About 10 years ago, I stopped liking drive-through hamburgers as much as I once did.
All of them. Carl’s Junior (Hardees I think elsewhere). McDonalds. BK. Even Wendy’s, which once seemed wonderful.
They just didn’t taste the same ... none were ever truly delicious any more. I still like them ok. Wendy’s can pull off pretty good burgers. In ‘n Out can put together a tasty sandwich. But not even they, taste like what you could cook in the backyard.
Why is that?
I wonder if all of them, changed to including the pink slime?
That and meat “extenders”. Soy products mostly. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to eat off the dollar menu.
Of course they don’t taste like ‘backyard burgers.’ But what’s in your backyard burgers? Do you really know.
Better just shut up and eat.
My wife buys range fed eggs, not cheap but when we go back to the store bought, quality doesn't seem to be there. Whether real or in our minds, don't know but she keeps buying the expensive eggs.
Ask your butcher. Back during one of the tainted beef scares, the wife asked what’s what with the ground beef. Turned out we had it backwards. The stuff that looked like it was prepackaged was actually ground on premises.
They don’t salt the patties as much as they used to.
“They just didn’t taste the same ... Why is that?”
It’s because they now all cook their patties into little disk-shaped coal patties because they don’t have the confidence that their ground beef isn’t contaminated with e coli, and the only way to assure themselves that their food won’t kill their patrons is to incinerate it.
Go to Safeway and buy chuck on sale and have them grind it on the spot and you’ll have ground beef guaranteed to be safe and pure and fit to cook to rare perfection. If bone in chuck, be sure to get a center-cut piece, as the end cuts are mostly fat gristle and bone.