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Possible to reduce fat by boiling food?

mexiFRO

mexiFRO

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So my mom keeps telling me that she "boiled the fat" off of dinners she makes. I'm not to sure if that is possible. For example, she will boil sausages and beef and tell me that some fat collected at the top and she removed it. My main question is this...is she full of shit? Can you boil fat out of food? Not all, just some? Thanks.
 
tim290280

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Depends on the type of fat, the type of cooking, the length of cooking, the amount of pressure the food is under and the container used to cook in.

Different fats have differing boiling points, and some will denature at temperatures other than that. If you think about cooking sausages, they can be cooked so that a lot of the fat is hot enough to rise away from the heat and seep/burst out of the sausage. But if you still have the fat collecting in the pan it hasn't really gone out of the food completely. So at best most cooking methods have reduced the original fat content.

Of course if she is boiling the shit out of the food in order to get rid of fat then you will lose a lot of the nutritional benefits of food. Cook anything too long and you denature all sorts of goodies in food. Check out this study on milk pasteurisation:
Effect of milk pasteurization temperature and in situ whey protein denaturation on the composition, texture and heat-induced functionality of half-fat Cheddar cheese
RYNNE Nuala M.; BERESFORD Thomas P.; KELLY Alan L.; GUINEE Timothy P.;

In recent years, many dairy product manufacturers pasteurize milk at temperatures higher than 72°C, so as to reduce further the risk of survival of Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis. However, little information is available on the effect of these temperatures on cheese quality. Half-fat Cheddar cheeses (∼15%, w/w, fat) were manufactured from milk pasteurized at 72°C, 77°C, 82°C or 87°C for 26s, and analyzed over a 360d ripening period. The mean levels of whey protein denaturation in the pasteurized milks were 2.8%, 8.4%, 20.2% and 34.1% of total whey protein, respectively. Increasing pasteurization temperature significantly increased the levels of moisture and non-expressible serum and decreased the levels of protein, fat, calcium and free oil. Pasteurization temperature did not significantly affect the levels of pH 4.6-soluble N but influenced the degradation profiles of αs1-and β-caseins. Increased pasteurization temperature significantly reduced fracture stress, fracture strain and firmness of cheeses. Raising the pasteurization temperature from 72°C to either 82°C or 87°C significantly reduced the flowability and stretchability of the heated cheese and increased its apparent viscosity; in contrast, increasing pasteurization from 72°C to 77°C did not affect these properties.

International dairy journal
2004, vol. 14, no11, pp. 989-1001
 
Adam23

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^^^good info !!! thanks tim :tiphat:
 
Z

zoobody

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u cant boil off fat, sorry
 
R

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Im not sure what that study means to this, because if you dont pasteurize milk you are just asking for trouble. Good post though tim.

You lose a lot of nutrients when you cook things too long, but boiling does reduce the fat because if you cook sausage in a pan the fat just sits there on the sausage and doesnt leave, like time stated.
 
tim290280

tim290280

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^^ The point of the study was to show that even at low temperatures you get a change in the nutrient profiles of food. In this study protein content decreased due to denaturing with the increase in pasteurisation temp, you also decreased levels of calcium and fat in the milk. But that is also the point, you kill off the bacteria and fungi present in the milk by destroying their proteins.

It's all related to what specific fats (or proteins) you are looking at and how long and what temperature you cook at. Given enough heat you can volatilise anything, but you may not have anything left worth eating.
 
Ironslave

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Take paper towel, squeeze fat out of sausages.
 
The Creator

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Good posts here. Not completely relevant to the thread but I was talking to our campus dietician the other day and she made an interesting suggestion. She said you can buy ground beef that is the highest fat content like 20%, skillet it up, and then rinse it with water in a strainer and it will be just as lean as the 7% fat. I found that interesting.

As far as the boiling fat off goes, I think Tim pretty much nailed it. You can cook something for long enough at a high enough temp that it will decrease the fat content but it will also take other things away too. So there is some validity to her reasoning but not as much as it sounds probably.
 
Eli80Cal

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Good posts here. Not completely relevant to the thread but I was talking to our campus dietician the other day and she made an interesting suggestion. She said you can buy ground beef that is the highest fat content like 20%, skillet it up, and then rinse it with water in a strainer and it will be just as lean as the 7% fat. I found that interesting.

As far as the boiling fat off goes, I think Tim pretty much nailed it. You can cook something for long enough at a high enough temp that it will decrease the fat content but it will also take other things away too. So there is some validity to her reasoning but not as much as it sounds probably.

We did an experiment like this in school (weighing the meat before, cooking, rinsing, draining, then patting dry and weighing vs rinsing raw meat, patting dry, and weighing.) If I remember, you could get it down to about 7% lean by weight. You have to cook 30% beef just like you do 7% beef, so I am not sure it would have any effect on protein quality.

Tim brought up different melting points of fats. This is true when heating AND COOLING. Any one who has looked at left over soup the next day has seen the fat that has hardened on top. Cooling it may be another option for reducing the fat content without stripping nutrient content. :dunnodude:
 
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