PrintOrganique: A 'Better Burger' That's Not All That Bad
"... a preposterous statement in light of the fact that we live in a universe that has Kobe and USDA Prime beef in it."
Organique
110 E 23rd Street, New York NY 10010 (b/n Lexington and Park Ave S; map); 212-674-2229; organiqueonline.com
Cooking Method: Grilled
Short Order: All-natural organic burger served on a whole wheat bun. It's far better than it should be but is still hard to recommend, given the price
Want Fries with That? They serve "air-baked" potatoes that they call fries. I didn't dare try them
Price: $7.95
I can think of no concept more abhorrent than that of a "healthy" hamburger. To try to make a burger healthier and leaner is to abrogate what a hamburger is—a highly processed and refined food. It is quite the opposite of the agrarian, organic, back-to-the-land idealism of the contemporary local-food movement. The hamburger, which began to manifest itself in the American culinary zeitgeist during the first half of the last century, is by its very nature a reflection of the post-industrial modern age. It is a physical manifestation of one of the great organizing principles of the last century—commoditization.
I am thus highly skeptical that an organic burger using grass-fed beef and a whole wheat bun could even approach what a hamburger should be, let alone actually be edible. I admit I was expecting the burger at Organique to be laughably inferior. I imagined a dry, leathery hockey puck of a patty and a completely inadequate bun. In defiance of expectations, or indeed perhaps because of them, what I ended up eating was perfectly adequate. And I say that not as a back-handed compliment but in admiration of the way Organique has turned something fundamentally anti-nutritious into something you could at least convince yourself is somewhat nourishing.
The burger at Organique comes from grass-fed Dakota beef, and the menu assures us that it has "has been university-tested and found to be more tender and flavorful than nonorganic beef" (I'm guessing they meant to say "universally"), which is a preposterous statement in light of the fact that we live in a universit—I mean universe—that has Kobe and USDA Prime beef in it.
While the Organique burger may not quite measure up to such high standards, nor even those of regular corn-fed burgers, the sirloin patty is actually quite good. It had a clean beefy flavor that I would not normally associate with grass-feeding, which often tends to give the meat a herbaceous quality. It was far juicier than most grass-fed burgers and was coarsely ground.
Cooked on a grill, it was delivered perfectly rare as ordered, although the hash marks were not as pronounced as I would have liked. Nevertheless, the patty did have a decent crust, providing a pleasing textural contrast to its tender interior. The American cheese was nicely melted, although an additional slice might have provided a better balance of flavors. The bread, whole wheat brioche, was far from ideal, with its coarse texture. But at least the strong flavor of the unprocessed grain masked any sweetness the bun might have had.
The burger comes with organic lettuce, organic tomato, and onions (apparently not organic), but I skipped them as I usually do. Consuming the burger plain provided a surprisingly familiar experience in terms of flavor profile—bold beef and tangy cheese—although the whole wheat added an unwelcome nuttiness. Texturally the bread was far too stiff and cardboardlike, forming a hard shell around the patty. Fortunately the beef managed to assert itself despite this.
Overall the burger was not as bad as it might appear on paper. If it came served on a white bun it might even have been decent, but the whole wheat bread is just wrong for the task. Another problem is that the burger costs more than $8 after tax, which I suppose is the price of environmental responsibility—or perhaps political correctness.
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13 Comments:
"what a hamburger is—a highly processed and refined food"
?????? Really??? How so? A hamburger is meat, ground up, formed into a patty, cooked and placed on a piece of bread. That's not what I call highly processed at all. It is in fact in it's purest form, highly UN-processed. I can think of tons of other foods that are much more processed than a hamburger. Industrial burgers, yes, hand made burgers, not really. I think your reverse snobbism detracts from your otherwise lucid thinking on the matter.
"the burger costs more than $8 after tax, which I suppose is the price of environmental responsibility—or perhaps political correctness."
This is just hypocritical. The Black Label burger costs 12.99 BEFORE tax.
simon at 10:55AM on 03/03/09
@ Simon A burger is in fact highly processed, which is why they have only existed in the modern age.
Let's start with the beef: Firstly almost all the beef we eat as hamburgers is grain fed. This involves a highly mechanized industrial infrastructure just to harvest the corn and soy and whatever else the animal is fed. Corn fed animal are generally not free range, they are reared in massive industrialized farms. You accurately state that the beef is ground up (in other words processed) It is not treated as a whole cut like a smoked brisket or even sliced into steaks but rather the primal cuts gets butchered and the whole muscles are broken down into smaller pieces which are then ground, formed in to patties and then cooked. Sound pretty processed to me.
