Best Value Lean Ground Beef-not such a good deal????

Now I know there was a thread about the "tube ground beef" (i snicker as I type that..lol)

we were curious of how good it was. my thoughts were that it was fine. I was referring to the Beef Beyond Belief or the 2 lbs ones they sell at Zehrs, No Frills, etc. WELL, thinking I should use up my FREEbeefwub3 hamburger helpers, i brought them to GT. They have the hamburger helper and tuna helper on for only 1.62. I have seen that they have frozen 1lb beef gr. beef tubes so i thought, "great!"

well, i made it last night and this particular brand is not so good. It is called "Best Value Lean Ground Beef." It is in a bright red tube.

while it was frying, it smelled reminiscent of liver or some other organ meat. ewww. Don't get me wrong, I love liver, but only when I am eating liver. I wouldnt want the taste or essence of that strong flavour in hamburger helper or any other dish called for ground beef.

the texture was strange too. really grainy. I started thinking about wet cat food and that was it! there was no turning back. it has the texture of that weird Taco Bell ground meat. You know what I mean?

anyway, just a warning/review. I won't be purchasing this any more.

NOTE: I thought the cats would love it seeing as it looked and smelled like cat food. Two of them turned their noses up at it! Crazy. 2 out of 3 cats would not eat it. I wonder if the neighbors dogs would like it?

ewww I would never buy beef from GT. Dont ask me why, never tried it, but definately wont now. Thanks for the review..

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Originally Posted by miztia

ewww I would never buy beef from GT. Dont ask me why, never tried it, but definately wont now. Thanks for the review..

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your so right....lol. what the hell was i thinking? thats what a friend of mine said...."what do you expect?"

I never trust fresh meat that comes in an opaque packaging. How are you supposed to check for colour, etc.?

I live close to a GT, but I've never bought the tube beef there. I usually buy 10lbs at a time when a local butcher has it on sale, but this past week I picked up very nice lean ground beef at Metro. The meat quality still seems high after the change from A&P, which was always good.

i always make hamburger helper with ground pork... never told the hubby and he never knew till i let it slip to a friend in front of him.... its cheaper and taste the same to me ... andapparently him too! LOL

im not a fan of the 'beef tube' *snicker* i like it in the styrofoam tray..i agree with irefusetopayfullprice, need to see the colour etc. ive purchsed it from loblaw in the past when it came on really cheap and i found it to be um, how shall i put this, gristley? maybe? i dont know..just not so hot.

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Originally Posted by gracesmommy

im not a fan of the 'beef tube' *snicker* i like it in the styrofoam tray..i agree with irefusetopayfullprice, need to see the colour etc. ive purchsed it from loblaw in the past when it came on really cheap and i found it to be um, how shall i put this, gristley? maybe? i dont know..just not so hot.

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You shouldnt judge your beef by the colour. In Canada it's legal to treat it with Carbon Monoxide to keep the fresh reddish/pink colour. It can actually still look great when its going bad. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1335505.shtml

That being said I buy whatever beef is on sale. Tube or Styrofoam. Im a smell/touch tester myself. Stinky or Slimey = :puke: It seems that most grocery stores get alot of their meat pre packaged now. No Frills, Food Basics, Walmart, Price Chopper dont have a meat department so it's not fresh anyways. Even the stuff you pay top dollar for at Sobeys, Loblaws etc isnt ground in store. Well, It comes in ground and they grind it again. So if you ask them if they grind it in the store they can say yes. I was also told by a friend that works at a grocery store meat dept that they dont use different meat for the lean or extra lean and they just grind it an extra time:( I always buy lean because the regular and medium are too fatty and gristly and the extra lean is too expensive. I wonder if Sobeys or Fortinos will grind the meat for me the next time they have roasts on sale. hmm

Ahhh - once someone told me that they have a friend who worked for RCSS, and the friend told this someone that the ground beef there is reaaaally ground beef - as in if the beef falls to the ground, pick it up and grind it up anyway - who cares about washing off the gunk. I don't know how far that is true, but I don't buy ground beef or any other meat there. I have been buying from Costco, but do remember that there was a salmonela thing that started there a couple of years ago. I have an electric meat grinder, but soooo lazy to use it. Also I am messy, so I dont know where I put it, and my basement is a mess. Hopefully I will find it in spring/summer when I clean up............

I don't guy ground beef, after watching a special on TV about it 15 years ago. Now I grind my own meet with my grinder attachment on my kitchenaid. This way I know what I am eating.

I don't want to think about what I saw on that special, but let's just say I became a vegetarian for 10 years after watching it and now only eat a little meat. I still prefer a vegetarian meal over any kind of meat.

Thx for the review - I, too, like to be able to see it if I'm getting it from a groc. store, - a butcher is different because they often use the opaque tube packaging. And, yeah, the 'cow bum' thread....

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Originally Posted by kt_9333

i always make hamburger helper with ground pork... never told the hubby and he never knew till i let it slip to a friend in front of him.... its cheaper and taste the same to me ... andapparently him too! LOL

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Wow, you're lucky you can get it cheaper! Ground pork is really expensive where we live - I love using it, but it's been way out of our price range probably for the last year. I miss it - there are tons of dishes I love making with it!!!

Is the "Best value" brand the same one as Walmart's generic brand? Walmart has these new no name brands in white boxes packaging etc. I have not tried anything from this line but it's super cheap. But for some reason the white packaging is kind of not appealing. Well I will not judge a book by it's cover. No name in the yellow packaging is great!

I used to live in Vancouver and there are lots food/meat packing plants there. One radio station used to ask questions about how foods are made. One question was what exactly goes into ground beef? Someone phoned in that had worked at one of the places and stated that in ground beef, everything but the lips and teats goes into ground beef. Gross! I don't know how true that is but I will never forget what was stated.

I tried a tube on Friday, the lean ground beef one. IT WAS THE WORST GROUND BEEF I EVER USED IN MY LIFE!!! Never again will I buy the tubes. It was very grainy, and it most certainly didn't taste right. I guess you really do get what you pay for!

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Originally Posted by kt_9333

i always make hamburger helper with ground pork... never told the hubby and he never knew till i let it slip to a friend in front of him.... its cheaper and taste the same to me ... andapparently him too! LOL

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we use ground pork in a lot of things too, instead of ground beef. My roommate's parents make it homemade, sausages too and pasta sauce it's all sooo much better then store bought! (I will be very sad the day I have to move out and can't have all the yummy homemade foods his mom makes) It really makes me wonder why society has brought it to the point where we really on factory's and processed foods though, I guess it's because we try to do soo much!