Different blends of beef for burgers have been the rage for awhile.
The method not only provides distinctive flavor and texture, but also gives processors a premium product.
Until recently, you only ran into these in restaurants, unless you have an able butcher who was willing to do it for you in-house.
Schweid & Sons is a large purveyor of quality ground beef, with a meat business heritage that dates back more than 120 years. Starting in New York’s Lower East Side, eventually, succeeding generations of family members chose to focus only on ground beef, and moved to a modern federally inspected factor in New Jersey (pic below),, just five miles from midtown Manhattan.
The company has grown exponentially with the rise in burgers as a steady part of American diets. They furnished the Five Guys chain with meat when they had just a few stores, and still do today. The serve a host of other regional chains as well as the East Coast locations of Fatburger.
Schweid has expanded to the retail market and placed their attractively packaged products in grocery stores across the country. They have a number of different blends.
(Sidebar – I crave finding a burger in a restaurant where the meat patty stands on its own as exceptional – thinking I could do that at home has been only a dream).
I opted for their C.A.B Blend – Chuck and brisket, tho the packaging does not say what percentage. They start with Certified Angus Beef, a designation and label you’re probably used to seeing in your deli or meat counter.
The package (fresh, not frozen, tho I can’t say whether or not they were frozen in transit), contains four patties of 5.3 ounces each. Which at my store, works out to just north of $6 per pound.
I cooked mine on the grill with a quick sear on each side then low and slow to very rare. Condiment free, I nestled the patties onto a kaiser. You can see the thickness of the raw patty in my hand below, compared to the cooked on – very little shrinkage.
FOR MY MONEY, this is an exceptional burger. The texture is exactly my preference, and the patty tastes like beef, which you may think is a strange thing to say, but I’m a stickler for believing meat should taste like the actual animal. These are just great. Cliche, I know, but they really do taste like quality chopped steak.
There’s a whole host of frozen patties in the grocery freezers these days, some are pre-cooked, some not, some are no name, some are emblazoned with the name of known fast food restaurants. I’ve tried most all of them and always been disappointed. Here’s some of them.
I hope this experiment in wide spread distribution works for Schweid and Sons. I’d also be thrilled if they had some bulk one pound packages to use the product in recipe.
Here’s where you can find these fine, fine burgers near you.
Packaging
Patty thickness
On the grill – rare
Processing plant
Schweid & Sons Burger Patties Review
Schweid & Sons Burger Patties Review