When I was a kid, the only thing I liked to eat was hamburgers.
For my own children, it was more about the chicken nuggets (at least for the first two). But, for me, it was hamburgers. At home, my parents would cook hamburger helper a lot, but that’s still hamburger, right? I didn’t eat chicken, period. Wouldn’t touch pork (well, unless it was disguised as bacon, of course). And seafood? Don’t get me started. My grandparents on my mom’s side loved seafood. They would often go out to eat at very nice seafood restaurants, and sometimes they’d take me. And there was literally nothing on the menu I would eat. Oh, sure: nowadays, almost every restaurant will offer a hamburger or some chicken nuggets on a kid’s menu, regardless of the actual cuisine. But not in my day. In my day, if you didn’t like the type of food they had, you were just supposed to suck it up and eat it anyway. But I was a stubborn child. I would eat nothing rather than eat seafood. I spent many a meal eating Captain’s Wafers sandwiches with butter in the middle that my grandmother would make me, and that was literally all I’d get. Once when I was perhaps 8 years old my grandfather gave me a few dollars and told me that, if I wanted a hamburger so bad, there was a McDonald’s next door: I could go get it myself. I was a painfully shy kid, and the thought of going somewhere (even directly next door to a restaurant where my grandparents could easily see me from their table by the window) and actually interacting with adults was horrifying, and, in retrospect, I think my grandfather knew this and the whole thing was sort of a challenge. But I ate a hamburger and fries that night.
I was committed to the beef, is what I’m saying.
Besides the fast food hamburgers and the hamburger helper, there was “hamburger steak,” a dish (and I’m being very generous in calling it a “dish”) that my father made by serving a hamburger patty in onions and gravy rather than on a bun, bologna sandwiches (always beef bologna, of course), spaghetti and meatballs (meatballs composed either solely or primarily of, you guessed it: beef), beef stew, the occasional beef pot roast at my grandmother’s house which then turned into something she called “beef hash” the next day, and probably a few more ways to dress up cow meat that I’m not even remembering right now. The only thing I can really remember eating as a child that wasn’t beef was hot dogs (we didn’t really do beef hot dogs back in those days). And the occasional meal of chicken chow mein (my foodie grandfather again) that was served in that particular way that they used to make it on the East Coast before they decided that it should be full of bean sprouts (bleaaugh). It was a whoooole lotta beef.
Of course, most of it wasn’t very good beef. I didn’t care for steak (too chewy), and my parents and grandparents were just as happy not to have to pay for one for me anyhow. I didn’t do prime rib either, on those super rare occasions when the parents or grandparents would spring for it. So the vast majority of the beef I ate didn’t taste much like beef: the hamburgers tasted of mustard and ketchup; my dad’s “hamburger steak” tasted of gravy; most of those meatballs tasted like my grandmother’s spaghetti sauce; hamburger helped tasted mostly like MSG. And, you know, back in those days, that might have been for the best. Beef was pricey (chicken was the “cheap” meat back then), so most of what I was eating was right down at the lower end of the quality spectrum. Which is fine: I was a dumb kid. Don’t waste the good stuff on me.
Of course, as I got older, I did get a little more discerning. I never really developed a taste for seafood, but I started liking various forms of chicken, and even started appreciating pork chops, not to mention all the really delightful disguises that pork can assume, like pepperoni, salami, capicola (for Italian subs), andouille sausage (for red beans and rice), country sausage (for biscuits and gravy), country ham (for ham rolls on Christmas morning), etc etc etc. I even started liking the finer forms of beef ... somewhat. I’ve always been the sort of person who appreciates a good filet mignon but otherwise can take or leave a steak, and as far as I’m concerned the attraction of prime rib lies almost entirely in the au jus. Even what is probably my all-time favorite beef dish, steak au poivre, is, again, all about the sauce. Curiouser and curiouser.
Of course, in recent years, even the once-lowly hamburger is getting new appreciation from the culinary world. First they told us to stop using so much damn ketchup (or mayo, or thousand islands dressing, or whatever your slathering of choice may be) so we could actually taste the meat. Then, once we decided that was a terrible idea, they started telling us to seek out a better class of meat. Organic, pasture raised, grass-fed: all that stuff became all the rage. Even kobe, if you want to get really pricey. And, as the much better qualities of beef have gradually become more and more commonplace, and we’ve all become more and more able to actually taste the meat, and I’ve become more and more discerning, I’ve discovered a very curious thing about myself.
I don’t actually like the taste of beef.
When I look back on my life at the quantity of beef I’ve packed away, this is practically shocking. I mean, how can I not like beef? Everyone likes beef. It was the most consumed meat in my country of origin for the first twenty-five years of my life, and #2 for the last thirty. In 2020, the U.S. consumed 20 billion pounds of beef, which is roughly 90 pounds of beef for every man, woman, and child in the country. And for 50 or so years, I was perfectly happy with beef. Until I could actually taste it. Now ... not so much. Now, I would have to rate it as “meh” at best. Quite often, in a beef dish made with particularly high-quality grass-fed beef, I actually dislike it altogether. Sometimes, when someone in my house is cooking beef (especially in combination with garlic), it can actually make me a bit queasy, even though I know I’m going to enjoy the taste once it’s done.
And of course the silly thing is, it’s not particularly good for me. I know there’s some debate about whether beef is healthy or not, but I think a lot depends on the individual. For me, I can tell you definitively that there are only a few things I know for a fact help me lose weight, and one of them is to cut out red meat. So what occurs to me is, why should I bother continuing to eat a meat that makes me fat and I don’t even like the taste all that much?
Oh, I don’t propose to cut out beef altogether. I still like a nice filet every now and again, but for me “every now and again” means about once a year. When it comes to meatballs or hamburger-helper-style meals or taco
I tried it on a whim, really. Just to see if it could really live up to the hype. So, can I tell it isn’t beef? Of course. Then again, that’s sort of a plus from my perspective. The more important question is, can I tell it isn’t meat? And the answer is, no, not really. It sort of tastes like an exotic meat you might get at a fancy chain, like an ostrich burger from Fuddrucker’s (and, yes: I’ve had one of those before). Like a turkey burger, but different enough that you probably wouldn’t think it actually was turkey. Point being, it’s a perfectly acceptable meat substitute. And they say that plant substitutes such as Impossible are better for the planet, so that’s a win-win in my book. It does contain soy, so I try not to eat it as a regular thing (soy has its own set of pros and cons), but, as a sometime food, it’s probably better (and better for me) than actual beef.
So that’s where I’ve landed on the topic of America’s #2 favorite (formerly #1) processed animal protein. I think I just don’t need it any more. And I think that’s going to be good for me in the long run. No need to go full-on vegetarian, I don’t think, but getting a bit closer has got to be a good thing.