What to Do With Ground Beef Serious Eats

I Can't Believe How Well This One-Ingredient Trick Works for Cooking Footing Beef

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Credit: Sara Tane

When I caught air current that there were some videos going around on TikTok offering their 2 cents on how to cook basis beef, my immediate reaction was to cover my ears and run the other way. Why? Because the concluding time someone on TikTok decided they had some ground meat cookery advice, they were suggesting that you drain and wash your cooked meat under water. I'm surprised my telephone screen didn't shatter after playing this video. The HORROR!

Luckily, this most recent ground beefiness cooking tip has goose egg to practice with the previous nonsense that my virgin eyes had to endure. In fact, the hack is merely a simple addition of a pantry ingredient for seriously improved ground beefiness results. Ground Beef TikTok™ was a place on the cyberspace that I swore I'd never return to, but after this hack, it looks like I'1000 here to stay.

TikTok Wants You to Add Baking Soda to Your Ground Beef

Here's the tip: For every pound of ground beef, a adept dominion of thumb is to add together about i/4 teaspoon baking soda and to permit the meat sit for about 15 minutes before cooking. From there, you can throw the basis beefiness in a hot, dry out pan and cook information technology upwards.

Why would you want to do this? The chief quarrel with cooking ground beefiness is that it expels and then much moisture while cooking that information technology'due south difficult to achieve nice caramelization and browning due to all the liquid in the pan.

Some cooks get around this difficulty by cooking the ground meat in smaller batches so that less moisture is expelled, only this blistering soda hack solves this result with scientific discipline! Since TikTok is a place where your encephalon cells go to die, the video doesn't really delve also far into the reasoning behind why this works, but basically (punny) the loftier pH of the blistering soda prevents the proteins in the beef from bonding. These strong bonds are what forces wet out of the beef and leaves y'all with a pool of h2o in the pan, so by keeping these bonds from happening, y'all're going to see way less moisture while you're cooking.

Will this work with other meat? Since we empathize the scientific discipline, we tin can make an educated approximate that this volition concord up beyond all ground meats, only give it a try and permit me know how it goes with turkey, craven, lamb, or even sausage. Same goes for the fat content of your footing beef — based on the science, we can assume this hack works with your preferred fat content. The fattier the beef, the more rendered fatty you might run into in the pan, but it shouldn't bear upon the success of your gilt brown beef.

My Honest Review of Adding Baking Soda to Ground Beefiness

SMH, TikTok, you've done it over again. I largely avoid cooking footing beef because it's not my favorite flavor-wise, and on top of that, you accept to throw in the desperation of the fatty beef liquid that you lot're left with when you cook information technology. Lamentable, but I'll respectfully pass. The blistering soda non just prevented a large pool of moisture from accumulating, but information technology helped brown the ground beef bits and kept the meat juicy and tender. Forget that rubbery texture you might be used to with your ground beef — this was annihilation only that.

Don't get me wrong, there was a small amount of liquid that accumulated, just most of it was rendered fat and information technology did not impede the meat from achieving glorious, caramelized results. Is this hack going to brand me a weeknight ground beef consumer? Probably non, but next time I'm throwing together tacos or a stir-fry, this is certainly going to be a trick that I keep in listen. I knew that baking soda could accept your boiled and roasted potatoes to the next level, but at present I know that information technology can also greatly improve your ground meat.

My Tips for Trying This Tip at Home

1. Embrace the hot, dry pan. There are not many meat cookery applications where you've got a hot, oil-less pan, but this is definitely one of them. The beef will render some fat which it tin can cook in, and you will achieve better results with as little oil and moisture in the pan as possible.
2. Allow the meat cook undisturbed. Letting food cook without fussing with information technology is an extremely underrated cooking skill. I know it's tempting to want to make it there with your spatula and constantly stir. Instead, yous will have ameliorate results if you only barely break up the meat and let heat and science do its matter. The caramelization volition be deeper and darker, and the meat is less likely to be overcooked.
3. Season! The video doesn't address seasoning just that'southward as of import. Don't be agape to add together in your favorite ground spices (smoked paprika, cumin, and cayenne are all dandy with beef) and some salt and pepper to your gustatory modality.

Sara Tane

Correspondent

Sara Tane is a food author and private chef based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Teaching and has written for Cooking Light, MyRecipes.com, and The Feedfeed. She also has a serious affair for oysters.

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Source: https://www.thekitchn.com/best-ground-beef-baking-soda-tip-23143702

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