Where do you want 90% lean beef?

Question

The burger recipes I've found online called for rather fatty ground beef, like 80% or 73%. (Spruce eats: 15 - 20% fat), Smoked BBQ source: 15 - 20% fat, Taste of Home: 20 - 40% fat (sic!), Spoon university: 20 - 30% fat, The Kitchn: 20% fat, Serious Eats: at least 20% fat, Steve Raichlen: 20% fat.) I didn't pay attention and bought some 90% lean beef.  I guess the burgers will still work out, but it got me thinking.
If everybody says you need fatty ground beef for flavor, in what kind of recipes do you actually want these 90+% ground beefs, and why?

GdD · Accepted Answer

This is partly down to taste. When you make burgers much of the fat runs out by the time it's done, so you need to start with a high enough fat content that the burger isn't dry when it's done. I've made burgers with 10% fat when that's all I can find rather than 20% (my personal ideal), and they are very tasty as long as you don't overcook them. I find the extreme of 30% which I've seen recommended in places to be too greasy, but again that's my taste - I find too much fat covers the flavor of the meat.
Where you have to be very conscious of fat, whether minced or not, is in dishes where the fat has nowhere to go, like stews, braises and casseroles. Very fatty meat in these can end up with a greasy end result, which is not to most tastes. I use around 10% mince and lean cuts for those types of dishes.

Willeke · Answer

I use mince / ground beef in many dishes and in most of those low fat content is not a concern.
Stirfry, chilli con carne, cottage pie, spaghetti sauce to name a few.
Just remember to use some oil or fat if you put the meat in a hot pan, which you may not do with fatty mince.
If you have too high fat content you may want to take out the grease as part of your preparation, like they describe in this question. As seen in the related questions.

Tetsujin · Answer

"...you need fatty ground beef for flavor…"
Presumably that's if you like the taste of fat - which I never have.
In the UK it's the fat content which is labelled, as opposed to the beef content, so your 80, 75, 90% would be called 20, 25, 10% over here.
20% is the fattiest I've seen here, which is always the 'cheap meat' on the bottom shelf. The top shelf 'good stuff' is 5% fat [95% beef] & that is what I use for everything, from burgers to chilli. If I need a higher fat content I will add oil or occasionally butter.
Burgers in the UK always tend to use breadcrumbs as a soak-up/binder. This keeps your burgers more tender too. Beef, an egg, chopped onion, breadcrumbs [optional salt/pepper/cayenne/dill]. I did once try just beef, but they came out a bit tough.

DarenW · Answer

I sometimes make soup from a certain brand of soup kit. Italian Wedding. The instructions, not that I follow instructions well, call for molding small balls of raw ground beef and spice mix to drop into boiling broth. The meatballs then cook in the water. There's no chance for excess fat to dribble out as in a frying pan or grill. I want minimal grease in the soup, so I start with a low-fat ground beef.

Answered by DarenW on July 21, 2021

Where do you want 90% lean beef?

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