Is there anything you can do to remove some/most of the fat in ground beef? I have heard of washing it, and i’ve heard of using the george foreman grill but I don’t know how effective either method is. Are there other methods I can use?
I just use the George Foreman grill and a spatula to squish the heck out of the meat while it’s cooking to get the grease out.
ditto voltaire. george foreman grill is what you are looking for. cheap, easy to clean, cook anything in about 8 minutes.
Not to plug any products, but the other night one of the talk shows had famous cook, Wolfgang Puck, as a guest. While he was doing his recipe, the host mentioned that he sees that Wolfgang was using a George Forman grill. Mr. Puck got annoyed at that, stating that it just happens to be a Wolfgang Puck grill. He went on to say that you wouldn’t come to him to buy boxing gloves, so why buy a grill from George Forman. 
I thought I should add, I’ve found it best to do most of the spatula squishing towards the end of the grilling process. Otherwise, the grill seems to over-cook the outside and under-cook the inside.
Washing it will do almost nothing to remove fat. The Foreman-type grill prevents the patty (if you are making hamburgers) from sitting in the grease and absorbing it back up as in a frying pan, but unless you make your patty really thin there’ll still be a lot of fat inside; you’re basically just loosing the stuff on the outside while the rest is sealed in by the browning. Ditto for a normal grill or broiling rack.
If you really want low fat burgers/meatballs then you need to go to ground chuck. It’s somewhat more expensive, but on the other hand, you are getting more protein and less fat that you’re trying to get rid of anyway. One thing you can do to reduce cost is to look for chuck roast on sale and have the butcher grind it up for you; it’ll be less expensive than the chuck sitting in the case and can be even cheaper than plain 85% ground beef if the sale price is good enough.
If you want super-lean, take a look around for buffalo. It’s usually a premium in cost, but very lean and with a much richer flavor than domestic steer.
Stranger
That sure sounds like a scripted question so that Puck could plug his grill.
I wonder if Foreman actually had anything at all to do with the concept or design of his grill.
Just buy leaner meat, ground lean is something like 92% lean and 8% fat, which means there isn’t a very unhealthy amount of fat there at all.
I know we’re getting tangental now but I just read up on the George Foreman Grill and Foreman has mad a whopping $150m off the grill since 1995. More than he made in his entire boxing career. That’s amazing.
You’re also supposed to drain ground meat that you’re browning, like for tacos - you just tilt the pan and spoon it out.
While you can buy very lean ground beef, the nasty surprise is that it doesn’t taste very good. The fat, it would appear, is the source of that much-coveted “hamburger taste.”
I thought that you weren’t supposed to smoosh the patty with a spatula, as it would tend to dry out the meat. I agree with the suggestion to use low-fat ground meat, but at the same time, the fat does add flavor to the patty.
I bought ground buffalo a couple of weeks ago. It was cheaper than cow.
I went to a different store last week, and all they had was frozen. For that store, it’s an occasional thing. The store I bought the ground buffalo from before may also only carry it occasionally. I’ll have to go back and check. (Or just go to the meat outlet, that has ground buff all the time.)
Not only was the buffalo cheaper (when I bought it) than cow, it tasted better. (We fired up the charcoal grill, to boot!) And now I find out it’s lower in fat. I think I’ll stock my freezer…
Now I’m picturing a bunch of Far-Side-esque cattle standing around saying, “Hey, anybody seen Chuck lately?”
If you really want to seperate the fat you can break up the beef and boil it. This will allow most of the fat to come out of the meat. After which you can dispose of the meat (which will be tasteless) and cool down the liquid, which should seperate into a fat layer and a gelitin layer. The fat layer is great for making french fries, like McD’s used to taste like, and the gelitin is great for gravy.
Agreed. Anything with less than an 4:1 lean-to-fat ratio tastes dry and tasteless in comparison. I try to avoid the lean ground sirloin and opt for the fattier chuck (usually 80% lean.)
Otherwise, I don’t know of any way to remove fat from ground beef other than by cooking it out, or grinding leaner cuts of beef.
Lye. Unfortunately, it tends to be much less appetizing afterward.
[Carnac the Magnificent]
Chuck. Chuck.
[opening envelope and reading the note]
‘What do you call a legless and armless man in a butcher shop?’
[/CtM]
It drys out the meat because you have squished out all the fat albeit in liquified form. Lean beef is always going to be dryer.