Can You Drain the Fat?
I was told by a popular dieting organisation representative that you cannot infact drain the fat from meat. Having significant trust issues, I was obviously dubious of this statement so decided to test it.
Spoiler alert: No you can’t, and the high fat meat is significantly worse than I thought.
The Experiment
Two packets of mince:
one “750 grams” of 5% mince (actually 742 grams)
one “500g” of 20% mince (actually 504 grams)
The methodology is simple: Cook until crispy and has stopped sizzling - i.e. when the water has all gone, then drain the fat to see how much we get. Also, we’ll compare water loss to see if theres any difference in overall percentage of fat to meat ratios once the water is removed.
I cheated a bit: The fat drained manually didn’t seem like a lot, so I also squeezed it between a few sheets of kitchen roll which pulled another few grams out.
Results
5% Fat Mince:
Starting weight 742 grams
Estimated 37.1 grams of fat
End weight of 460 grams
Water loss: 282 grams (-38%)
Fat drained:
Absolutely none; It was bone dry.
Fat remaining (assuming 5% is accurate):
37.1 grams in 460 grams of meat: 8%
20% Fat Mince:
Starting weight of 504 grams
Estimated 100.8 grams of fat
End weight (minus fat) of 269 grams
Water loss: 235 grams (-48%)
Fat drained:
Seperated in pan: 18.2 grams
Tissue assisted draining: 9.6 grams
Fat remaining (assuming 20% is accurate):
Without removing any fat, the concentration is around 37%
73 grams remaning in 296 grams of meat = 24%
Without tissue squeezing, this would have been = 27%
Final Thoughts
If you want high fat meat, the 20% fat meat products are very fatty. Otherwise, avoid like the plague. The overall fat percentage is not a overall meat to fat ratio. After draining the 20% meat, there was still a visible sheen on the end product, so that percentage of fat in the above maths is not entirely unexpected.
The texture of the meat was significantly better in the higher fat percentage meat. Presumably this is due the fat providing a nice interface between the meat and the pan to assist with Maillard reactions. The higher fat meat was significantly more caremelised, and had a lovely crispy outer shell on some bits.
I’d probably recommend using this for more stuff that you expect to give you heart attacks, otherwise the 5% stuff will be great for your arteries. Especially when you want the caremlisation and crispy texture, for stuff like burgers etc. If you aren’t bothered about that, the lower percentage fat products will be just fine.
I’m genuinely surprised that mince meat can retain so much fat… like almost 25% of what was in the pan was still fat. I imagine that with some more enhanced methods of mince interrogation, you could extract more, but I wanted to keep this fair to you, my dear reader. It wouldn’t be representative putting the end product under a ten tonne hydraulic press just to squeeze every last drop out.
Pricing:
You’d think that the shittier product would be cheaper overall for the actual meat content, wouldn’t you? Whilst this is true, it’s only marginally true; The price per kilo doesn’t actually differ too much with the 20% fat mince coming in 15% cheaper overall, but with a significantly higher chance of causing a heart attack later in life, so the cost probably works out about right in terms of Healthcare Vs. Shopping savings 🤷♂️
20% fat mince:
500 grams of initial product = £1.79
Overall “Meat” content estimate: 223 grams
Price per kilo of not-fat: £8.02
5% fat mince:
750 grams of initial product = £3.99
Overall “Meat” content estimate: 423 grams
Price per kilo of not-fat: £9.43
Bear in mind that I wasn’t able to extract all fat from the 20% fat mince, it might work out to be roughly the same price overall for actual the actual protein.
