How To Make Regular Ground Beef Leaner

The last three months have been full of celebrations and travel. It's been so fun, but I still haven't quite got the hang of budgeting for special occasions. So, now we're going into frugal mode while our finances recover. That means lots of Googling for money-saving DIYs and freezer food recipes, so I can take full advantage of the small deep freezer I bought a few months ago.

I rarely buy ground meat since it costs so much more per pound to get lean ground beef or turkey than it does to get (unground) chicken. Plus, I assumed the high fat content of regular ground beef outweighed the lower price tag. 

Google to the rescue!

I found two great articles on lowering the fat content of regular ground beef on Hillbilly Housewife and Democratic Underground. The first article is cool because Mrs. Housewife posted a chart that shows how much weight each type of ground beef loses while cooking (regular to super lean). It turns out that even though regular ground beef (30% fat and 70% lean) costs less than half as much as super lean (7% fat and 93% lean), you lose less than 2 oz. more per pound while cooking (12 2/3 oz remaining versus 11 oz). Half the price for 90% of the meat? Sold!

Stock pot filled with regular ground beef

Hillbilly Housewife Method

Her method is to brown the meat, drain the fat, then put it in a colander and run hot water over it to get even more fat out. You could then season it or put it back in the pan to cook with your favorite aromatics (garlic and onions <3) and/or freeze for later use.

I was also impressed by the comment left by Damie about running the cooked beef crumbles through a food processor along with your favorite meatball ingredients, forming the resulting mixture into balls, and browning them in a pan. I am planning on trying this out on freezer meatballs for lazy dinner nights.

Boiled hamburger spread out on a cookie sheet to cool

Democratic Underground Method

I liked lildreamer316's method on Democratic Underground for defatting ground meat even more for its frugal creativity. She (had to guess on the pronoun here) puts about an inch of water in the bottom of a pan, adds 5-6 lbs of ground beef, brings it to a boil, and stirs it around until it is no longer pink. 

Less work and clean up is good. But I liked even more that she reserved the broth. I make soup stock pretty regularly, and will likely post about it another time. In case you haven't done this before, when you cool the broth in the refrigerator, the fat floats to the top and will form a solid layer that you can easily lift off and throw away.

Look at the amount of fat I lifted off the reserved beef broth the next morning!

Your Method

Do you have a favorite method to make your ground meat healthier? What other frugal food tips do you have to share? I love hearing about this stuff!

A New Beginning

I think I might take another crack at this blogging thing. It's been floating around in the back of my mind for a while now. My interests have always changed pretty quickly (hence the boxes of various crafting tools and supplies around my house), so I think I may have limited my subject matter too much on previous attempts. This time I'm just gonna have at it with whatever my favorite topic of the day is, and see what happens.

This is a blog about learning. And probably about mistakes, too. I love finding out how things work, how things are made, and why things are done. I have really always been that way, but these days technology makes it so easy that I sometimes wonder if it's becoming unhealthy... 

Naaaaah! 

Does anyone else get twitchy when you aren't able to Google random questions that pop into your head?

Nuts and Bolts

My Mistake

There hasn't been much to report on in a while. Things just keep getting bigger and bigger. I'm really enjoying watching my plants grow so successfully--much better than I had expected for a first attempt. I guess the soil here is forgiving.

It turns out that the butternut plant that was growing so fast last month is actually a sunflower! It's nearly as tall as me now (about 5 feet) and I think I can see the beginnings of a flower peeking through.


However, I do have a lovely baby butternut squash peeking out from between the leaves lying along the ground of an actual butternut plant, as well.

Tall Lettuce??

I also learned about bolting this week. Apparently once some plants believe they have reached maturity, they grow really tall and fast so they can spread their seeds. The cilantro started growing upward really fast with tiny leaves and then sprouted tiny white flowers. But I'm going to leave it be so I can harvest the seeds for corriander. (Mmm.. chai tea... :) )

My lettuce is also really tall! I just thought it was something the variety did, but my taste buds disagree. Last night I made a beautiful salad with the leaves from my 3' tall lettuce plants and it was so bitter we couldn't eat it. *sigh* I read that it has something to do with the hormones the plants release when they bolt. I may try planting some more. There seems to be a debate on some of the forums I checked about whether you can actually grow good lettuce during the summer heat or not. Let's see what happens, shall we?

Big Ol' Butternut

He's So Happy!

Remember that little plant in the foreground of my post a couple of weeks back? Check it out now!! I can't believe how fast things are growing now that the weather has heated up!

I've already been picking leaf lettuce and cilantro. Now I'm keeping an eye out for flowers on my tomatoes. :)

To Weed or Not To Weed

What Is This???

So I suddenly noticed this plant a couple of days ago. Somehow I didn't see it until it was as big as my tomato plant (maybe 15"). I've pondered it for a while and can't imagine it growing any of the vegetables that I planted, so I finally bit the bullet and chopped it down.

I always thought that you were supposed to pull up weeds by the roots, but after reading around the Internet a little bit trying to figure out what this plant was, I read that if they're near plants you want to keep, you're better off cutting it off at ground level a few times until it dies. That prevents damaging the root system of the neighboring plants.

So hopefully this wasn't my sunflowers or my peppers. I haven't seen any sign of those yet. But I really doubt it.

It's ALIIIIVE!!

*Heavenly Choir* Ahhhhh!

Look how beautiful they are! :D Ok, the garden is still pretty ugly, but it's got plants growing in it now! And they're even mostly not weeds!

I'm able to recognize tomatoes, butternut squash, lettuce, corn, cilantro, and some flowers (alyssum) that I planted around the edges that are supposed to deter pests. (Or maybe they attract bugs that eat pests. I can't remember for sure. I just know they're good!) There are lots more tiny sprouts peeking out, too.

I expect some of the plants are going to crowd each other out since they are really close together, but I am pleasantly surprised how well it's going so far for how little work I put into this. I ignored it for about a week while recovering from a nasty bug I caught at work, and it didn't seem to mind. Now I'm going out every couple of days to pull up tufts of grass and clover that keep trying to reassert themselves.

Now I just need to figure out how to tell when I should pick that cilantro and lettuce...

Blue Beans

It's So Sad...

I think I spoke too soon about the green beans being the ones to outlast everything else. I went out there to find one plant completely gone and the other looking like this!

Then last night I had a dream that I caught our neighbor's (nonexistent) bunny nibbling my veggies. I got to pet it. :3

I did see a few tiny sprouts nudging their heads up through the soil, though. There is still hope!! (Assuming they are not weeds, of course.)