Someone in the office told me today that you should buy the deepest color of ground beef you can find because the darker the red, the less fat it contains.
Is that true? I tried googling and looking on dogpile.com but came up empty handed. Why would that be?
Also is it better to buy ground beef or ground chuck ?
I usually buy whatever is on sale but it may not be best for the growing kidlets, that is why I am asking.
Thanks.
The more white in the ground beef, the more fat. But whether the beefy part is light or dark red, is another thing entirely.
Around here, the butchers are nice enough to label the fat content of the ground beef. The cheapest is about 70% lean, the most expensive about 90%. Obvisouly you’ll see a difference in shrinkage when you cook it, but if you drain the fat off, the kidlets shouldn’t suffer from using one over the other.
Ground beef, ground chuck and ground round all have slightly different tastes and fat content, but if you’re using it with a pile of spices and fillers, you can easily just use regular, “lean” or “Extra lean” ground beef.
I wouldn’t go by the color at all. All the packaged chop meat in the stores I frequent, have it labeled at percentage of fat in that particular package. I just looked at some I bought today. It comes labeled 75%, 80%, 85%, 90% and 97%. As an example, 75% is 25% fat…97% is 3% fat. Taste and flavor will get better with the larger fat contents. If I cook a 75% on the George Forman grill (It is slanted so fat drains into a tray) the tray fills up. On the other hand, a piece of 97% ends up with no fat drippings…or minimul at best.
“Ground beef” is whatever they have left over from cutting up the larger pieces into retail sizes.
If it says “chuck”, “sirloin”, “round”, etc., then it refers to meat ground from that specific cut.
In general, for the best results with ground beef, a mixture beats a “pure” cut, provided the fat content is right for the dish.
The deeper red the meat is in the package at the store,the FRESHER the grind.Check it out when you take it home and notice in some packs it’s brown inside.Or let it sit in your refrigerator for a day or so and look at it.
If it’s losing that redness on top,it’s from an older grind.Don’t know if the fat content has anything to do with that,tho.
Ground chuck is from the front part of the steer (generally less tender and fatter),tho with a grind how would you notice?Round is from the hindquarters (more tender and leaner) and ground beef could be chop meat’s equivalent of the allmeat hot dog 