How can I determine fat content in beef?

A method of approximation that i use would just be looking at the amount of white and red colours.

Good mince would have a lot of red, and very little white, and bad mince, has a very little red.

"Red" is the meat itself, and "white" is the fat, and the colours in between are stuff like cartilage.

Using approximation, you can just estimate the amount of fat in your mince.

1. Weigh the ground meat before starting to determine its total weight.
2. Render as much fat as possible in the ground meat by boiling or simmering.
3. Use a fat separator to separate off the fat
4. Allow the fat to dry (or dry it by gently bringing to >100°C/212°F, beware splattering).
5. Weigh the amount of fat rendered.

Fat percentage is 100 × (fat weight) ÷ (total weight).

Alternative method: Ask farmer which primal cut the meat is ground from. Look up answer in table. :-P

I am trying to determine the same. The problem with rendering out the fat is; Some fat stays behind with the meat if you are just browning the meat for use.I I am curious because sometimes I buy meat and a lot more fat is rendered out than what I usually experience. Normally, If I use a 90/10 and brown the meat very little comes out. I may even need to use a little bit to facilitate the browning. If I use a 80/20 grind, there is some fat that would need to be removed before proceeding with the recipe. This experience tell me that 10% of the weight of the meat is fat that does not render out, so if you get a 10% rendering, your fat content would be 10% (which stays with the meat) plus the 10% that is rendered out. The example I gave would be an 80/20 ground beef. If the processor adds water to the beef (via ice chips), my method would yield a lower percentage of fat that it is in reality. For example, your meat composition is actually 70% meat, 15%fat and 15% ice chips (added water). When you render it, the added water is not counted, so yu are left with the meat and fat. off leaving meat and fat. Doing the math, what was sold as 15% fat is in reality over 21% fat. Barely allowed to be called ground beef.

The instrument sold to markets to determine % fat apparently (from operation manual) renders a known volume of ground beef into a known diameter vial and measures the thickness of the fat layer floating above the water with a gauge that is calibrated in fat percentage.

This instrument would not account for added water (which presumably takes up some of the raw meat volume) but could certainly include a factor to account for the unrendered fat by adding the known percentage of residual fat to the measured percentage in the vial.

Many years ago I worked at McDonalds. That was over 40 years ago, back when we cut, washed and cooked our french fries each day, even mixed our own 'secret sauce' (1000 island dressing with catsup stirred in). What applies here is the burger patties were supplied fresh from a local butcher. Each new batch, 2 or 3 times a week had to be tested by the manager for fat content and possibly other tests. He used a small vial or test tube and some chemicals for the test. I don't know what was used but I'm sure this test is still available somewhere.

To determine the percentage lean of meat: NOTE: This method would certainly get you close, but is completely uncomplicated.

Published data: Density of lean beef (from info by link below) is 0.96 grams/milliliter 1 US cup contains 240 milliliters

For 1 US cup of lean beef, the expected weight value would be 0.96 g/ml x 240ml the result would be 230.4 grams.

To calculate percentage lean: (actual weight, grams)/(expected weight, grams) x 100 or (actual weight, grams)/(230.4 grams) x 100

Example:

1cup sample of ground beef weighs 220 grams so,

220g/230.4g x 100 = 95.4 percent lean and 9.5 percent fat

http://www.fao.org/3/ap815e/ap815e.pdf