Please Don’t Rinse the Ground Beef
By now, you’ve probably seen the chaotic TikTok video of a young woman rinsing cooked ground beef to get rid of “all that fat.” This upsets people who love taste, but I suspect it upsets plumbers even more.
At first, I didn’t want to write about this video at all. The internet seemed furious enough that Emily Harper (the young woman in the video) has since posted another video saying she received death threats over the ground beef video, which, let me clarify, is totally unacceptable, absurdly disproportionate. reaction. …
But you really shouldn’t rinse the beef like Emily does in her video (and you really shouldn’t accept things you see on TikTok without asking them). Not only will this impair the taste (flavor is fat), but more importantly, it will damage your plumbing. As I explained earlier , even if fat is liquid at room temperature, it can clog your pipes and destroy your personal or nearby plumbing system, creating back-up sinks or, even more annoyingly, flooding basements with sewage. …
If you are frustrated by the amount of fat released from minced meat when you cook it, there are several things you can do to avoid damaging your pipes. You can buy a leaner beef or turkey mixture, or perhaps switch to beans, or you can drain the fat into a container, let it cool, and then throw it in the bin . (Or, if it’s bacon fat or chicken fat , save it and cook other meals in it.)
But don’t pour it down the drain or flush it away. The fat is hydrophobic anyway, so you’ll never get it all the way (although some of it can be physically washed off with a strong jet of water), and you will wash off any seasonings you put on during the cooking process. …
And while we’re on the subject of things we shouldn’t do, please don’t email the young woman who filmed the TikTok video. I assure you that all this has already been explained to her, and as the recipient of the hostile letters, I also assure you that they are not “helping” in any meaningful way. However, I would like to speak to the Nutrition teacher who allegedly shared this advice with Emily. Please, whoever you are, stop telling the kids to dump fat down the drain.