In our house we grew up on ground beef (mince, as it's known in the UK) ~ staple food of the not quite poor but certainly not well off. I still make it now, great comfort food, casseroled with lots of veg. Yum!
These days I eat much smaller portions of it but with great relish.

I never eat turkey, minced or otherwise, because it's virtually impossible to get free range turkey. I can't bear the thought of caged birds/animals.

I feel the same way. Actually I really am amazed that some people get all freaked out from the word "bacteria" when our guts are just FULL of the stuff naturally. Our bodies are designed to effectively rid itself of the majority of the "nasty" bacteria...unlike all the nasty chemicals and additives and preservatives that makes our poor liver and kidneys work in full overdrive.

I have a friend that won't eat meat because of bacteria but eats bag after bag of Doritos, Cheetos's and a 12 pack of diet coke daily. It floors me that she pumps all those chemicals into her body but freaks at a bacterium that will die during proper cooking...or during digestion except under very rare circumstances.

I just found this neat website:
http://healthy.hillbillyhousewife.com/groundbeef.htm

I use this website's recipe to make homemade laundry detergent too. I like how they "investigate" so many household items!

Hrm. The numbers are drastically different on sparkpeople.com.

Ground beef, extra lean, 4 oz. - 265 calories, 19g fat, 21 protein
Ground turkey, 4 oz. - 160 calories, 8 fat, 22 protein

That's puzzling.

Awesome information! Only thing is, I like to make burgers! Do you all think that draining whatever comes out in the pan, and rinsing a burger would accomplish ALMOST the same? I can't imagine that getting rid of whatever you CAN would be a bad thing.

I am most definitely going to try this. One of my favorite ways to prepare the ground turkey in my house is to crumble it, cook it and add some salsa, serve over rice, sprinkle shredded cheese on top. My kids love this combination.

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That is interesting. My dietpower says that 3 oz of ground turkey before cooking has 199 calories , 11g of fat, and 23.3g of protein.

3 oz of extra lean ground beef has 199 calories, 14g of fat, and 15.9g of protein.

There are different types of ground turkey too though..there is the zero fat stuff, and differnt pecentage of fat for turkey too. My guess is it just depends on which level is being tested..but the differences are enough to make ya just swear off both and get something easier to figure!

Not that I will do it..I'm a carnivore at heart, and have no desire to give up my animal protein. I guess as long as I am not cutting my calories that close I'm still okay.

I'm not a fan of ground turkey, but not a big fan of ground beef either.

I prefer beef to turkey though!

I found this is my grocery store -- Maverick ground beef.

4 oz: 120 calories!

Hormone free, grass feed, open range beef.

Is that for cooked, like pan seared or anything? My numbers are for raw. I don't cook with oil for things like spaghetti so I used raw numbers. Dunno if that has anything to do with the difference. That is puzzling. I even cross referenced other sites. Granted, some are way off from the rest. That'll need some research.

Yummy! Yeah they are good.

Ground meat is generally not the best so I avoid it as much as I can, I eat red meat at most 3x a month. But still sometimes there's nothing quite like a juicy hamburger.

Nothing bad about ground beef. Personally, I can't stomach ground turkey.

I prefer the taste of ground turkey breast, but still eat lean ground beef on occasion. It's good for keeping my iron levels up.

Someone up thread posted the link to the "hillbilly housewife" site. She gives the monetary breakdown as follows
Obviously, it depends on how much you're paying for meat. If you can get the less fatty stuff for not much less, that's probably more worth it. But rinsing really doesn't take much work at all. It's literally a couple of minutes added to your cooking time.

I like ground chicken, but am not that fond of ground turkey (but ground chicken is hard to find in our area). Ground turkey often has skin ground into the meat, which increases the fat and calorie count, so when I do buy ground turkey, I make sure it's breast meat only.

As for ground beef, extra-lean (95 - 97%) ground beef tends to run $3.00 to $4.00 per pound, whereas (70 - 75%) ground beef often goes on sale for $1.00 per pound.

I buy cheap ground beef on sale. Sometimes I will drain and rinse the extra fat, but more often I brown the ground beef with dry minced tvp granules (soy protein). It looks like grapenuts cereal, and is fat-free. It runs about $3.00 per pound or less in health food stores (Walmart even carries it now, though it's a little more expensive), and each pound is equivalent to 4 lbs of ground beef.

I brown the tvp and ground beef with onions and other seasoning vegetables (and then add hot water or broth to reconstitute the tvp). If I use 1 lb of tvp to 1 lb of cheap ground beef, I get the equivalent of 5 lbs of extra lean beef for about 80 cents per pound (cheaper than the cheapest lean beef). The more tvp I add, the leaner and the cheaper it gets (although hubby won't eat it, if there's much more tvp than beef. So the most I'm able to dilute the mixture is 2 lbs tvp to 1 lb ground beef. Any less beef and he starts to notice the difference).

I usually make the mix up every month or two, and freeze it in 2 gallon ziploc freezer bags. As the mixture freezes, I smoosh the bags every 20 minutes or so that the mixture freezes into crumbles, and then I scoop out what I need for recipes (spaghetti sauce, sloppy joes, tacos, stroganof....).

Sometimes I even use ground pork, italian sausage, or chorizo (and add even more tvp, because lean ground pork and sausage is very hard to find).

I found a couple ground beef recipe books in thrift stores (and I have a couple more on my wish list at amazon.com), and while some of the recipes are NOT diet friendly, many are or can be easily adapted.

An easy and quick way to brown ground beef and remove the fat is to put it in a saucepan with enough water to cover it and boil it until the meat is cooked. Drain it. You can use it right away or freeze it to use later.