Low Fat Meatballs and "Should I Buy Expensive Minced Meat?"
Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2022 2:08 pm
I've been making meatballs because it's a lovely and cheap meal that freezes well for me.
Lidl sell a few different kinds of minced beef but there are two I wanted to compare. There's the cheapest possible which has 20% fat and then there's the 'premium' one that has only 10% fat. They call the premium one "Steak Mince" but please don't imagine that somebody is mincing up good quality steaks because they're not.
You don't really want to get minced beef with a fat percentage lower than 10% because the fat is within the meat. You could ask a butcher to mince up a really low fat piece of meat like fillet but all you'd be doing is wasting an expensive cut of meat in order to make cheap meat (minced meat).
Anyway, the counter prices of the meat are below:
10% Fat "Steak Mince" = £3.69 for 750g
20% Fat "Beef Mince" = £1.89 for 500g
Why does one come in 750g and the other in 500g? The cynic in me thinks it's to stop you making easy price comparisons. To give them credit, Lidl actually print the price per kil though so we can make a fair comparison straight from their shops/website:
10% Fat "Steak Mince" = £4.92 per kilogram
20% Fat "Beef Mince" = £3.78 per kilogram
However I wondered what those prices per kilogram would work out ifwe measured it only for the meat. So I did the maths...
10% Fat "Steak Mince" = £5.46 per kilogram, once the fat is discounted
20% Fat "Beef Mince" = £4.73 per kilogram, once the fat is discounted
Still great value, whichever you decide.
However, if you're making meatballs you need to gently fry them in a pan before you cover them in sauce. This is ideal for rendering all of the fat out of the meatballs. It's a double-win because you end up with lovely lean juicy meatballs. You can drain off the fat into an old jar and you've got a "free" jar of wonderfully tasty beef dripping.
I like to mix pork and beef for meatballs for a fuller flavour. Recipe below:
1 kg "Beef Mince" = £3.78
500g Minced Pork = £1.99
~250g finely chopped onions = ~£0.13pence
2 eggs = ~£0.40pence
I then add in the following herbs spices
1 level tablespoon salt
1 level tablespoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon thyme
It's difficult to put a price on these. I bulk buy my spices because I do a lot of cooking so the above probably costs me a less than 20 pence but it will obviously have cost me a fair bit more to buy them in the first place. I'll put the cost down as 50 pence to be fair on that.
To make the mixture go further, I keep the ends of my loaves of bread tied inside the bag in the freezer. Take the ends out, put them into a food mixer and you've got what are essentially "free" bread crumbs.
I add 4 crust ends saved from loaves of bread into the meatball mix. If you normally throw away the ends of the brread then you're basically getting this for free. If you calculate the cost of a single slice of bread from a basic white loaf it works out at 1.5 pence per slice so I'll add 6 pence to the cost of this recipe.
You can make them without breadcrumbs but it really helps the mixture go further and makes them softer once cooked so you can cut them with a spoon. If you make them without breadcrumbs they can be a bit chewy.
This mixture should make you IRO 80 ping-pong ball sized meatballs. I normally eat 7-8 in a serving but let's go with 10 as an adult serving and 6-7 as a child serving.
The total cost of your meatballs ingredients are £6.86.
This works out at 86 pence for a very generous adult portion of 10 meatballs.
For a smaller portion of 7 - 8 meatballs it works out at 64 pence for a portion.
For a kids portion of 6 - 7 meatballs it works out at 56 pence for a portion.
Obviously you'll need to add the cost cooking fuel, a sauce and some pasta to go on top of that but you should be able to do this easily for less than £1.20 per portion.
I drained off ~150 grams of "free" beef dripping by cooking them over a slow heat in a pan. This would cost you ~£0.35 in the shops but I haven't taken this into account in my pricing. The dripping you'll get from these meatballs also tastes infinitely superior to the nasty bleached shop stuff and is so nice you can have it on toast but it can also be used as cooking fat for anything from baking to frying. However, if I deduct the amount of fat I've rendered out of the meat it means that ... wait for it ... the finished meatballs have the same or similar fat percentage to the more expensive "lower fat" minced meat.
It's a bit of a faff to make up a big batch but given the rising cost of living I think it's worth it. It took me about an hour and a half to make a batch of over 80 last night. If you cover them and cool them quickly they can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer. I put them into plastic tubs (like you get from Chinese takeaways) and separate layers of them with baking paper. This helps preventy them freezing together so you can pick them out, put the lid back on and keep them in the freezer.
