80/20.
You've probably seen it printed on a package of ground beef a hundred times.
Maybe you've also seen:
90/10.
85/15.
93/7.
And if you're like most people, you probably know the first number has something to do with "lean."
But what are those numbers actually measuring?
Is 80/20 a grade?
Does 80/20 mean the cow was fattier?
Is 90/10 better beef?
And here's an interesting one:
Where does that 20% fat actually come from?
Let's talk hamburger.
FIRST, 80/20 ISN'T A GRADE
This is probably the easiest misconception to clear up.
When a package says:
80/20
it means the ground beef is approximately:
80% lean
and
20% fat.
That's it.
It isn't a USDA quality grade.
It doesn't mean Choice.
It doesn't mean Prime.
It doesn't tell you how the animal was raised.
And it doesn't tell you how much marbling the carcass had.
80/20 describes the composition of the ground beef.
USDA quality grading is something completely different. Prime, Choice and Select are carcass quality grades based largely on maturity and marbling.
So you could have two packages of ground beef that both say:
80/20
while the beef that went into those packages came from very different animals.
Same ratio.
Different beef.
AND THERE'S ACTUALLY A LEGAL LIMIT
Ground beef can't just contain however much fat somebody wants to put into it.
Under the federal standard of identity, ground beef can contain no more than 30% fat.
USDA regulations also say ground beef cannot contain added water, phosphates, binders or extenders.
That means:
70/30
is essentially the fattest ratio you'll normally encounter under the federal ground-beef standard.
Then you can move progressively leaner:
75/25
80/20
85/15
90/10
93/7
and so on.
But here's where this gets more interesting.
FAT ISN'T JUST SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS TO BE IN THE HAMBURGER
When a butcher makes ground beef, there are two basic things being balanced:
Lean.
And:
Fat.
Beef fabrication produces lean trim as steaks, roasts and other cuts are shaped and trimmed.
It also produces fat trim.
Those materials can be used to formulate ground beef toward a desired lean-to-fat ratio.
So if a butcher wants to produce approximately 80/20 ground beef, the goal is to create a mixture containing roughly:
80% lean tissue.
20% fat.
That doesn't mean every handful coming out of the grinder contains precisely 80 molecules of lean and 20 molecules of fat.
It's a formulation for the batch.
And that formulation matters.
Because fat changes what happens when you cook it.
SO WHY IS 80/20 SO POPULAR?
Because fat does some pretty useful things to a hamburger.
Especially:
Juiciness.
Flavor.
Texture.
Research comparing ground beef at different fat levels has repeatedly found sensory differences.
In one Beef Checkoff-funded study, ground beef patties containing 20% fat were juicier than patties containing 5% fat. They also had greater fat mouth-coating and differences in several flavor characteristics.
Another study comparing 10% and 20% fat patties found the 10% patties tended to be less juicy, while the 20% patties were more tender in the instrumental testing used in that experiment.
And a larger consumer study found something especially interesting:
Consumers preferred 20% fat patties made from chuck lean.
So 80/20 isn't just some arbitrary number somebody printed on a package.
Twenty percent fat can meaningfully change the way a burger eats.
BUT MORE FAT DOESN'T AUTOMATICALLY MEAN BETTER
This is where we're going to sound very familiar.
Because beef almost never gives us a clean:
THIS ONE IS BEST.
There are tradeoffs.
More fat can contribute to juiciness and flavor.
But fat also renders during cooking.
Which means some of it ends up:
In the skillet.
On the grill.
Or dripping through the grates.
Research comparing 10% and 20% fat patties found the leaner patties had higher cooking yields.
In other words:
You may start with the same weight of raw hamburger and end with different amounts of cooked burger.
That's an important part of the equation people don't always think about.
WAIT. DOES THAT MEAN AN 80/20 BURGER BECOMES 80/20 AFTER COOKING?
No.
And this is where those numbers are easy to misunderstand.
80/20 describes the raw ground beef formulation.
Cooking changes things.
Water is lost.
Fat renders.
The patty shrinks.
And the exact amount lost depends on things like:
Cooking method.
Cooking time.
Final temperature.
Patty thickness.
Starting fat level.
So don't look at a cooked burger and assume:
Still 20% fat.
That's not what the label promised.
The label described the product before you cooked it.
AND 90/10 ISN'T JUST 80/20 WITH LESS FLAVOR
It's tempting to think of ground beef as a sliding quality scale:
93/7 = healthiest and therefore best
↓
90/10
↓
85/15
↓
80/20 = indulgent
But that oversimplifies what's happening.
Different ratios work well for different things.
If you're making a burger where juiciness is the whole point?
80/20 makes a lot of sense.
If you're browning beef for something where you're going to add plenty of other moisture and flavor?
You may prefer something leaner.
If you don't want much rendered fat in the pan?
Again, leaner may suit what you're cooking.
This isn't really a contest.
It's a cooking decision.
AND HERE'S SOMETHING ELSE 80/20 DOESN'T TELL YOU
This is the part we find much more interesting.
Imagine two packages sitting next to each other.
Both say:
80/20 Ground Beef.
Compositionally, they may hit the same lean-to-fat target.
But that doesn't mean they're the same product.
The lean could come from different muscles.
The fat could come from different sources.
The animals could have been raised differently.
Their age could differ.
Their feeding programs could differ.
The beef could have different flavor characteristics.
And, depending on the production system, the ground beef could contain beef from one animal or many animals.
That little:
80/20
doesn't answer any of those questions.
