One Caveman’s Financial Journey

I love to experiment with food, specifically hamburgers, when grilling season comes around. Making your own hamburgers is a true hands-on experience, so be prepared to get a little messy.  It’s not hard to make a regular burger - all you have to do is fashion ground beef into patties - but to make something special, you have to experiment with mixing in spices and other seasonings.

Making a great burger is an imprecise process; it really comes down to how the meat mixture feels between your fingers and how pleasing is the aroma.  In search of that perfect burger, you’ll find yourself adding a pinch of this and a dash of that until you’re happy with the final result.

Here are the ingredients from my latest successful experiment:

• 2 lbs. 80% lean ground beef
• 1/3 cup Barbeque sauce
• 1/8 cup Dried minced onion
• 2 tsp Cayenne pepper
• 1/8 cup Oats
• 1/8 cup Bread crumbs
• 2 tbsp Hickory shake-in seasoning

Of all those ingredients, the only one I actually measure is the meat; the rest are all estimates based on memory. After getting two pounds of beef in a large bowl, I start pouring in other ingredients by sight.  Working the ingredients in by hand, I check to see if the mixture is too wet from the barbeque sauce.  If the burgers are too wet, they’ll likely fall apart on the grill, so I added the oats and bread crumbs to help absorb some of the extra moisture and to stretch the meat a bit further.

Now the real key to great homemade hamburgers is to use 80% lean ground beef. Fat is essential for a great grilling experience because the real flavor of the meat comes from the fat, and the extra fat will help keep your burgers from drying out on the grill.  Don’t worry since most of it will drip away - if you used 90% lean, you’d have very little left and your burgers would either fall apart or turn into little rocks.

Anything beyond the bare ground beef is really up to your own tastes. I like the sweet and smoky flavors of barbeque sauce and hickory, so that drove my choices.  There are many possible combinations that you almost can’t go wrong.  Just take all your spices and seasonings out of your cabinet and see what you come up with.

What’s even better than getting burgers exactly how you like them, they’re also cheaper than the pre-made frozen patties. The frozen burgers we used to buy from Sam’s Club were about $14.25 for 18 1/3-pound burgers, or $0.79 per patty.  I can’t really nail down an estimate for the cost of the ingredients, but I do know we purchased the ground beef for $1.98 per pound.  Using the two pounds of beef (bolstered by the added ingredients), I was able to make 7 1/3-pound burgers.  My meat cost was $0.57 per patty and I seriously doubt the ingredients I added would cover any significant amount of the $0.22 difference.  Not only did I make an outstanding burger that my family and my guests raved about, I saved $1.54 over grilling pre-made, frozen patties! Now that’s some frugal, tasty food!

Grilling is one of the great benefits of summer and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t take your cooking outside at least once a month.  Why heat up your home and stress your air conditioner when you could make something wonderful outside on the grill?  Get out there and start the fire!

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