We all have little cooking hacks that help make our meals "healthier." Maybe you beef up your rice with cauliflower rice or swap sour cream for Greek yogurt. Go you! But some tips go a bit too far and make what could be delicious and healthy food into something that is barely edible, as one TikTok user learned the hard way. This week, a video showing a woman rinsing cooked beef mince went viral for, well, obvious reasons.
TikTok user Emily Harper's video starts out with her promising to teach you a healthy cooking hack she says she learned in her nutrition class. It all starts out fine with her cooking and then preparing to drain the mince beef (something we've all probably done a million times), but then things go HAYWIRE. She pours the beef into a strainer over the sink and begins to rinse it for, like, a while. All that delicious grease literally goes down the drain.
"All this grease is disgusting," she wrote on the post. "So get rid of it!"
There are a few problems with this, obviously. For one, you shouldn't be pouring grease into your sink!! It can harden and gum up the pipes (she's since added in subsequent videos that she doesn't do it that often!). I personally pour it into a cup and toss it into the garbage once it cools, but people have all sorts of methods they swear by. But the thing people really took issue with, obviously, is that draining AND rinsing your beef mince will make it dry. It's going to take away all that delicious flavour and fat that not only tastes great but also can help keep you full.
She's since turned comments off on the TikTok, but not before it had been shared all over the internet, as well as "duetted" by other creators, all pretty much saying the same thing: a little bit of grease is your friend!!!
Say it with me: A little bit of grease is not your enemy!! Amen!