Turn 80-85% Lean Ground Meat into Nearly Fat Free Ground Meat

This is one of my frugal cooking techniques that I thought everyone knew about. You know, like microwaving your sponges. You don't microwave your sponges? Seriously? Look it up.

If I lived alone, I would probably go vegetarian, but we have a large family. They like to eat meat. Meat can be expensive.

When I look through the sale ads, generally the sale ground meat isn't the low fat, 93% to 97% lean ground meat. No, it's the 80% to 85% fatty meat for about $1.99 per pound. At least that's what we pay around here (Louisiana is not known for being cattle or turkey country).

Have you ever cooked with that stuff? The grease! It's, well, kind of nasty. The tacos swim in fat. Fat floats in your bowl of chili. Your soup has a layer of sheen on it. Okay, I'll stop there. The point is that it isn't healthy for you.

Years ago while looking through a bulletin board on feeding large families, I found a method of preparing or precooking your ground meat to remove nearly all the fat: boiling it.

Bear with me a bit more. Boiled ground meat, once added to a dish like chili or spiced heavily like taco meat, doesn't taste much different than frying it

In this post, I'm using 85% ground beef, but honestly we eat ground turkey more often than ground beef. The same method works the same with either one. It's rather simple.

1. Put the meat in a pot that's twice as deep as the meat.

2. Cover with warm water.

3. The next part, I won't show. It's nasty but necessary. Wear a disposable glove and use your hand to loosen the meat up. Otherwise you end up with one large boiled lump.

It should look like this afterwards.  See. No more large lump. Now put a lid on the pot and bring it to a simmer over medium high heat.

4. When it gets to a simmer, it starts to puff up like this. Give it a good stir with a wooden or metal spoon, and it will all sink under the water.

I love this method because I am a bit of a germ freak. Knowing that all this ground meat is immersed in water that is 212^oF, well above the safe temperature for meat.

Let it simmer for about 20 minutes with the lid on. You can see the melted fat floating to the surface. Fat does float.

5. After 20 minutes, turn the heat off and let everything cool down. The fat will remain on top, and the meat will sink. If you are grossed out, I'm sorry. Remember all that fat you would have been feeding to your family.

6. After it's cooled down, I use a metal mesh strainer to strain off the liquid, which I keep. In reality it is a low quality beef or turkey broth, and so I use it in my homemade dog food. If I didn't have dogs, I would drain it into the sink. If you do, REMEMBER to flush the sink with really hot water and a dab of liquid soap so that the fat doesn't solidify in you pipes.

This is the meat you are left with. It doesn't look much different from traditionally cooked ground meat, and once you spice it or add it to a soup, it doesn't taste different. Well, it is much less greasy.

I let it cool, bag it in zippy bag, put a date and label on it and then freeze it. When I want to make tacos, chili, lentil soup, sloppy Joes or a dozen other dishes that need ground meat, it's already cooked and nearly fat-free.