage rolls so hopefully not for the worse as I quite liked them.

Got a 17p reduced meat free sausage roll from the Asda hot counter.

It was a bit like a warm savoury nutri-grain bar.

>>13504

>17p reduced meat free sausage roll

there is something about those words that is suprisingly difficult to parse.

>>13505
Needs a comma after reduced.

>>13506
I'd have put it after sausage; let it roll down the hot counter.

>>13507

Between meat and free for me.

I want my cheep meat and my bonus sausage roll. None of that vegan muck for me thanks!

Apologies lads, yesterday was my first caffiene-free day and I couldn't really think straight.

I'll rephrase:

Got 17 reduced sausage counter p free meat from hot Asda counter roll.

Gourmet ketchup apparently means mixing burger relish with shitloads of cider vinegar.

>>13510
How is that in the least bit gourmet? We need some poor volunteer to do a taste and report.

>>13510
I bought some of this one as it was the only ketchup that hadn't been panic-bought out at the time. It tastes nothing like ketchup, it's fucking bolognese.

>>13512
That is disappointing - I have found a lot of their food to be very good.

Picture related. I have to limit them to one a week for lunch - fail most of the time.

Aldi's own brand cream crackers are fucking shite.

Considering this is the winning combination of pastry, cheese and baked beans this was a disappointment. Almost every mouthful tasted of red pepper, which they'd snuck in there.

Ginsters always seems to be a bit of a let down.

Stumbled across this in my local Turkish sklep. A very pleasant reminder of what IPAs used to taste like 10-15 years ago, before the invasion of citrusy American hops and the trend of "over hopping" pioneered by the Americans, whose influence now pollutes the supermarket shelves. They took this from us!We took this from ourselves!

>>13512
I got some Leon Korean style vegan mayo, and it was grim. It wasn't cheap, but it tasted like how fermented straw smells.

>>13565
Should have got some Polski mayo from Lidl during Slav week.

Yesterday I had Aldi's vegan bacon pieces and mushroom barbecue pizza. It's quite similar to the Dr Oetker Quorn pizza, except with added peppers, barbecue sauce and the base isn't as nice. I'm not sure if I'd get it again.

Eating spicy peanuts again. Think I ate three packets of them yesterday. They're so fucking good.

>>13572
It'll always be KP dry roasted peanuts for me.

>>13573
You haven't tried these.

Today I have tried Co-op's vegan katsu curry.

The jasmine rice was gloopy before it was cooked and wasn't even remotely fragrant. The soya goujons were almost entirely coating, with an incredibly meagre slice of soya within. The curry sauce was also tinged with disappointment.

>>13578
I have been disappointed with all of the Co-op's attempt at vegan food. For such a sound organisation, I would have thought they were better.

>>13579
I've heard that their incredible burgers are nice, but everything I've tried has been subpar.

>>13578
>ping meal
>disappointing

Mental, that.

>>13581
>ping

What?

>>13581
>ping meal

Can't say I've ever heard them called that before. Is that a local term or something the Yoot use?

>>13583
Noot noot, motherfucker.

>>13582
Guessing he means a microwave meal.

>>13583
The welsh name for a microwave is "popty ping", yes it is so I'm guessing they've shortened it to just ping now.

>>13585
The goujons were cooked in the oven, as per the instructions, so there's no real excuse for them being pants.