Summary: A rapid and simple procedure to detect irradiated food containing fat is proposed. This method is based on HS‐SPME coupled with GC‐MS to determine the presence of a radiolytic product in irradiated meats: 2‐dodecylcyclobutanone (2‐DCB) and is proposed as an alternative to EN 1785:2003, which is a long and complex procedure. The qualitative confirmation method is validated on different type of meats: chicken, turkey, duck, beef, pork on both nonirradiated and irradiated samples at different dose levels (0.05, 0.12, 0.5, 1.0 and 3.0 kGy) with a biological X‐ray irradiator. The validation parameters investigated are selectivity, minimum dose level (MDL), limit of detection (LOD), sensitivity and specificity. The MDL and LOD values were 0.5 kGy and 5.0 ng mL⁻¹, respectively, for all matrices. No false positives or false negatives occurred, and 100% of samples were correctly identified. The results show that HS‐SPME GC‐MS is suitable for routine analysis.