Female Forum

Every time I cook something like beefburgers or sausages, I’m really shocked at the amount of fat that comes out of them. It’s quite revolting really and just think, your eating that!

So I’ve recently switched to tescos meat free burgers. They are absolutly delicious, and if you didn’t know that they were meat free, you couldn’t tell the difference. You get lovely tasty food but with none of that disgusting fat in it.

The kids have lovely burgers that taste nice, and the OH even likes them!  I made my eldest a cheeseburger yesterday, but used my half fat cheese because (A) I didn’t have any “normal” cheese and (B) because I wanted to see what he thought. He loved it!

Have you ever switched to meat free because of something like this? I often eat quorn sausages, and they are surprisingly tasty. They do several different ranges, although the downside is they are a bit expensive.

I’ve also been noticing all the fat in meets the last few weeks. Its shocking really. I’ve been eating the Quorn mince and chicken which is really nice with lots of flavouring. I do prefer ‘real’ chicken though, you can cut away all the fatty bits and just bake it in Fry-light.

But an idea to consider is if you don’t like the ‘real’ mince, is to make your own without any fat. Get a mince machine and mince your own beef. I’m not sure how much it would work out, I haven’t tried it myself but I just got a revelation whilst typing . My dad sometimes makes his own mince and I always ask him to put no fat in it if I’m staying with them, and its soooo nice . You can preflavour it as well .

we bought a little table top BBQ, it has a little slide out dish under the grill, to catch all the fat (&what;ever else), you should see what lands in that tray when we’re done with cooking!. its disgusting!!

It is isn’t it cat? And just think all that horrible fat ends up on your hips, tummy, thighs and bum!! blurgh. It’s really astonishing when you see just how much comes out.

I have stopped buying tescos value mince. The amount of fat that comes out of that is just gross beyond words. It makes me feel ill, so now, although it costs a bit more, I buy extra lean mince. I dry fry it, then press it through a sieve to get any remaining fat out of it, then wipe the pan with kitchen paper and put it back in. You can really taste your food so much better without all that fat in it.

If I ever do need to fry anything, like an egg for example, I always use fry light. It’s completly tasteless anyway and only 1 calorie per squirt.

I also use quorn mince sometimes, and whilst it might not look very tasty, once you have added all your ingredients and sauce, it’s really nice and low in fat too. I’ve made some delicious cottage pies using quorn mince.

I think the best invention is: Lean Mean Grill Machine George Forman (I think his name is spelled right)

Its small, portable and like you say Souxi, it catches all the yucky fats that spend ages on our hips :(.

I do prefer quorn mince now, but the occasional real meat is real nice .

I think Souxi makes a good point about cheap ‘value’ meat, it often is fattier; the ‘lean’ or low fat option is generally more expensive. We recently stopped buying our meat from the supermarket, now we get it from a butcher who sources it all locally and it’s much nicer. The chicken in particular is amazingly moist. We thought it would be more expensive but actually it works out cheaper, I assume because there aren’t the transport and storage costs that supermarkets have. Also, I don’t like how supermarkets sell mince in 500g packs - you used to get it by the half pound which is less and just enough for two people. 500g is too much and we always ended up leaving some. I don’t like waste so I like going to the butcher and being able to ask for exactly what we want - we actually usually get 400g which is even less than half a pound, but it means we can have side dishes e.g. if we make bolognaise I’ll do a salad with it as well as pasta.

I think generally the average person eats more meat than they need to. We try and make sure we have a couple of main meals each week which don’t include it, usually at least one fish/seafood and at least one completely veggie meal, just so we’re getting a varied diet.

I think you have a really good thing going there Mookie. I’m tempted to start buying from the local butcher as well. I think its good for the local community as well. I also try and make us at least one fish dish a week, and we hardly ever eat red meat. If we do its mince/quorn.

I actually bought some value mince meat to make a spaghetti bolognas yesterday after forgetting my debit card (flake my name flake by nature) It came down to a choice between a decent sauce or lean meat so I went for the sauce.

I wouldn’t normally buy cheap meat as my mum deeply ingrained in me how bad for me it is as a small child and boy was In for a shock. I just couldn’t enjoy eating it after I saw how much fat there was in the pan.

Next time I think I will do a mookie there is literally a butchers at the top of my street and I find 500g to be way too much.