Those ground beef tubes with crazy long expiration dates- do you trust the date?

Cafe Society
1

So my rule of thumb when buying raw meat has always been to cook or freeze the meat no more than 4 days after purchase, or by the ‘sell by’ date, whichever comes first.

But lately I’ve been buying ground beef in these 3lb. plastic tubes that are sealed off at the ends with metal clips (see image below). And I noticed the expiry dates are like 2 weeks out from the day I purchase them, which seems way too long. I did some googling, and apparently there are different packaging methods such as low oxygen packaging and such that extend the refrigerator shelf life, but, it’s not like those tubes are hermetically sealed or anything. Sometimes I see them leaking a bit of myoglobin, so they’re not always air or water tight, and it certainly wouldn’t take much for the plastic to be accidentally punctured.

So if you bought some raw meat with a “use or freeze” date that seemed crazy far out like 2 weeks, would you trust it, or ignore it and go no more than 4 days like me? Split the diff?

I currently have a tube in the fridge I bought Saturday, so not a hypothetical. I won’t go so far as to say ‘need answer fast’ though :slightly_smiling_face:

2

Hog rings.

:heart_with_arrow:

3

I tend to believe the expiry date.

4

Trust but verify. I use these and have never had one go bad before the date, but if one did, I’d certainly know before cooking it.

5

:notes: Shot through the tube…and you’re to blame.
You give meat… a bad name. :notes:

6

OK, so both you and @crowmanyclouds have quoted my mention of ‘myoglobin’ and made oblique ‘shot through the heart’ references. Is it just the fact that the pink liquid that red meat sometimes exudes is often mistaken for blood, or is there some deeper joke or pun I’m missing here? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

7

This.

Raw meat requires care in handling, but it’s somewhat hardier than commonly thought. I like to think that 21st-century raw-food handling science has bought us some extra time that our parents and grandparents couldn’t count on. So there are some lingering rules about when to use raw meat that are probably outdated now, but we’ve generally never learned differently.

Not ground meat, but: Sometimes, if I catch it right, I buy boneless chicken breasts that have an expiration date around 10 days out. Just regular ol’ shrink-wrap packaging (so far as I can tell). I chuck them into the fridge, and often use them a week or 8 or 9 days later. Seem totally fresh coming out of the package, and have had no ill effects from using chicken breasts this way.

8

Much more often than not and knowing the difference it annoys me and I love seeing anyone get it right.

9

Wrong. They’re air- & liquid-tight. Until punctured. How do you feel about milk in those little individual aseptic boxes with expiration dates months in the future? Which do you think goes bad faster, milk in open air or beef in open air? Point being that if properly sterilized and sealed, aseptic room temperature packaging is very, very good.

If you can squeeze it at the store & it deforms and stays that way, you’re handling a leaker. Don’t buy that one. Just because there’s myoglobin or other goop on the outside doesn’t mean that one is leaking; leakage from damaged packaging often runs onto good packages nearby.

10

BTW, that form of packaging is called a “chub.”

11

Darn, you beat me to it.

12

OK, general point taken, though milk is a bad comparison for me. Not a milk drinker-- I think the stuff is gross, and it smells off to me when it’s supposedly fresh from the store.

13

I occasionally buy the tightly vacuum sealed packages of 80/20 ground Chuck from Trader Joe’s (little squares, not chubs). They are much better sealed than the “freshly packaged” ground meats from the store in their foam trays, and have much longer expiration date, just as you noticed. In general I trust their dates, more because I trust that they’re made the enlightened self interest decision to NOT risk the bad publicity of spoiled food to squeeze out a few days.

And of course, the airtight seals means that a lot of the normal signs of food going off are limited or eliminated, such as smells, oxidation, and what have you.

Chubs though are often marketed at the cost-saving end of the spectrum, and while probably not fair, I think emotionally I’d trust them somewhat less. It’s not rational, but despite my best efforts, I’m not always so.

My other problem with chubs, is that the deals are on three pounders. I’m the only meat eater at home, and once the seals are breached, the whole thing is on a timer. If you had a vacuum sealer (as an example) and portioned, sealed, and froze it all upon the first opening, no worries, but there’s no way I personally would be able to use more than a pound or two in a timely manner, and even at the price of ground beef, think I’d hesitate to buy large quantities and then spend the time, money, and effort to portion and seal.

So, after writing the Great American Novel of a post, I think you’d be fine in ignoring the “4 days after purchase”, but be more careful once the containment is breached. Because that’s how you get Gozers, and no one wants that. :slight_smile:

14

Though I don’t tend to buy those, I do trust the date. UHT and microwaves can pasteurize things very effectively. And there is no way a company would take he legal risk of putting wrong dates on the package if they did not have confidence in it; if anything they are too aggressive in order to increase consumption.

15

can’t you just portion after opening and freeze “surplus”? That’s what I do.

16

Gozers? What would that be?
And do I really wanna know?

17

Yes, I did mention doing that, but that it’s more work IMHO than justified for the $$$ savings on buying a 3lb chub. Using good freezer rated bags, and making sure to get the air out (preventing freezer burn) adds to the cost and effort for only a minor savings over a 1lb Trader Joe’s package.

I was making a failed joke about “breaching containment” leading to disaster, a la Ghostbusters.

18

I suppose it’s how often you use hamburger–I use frequently, so I just cut up chub and wrap in aluminum foil and freeze, just couple of minutes

19

Hey, an interesting, useful post is never too long, while an uninteresting, useless post is too long at a sentence or two. Your posts are always the former.

Now let me get this out of the way:

So, it really is called a ‘chub’, huh? I thought Slithy_Tove was joking at first. Did the inventor of this packaging method ask his 13 year old nephew to name it?

And, I’m with @fedman1 – now that my wife and I have been empty nesters, I cook a pound of the chub and portion the other two pounds into two 1-quart freezer bags that I flatten for easy thawing later and throw in the freezer.

But now it looks like both my sons are coming home, one from college for the Summer, one from living in Asia for months (long story). 3 lbs. of ground beef will barely feed my two boys, let alone all 4 of us at one sitting :smirk:

20

The Wiki links lead to patent for a chub packaging material to 2008, but I haven’t found any sort of cite for origin or earliest use in a quick hit of der Googles.

And yes, absolutely your needs present and future (as well as @fedman1’s) would be drastically different than mine, which is why I made sure to state that I was the sole meat-eater in the house. My need for ground beef is pretty minimal, and recently I mostly buy a 2lb package of a ground pork/beef blend at $3.50/lb. Since ground chuck or sirloin is normally around 5.99 (though frequently 4.99 or less in chub form) at my mega mart, it’s a better deal and it’s far more neutral in flavor working well in a number of ground meat dishes including Ant’s climb a tree, a filling in potstickers, or making Asian lettuce wraps.