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Many people in North America use the terms ground beef / Ground Hamburger / Hamburger interchangeably. For producers, in the US at least, there is a legal difference they must adhere to: any fat in ground beef must be the fat already adhering to the meat content they are adding; for ground hamburger, additional beef fat other than what was on those pieces of meat can be added. Bacteria in Ground Beef. When beef is ground, far more surface area is created on all the minute pieces of meat than existed on a single hunk of meat.

Combine this increased surface area with the extra handling and equipment that the ground beef has had to go through, and the ground beef gets lots more chances to pick up bacteria during processing. The cow may have already had E. Consequently, ground beef must have no pink inside when cooked. Colour alone, though, isn't an indication of safety: sometimes hamburger can appear browned before it is safe to eat. It must reach an internal temperature of 7.

• · For more, visit TIME Health. Store-bought ground beef often contains a variety of bacteria that can make humans sick and is resistant to the drugs used to.
• Expert answers to commonly asked questions about ground beef types, history, handling, preparation, cooking, healthy ground beef meals, storage, production and more.
• This original ground beef jerky recipe is rich and flavorful as well as easy and quick to make! No marinating required. Everyone will love these!
• Forgot to take that ground beef out of the freezer this morning and now it's 4:00 and your kids are begging for tacos? Never fear - I'm going to show you to freeze.
• · How to Tell if Ground Beef Has Gone Bad. You meant to make those enchiladas days ago but never got around to it. This wikiHow will help you find out if.

This classy, elegant looking Sweet Potato and Ground Beef Pie hides a deliciously healthy dish that is so easy to make and offers so many possibilities, it'll.

C (1. 60 F). If you're nervous about this, instant- read meat thermometers are very inexpensive now. The Fat Question (Lean Ground Beef, Extra Lean Ground Beef)Varieties of ground beef are now being sold as regular, lean, extra lean, super lean, etc. But what does regular, lean and extra- lean mean? The labelling laws can be unclear.

Canada's ground beef laws are more updated than those of the UK and the US. In any other kind of food labelled 1. But the 1. 0% in that extra lean above isn't actually 1. On the surface, that 1. It's the percent of fat, by weight, that the processor of the ground beef has either added to the ground beef or left in that was already part of the meat.

Tips. How long does raw ground beef last in the fridge or freezer? Food Net Work more. The exact answer to that question depends to a large extent on storage conditions - keep ground.

In addition, ground beef naturally has a lot of water in it. That's not the producer adding water, we're all made of water. Ground beef is 5.

When ground beef is cooked, the half the weight that was water evaporates away in steam. Patty Melts. The fat content didn't go anywhere, though, so with the overall weight of the cooked product having gone down, your ratio of fat to product has now doubled to 2. A pan- fried hamburger patty from 1.

Take two 3. 5 oz hamburger patties and fry them in separate pans. The one made from 3. Granted, neither result is ideal, but the 3. You can't assemble one tidy table comparing the fat content of ground beef in the UK, the US and Canada.

The guidelines in the UK and the US are shifting and vague. The guidelines such as they are in any of the three countries aren't actually followed. Consumer advocates measuring fat by weight, as the current system allows, found that ground beef products they purchased at stores varied widely outside the ranges for how they had been labelled. Even when percentage fat by weight guidelines are standardized, as in Canada, and even if they were rigidly followed, they would still be inaccurate in terms of what the reality is when the consumer puts the cooked product on a plate.

Even if ground beef were required to conform to the same format of nutritional labelling that other food is (for instance, saying 2. They just wouldn't have the tools, knowledge or capacity. Some argue that the solution might be to legally require the local butcher to do it anyway, effectively stopping him from selling ground beef and putting ground beef sales squarely in the hands of the big supermarket chains who could do this, but some people might reasonably argue that, precise fat content aside, they actually feel more comfortable buying their meat from a butcher who has been serving them for 1.

The UK has already taken this into account: its fat content guidelines apply to supermarkets, and not to butchers. In Canada and the US, the general guidelines for ground beef legally require that no filler or water be added to the ground beef, and this is rigidly enforced, at least. In 2. 00. 4, the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) found that many packs of "extra lean" minced beef sometimes contained more fat than regular ground beef. While there is no maximum fat content for minced beef in the UK, there is a maximum of 7% if the minced beef packaging bears the words "lean minced meat." If, however, the seller changes the wording to "minced meat lean", or labels it extra lean, etc.

The FSA found this not to be true, and consequently in 2. UK. Ground Chuck, Ground Round. Ground Sirloin. Sometimes, in North America, ground beef will be labelled to indicate that it has been made purely from one specific part of the animal. Here is the fat content on those varieties: Ground Chuck: 1. Ground Round: 1. 0 - 1.

Ground Sirloin: 8 - 1. Chuck is considered the optimum "cut" of meat meat for ground beef. The reason is that ground sirloin and Ground Round can end up tough and dry. When hamburger is really lean, what fat there is in it will have finished dripping out too soon, leaving the meat to shrivel and dry over the heat. As a result, people are going to cook it less well- done the next time, bringing back the basic health safety issues of undercooked ground beef. Instead, if you are using a ground beef made from something like ground chuck, or with a high enough fat content, it has enough fat in it to keep lubricating the ground beef for the entire cooking process, so that people won't complain about their ground beef being over- cooked. If you are pan- frying ground sirloin or ground round, you may wisth to have some olive oil, or olive oil spray, (or canola / rapeseed oil) at hand to help prevent the meat from sticking.

You may have noticed that all three sources (Chuck, Round, Sirloin) are pretty tough areas of the cow: why the hamburger still ends up tender is that the grinding process breaks down the tissue of the meat, effectively tenderizing it. What colour should my ground beef be? Beef is normally more of a purple colour. It only turns rosy red when it comes into contact with oxygen.

The rosy red colour, however, is the colour that consumers have come to associate with "safe to eat." Consequently, retailers oblige consumers by packaging the fresh ground beef (and all other fresh beef) in plastic wrap which is actually specially selected to let air through to the meat, to keep the surface of the meat that rosy red colour. That's why home economists have been saying to us all along, don't freeze your meat in that home packaging: instant freezer burn. Should you happen to see ground beef on which the dates are good, but the meat is a bit more purply, that simply means it's been packaged with proper plastic wrap, and because of that will probably actually be fresher than the rosy red stuff. When you expose purply colour beef to the air, it should turn red in about 1. Making your own ground beef.

Some people use their food processor to grind their own ground beef. To do this, cut the meat first into 2 to 3 cm (1 inch) hunks, then put it in the fridge to cool it down again. Then process in small batches in the food processor. Use "pulse" rather than continuous run; continuous run will give you beef liquid. If you want 1. 00% lean ground beef, you can make it at home yourself this way.

People who've tried, however, seem to reluctantly admit that you should add back that fat you had just trimmed off: the optimum figure seems to be at least 1. Cover and refrigerate right away until you need the ground beef, or freeze. Make sure you wash any items that you used in making the hamburger before you use them for anything else, including the cutting board and the counter.

Cooking Tips. Ground beef must be cooked to an internal temperature of 7. C (1. 60 F). This is past the pink stage inside, but you can't guess that it's necessarily at that temperature just because it's no longer pink - - sometimes hamburger may be completely browned before it reaches a temperature at which it is safe to eat. A quick poke of an instant read food thermometer will ensure safety.