No Beef With No Beef

There’s been an influx of better burger patty brands in the Malaysian freezer section recently. I’m happy to report that most of these brands are local, with Darabif being the most prominent (the brand also offers a lamb patty).

The burger boys (I borrow this term from food giants Unilever Foodsolutions), however, are not rushing to change their product. While many will stay with the iconic Ramly brand (a veritable institution when it comes to Malaysian street food), few are already, in this climate of rising prices, learning that it is possible to get away with patties with lesser meat volume. After all, with a small oval of compressed beef parings and gristle is sandwiched between hot bun halves, wrapped in lettuce and tomato, and slathered with mayo (most probably Lady’s Choice, and no, this is NOT a UFS plug, simply an observations) and both tomato and chili sauce, the importance is on how the package put together tastes. Very rarely are street burgers deconstructed as I do my own burgers, and eaten layer by layer. 

To prove the point I bought a cheaper brand of burger. Ten patties in a pack for about RM6, under the Purnama brand name. Kit cooked them for dinner and served up these pretty good looking burgers. And no one asked, ‘So where’s the beef?’

Burger by Kit, invisible patty by Purnama.

After this exercise, unless I am serving burgers right off the barbeque, I think I’ll continue to pare down the costs and buy less meat for more savings. And if I want gourmet burgers, I’ll get Kit to make his own hand shaped, chuck ground variety.