Beef mince: what it is made from and the ratio to ask for

No cut in the butchery is harder to judge by eye than mince. Two bags look identical, cost the same, and behave completely differently in the pan. One holds together as a burger and browns in a crust. The other weeps water, greys, and leaves you with a sauce that tastes thin. The difference is not the price, it is what went into the machine.

What mince is made from

There are two honest ways to make it. The first is to take a named cut, trim it, and put that through the grinder. Chuck, shin, brisket and shoulder make good mince: the right balance of lean and fat, and enough flavour to survive grinding.

The second is to grind trim: the offcuts from the day's cutting. This is what most cheap mince is, and it is why the same bag tastes different every week. Nothing is wrong with trim if it is fresh and clean, but you cannot predict it. One week it is 25 per cent fat, the next it is dry.

So the first question at the counter is not the price. It is: what cut is this from? A proper butcher answers in one word. If the answer is a shrug, you are buying whatever was left on the block.

The fat ratio, and why it is the only number that matters

Mince is sold by fat percentage, written lean to fat. Twenty per cent fat means 80 per cent lean. This single number decides how the meat cooks far more than the cut does.

• 10 per cent fat: very lean. Good for a keema you will simmer with tomatoes, or for anyone counting fat. Bad for burgers, because it dries out and crumbles before it browns.
• 15 per cent fat: the all-rounder. Bolognese, shepherd's pie, stuffed peppers, mince for a stew base. Enough fat to brown properly, not so much that the sauce turns greasy.
• 20 per cent fat: burgers, meatballs, koftas, anything you shape by hand. The fat renders out, bastes the meat from inside, and keeps it juicy. Below this, a burger patty will taste like a dry steak.

If you are buying for two meals, buy two bags rather than compromising on one. It costs nothing to ask for 1 kg at 15 and 500 g at 20.

Coarse or fine

The plate on the grinder changes the texture as much as the fat does. Coarse mince, from the larger plate, keeps visible pieces of meat and gives you a burger with some bite, or a keema that still tastes of beef. Fine mince is smoother, and suits sausages, samosa filling, and sauces where the meat should disappear.

Ask for coarse if you are shaping patties. Ask for fine if it is going into a filling, and twice through the grinder if you want sausage-smooth.

Why mince spoils faster than a whole piece

Bacteria live on the surface of meat, not inside it. A whole roasting piece has a small surface and a large clean interior, which is why a joint keeps for days. Grinding mixes that surface through the whole bag, so mince goes off two or three times faster than the steak it came from.

That gives you two rules. Cook it within a day of buying, or freeze it the same day you buy it. And never thaw mince and put it back in the freezer, because you have doubled the time it spends in the temperature range where bacteria multiply.

Grey on the outside of fresh mince is usually just oxidation from contact with air, and it is harmless. Grey all the way through, with a sour smell, is not. Fresh mince should smell of almost nothing and feel cool and damp, not slimy.

How to brown it without boiling it

Most home mince is grey and watery because it was crowded into the pan. Mince releases a lot of water, and if the pan is full that water has nowhere to go, so the meat sits in it and boils. No amount of later frying fixes that flavour.

Use a wide pan, heat it properly, and add no more than 500 g at a time. Spread it out and leave it alone for three minutes before you touch it. That pause is what gives you the brown crust. Break it up, cook two minutes more, lift it out with a slotted spoon, then pour off the fat and water before the onions go in. For 1 kg, do two batches. Six extra minutes, a different dish.

What to pay for

Mince from a named cut costs a little more per kilo than trim mince, and it is worth it whenever the meat is the point. Buy trim mince for a highly spiced dish or a sauce that cooks for an hour and a half, where the difference is harder to taste. What you should not accept is paying named-cut prices for a bag nobody can identify.

All our beef is halal and cut fresh at City Market Stall 56, never frozen, and mince is ground to the ratio and plate you ask for while you wait. Any cut can be taken in any weight from 0.5 kg, and we deliver the same day across Nairobi. Pay on M-Pesa till 9700565, or ask at the counter what we would use for the dish you have in mind.