Italian-Style Hamburger Soup

I love grocery shopping. I relish sitting down on the weekend, laptop beside me and cookbooks around me, picking out my culinary adventures for the week. I make up my grocery list based on how I walk through the store – it is so neatly organized it is slightly embarrassing. Not to mention all my grocery lists are made on lovely pink notepaper my best girlfriend had made with my name on them recognizing my affinity for list making (and organization in general). As a result, I tend to keep my lists private.

This weekend however, the weekly grocery list was spied by friends over for a Valentine’s Day dinner party. I got razzed. The list joined us at the table during dessert, I got razzed more (the joy of friends who know you so well!). Then a question came, “what does this mean? 1 x grilling, 2 x marinating…you’ve got secret codes?” It isn’t codes, its beef buying at its most basic.

Ten years ago some really smart meat-heads (I can say that, one of them is my dad) got together and decided to make the meat case a little easier to navigate – by developing a naming/category system for beef cuts (the industry term is retail beef nomenclature). So, my secret codes aren’t all that secret – they’re just a mystery to a lot of people. Hopefully this helps unlock some of the mystery.

This naming system divides the huge variety of beef cuts available in Canada into basic cooking categories. Think of it this way, you don’t crave a Top Sirloin or a Rib Eye – you crave a nice steak grilled on the barbecue. You don’t crave a Cross Rib; you crave a warm comforting pot roast. What you crave is the cooking method.

There are seven basic categories: Pot Roasts, Oven Roasts, Grilling Steaks, Marinating Steaks, Simmering Steaks, Stewing Beef and Quick Serve Beef. Each has its own cooking method to bring out the best in flavour and tenderness. The cooking method is listed right in the name on the label at the store – for example, a Top Sirloin Grilling Steak would be grilled on the ‘Q, broiled in the oven or pan-seared. A Sirloin Tip Oven Roast would be oven roasted using dry heat, and a Flank Marinating Steak would be marinated overnight prior to being grilled, broiled, and…well, you get the picture. For detailed cooking instructions for each category, check out this great Beef 101 section.

The best part about this system? Not standing at the meat counter saying “‘poop’ they don’t have any ‘insert cut name here’” – if you make your list based on the cooking method (or craving) you can just look for any cut with Grilling/Marinating/etc in the name. Smart meat-heads indeed.

Writing this has got me thinking about this weekend’s grocery list. I think this weekend there might be a 1 x simmering on the pink paper list. Chef Michael Smith has a great Orange Ginger Beef dish in Chef at Home that uses a simmering steak I really like. Tonight however, is the perfect night for soup. This easy Italian-Style Hamburger Soup is a frequent dish at our house – it’s my ‘using up stuff’ recipe. It uses up frozen ground beef I pick up any time it’s on sale and all those random vegetables slowly moving beyond their prime in the fridge.

So there – my not so secret code is revealed. Did I unlock a mystery for you? Oh, and if you see me and my pink lists in the grocery store say ‘hi’. I’ll be the one with the very organized cart, perfectly sorted for ideal bagging. Yes, I’m that person.

A card-carrying carnivore and voracious vegetable lover, Heather left life in the city for life in the country and now boasts an extensive rubber boot collection. Heather Travis is the Public Relations Manager for the Beef Information Centre.

This recipe photo for Italian-Style Hamburger Soup comes from the Beef Information Centre.