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by Theodores 4479 days ago
Speaking as a vegetarian with a sense of British humour that not all y'mericanz get...

A better deal for you meat-eaters - go to market and buy your own cow!!! I think that with post and packaging you could get a whole one for £200 or so depending on how lame it was. Give your cow a name, e.g. Ronald.

Next, get some meat grinder or improvise one. Pop to your local hire shop and just hire one of those chipper things tree surgeons use to turn whole trees into small bits. Give it a proper clean and now put your freshly purchased cow through it. You might want to hire a chainsaw too so you can cut things like the anus out first, or maybe the eyes or perhaps the teeth if you don't want to choke on them in your burger. You could even cut off things like Ronald's gonads for a special treat. Depends on when you hire, but you can expect to part with a good £50 - £100 for hiring such tools.

Now for freezing your 100% pure British Beef. Get a few chest freezers from the local tip or advertised on a freecycle thing. Expect to pay a few bob to a mate with a van big enough to get your chest freezers home. Maybe offer to pay in burgers.

The electricity bill for the freezers could be £100 a year, maybe even higher depending on how big your cow was. Depending on how many burgers you scoff and how quickly your 'leccy bill will vary.

How many burgers you end up making depends on how thin you make your burgers and how much connective tissue (brain, spinal cord) you put through the wood-chipper. You could make many, many thousands of them rather than a mere one thousand. Or you could make just the one cow-sized burger. Or do whatever on a day to day basis, maybe making other beef creations like shepherds pie from the basic mix. Or perhaps meatballs - just drop them in the deep-fat fryer as and when the urge arises.

One benefit of this DiY approach is that any sarky vegetarians will be impressed that you haven't left the difficult killing bit up to some distant abattoir, plus you will have connected with your inner hunter-gatherer self by getting immersed in the gore of killing an animal, as God intended. There will also be considerable benefits when the zombie apocalypse happens, as predicted by George W Bush in 2001.

1 comments

Speaking as someone who apparently believes feigning incomprehension (also, immitation) is funny:

I don't get it. Why would you name the cow? It's not like it's a pet, or even a dairy cow. It's for eating.

Also why would you use a chainsaw?

Seems imprecise and messy.

I think it would be more efficient to have a specialized tool. But that tool would require a significant ammount of capital... Probably more than the cow! (or buying the burgers).

Maybe someone could have as a paid service a system where you could pay to use or rent the relevant equipment?

Is anyone doing that? Might be profitable. Note to self or others: look into that.

Although, I don't really feel like making a business out of that? It doesn't seem particularly elegant.

Also, my cooking skills aren't very good, so I don't think it would turn out as well?

Maybe I could do the initial cutting apart though?

And then pay someone else to turn the meat into burgers?

That's yet another thing to pay for though, and I don't think anyone is in the business of making burgers out of customer provided meat at the individual scale yet though.

Note to self: investigate this business idea as well.

(combined with renting out the machine???)

All in all, it seems rather time consuming though.

Maybe once every other month as a novelty?

Could be entertaining.

I wonder if the same equipment works with chickens.

... Speaking of which, I'm having trouble imagining a chicken bleed. Does it look the same as other animal blood?

Is it different because it's a bird?

I can imagine a cow bleeding fine, but that might be because the fur is short?

I also have trouble imagining a fish bleed, but I think I kind of remember that, so it's a bit easier.

I guess chicken bleeding would look normal then?