Ground Beef Nutrition Facts for Cooked 85/15 Beef

In the United States, "ground beef" is defined by USDA regulation (9 CFR 319.15). It is chopped fresh or frozen beef with no more than 30 percent fat, and it may not contain added water, phosphates, binders or extenders. The difference from "hamburger" is that hamburger may have loose beef fat added to it, while ground beef may contain only the fat attached to the meat that was ground.

Packages that state a lean percentage, such as "85% lean," must also state the fat percentage, which is where names like 85/15 come from. Labels may also name the cut: ground chuck is usually one of the fattier blends, and ground round and ground sirloin are leaner.

The two numbers are the lean and fat percentages by weight of the raw meat. More fat means more calories and less protein per gram, both raw and cooked:

• 80/20: the usual choice for juicy burgers; the most calories and fat of the common blends.
• 85/15: the blend on this page, a middle ground for burgers, meatballs and tacos.
• 90/10 and 93/7: leaner blends often used in sauces and chili, where they release less fat into the pan. USDA's 93/7 record, on the lean ground beef page, has fewer calories and more protein per 100 g than the 85/15 here.

Cooking melts out part of the fat in every blend, so the gap between blends is smaller after cooking than the raw percentages suggest.

Ground beef loses water and fat as it cooks, so it weighs less afterward and every nutrient is more concentrated per gram. In USDA's measures, a quarter-pound raw patty (4 oz before cooking) cooks down to about 83 g, with 193 calories and 20.4 g of protein. That is why a cooked 3 oz serving has more calories than 3 oz of the same beef raw.

The fat that drips out of a patty or pools in the skillet is not in this record; pouring it off keeps it out of your dish. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service recommends cooking ground beef to an internal temperature of 160 °F, checked with a food thermometer, because color alone is not a reliable sign of doneness.

• Cheeseburgers. A grilled or griddled patty on a bun with cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion. Cheddar Cheese · White Bread · Green Leaf Lettuce · Tomato · Onion
• Tacos. Browned ground beef seasoned with garlic, chili and cumin, topped with cheese and lettuce. Garlic Powder · Onion · Cheddar Cheese · Iceberg Lettuce
• Chili. Ground beef simmered with beans, tomatoes, onion and spices. Black Beans · Tomato · Onion
• Spaghetti with meat sauce. Ground beef browned with onion and garlic, then cooked in tomato sauce and served over pasta. Pasta · Tomato · Onion · Garlic
• Meatballs and meatloaf. Ground beef mixed with egg and breadcrumbs as binders, shaped and baked. Egg · White Bread · Onion
• Cottage pie. Ground beef and vegetables in gravy under a layer of mashed potato. Potato · Carrot · Onion · Butter

Raw ground beef is more perishable than whole cuts, because grinding spreads surface bacteria through the meat. Keep it in the coldest part of the refrigerator and cook or freeze it within a day or two of buying. Frozen ground beef keeps safely indefinitely, though its quality is best within a few months. Thaw it in the refrigerator, in cold water or in the microwave, never on the counter.

Products made with meat are regulated differently from most foods: in general, a product with more than 3 percent raw meat or 2 percent or more cooked meat falls under USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service rather than the FDA, and its label has to follow FSIS rules. Whichever applies, the nutrition math starts the same way. Match the record to the state of the meat you weigh: if you weigh raw ground beef and cook it in the product, use a raw value and set the cooked batch weight, and if you weigh it cooked, use a cooked value like this one. The label generator and the recipe nutrition calculator handle the batch yield. The reference amount for plain cooked beef is 85 g, the same as the default serving here; mixed dishes have their own in the RACC lookup.