Let's talk about the bread. An enriched refined white burger bun is about as processed as bread can be. Just the act of stripping the bran and wheat germ should qualify it as highly refined but even after that occurs the bread is bleached to remove any yellow color that might remain. Also since most bread is enriched by adding nutrients to it I would argue that it amongst the most processed foods that we consume.
How about the cheese? You don't have to look much past the label of any American cheese product to know what is going on, it invariably reads "processed cheese."
Black Label burgers cost $12 (or whatever they sell for) because they are using dry aged USDA Prime steak in the grind, the added expense is justified on that basis alone. But compare the Shake Shack burger which sells for $4 and uses a custom blend of all natural Creekstone beef and you will have a hard time convincing most people that the $8 Organique burger is some how reasonably priced. It is not, you are paying for something other than the beef itself.
Nick Solares at 3:09PM on 03/03/09
Ugh, the whole wheat bun is just unnecessary.
The name of the place is so affected. It reminds me of that French & Saunders sketch where they're pretending to sell jewelry on QVC. Every pseudo-gemstone has an "ique" on the end, and there's even an "Ique-ique".
Michele Humes at 3:50PM on 03/03/09
As I said in my comment, industrial burgers are indeed highly processed, but any hand made burger made with semi decent ingredients does not qualify for that label. American cheese is not cheese, it's a cheese like product. Yes, most generic industrial hamburger buns are highly processed, but it's not a requirement to use them to make a delicious burger. In the first half of the last century, when the hamburger "began to manifest itself in the American culinary zeitgeist," all beef was still grass fed. We didn't switch over to a factory farm mega industrialized model of corn and soy fed beef until AFTER WW2. The first references to hamburgers date back to the 1880's. Grinding meat and cooking it on a skillet or over a flame is hardly a modern industrial invention.
When you go buy a steak from the supermarket, the only difference between it and a burger is that it isn't ground up. Do you also consider that steak to be "highly processed?" Running it through a meat grinder is a process, just like scratching your ass is a process. I wouldn't call it "highly processed" just because it's gone through a meat grinder. How about sausage-making? Cheese-making? Also "highly processed?" I think a lot of slow food people would bristle at that. You are generalizing too much. There's a difference between "highly processed" and just plain old cooking.
By your definition, anything that was cooked or baked, or fermented is highly processed. Twinkies are highly processed. High Fructose Corn Syrup is highly processed. Bread is not. Ground meat is not. Cheese is not. Your generalization strips "highly processed" of any meaning. Newsflash: all cooking is a process. Making a delicious burger doesn't require factory farmed or processed ingredients.
simon at 4:15PM on 03/03/09
Once again Simon you have reduced this to a semantic argument. I am fully aware of a distinction between "cooking " and "highly processed" were the line is drawn is of course a personal decision. I choose to define white bread - in any form - as a processed food because it has been so drastically altered. There are people who eat raw food diets that do indeed refer to anything that is cooked as "highly processed" I choose to draw it slightly more liberally.
The hamburger in its contemporary form - which is universally recognizable - has only existed since the 1920's when the hamburger bun was invented. All previous regional iterations were but evolutionary steps. It is true that early burgers used grass fed beef but the ascension of the hamburger to a national dish occurred in the post war period and coincided, not incidentally, with the adoption of corn feeding and industrial farming. It was because of White Castle in the pre war era and McDonald's - two companies that are the paradigms of processed food - after the war that the hamburger gained national currency.
While cooking meat on a skillet might not be a modern invention grinding the meat using a commercially available grinder certainly is. Before the advent of industrialization and mass production meat grinders - with their numerous machined and interlocking parts - were not widely available and it was thus not worth making hamburgers because of the labor intensity.
When you buy a steak in the supermarket what you are buying is highly processed for all the reasons that I mentioned in my earlier comment regarding what it takes to feed them plus the fact they they are pumped full of hormones. That is why slow food people prefer grass fed, pasture raised hormone free animals.
It is true that a burger does not have to contain highly processed ingredients but the fact is that 99.9999% of burgers sold use them is a pretty good indication that that is how they should be. A gourmet chef can deconstruct anything - burgers, tater tots etc - and use unprocessed ingredients but that doesn't alter the fact that for almost its entire existence the burger has been precisely what I said it was - "a highly processed and refined food"
Nick Solares at 8:10AM on 03/04/09
Actually, even grain-fed cattle are pastured (eat grasses) for most of their lives and are only finished on grain to fatten them up.
