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We all know that unless you took my advice and found yourself a butcher, real hamburger is hard to come by. Real, meaty, fatty, found in the corner and ground up before anyone notices scraps are the only true hamburger out there. Now we have 80/20. 90/10. 99 percent lean beef. Yuch.

And not only does super lean meat taste bad, it’s unusable for what we normally like to do with our hamburger. That is, make hamburgers. You see, hamburgers need about 25% fat just to hold them together, anything less and it’s going to crumble apart. That’s anoying if you’re frying them, it’s a ruined dinner if you’re grilling them(and really, why wouldn’t you be grilling them?)

So what are you to do if you’re old lady brought home a tube of 90/10 for your Saturday night neighborhood grill? First, dump her. Second, pork sausage. Pork sausage has plenty of fat for everybody. Just mix in about a tablespoon of pork for every burger and you should be good to go. And quite frankly, the results are beyond awesome. You’ll never make burgers without sausage again.

You’re welcome.

I know you buy your meat at some grocery store where the butcher is a faceless Mexican in a back room who’s retirement plan is to cut his thumb off in the ban saw. We all do. And occasionally that’s OK. But it’s a really smart move to find yourself a butcher, a real honest to God, old school butcher. Or at least a grocery store with a meat counter where you can talk to a guy instead of isles upon isles of heartless prepackaged carcass(prepackaged hearts not withstanding).

There are a few reasons for this, first the butcher is one of the original man’s men. Remember the Brady Bunch? Was Sam the butcher some sap who married a twat and took in her 3 whining, gabbing, menstruating daughters? No, he banged the maid and sent her home when he was done with her. All she got was a few free pounds of meat and a lot of double entendres. That and being up to your wrists in dead animals all day is petty much the definition of manly

Second, he knows more than you do and you can ask him questions with out shame. You can’t ask some teenager in an apron what the difference between flank and skirt steak is while he’s trying to price the Rice-A-Roni. The butcher is one of the few men you’re expected to ask questions of and it’s not an admission of weakness or idiocy. In the olden days he would be a tribal elder. The elder who always smelled of blood and entrails.

Finally, if you know your butcher he’s gonna give you better stuff. Everybody likes someone who’s interested in their job, the butcher is no exception. So when you asking him to cut you some 2 inch thick pork chops, he’s not annoyed that you don’t want what’s on the counter. He’s glad to have a customer so interested that he knows exactly what he wants. That means he’ll choose better cuts for you, maybe give you an extra half pound for free.

So next time you’re thinking of grilling a steak, find a butcher nearby and ask him what he recommends. He’ll give you his best stuff, best info and you just may make a blood splattered friend. Who’s not a serial killer.

Hopefully.