Did you ever serve ground beef that had *just* turned grey/brown?

Has anyone here ever eaten or served ground beef that had turned greyish-brown sometime within just the past six hours or so? (Refrigerated the whole time).

How’d that turn out for you?

ETA: Ahem. Need answer fast.

I’ve used “grey” ground beef without incident. Occasionally, I’ll get a package at the store that is red on the outside and grey on the inside…figure that one out.

I would use the “sniff” test, too. If it smells funky, it’s not worth food poisoning.

I am not a doctor or a butcher, but as far as I know, ground beef turning grey does not indicate that it’s going bad. That’s just what air does to ground beef. If it smells off, don’t use it. If it is old, don’t use it. But if it smells fine and you haven’t had it long, you should be just fine.

smell is everything… when in doubt- cook the hell out of it.

What they said. When I have questionable ground beef, it gets a good cooking, then made into taco meat (add lots of seasoning!)… :slight_smile:

The blood in meat (and in you and everything else) turns red when first exposed to the air. This can result in the weirdness that is a pound of hamburger that’s red on the outside and brown on the inside.

It is not, as my brother thinks, the result of the store wrapping a clod of old meat in a thin layer of fresh meat in order to sell it.

The store has some meat that’s been around a bit too long (or just looks gray) and then feeds it into the meat grinder with a bit of fresh meat so that the entire package looks red. A local supermarket does this all the time, so I’ve stopped shopping there.

I just wanted to say how much I appreciated the serendipity of RealityChuck showing beside the title as the last poster in this thread. :smiley:

Yeah, if I know my ground beef should still be good, but it looks funny, I give it a really good sniff, and have never had a problem with that.

Exactly, and there’s a cite here.

I cook hamburger all the time that has turned color. If it smells good then cook it.