Burgers

I told you we would cover burgers ;)

I love me a juicy, tasty burger. These beauts get a lot of bad rap because of their evil fast-food cousins (and some not fast-food restaurants...if you really want to give yourself a scare, check out Ruby Tuesday's nutrition info. That's right, 900+ cals for a VEGGIE BURGER.) However, if you do your homework and prepare the burger yourself, there's absolutely no reason you can't indulge in a meat-and-cheese-seeded-bun-love-fest once in a while.

Do-It-Yourself
Food Network guru Alton Brown swears by grinding your own burger. This of course requires some kind of apparatus to grind the beef, like a food processor, or an actual meat grinder (how Pink Floyd). I've never attempted this myself. However, his recipe is as follows:

8 oz chuck, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes
8 oz sirloin, trimmed 1 1/2 inch cubes

To put it in perspective: Fresh Direct (who doesn't deliver to my neighborhood, drat them) prices chuck at $4.99 per lb, and sirloin at $3.99 per lb, which means that for $4.49 you get a pound of freshly ground beef. If you dole your beef into 4 oz. portions (which is my preferred burger size), you get 4 1/4lb patties for less than a dollar-fiddy a piece (and they're all sittin' pretty at a reasonable 305 calories). Eat it, McDonald's.

Frozen Option
If I teach you one thing with this blog, it will likely be to USE YOUR FREEZER. I can't tell you how much money you will save, because I haven't bothered to count it. Rest assured, though, your wallet will thank you. Freezing food will protect your leftovers and help you stretch your resources. Bonus scenario: there's a great sale on pork tenderloin/ground turkey/chicken lips at your local market, and you've been dying to try out that Cubano/turkey meatloaf/ chicken lip stew recipe your grandma gave you, but you don't know when you'll have time to cook it. No matter! You can buy it and freeze it until you're ready! Such a simple rule, and burgers are no exception.

A good place to check for inexpensive meat is Omaha Steak Company. Now, I will warn you to put your number (including cell) on the do not call registry, because OSC loves to make little courtesy calls asking you to buy their beef. I'm 100% Not Into This (and for the record, I asked them not to call me and they complied), but I do occasionally get email updates from them, and they have some pretty good deals pretty frequently. As of this writing, you can get 16 (!!) 8 oz. burgers for $34 (as opposed to the regular price of $66.99). If you follow my example and halve and reshape the patties into 4 oz. servings, that's a whopping 32 burgers for only $1.06! (I should totally be on TV with this). The patties come individually wrapped and stored in a big stuff-in-your-freezer-box, which - you know - I wish they used less plastic, but it makes it a breeze to defrost individual patties. I did the math, and you save about 40 cents a burger if you go for the box of 8 oz. burgers, as opposed to buying the rough equivalent of 4 oz. burgers.

Each patty is 100% pure beef, which is really the only kind of burger I recommend eating, unless you like earthworm as a potential filler (okay, that was a vicious rumor). It's 490 calories for the 8 oz monster, only 245 if you cut it in half. Not bad.

Bottom Line
Follow Alton Brown's recipe for freshly ground burgers. Approx $1.30 and 305 calories per 1/4 lb burger.
Go the frozen route with Omaha Steak Company. Approx $1.06 and 245 calories per 1/4 lb burger (with the deal described above).