I’m looking at a recipe that says to cook out the pink in ground beef, but do NOT brown it. This puzzles me; it seems to me it goes right from red/pink to brown.
What should ground beef in such a state look like?
Gray.
Gray. It doesn’t turn brown until it starts to carmelize.
I believe it is more of a grey.
But aren’t there like 50 shades of gray?
Only if you beat your meat.
If its going from red/pink to brown you are cooking it at too high a heat.
Cook it at lower heat and you’ll get that ghastly medium gray color.
Basically for gray, you want the temp just above what it takes to boil it.
What’s the recipe?
I’ve never encountered that particular instruction.
Some chili recipes call for grey, rather than browned, ground meat.
Those are not recipes that should be followed then. Boiled beef in chili? I have to go lie down.
It’s a must for Cincinnati-style.
Whenever I make Cincinnati chili, I boil the beef in beef broth.
I experimented with Bovril once when I had no beef broth or bouillon cubes. Worked surprisingly well!
The common term for the stage before browned is “gray”, although to me, it’s not really gray. It’s a shade of brown- maybe gray-brown.
Browned OTOH, means literally browned. Relative to the “gray” meat, browned meat will be a more rich brown/red color. It’s the result of Maillard reactions in the meat, and is the same as a good crust on a steak. It adds a lot of flavor when you do this, but for a lot of recipes, it’s not strictly necessary.
What I’d recommend doing is taking some ground beef and cooking it in the microwave until it’s not pink anymore - that’ll be “gray”, and probably not “browned”. Then take that, dry it off a little bit, and fry it in a pan- you’ll see the color change. That’s browned.
Yep. I was going to mention that. I also do it for my bolognese. It’s mostly a textural thing, but also the flavor is a little different. Ground beef that is not browned has a more delicate texture and flavor than beef that has been browned.
This terrible WikiHow on how to brown ground beef shows you exactly what non-browned, but not pink meat should look like.
I also do it for perushke.
That’s really terrible, and exactly what the stage before browning looks like. Way to go, Wikihow!
Wikihow has you adding water when browning ground beef? Whut?
It would prevent any of that icky “brown” color from showing up, I guess. Which seems to be their intent.
I’ve never had ground beef look like that. Pork, yes, but never beef. I cook it on medium heat, and it goes right from red to a color that’s at least tan - certainly not gray.