[amorphous]

Totally agree with not knowing what's in ground beef. All of my ground meat I now get from a local butcher that I trust. The size of Hamburger patties before and after grilling are a good indication of how much "junk" has been added to the meet.

Walmart ground meat is the worst of all, IMO. Their ground beef sometimes loses almost half is original size after cooking.

[Aliska]

In my failed quest for the perfect hamburger meat, my butcher said to use 80-20 chuck. I just can't get it to work, tried the quarter-size depression trick to avoid shrinkage and many other ways of forming the patties. These burgers I remember from a drive-in has almost crispy lacy edges but the burger wasn't dry. It was cooked on a grill, probably started as a ball and flattened with a spatula. I could never duplicate that in all these years. The man who ran the restaurant had a farm and used his own beef which included many cuts I'm sure and saved out the steaks and perhaps choice roasts for other uses.

Now 80-20 has quite a bit of fat which I want for a good burger but when I brown it and break it up, it often lets off little to no fat (if there is any I tip the pan and spoon it off or sop it up with paper towel(s)). But if I then slow cook it, fat creeps out and there's that orange grease after refrigerating. I try to scrape out as much as I can.

I think my burgers shrink some and I don't want that so you make a good point.

Maybe my taste is off in my older years but I remember getting ground beef, frying it in a patty and eating it as a steak burger with no bun. It was so tasty then. I liked it with a little bite of raw onion, maybe some Worcestershire (which I don't llike much in cooking), A-1 steak sauce I haven't bought in years, or just plain.

I had some roast a few years back and was so delicious I couldn't believe it. It was bought directly from a farmer. But they could have used prime rib and cooked it like a pot roast. Whatever, I wish I could buy a half of beef but I wouldn't use it up fast enough.