Buying ground beef is like rolling dice. If you don’t know what you’re doing, the results won’t mean anything to you. Once you’ve bought your ground beef, the most common next step in cooking it is to brown it. While that’s not really that hard, the next step is one that often gets overlooked…draining away the fat. If you don’t drain the fat, not only is it less healthy, but your recipes will have a tendency to turn out runny.
In the past, I’ve always just put a strainer over the sink, turned on the hot water (running next to the strainer/colander), and poured the cooked ground beef and fat into the strainer. The fat runs through and down the sink and you’re left with less fatty cooked beef in the strainer ready to be used in the recipe.
Then a while ago I had this idea to try and get rid of the fat without running it down the drain. I’m sure that can’t be good for anything, even though it’s biodegradable. So I was thinking about the problem when it hit me…use old milk jugs or 2-liter bottles for the collection.
Here’s how to use this trick:
- Get a bowl that is slightly larger than your strainer/colander
- Place the strainer over the bowl
- Pour the browned ground beef into the strainer
- The fat will drain into the bowl
- Place a funnel in the top of an old milk jug or 2-liter bottle
- Pour the drained fat into the milk jug/bottle
- Put the lid on and throw the drained fat away
Is it rocket science, nope. But it does make the kitchen cleanup a bit easier.
An alternative solution:
While researching another topic, I ran across another solution to the same problem of Draining Ground Beef. This one uses the plastic bags from the grocery store to collect the fat. When I tried it I had to use two or three bags to keep them from leaking too much, but it is a great solution.