Meat in your Mince

Mince or ground beef, can be a really versatile ingredient. However, it can be very variable in quality too. As mince can contain a lot of fat and connective tissue often the budget mince ends up being far less value than it first appears.

While I personally do not have much time for the “cant cook, wont cook brigade”, I genuinely feel for folks that do not have the money to buy, cook and eat the best food available. Thus, I have been experimenting with the mince that the majority of people actually buy. While I wish it were different, the majority of people buy their mince from a supermarket. It took me a while to find a decent local butcher after moving to the village, but I did locate one. There I can buy good mince at a price that is equivalent to the supermarkets, but it is in terms of quality that it genuinely wins out.

While the quality is very good, it is not as good as well hung beef. Hanging beef enables the meat to dry out and the natural enzymes in the meat tenderise and add flavour to the meat as it hangs. While traditionally all beef was handled in this way, most retailers do not do this as it adds costs. It is this change that has enabled the major retailers to reduce the price of beef.

While there is an argument that cheaper food helps the poor afford foods they could not otherwise afford. However, this has had other costs particularly in the context of food and cooking, the flavour of the meat. Further, the constant downward pressure on price for meat means that farmers are forced to reduce the welfare standards to reduce costs. Equally, the downward pressure on the price means that the supermarkets will source the meat they sell from wherever it is cheapest. That can lead to meat that would not pass as fit within Britain (or your nation), can enter the food chain. While I am not going into the details here, there have been examples of this happening. This is why knowing where your food comes from can be so important.

While the supermarkets have abused the labelling regulations to hide the fact that people have been buying imported meat, for the most part you can tell where the meat has come from. The real difficulty arises with processed food and ready meals. Last year when the BBC were asking the largest retailer in the UK where the chicken in just one ready meal came from, they were originally told it was British. Then they said it was European but they could not say exactly what country. Finally they acknowledged it was from Thailand. While the label on the ready meal said it was British.

Now in this example there were no health implications, but if there had been a disease outbreak that effected chickens, consumers would never know that they are eating a suspect food. This is why I personally favour cooking from scratch.

With the cheap mince from the supermarket, I have a special way of cooking the mince. I will chop a couple of onions and over a low heat cover the chopped onions with the mince and cook without adding any extra fat. As the ground beef and the onions cook in the fat that is already in the meat, no extra fat or oil is needed. Further as you are slow cooking the meat, any bits of connective tissue that is in the meat is tenderised too.

Once cooked the meat is drained, this removes the excess fat, and this means you end up with less fat than even the lean mince that you will often be charged extra for. Also, as the mince will have been made from meat that has not been hung, this removes the excess moisture from the meat as well. This can be separated and the liquid added back to a dish if needed.

This system of cooking mince can also be used for very lean mince and especially if you are cooking in bulk. My local butcher has a discount for buying five pounds (weight) of mince, and I will cook this all at once and freeze portions ready to add latter. Alternatively I will prepare many dishes and freeze them.

This is why I can not understand why even busy people will waste money on ready meals and processed food. Cooking from scratch is obviously cheaper and more economical. However by cooking in batches like this, it is possible to genuinely save time. As most pre-prepared meals made at home can be cooked straight from the fridge or freezer. Further it allows parents in particular to ensure that there children are getting a balanced diet. Equally it is possible to cook a Chilli con Carne for the adults and one that the children can and will eat.

While this way of cooking mince is a guide to enable folks to cook the budget type ground beef, it is only one of many ways to cook mince. However it is a great starting point and when I have previously shown people how much fat can come off a packet of mince, they have been shocked. I first developed this method when trying to help some friends who wanted to loose weight. It amused them that I as a vegetarian, as I was then, knew more about cooking meat than they did. While you do need some fat to add flavour to meat, any meat, I would suggest trying this and see for yourself just how much fat and how little meat is in your mince.