Beef Tips and Tricks

Fat Content:  Ground beef comes in many fat contents these days.
Usually the leaner the meat, the higher it is priced.  I have
noticed 4 general categories of ground beef.

Super Lean:  This is usually 10% fat or less.  Locally it is most
commonly 7% fat, but some places have it as low as 5 % or as high as
10%.  It is the most expensive of the ground beefs.  Average price
around here is $2.69 a pound, although a local Warehouse store
(Sam's) has it for as low as $1.88 a pound.  If I had to buy the
leanest meat for medical reasons, I would buy it at the Warehouse
Store, and extend it with Textured Vegetable Protein to reduce the
cost.  A pound of raw Super Lean weighs almost 12 2/3 ounces after
cooking.

Ground Round:  85% lean and 15% fat.  The is often called extra lean
in cook books and magazines.  It costs about $2.29 a pound,  less
expensive than the Super Lean above, and not much higher in claories.  
A pound of raw ground round becomes about 12 oz of cooked meat.

Ground Chuck:  80 % lean and 20% fat.  Most cook books refer to this
as lean ground beef.  Around here it costs about $1.89 a pound.
Sometimes it goes on sale for as little as $1.19 a pound.  A local
super store (Walmart) carries it in 5 pound rolls for $6.40, or
about $1.28 a pound on a regular basis.  A pound of cooked ground
chuck reduces to about 11 1/2 ounces of cooked meat.
Regular Ground Beef:  This has to be at least 70 % lean, which makes
it 30% fat, sometimes it is advertised as 73% lean and 27% fat.   It
is usually the cheapest hamburger available.  I purchase it in 5
pound rolls  (at that same Walmart) for 88 cents a pound, or $4.40
for the whole five pounds.  A pound of hamburger, cooked and well
drained, equals about 10 2/3 ounces of cooked beef.  Merely 2 ounces
less than the much higher priced Super Lean Ground beef.  Regular
ground beef is less than half it's cost too, making it the  Ground
Beef of Choice for most frugal shoppers.

Reducing the Fat Content in Regular Ground Beef: Some folks don't
use Regular Ground Beef because of the fat content.  If you consume
the fat which cooks out of the beef, I would agree.  But most folks
don't eat the fat, they drain it off.  You can also rinse the meat
under hot water and get rid of even more fat.

My usual method is to fry up the hamburger in the normal way,
without adding onions or garlic, or any other seasonings, yet.  Then
I drain off most of the fat into a clean empty vegetable can I keep
on hand for this purpose.  Then I dump the meat into a pasta
strainer in the sink.  I run hot water into the greasy pan until it
is almost full, and dump this over the meat in the strainer.  Then I
do it again.  Afterwards I let it sit for a few minutes for the
water to drain off.  Then I put the meat back into the rinsed
skillet, and proceed with the recipe.

According to the April 2000 Pillsbury Classic Cookbook "Cooking With
Ground Beef";  3 oz of cooked ground beef crumbles have 195 calories
and 12 grams of fat, if you only drain off the fat.  If you rinse
the meat in hot water after draining off the fat, the calories are
reduced to 135, and fat gram to 6.  This is quite a significant
reduction.  So for all the folks who eschew regular old hamburger
because of it's fat content, take heart.  You can buy and eat it as
much as your budget allows, just rinse it in hot water after cooking
it, to remove the fat.

If your recipe calls for baking or broiling, you can place the meat
on a broiling rack so that while it cooks, all of the fat will drip
down, underneath, instead of staying in the meat.  Meat loaves, and
Salisbury steak can easily be cooked this way.  Another handy
invention is a meatloaf pan insert.  It is a bread pan with holes
poked in the bottom of it.  You put the meatloaf into the pan and
place the pan inside a regular loaf pan, or any type of baking pan.
Then you bake as you normally would, and all of the fat drips out of
the holes in the bottom of the pan.  These are sometimes found at
yard sales, so keep an eye out for them, if you think you want one.