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Comment by spunker540 | Hacker News Reader

The one thing these burgers got on in-n-out is the freshly-ground beef trump card.

I would be interested to see some blind taste test data to determine if a majority of people can distinguish a burger made with beef that was ground 1 day before cooking vs. 1 minute before cooking.

I haven't seen such a chart, but I don't know of any burger restaurant that grinds a la minute - not at any price point.

That's a moot point if you can't tell the difference or if the one that was pre-ground ends up tasting better in a blind taste test. I agree, however, that the freshly ground one should taste better.

My point is that even high end restaurants haven't found it worthwhile to grind immediately before cooking, so it's probably a pretty minor difference

Probably because it's labor intensive, something an automated machine can handle just fine.

I think very few people will be able to tell the difference.

However, IMHO, the source of the beef can trump all that. I used to buy a year's worth of beef from a local farmer all at once. Even after a year in the freezer, a burger made from his grass-fed beef tasted better than one made from meat bought from the grocery the same day. When you start out with high quality meat, it takes a long time before the flavor degrades.

OTOH, "regular" store bought ground beef tastes nasty after being frozen for a few months.

You seriously can't taste the difference between pasture-raised beef and the grade D swill that junk food pushers like In-n-out peddle?

The biggest factor is in fresh vs frozen, and in N out is on the correct side of that divide. I'd be interested in a blind comparison between burgers made with high and low end pieces of beef, but it'd be very difficult to eliminate the confounding variables. Getting fat percentage equal would be tough.

In N Out uses factory-farmed, garbage-fed, antibiotic-saturated beef from cows who have no room to move and stand in their own shit all day. I can tell the difference between that kind of stuff and a good healthy grass-fed cow by smell alone. Seriously, I wonder if you have ever even had healthy beef.

Interesting. How did you come to the conclusion that you can tell the difference just by smell? Can you do that after it's been cooked? It's easy to see certain differences in uncooked, whole cuts of beef, but I'm impressed that you can smell the difference.

To your point about high end and low end pieces of beef, steaks are usually priced by the tenderness of the beef, which tends to have an inverse relationship with flavor (of course, there are other factors as well, and some people just prefer a mild-tasting cut).

As you might have inferred by now, good burgers are typically made from cuts like brisket and chuck that are tough, inexpensive, and high in flavor. Using high-end steaks for burgers is simply a waste, doubly so for well-marbled ones.

The fat percentage would not be difficult. Any good butcher would probably be happy to help you set such a comparison up. That is, if they don't warn you that it's a waste to use that T-bone on a burger first.

I'm interested in using the same cuts of meat from different grades of beef. The higher degree of marbling in higher-end beef will make it difficult to get the same amount of fat.

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