AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Many weeknight dinners start early in the morning when you pull a pound of ground beef out of the freezer to defrost. But the average price of that pound is now approaching $7. Five years ago, it was $4.10, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. So we've invited Dan Pashman to come tell us how to make a weeknight staple go a little bit further. He's the man behind The Sporkful empire, including the podcast by the same name, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
DAN PASHMAN: Hey, Ayesha. Thanks so much.
RASCOE: So I guess the first thing that comes to mind with ground beef and how you can make it last a little longer is meatloaf, right?
PASHMAN: Meatloaf is one great example. But I think this is kind of a very old problem, actually. It didn't use to be that people had meat every night at dinner. That wasn't always the way. It's only recent decades that that's been the case. But in the many years before that, a lot of foods and cuisines all over the world developed dishes that were specifically designed to stretch meat and make it go further to feed more mouths without being as expensive.
Meatloaf and meatballs are a classic example 'cause you're taking ground meat and you're adding breadcrumbs, maybe even stale bread. So it's a way to use up old bread and make sure that doesn't go to waste. There's other ground meat dishes that work similarly - like, in the Middle East, kofta, kibbeh. These are ground meat dishes that have bulgar wheat in them. Or you think about dumplings. Like, there's a lot of dumplings in Chinese and Korean cuisine that have cabbage. Like, pork and cabbage is a classic combo.
RASCOE: What about spaghetti? Because that usually will stretch 'cause you...
PASHMAN: (Laughter).
RASCOE: You know, you've got the...
PASHMAN: Yeah.
RASCOE: ...Sauce and the noodles.
PASHMAN: A hundred percent. You know, the thing I would do - I mean, I'll do taco night in my house sometimes. And if I want to go vegetarian, I'll just buy a bunch of portobello mushrooms or the baby bella mushrooms you can get. But then you just chop them up into the smallest bits you can get them, and they're almost like the size of ground beef. Take a jar of tomato sauce, even. I mean, you can make your own tomato sauce if you want, but there's so many really good, high-quality jarred tomato sauces in the market today.
RASCOE: I do Ragu Chunky-style.
PASHMAN: Whatever floats your boat.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
PASHMAN: Chopping up some mushrooms, browning those in a pan and then incorporating ground meat is a great way to stretch. You can turn one pound of ground meat into two pounds of food by adding in more mushrooms.
RASCOE: What about mixing, like, ground pork with ground beef? Do people need to know anything specific about blending meats like that?
PASHMAN: You could also add in some ground turkey, which is going to be a little less expensive if you mix that with the ground beef. You might not be able to do, like, a rare burger, beef burger with poultry mixed in, because you need to make sure that poultry's going to be cooked through. Lamb isn't necessarily less expensive than beef - in fact, probably more expensive - but it does taste really good. Also, talk to your butcher because you may be able to find a high-quality ground beef blend that won't be so expensive if they're pulling from different cuts.
RASCOE: For restaurants who are dealing with the higher price of beef right now, do they typically, like, make adjustments to their ground beef dishes to make them cheaper when prices are high? Or do they just pass that along to the consumer?
PASHMAN: It's some of both. I mean, look. Some of them are raising prices. Some of them are shrinking the burgers. Maybe they put, you know, an extra big pile of fries next to the burger so the plate still looks full. You know, the fries are less expensive. So it's definitely something that restaurants are struggling with, is how do you find that balance? 'Cause the flip side is, you know, if it's an $18 burger and it comes out and looks a little paltry, well, then now the customer is not happy. And so it's a real challenging time for restaurants.
RASCOE: Yes. That's Dan Pashman. He is the three-time James Beard Award-winning creator of The Sporkful podcast. Dan, thanks so much for speaking with us.
PASHMAN: Thank you, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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