I've kept them for 2-3 months in the past without any issues.
Enjoy!
Lidl sell a few different kinds of minced beef but there are two I wanted to compare. There's the cheapest possible which has 20% fat and then there's the 'premium' one that has only 10% fat. They call the premium one "Steak Mince" but please don't imagine that somebody is mincing up good quality steaks because they're not.
You don't really want to get minced beef with a fat percentage lower than 10% because the fat is within the meat. You could ask a butcher to mince up a really low fat piece of meat like fillet but all you'd be doing is wasting an expensive cut of meat in order to make cheap meat (minced meat).
Anyway, the counter prices of the meat are below:
10% Fat "Steak Mince" = £3.69 for 750g
20% Fat "Beef Mince" = £1.89 for 500g
Why does one come in 750g and the other in 500g? The cynic in me thinks it's to stop you making easy price comparisons. To give them credit, Lidl actually print the price per kil though so we can make a fair comparison straight from their shops/website:
10% Fat "Steak Mince" = £4.92 per kilogram
20% Fat "Beef Mince" = £3.78 per kilogram
However I wondered what those prices per kilogram would work out ifwe measured it only for the meat. So I did the maths...
10% Fat "Steak Mince" = £5.46 per kilogram, once the fat is discounted
20% Fat "Beef Mince" = £4.73 per kilogram, once the fat is discounted
Still great value, whichever you decide.
However, if you're making meatballs you need to gently fry them in a pan before you cover them in sauce. This is ideal for rendering all of the fat out of the meatballs. It's a double-win because you end up with lovely lean juicy meatballs. You can drain off the fat into an old jar and you've got a "free" jar of wonderfully tasty beef dripping.
I like to mix pork and beef for meatballs for a fuller flavour. Recipe below:
1 kg "Beef Mince" = £3.78
500g Minced Pork = £1.99
~250g finely chopped onions = ~£0.13pence
2 eggs = ~£0.40pence
I then add in the following herbs spices
1 level tablespoon salt
1 level tablespoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon thyme
It's difficult to put a price on these. I bulk buy my spices because I do a lot of cooking so the above probably costs me a less than 20 pence but it will obviously have cost me a fair bit more to buy them in the first place. I'll put the cost down as 50 pence to be fair on that.
To make the mixture go further, I keep the ends of my loaves of bread tied inside the bag in the freezer. Take the ends out, put them into a food mixer and you've got what are essentially "free" bread crumbs.
I add 4 crust ends saved from loaves of bread into the meatball mix. If you normally throw away the ends of the brread then you're basically getting this for free. If you calculate the cost of a single slice of bread from a basic white loaf it works out at 1.5 pence per slice so I'll add 6 pence to the cost of this recipe.
You can make them without breadcrumbs but it really helps the mixture go further and makes them softer once cooked so you can cut them with a spoon. If you make them without breadcrumbs they can be a bit chewy.
This mixture should make you IRO 80 ping-pong ball sized meatballs. I normally eat 7-8 in a serving but let's go with 10 as an adult serving and 6-7 as a child serving.
The total cost of your meatballs ingredients are £6.86.
This works out at 86 pence for a very generous adult portion of 10 meatballs.
For a smaller portion of 7 - 8 meatballs it works out at 64 pence for a portion.
For a kids portion of 6 - 7 meatballs it works out at 56 pence for a portion.
Obviously you'll need to add the cost cooking fuel, a sauce and some pasta to go on top of that but you should be able to do this easily for less than £1.20 per portion.
I drained off ~150 grams of "free" beef dripping by cooking them over a slow heat in a pan. This would cost you ~£0.35 in the shops but I haven't taken this into account in my pricing. The dripping you'll get from these meatballs also tastes infinitely superior to the nasty bleached shop stuff and is so nice you can have it on toast but it can also be used as cooking fat for anything from baking to frying. However, if I deduct the amount of fat I've rendered out of the meat it means that ... wait for it ... the finished meatballs have the same or similar fat percentage to the more expensive "lower fat" minced meat.
It's a bit of a faff to make up a big batch but given the rising cost of living I think it's worth it. It took me about an hour and a half to make a batch of over 80 last night. If you cover them and cool them quickly they can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer. I put them into plastic tubs (like you get from Chinese takeaways) and separate layers of them with baking paper. This helps preventy them freezing together so you can pick them out, put the lid back on and keep them in the freezer.
I've kept them for 2-3 months in the past without any issues.
Enjoy!
