Who wins in the battle of Size?

Who wins in the battle of Size? Fat vs. Lean Ground Beef

Measuring Height of burger.

The two types of ground beef used.

Measuring the diameter of the hamburger.

Graph that shows the change in both diameter and height of the hamburgers between the two groups. 

For my first mini experiment, I decided to explore whether the amount of fat in the ground beef a person uses to make a hamburger effects the size of the patty it is cooked.

With that said, I hypothesized that if hamburger patties are constructed out of lean ground beef, then the patties made out of ground beef will be smaller in size than  hamburger patties made out of ground beef with a high fat percentage, because the lean ground beef patties have less affordable fat to lose. Therefore, resulting in an overall smaller burger patty than hamburger patties made with a higher fat percentage. The null hypothesis for this experiment was that fat content would have no effect on the size of the hamburger patty.

The variables for this experiment consisted of the following:

·         Independent variable: Ground beef fat percentage (Lean ground beef vs. Fat ground beef)

·         Dependent variable: Hamburger size (Height and Diameter)

·         Standard Variables: Initial hamburger patty size (half cup puck), oven temperature (375 degrees Fahrenheit), the amount of time cooked (30 minutes), measuring apparatus (inch ruler), total amount of ground beef used (two 16oz. rolls of ground beef/one each fat content) and the units of measure (inches).

After I acquired all the ingredients for this fun experiment at the local HyVee, I returned back to begin testing. I started by preheating the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. While the oven preheated, started making hamburgers with the 80/20 ground beef first. In order to make the patties, I squeezed off portions of the ground beef and then placed them into a half cup sized measuring cup.  I continued to place portions of the ground beef into the measuring cup and gently pressed them down until the cup was full and level. Upon completion of this, I gently tapped the patties out of the measuring cup, and then placed them on a foiled baking sheet.

This process was repeated until all the beef was used up, which yielded 4 hamburger patties. The entire patty production process was then repeated using the 93/7 ground beef. Again this process yielded 4 hamburger patties. Once this was completed, the 93/7 hamburger patties were placed into an identical baking pan. At this point, colored toothpicks were placed into the 93/7 hamburgers to identify them apart from the 80/20 hamburgers, while non-colored tooth picks were placed into the 80/20 hamburgers. In addition, the number of toothpicks placed into each patty corresponded to the number burger it would represent in the data. For instance “burger #1” had one toothpick placed in it, while “burger#4” had four toothpicks placed in it.

At this point, the initial height and diameter was measured for each hamburger and recorded in a chart. After the initial data was recorded, the patties were placed in the heated oven for 20 minutes. Nearing the 20 minute mark, I checked the patties to make sure that they were not burning or over cook, at which point I made the decision that the burgers would need another 10 minutes to cook to medium-rare.

Once the patties had finished cooking, after 30 minutes, again each patty was measured and data recorded. The data was then averaged, and standard error and standard deviance calculated. After data analysis was conducted it did appear that fat content did have an effect on the patty size, however very small. That is there was a small difference between the two with the "fattier" patties being slightly smaller compared to the two. After analyzing the data, the p-value indicated that both changes in the burgers diameter and height were not statistically significant.

A few limitations to the study were that I was unable to create completely standardized patties. While I had formed them all in a half cup sized measuring cup, they were all slightly different in size. In addition, my experiment only tested a sample of 4 hamburgers each. And Finally, I was unable to acquire a draining rack and scale, which both prevented me from keeping the burgers from reabsorbing the juice that was released during cooking, as well as measuring their weights.