What
is Minced Beef?
Ground beef, beef mince, minced meat,
hamburger (in North America) is a ground
meat made of beef, finely chopped by a meat grinder. It is simply meat that
has been passed through a mincing machine to break it down into smaller pieces.
It is used in many recipes including hamburgers and cottage pie. In some parts
of the world, a meat grinder is called a mincer.
You can mince virtually any type of meat and you’ll find beef, lamb, pork, and
turkey mince sold in supermarkets and butcher shops throughout the United
States.
Mince
Beef vs. Ground Beef: Is Ground Beef the Same as Mince Beef?
Yes, in my experience
it is. I usually find North American recipes use the term ground beef while European recipes use minced beef, or just plain mince. Minced beef must be cooked to 72 °C
(160 °F) to ensure that all bacterial contamination, whether it be endogenous
to the product or contaminated after purchasing by the consumer, is killed.
Cooked color does not always indicate the beef has reached the required
temperature, as beef can brown before reaching 68 °C (155 °F).
How
Many Cows in One Ground Beef Hamburger?
A pound of minced beef
can contain the meat from up to 400 different
cows. Ever since the discovery of mad cow disease or BSE, people have been understandably worried
about the possibility of eating infected meat. Government agencies have been
making strenuous efforts to make sure that BSE and other germs don’t get into
the beef we eat. There’s every sign that the campaign to eliminate BSE, at
least, has been partially successful, but there’s no reason for complacency –
and there are at least possibilities that other germs may contaminate the meat
we consume. The problem is to do with changes in the way beef is produced,
especially the minced beef used in hamburgers.
Most beef cattle may start life on ranches, but they soon
move to gigantic feedlots where 100,000
or more cows are packed into a small area and fattened with grain and other
less savory food ready for slaughter. Eric Schlosser, author of the book Fast
Food Nation, describes conditions on these
feedlots as ‘like living in a medieval city, in their own manure’. Often
these feedlots are right next to huge slaughterhouses and meat-processing houses,
where hundreds of cows are slaughtered every hour and then ground into minced
beef in an almost continual process. The slaughter rate is so fast that
mistakes can easily be made, and manure can get on the meat as the animal is
eviscerated, and infect it. With this massive concentration, too, there are huge
possibilities for cross-contamination, especially when all the meat is fed into
a gigantic global meat-packaging system.
You might think that all the meat in a small hamburger
might come from a single cow. Marion Nestle, Professor of Public Health at New
York University, points out that in one study, the meat in a single pound of minced beef could be traced to 400
different cows reared in six different states in the United States. So the
chances of traces of pathogens getting into each helping of meat are massively
multiplied, while at the same time the difficulties of tracing any outbreak of
disease back to its source are correspondingly large.
Aware of the public relations danger of any outbreak of
food poisoning, fast food buyers like McDonald’s make tough demands on the
meat-packagers for testing meat for pathogens. Yet, of course, it’s the demands
of big buyers like these, too, that has helped lead to the rise of the
industrial feedlots. Today, just four big
corporations, such as Tysons,
control 85% of the beef market.
What is Pink Slime in Ground Meat?
Beef Products Inc. is the
creator of a product called "lean finely textured beef," also known
as "pink slime." Pink slime
is the common name for a controversial beef product. The name used in the meat
industry is lean finely textured beef (LFTB) and boneless lean
beef trimmings (BLBT). It has been mocked by the dysphemistic slang
term soylent pink. Pink slime has been claimed by some originally to
have been used as pet food and cooking oil and later approved for public
consumption, however this is disputed by the FDA administrator responsible for
approving the product, as well as by Beef Products, Inc., the largest U.S. producer. In 2001, The
United States approved the product for limited human consumption and it was
used as a food additive to ground beef and beef-based processed meats as a
filler at a ratio of usually no more than 25 percent of any product. The
production process uses heat in centrifuges to separate the fat from the meat
in beef trimmings. The resulting product is exposed to ammonia gas or citric acid to kill bacteria.
