I like Aldi’s 73% lean ground beef. It is perfect for burgers, either smoked or grilled. YUM!!
But It is too greasy for Chili (for my tastes) and I always drain it off.
Can I use it for something else? Could it be rendered into something like tallow?
It seems almost sinful to toss it, but it is what I usually end up doing.
Stan
I don’t know if you can do this with beef fat, or how to make beef suet, but I use my bacon grease (strained) into bird suet cakes and although it only stays solid during the winter months, everyone loves it.
I don’t know either, Stan? I know we don’t use it ourselves. But I would be curious to see what others might say? … It would be news to me if there is a use. But then again, I almost always buy 72%, so it would be nice if there is some uses.
You save every last golden chili infused drop. I buy 73% hamburger and I reserve a pint when I make chili. Then I split it up into 50ml fat bombs for use in cooking. It makes even the surliest cauliflower sing with joy. It’s a great addition to scrambled eggs too. Imagine throwing a 1 pound of fresh butter in the trash. That would be crazy right? Same thing!
I make chili with 55% lean ground beef and don’t drain it. I like rich sauces and typically use emulsifiers to incorporate the fat into my dishes so it doesn’t separate out. For chili that might be mustard, finely ground cumin and finely ground whole dried peppers including the seeds. And I add magnesium citrate to many dishes mainly for the supplemental magnesium but it appears to have a synergistic effect with other emulsifiers such as mustard and almond flour boosting their power to create silky sauces. If you are one of the weirdos that puts beans in chili overcooking some of them to the point of disintegration also helps integrate more fat into the dish.
Man I do like the sound of that, Nick.
I’ll give that a try.
My mom used to do something with it, but both my folks are gone or I’d ask her too. 
Sad how these parents find a way of exiting the scene, just when you discover how much you’d REALLY value just ONE MORE chat!!
Exactly. It’s beef ghee!!!
Most of the rendering happens during the cooking of the beef and the simmering of the chili. I take a pint out of oil out of my chili, and put it on the stove to cook for another 15 minutes in a cast iron frying pan. When the oil is 300 degrees F, and there is no water boiling out of it, it’s basically a rendered lard. Getting all of the water out of it extends its shelf life considerably. It’ll keep in the refrigerator for a long time and the freezer forever.
When my chili is done I can the chili and freeze the oil in 50ml shots.
I know what you mean. My grandfather used to cook me green beans sauteed in bacon fat in an old cast iron skillet every time I went to over to visit him. Everybody said using bacon grease instead of margarine would give him a heart attack. He lived well into his 80’s.
Not coincidentally, I use that exact same skillet to render the fat from my chili, and to cook my eggs every morning, and pretty much everything else. He always said cooking with iron made more sense to him than frying food on teflon plastic. He bought that pan in the 1940’s. He was right about a lot things that old man… 
Ain’t that the truth! I wish I had paid more attention to all the old family tales they told me in their last few years.
