One of my sayings, my “mom-isms”, is “No fat, no flavor.” Fat contributes a lot to the good taste of foods. A lot of those commercial low-fat and no-fat foods add garbage chemicals to improve the flavor that was lost by removing the fat.
And it’s one reason why I don’t get all that interested in buying extra-lean hamburger. Of course, I don’t want really fatty hamburger either.
Unfortunately, my husband looks at fat a bit differently. He takes his doctor’s advice to watch his saturated fat intake carefully. And for the record, I am eternally grateful that he is so conscientious about his health. I just somewhat suspect scientists, the government, and pharmaceutical companies are manipulating data and being less than truthful when it comes to animal fats.
As our society deteriorates and as food supplies become less reliable, I have pondered a bit about how previous generations fed themselves through wars, famines, and economic collapses. A lot of people survived by eating trash. And a lot of the trash we throw away now will become valuable food in the future, perhaps for others if not for ourselves.
One of those foods is hamburger grease.
Ordinarily, most people just drain the hamburger grease into a can and throw it away. Often we’re dealing with the fat from only a pound of hamburger and the effort to save it may not be worthwhile. However, as preppers, some of us have taken to dehydrating or freeze drying hamburger. And usually that involves preparing greater quantities of hamburger.
And
this happens every once in a while here. I came upon a lot of
short-dated hamburger in my shopping earlier this week and decided to
freeze-dry it. It works well for spaghetti sauce, hamburger helper,
taco meat, chili, etc.
Most people already know why they’re preserving hamburger for longer-term storage; this post is on saving and using the fat, valuable calories that are normally thrown away. However, it begins with browning the meat properly.
I began by putting six pounds of raw hamburger in a 12” cast iron skillet with the burner set at the very lowest heat. I then sprinkled about ½ teaspoon of baking soda over the meat and mixed it in a bit. (Baking soda raises the pH of the meat and prevents the proteins from bonding excessively, keeping the meat tender. It also helps the meat brown more quickly.) Let the baking soda work its magic for about 10-15 minutes. Then turn the heat up to medium-low. (Cooking at a low temperature not only prevents over-browning or burning the meat; it does the same for the grease.) Season the browning meat, if desired. Stir occasionally until the hamburger is fully cooked.
Remove the hamburger from the heat. Set a fine mesh wire strainer or colander in a large bowl and scoop or pour the meat into the strainer. Collect the grease in the bowl and transfer it to a canning jar.
Unfortunately, some fat still remains on the hamburger, and for best results for long-term storage, this also needs to be removed. And this fat can also be collected.
Place a large pot in the sink and put the strainer holding the hamburger in or over the pot. Start the faucet and run the cooked hamburger under very hot water to remove the last bits of fat. Transfer the rinsed hamburger to dehydrating or freeze-drying trays. Let the pot of water sit for a little while. The remaining fat will float to the top. Use a turkey baster to remove the fat from the surface of the water if it’s still liquid; otherwise, use a soup ladle.
So how much hamburger grease can you expect to recover? Well, theoretically, five pounds of 80/20 raw hamburger should yield 4 pounds of cooked meat and 1 pound. I didn’t bother to weigh the cooked meat, but I did get well over two pounds of rendered fat, an even two pounds that I drained off the meat, and another few tablespoons from the fat I skimmed off the top of the rinse water. That’s a lot of calories right there. And it sells for quite a bit on Amazon, depending on whether you’re getting high-grade tallow from grass-fed beef, or using lower grade tallow for making soap. Even if you’re buying it at the grocery store it costs a lot more than butter.
The very best tallow is rendered from fat that came from around the cow’s kidneys. Hamburger isn’t going to produce the highest grade of tallow, but rather than taking all day, it will produce the tallow rather quickly. This tallow works well to sauté or fry all kinds of foods. I used it to prepare hash browns the other morning. I greatly prefer using bacon grease for that, but the hamburger grease worked well. “They” say it works well in pie crusts. Maybe it would. I’d be willing to try it for a pot pie crust, but never for an apple or peach pie. There’s just too much of a beefy odor to it for that. However, it actually worked well enough just for sautéing that I will be making a valiant effort to save all our hamburger grease in the future.
If you don’t actually wish to cook with tallow, there are dozens of other practical uses for it:
Make soap and candles
Use for diaper rash
Condition leather
An article at Survival Sullivan lists many more. I personally found some of them a little on the sketchy side. I’m not entirely convinced that mixing tallow and baking soda will make an acceptable deodorant, nor am I persuaded that it should be used as a substitute for gun oil. And I really don’t think I’d want to rub it inside my nostrils to trap pollen and reduce seasonal allergies. Maybe I’m just odd that way.
Links to related posts:
References:
https://www.survivalsullivan.com/how-to-render-tallow/
03.08.21
I did not know about baking soda. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI too didnt know the baking soda trick. Thanks.... on a different note did you see pfizer says they havr a shortage of antibiotic solutions?
ReplyDeleteExile1981
Oh yeah. That's going to cause some parents to come completely unhinged. I mean, I guess I would lose it as well if my child really needed an antibiotic and it weren't available. Of course, they'll probably be able to make do with substitutes for a little while, but not forever. What a crazy world we live in.
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