Watch Video: CNN- McDonald's sets record straight on
what's in a Mc Nuggets
Watch Video: McDonald's Pink Slime
What Goes Into the Minced Beef?
In many countries,
food laws define specific categories of ground beef and what they can contain.
For example, in the United States, beef
fat may be added to hamburger, but not to ground beef if the meat is ground
and packaged at a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-inspected
plant. For example in the USA, a maximum of 30% fat by weight is allowed in either hamburger or ground beef.
The allowable amount in France is 5 to
20% (15% being used by most food chains). Both hamburger and ground beef
can have seasonings, but no water, phosphates, extenders, or binders added.
Ground beef is often marketed in a range of different fat contents, to match
the preferences of different customers.
Ground Beef is usually
made from leaner, tougher and less
desirable beef created when the sides of beef are carved into steaks and
roasts. About 17–18% of US ground beef comes from dairy cows.
In a study in the USA
in 2008, eight different brands of fast food hamburgers were evaluated for
water content by weight and recognizable tissue types using morphological techniques that are commonly used in the
evaluation of tissue's histological condition. The study found that the content
of ground beef or hamburgers included:
1)
Water content 37.7% to 62.4% (mean, 49%)
2)
Meat content 2.1% to 14.8% (median, 12.1%)
3)
Skeletal tissue
4)
Connective tissue
5)
Blood vessels
6)
Peripheral nerve tissue
7)
Plant material
8)
Adipose tissue
9)
Bone and Cartilage
("Bone and cartilage, observed in some brands, were not expected; their
presence may be related to the use of mechanical separation in the processing
of the meat from the animal. Small amounts of bone and cartilage may have been
detached during the separation process")
Ground beef may
contain beef produced using technology known as advanced meat recovery systems. In addition, meat processing
methods employed by companies such as Beef Products Inc. and Cargill Meat
Solutions produce product known as lean finely textured beef from fatty beef
trimmings. These trimmings are frequently treated with some form of
antimicrobial agent to remove salmonella (and other pathogens) and are included
in a wide variety of ground beef products in the USA. "USDA Safe and
Suitable Ingredients List" This product has been included in US meat
products since 2001.
Cuts
of Beef Used in Ground Beef
Although any cut of
beef may be used, chuck steak is one of the most popular choices (because of
its richness of flavor and balance of meat and fat). Round steak is also
frequently used. Ground beef is usually subdivided based on the cut and fat
percentage:
Chuck: 78–84% lean
Round: 85–89% lean
Sirloin: 90–95% lean
Ground
Beef from a Butcher
If you’re getting
mince from a butcher, it’s likely to be made from cheaper cuts like chuck
steak, from the front shoulders of the cow, and flank, from the cow’s belly. It
will also probably include trimmings of meat from steaks, roasting joints and
other, more expensive cuts. The butcher will also make sure that there’s a
percentage of fat in the mince because it needs a certain amount to give it
moisture and flavor as it cooks.
If you prefer to know
exactly what sort of meat is going into your mince, choose a piece of meat and ask your butcher to make you a fresh batch
right then and there. Most good butchers will be more than happy to do
this. Again, chuck steak from the shoulder is a good cut to ask for if you do
this; it’s fairly cheap and has a great flavor.
References:
Espinoza, Mauricio.
2005. Choice of Dairy-Cow Bedding Impacts E. coli Survival, Food Safety.
Ohio State University Extension
Food Safety and
Inspection Service. 2002. Focus on Ground Beef. Fact Sheet,
July 2002.
He, Ying; Sebranek,
Joseph G. 1997. "Finely Textured Lean Beef as an Ingredient
for Processed Meats". ASL R1361. Beef Research Report.
Levenstein, Harvey.
2012. Fear of food : a history
of why we worry about what we eat. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press. ISBN 0226473740.
National Research
Council report, An Evaluation of the Food Safety Requirements of the Federal Purchase
Ground Beef Program
Neuman, William. 2011.
"Food Companies Act to Protect Consumers From E. Coli Illness".
New York Times.
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