There’s been a lot of hype in the media over the last few days about “pink slime” in ground beef. There’s also been a lot of misinformation about the stuff.
It’s not slime. It’s beef. There are two different terms for it, boneless lean beef trimmings or finely textured beef. Both products start and end the same, but have one slightly different middle step. Here’s how we get it.
You know how you’ll get a steak from the grocery store, and it often will have a thin layer of fat around the outside. You “trim” the fat from the steak before you cook it, but usually you take a little bit of the meat off, too. You don’t usually spend a whole bunch of time getting that last little bit of meat separated from the fat, you just throw it away. This also happens at the butcher, but on a bigger scale.
