Quick tips for cooking ground beef. Buy 80/20. Fat taste good and makes the meat stick together and not becoming a stringy mess. Put the meat in the pan before the pan heats up. You're doing this for two reasons: 1, your pan can warp if it heats up with nothing in it, especially if it's a cheap pan. 2. If your pans already hot and you put the meat in, the outer crust of the meat will burn creating a barrier preventing all of the water/juice come out and you'll get a soggy mess rather than evenly cooked meat.
If you're burning it, or getting a really loud sizzle when the meat starts to cook, turn your stove the eff down. If this is still a problem, your pan sucks. Don't mess with stainless steal, you'll just eff it up. Get a good $20-$30 Teflon pan and don't for the love of god ever let something metal touch it, clean it with a soft sponge or rag when done using it. Also, Never freeze your meat, but if you have to, defrost in the fridge for a day or under luke warm / room temp water for 3-4 hours. It's hard not to eff up meat when it's cooked brown on the outside and a frozen brick in the middle. To get your meat finely ground, first put it in the skillet and chop it up, WITH A PLASTIC SPATULA, into large sections (1lb your meat brick should be sectioned off into 6-8 large chunks, Let it cook at a medium to low temperature and chop it up into smaller pieces turning the meat as the meat browns. This is not a quick 5 minute process, most people suck at cooking because they try to cook too damned fast. Also, this is when you should be seasoning. If you're a Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!) and don't want to think, just get some pre-mixed cheap crap like garlic salt or Lowery all season salt - mix in some freshly ground pepper. Oh yeah, Buy a rough ridin' pepper grinder. Pepper starts to go bad as soon as it's ground, like most seasonings. If you're buying already ground pepper, chances are it's no good before you even open that crap. While your at it, buy a salt grinder and buy sea salt. Once you taste sea salt, you'll never want that iodized crap again. Once it's brown all over, you can then chop it to as fine as you like it, again WITH A rough ridin' PLASTIC SPATULA Drain all of the water/juice out. If you're adding sauces, now is the time to do this.
You can cover your pan with a lid, or leave it un-covered; you can get good at either way. If you are using a lid, turn your heat down a bit more as it won't be needed with all of the heat being trapped in the pan. I tend to leave any watery/ground meats (like ground beef or ground sausage) uncovered, mostly because I'm flipping/moving the meat around more & I want all of the water/moisture to escape through seasoning. In my opinion, the lid should only be used for eggs/bacon/vegetables, however there are people that can pull off ground beaf with a lid.
You're welcome.