This argument is silly, but it is also silly to say that just because 99%+ of burgers are made a certain way, that is how the rest should be. 99% of burgers are made of USDA select grade scraps pre-formed into patties and frozen, but I don't think this is how they should be. I don't think there should be a standard for burgers and I'm getting tired of the way this site, and you in particular Nick, have this ideal burger and dismiss anything that doesn't follow it.
A burger should be evalulated on whether it is good and priced reasonably or isn't. A website devoted exclusively to burgers needs to be more open minded in reviewing them than simply comparing them to a carefully selected blend of beef cuts by La Frieda, seared on a griddle, served on a unintrusive white bun with a slice of american cheese.
jonsarkpk at 11:37AM on 03/04/09
A semantical quibble: the traditional burger is not "anti-nutritious", at least by the dictionary definition--it's rich in caloric nutrients. It's OVERLY nutritious, that's the problem--it provides, potentially, an excess of food energy, making it, for some, possibly unhealthy.
chevalier at 1:51PM on 03/04/09
"you have reduced this to a semantic argument"
Uh... The whole point was semantics. I object to your blanket statement that burgers are by definition a "highly processed food" and your definition of "highly processed" in general. I disagree with many of your other arguments and grasp of historical facts but I frankly don't have the time or energy right now to pick them all apart. Suffice it to say that jonsarkpk summarizes many of my sentiments very succinctly, and right now I'll leave it at that, because that's all I care to do at the moment.
One other thing: conventionally raised cattle are only pastured when they are infants and not yet fully weened. They are fed grain, not just because it's cheaper to keep them in a pen feeding from a trough, but because that fattens them up and gets them ready to be brought to market in about half the time as it would take to raise them to maturity purely on grass. That's why grass fed costs so much more. It takes much more time, and requires more space.
Also this statement is complete horseshit:
"you are paying for something other than the beef itself."
Grass fed beef has been demonstrated to contain higher levels of omega-3, conjugated linoleic acid, is higher in vitamin e, a and beta carotene, and is lower in saturated fats and overall calories. It also has a much lower risk of carrying e coli. And the FLAVOR is better. So you are actually getting much better nutrition for your money, tastiness, as well as "doing the right thing."
simon at 5:06PM on 03/04/09
@jonsarkpk You are absolutely right that a website dedicated to burgers should be open minded. That's why you will find a number of reviewers here with varying personal preferences and indeed visions of what a hamburger should be. Just last week AHT featured a review by Colin Parent of an Australian style burger and Damon routinely eats all manner of burgers with eggs and what-not. The point of a review is that I am giving my opinion. I am upfront about the fact that I have a narrow, maybe even reactionary, definition of my ideal hamburger is and it is also true that I like my burgers with just beef, bun and cheese (and I am beginning to think the cheese is superfluous) So with that in mind if you can't accept those things don't read my reviews. But in my defense I have given many positive reviews to burgers that are anything but griddle cooked burgers on a regular white bun - 67 Burger, Primehouse, Veselka. for example.
@ Simon Reiterating what I said in my comments to jonsarkpk - a review is an opinion. I have stated my opinion on what constitutes a "processed food" as well as the historical ascension of the hamburger. I doubt very much that you will be able change that opinion by anything that you could possibly post here. or anywhere.
Nick Solares at 5:46PM on 03/04/09
That burger smells like hippy! Airbaked fries? Sounds like a good recipe for card board. Pass.
Cheers, TB.
texas blues at 9:50PM on 03/04/09
Nick-I just wanted to chime in and say that I'm on your side here. I don't see these people raising their own cows and growing their own grain for bread, etc, so who knows how many steps their precious food goes through before it gets to their mouth?
The more important question here, however, is this: Why was this argument started in the first place? Either because Simon is a hopeless pedantic for pure semantics, or because the idea that something is "processed" offends him somehow. Just because something is processed doesn't mean it's evil, OR necessarily unhealthy--but you notice he's not arguing on that point, he's attacking your term so that he can justify liking a certain kind of food without having to admit to eating "processed" food.
That's the kind of thinking that makes people plunk down money to fund elitist places like Organique that make their living out of customers who are that easily frightened by the fact that we are not living in the Stone Age. Granted, I'll bet the owners and operators of the place suffer from the same delusion, but really! Give me a break!
sar_t at 12:38AM on 03/06/09
I love how an informative article gets taken down to the lowest common denominator, yet again. Great, informative article, thanks Nick. And simon, get a girlfriend.
ridethespiral at 10:09AM on 03/06/09
I hesitate to step in, after all the hoo-ha over what processed means, but why assume that "university-tested" was wrong? Citing some ag school study makes more sense to me than "universally tested." Or maybe you're right — I guess it would fit a sort of airy, holistic sort of feel.
rewil at 12:26PM on 03/11/09