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My homemade burger patties became smelly after one day kept in the fridge (not the freezer). The taste after I grilled them was also not good. Along with the smell, there is also blood stagnant inside the container.

Are there any solutions? Should I have boiled the beef first? But then I wonder if the taste after I grilled the patty would be different.

Cascabel
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user14597
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    Why does your title say "marinating"? From your question, it sounds like you just mean storing in the fridge. And what kind of meat did you make it out of? Ground beef does not generally have blood in it. – Cascabel Dec 05 '12 at 01:16
  • How long had you had the mince before making the patty? Had the mince been frozen prefiously. Was the mince cool while making the patty? What other ingrients did you use? Eggs? If so how fresh were they? I certainly wouldn't boil a burger ever. – vwiggins Dec 05 '12 at 11:19
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    The pale red liquid in a meat container in a fridge is not blood. It's the meat's juices (cell plasma and proteins). It always oozes from meat kept in the fridge and is not a sign of spoilage. Manufacturers selling prepackaged meat will put an absorbent napkin in the package to keep this liquid from sloshing around, so you may not have seen it before, but it is almost always there. – rumtscho Dec 05 '12 at 16:22
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    To those who edited this question *you changed the meaning*. You can't remove ambiguity (between marinating and storing) by simply picking one on behalf of the OP. I've rolled it back to the original content (but fixed the language up). If the OP returns to clarify, *then* the ambiguity can be removed. – Cascabel Dec 05 '12 at 17:45
  • Thanks for all of your comments and suggestions. I'll applied them one by one and collect the result. By the way, sorry for the broken language. Will improve it for sure, ^_^ – user14597 Jan 05 '13 at 17:40

2 Answers2

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Do you have a fridge thermometer? Confirm that your fridge is below 40°F (~4°C). Preferably around 37°F (~2.5°C), or, if you're primarily storing meat, colder (you can actually go slightly below freezing). If your fridge is too warm, things will spoil much faster.

That said, when meat is ground, all the contaminants on the outside are mixed in. So the shelf life is quite limited. And as you work with it, you'll want to keep it cold (e.g., make sure your marinade is cold when you add it). That said, unless you have a really cold fridge (around 30°F/-1°C gives you another few days), ground meat should only be stored for a day or two. Of course, you can put it in a ziploc bag, and put that in an ice bath in the fridge to get almost that cold.

You should not boil the burgers, that will certainly make it safer, but the taste will be pretty bad. If you have a low-temp (sous vide) setup, you could pasteurize the formed patties at around 57°C, that should be fine. But you don't want to bring them to 100°C, that's certain!

If your marinade contains water, you can get it cold by substituting ice for some of the water (equal amount by weight).

So, my suggestions would be:

  • check your fridge temperature
  • buy the ground meat (or grind it yourself, whichever) on the day you plan to use it.
  • If you want to marinate for more than a few hours (normally not needed with burgers, but...), make sure the marinade is cold. You need to keep everything below 40°F (4°C).
  • If you really want to push it to keep for more than 2 days, store it in an ice bath in the fridge.

If you have the equipment, you can use low-temperature pasteurization to make it keep much longer. And also to safely serve a medium-rare burger.

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derobert
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Your question deals with food safety, more than anything else. Ground meat, should be kept only for a short time (1-2 days). If you manipulate it, do so just before cooking.

If it smells bad, you risk food poisoning or, in the least, a bad taste experience.

You can flavour (marinate) the ground beef before you shape the burger. That way, you add moist.

Do not boil (cook in water) a burger patty. You should grill or cook it in a frying pan with very little oil. The method is to get the grill (frying pan) hot, put the patty on for 3 minutes on each side. After that, you can lower the heat until the meat is done to your liking.

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BaffledCook
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    Once you've browned it (which takes a lot less than 3 minutes per side with how hot I heat my pan), you can also (if you're willing to wait) plop the frying pan into a moderate oven to finish cooking. It'll cook more evenly in the oven. Or even switch it to a different pan or baking sheet, since the frying pan will probably be quite hot still. [I use a cast iron fry pan, which of course is oven safe, and safe to heat to ridiculous temperatures.] – derobert Dec 05 '12 at 17:14
  • @derobert, right you are. It depends on how hot your frying pan is. – BaffledCook Dec 06 '12 at 15:48
  • This is a really poor answer in my opinion and it doesn't answer the question at all. Mainly because you need more information from the OP as to what he means. "If it smells bad..." Are you the defining arbiter of what food should and shouldn't smell like? – spiceyokooko Dec 06 '12 at 16:17
  • @spiceyokooko: well, if meat starts to have a strong smell that is definitely not a good sign. – nico Dec 06 '12 at 17:01
  • @nico The OP never said his meat had a strong smell. Who knows what's causing the smell? What did he put into them when he made them? Day old meat kept in the fridge doesn't generally go bad - the smell he's experiencing could be anything. – spiceyokooko Dec 06 '12 at 19:23
  • @spiceyokooko: "My homemade burger patties **became smelly** after one day" seems quite a clear sentence to me... – nico Dec 06 '12 at 22:28
  • Clear in what sense? Do you know what the smell is? Is it a bad smell? Do you know what's causing the smell? Could it be picking up odours from elsewhere in the fridge? Could it be _something_ he put into the burgers when he made them that wasn't right? Too many unknowns here to be able to give an answer, _as I said previously_. – spiceyokooko Dec 06 '12 at 23:20