It only answers:
How lean is this ground beef?
DOES THE SOURCE OF THE LEAN AND FAT MATTER?
Researchers have actually tested this.
In one study, scientists used lean from different muscles, including:
Loineye.
Tenderloin.
Brisket.
They also collected fat from cattle with different production histories.
Then they blended those materials into:
90/10
80/20
and
70/30
ground beef.
Why?
Because researchers wanted to understand whether ground beef flavor was being influenced only by the amount of fat or whether the source of the lean and fat mattered too.
That's a much more interesting way to think about hamburger.
Ground beef isn't simply:
Beef + 20% generic fat.
The raw materials themselves have characteristics.
Which means two 80/20 burgers can share the same number without being identical.
SO IS 80/20 ACTUALLY THE MOST POPULAR?
It's certainly in the sweet spot.
Retail market research from the Beef Checkoff found that ground beef containing 11% to 20% fat, meaning 80% to 89% lean, accounted for about 46.5% of fresh ground beef pounds sold in 2023.
That's nearly half of the fresh ground beef volume in that dataset.
Interestingly, the 2021 National Beef Tenderness Survey found 85/15 was the single most prevalent lean point observed in the retail cases researchers surveyed.
So there isn't one magical hamburger ratio dominating everything.
But consumers clearly buy a lot of ground beef in that middle range.
Not extremely lean.
Not extremely fatty.
Somewhere in between.
NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THE COW
Here's where ground beef gets misunderstood.
People sometimes talk about ground beef like it's the part of the animal nobody wanted.
Steaks come off.
Roasts come off.
And whatever unfortunate scraps are left become hamburger.
That's not a very good description of whole-animal butchering.
When a carcass is fabricated, plenty of perfectly good beef doesn't naturally become a recognizable steak or roast.
There are trimmings created while cuts are shaped.
There are muscles or portions of muscles that may be better suited to grinding.
There are also cutting decisions.
A butcher can choose to leave certain pieces whole.
Or turn them into stew meat.
Or grind them.
Ground beef is one of the ways the entire animal gets used.
And then the butcher has another decision to make:
How lean should it be?
THIS IS WHERE WHOLE-ANIMAL BUTCHERING GETS INTERESTING
If you're working with one animal instead of ordering standardized boxes of trim from a larger supply chain, you are working with the fat and lean that particular animal actually produced.
And cattle vary.
One animal isn't an exact copy of another.
That's something we see throughout beef.
Ribeyes vary.
Marbling varies.
Tenderloins vary.
Fat cover varies.
Carcass yield varies.
Ground beef begins with that same biological variation.
The butcher's job is to turn what the animal actually produced into a consistent, useful product.
That's craftsmanship most people never see.
BUT IS THE FAT IN GROUND BEEF THE SAME THING AS MARBLING?
No.
This distinction is important.
Marbling is intramuscular fat.
It's the little flecks of fat distributed inside the muscle that USDA graders evaluate when assigning quality grades.
The fat involved in formulating ground beef can include separable beef fat associated with the beef being fabricated.
Those are not the same concept.
So:
A highly marbled Ribeye
and
20% fat ground beef
are both talking about fat.
But they're talking about it in very different ways.
This is another reason:
80/20 ≠ Prime.
Prime is a carcass quality grade associated strongly with marbling.
80/20 is a ground-beef lean-to-fat ratio.
Completely different measurements.
HERE'S WHAT WE'RE QUESTIONING
Why do we treat the lean percentage like it's telling us everything we need to know about hamburger?
Walk into the meat department and you might see:
80/20
85/15
90/10
93/7
And those numbers are useful.
They tell you something important about how that ground beef will probably behave when you cook it.
But they're only one piece of information.
They don't tell you:
What animal did this beef come from?
What parts of the animal went into it?
How was that animal raised?
What did it eat?
How was it finished?
How many animals were combined in the batch?
That's a lot of story hiding behind two little numbers.
AND THIS IS WHERE OUR GROUND BEEF IS DIFFERENT
Our ground beef at Falula Farm comes from the same animal we're already working with.
One animal.
We aren't combining beef from hundreds of cattle to create a giant production batch.
When we're cutting that animal, the steaks, roasts, specialty cuts and ground beef are all part of the same whole-animal process.
That means when beef becomes hamburger, its identity doesn't disappear.
Our ground beef comes from one animal.
We've talked before about why that matters to us.
It's not a claim that one-animal ground beef magically tastes better.
And it isn't a claim that small automatically means safer.
It's an identity and traceability choice.
We know what we're working with.
And we like keeping it that way.
THE BEEF REPORT BOTTOM LINE
So what does:
80/20
actually mean?
It's pretty simple.
Approximately:
80% lean.
20% fat.
Not a grade.
Not a breed.
Not a statement about how the animal was raised.
Not a measure of marbling.
And definitely not the whole story of the hamburger.
Fat level can influence:
Juiciness.
Texture.
Flavor.
Cooking yield.
And how the ground beef works in whatever you're making.
Research shows that 20% fat patties can be juicier than leaner formulations, while leaner patties can retain more weight during cooking.
So the question isn't necessarily:
Which ratio is best?
It's:
What do you want your ground beef to do?
For a juicy burger, you may want more fat.
For another recipe, you may want less.
But whichever number you choose, remember:
80/20 tells you the ratio.
It doesn't tell you the story.
And when it comes to beef, we're pretty interested in the story.
Know the animal.
Know what's in the grind.
Know your beef.