Quick Fixins: Boil Hamburger

Until a few years ago, I never knew that instead of frying up ground beef–you could boil it. And it took me a couple more years to actually try it, lol.

Can you boil hamburger? You betcha, but boiled hamburger doesn’t sound that appealing does it . It’s actually good though (at least my family thinks so) and there are many benefits to boiling big batches of hamburger at a time. Here’s the scoop…

Boiling Hamburger Tips

• Boiling hamburger is super fast and easy. Just bring a pot of water to a boil and crumble the raw ground beef into the water. You can plop in frozen ground beef as well. Keep the water at a rolling boil, stirring apart the clumps. When there’s no more pink to the meat–it’s done. It takes just a few minutes!
• Boiling the meat removes much of the fat. After straining the meat you could also rinse again with hot water to remove the trace of fat left on the surface.
• The amount of water needed has no rules other than enough to keep the meat covered.
• Boiled hamburger is not as flavorful as fried hamburger, so you’ll want to add things like celery, onion, garlic, peppers, bouillon, seasonings to the boiling water (whatever you like). Or you could just make sure to add more zip to the dishes you’ll be using the cooked hamburger in.
• When the meat is cooked, strain the beef with a colander placed over a pail or large pot and allow the meat to cool (you don’t want to drain the water in the sink because of the grease). Save the meat in freezer bags in one pound batches. Space saver tip: flatten the beef in the bags and stack them on top of each other in the freezer.
• You can boil meatballs too! Don’t make them too big and they’ll float to the top when they’re cooked through (test one first by cutting in half). Freeze on a cookie sheet then bag meal size batches in freezer bags.
• Some choose to use the strained water as a broth for homemade soups, but I chuck it. If you want to use it as broth, refrigerate the water first so you can remove as much as the fat as possible when it solidifies at the top.
• Use the boiled hamburger for fast meals. Take a bag out of the freezer, thaw and whip up any meal you like that calls for ground beef (meat sauces, taco filling, chili, sloppy joes, hamburger helper, casseroles, lasagna, etc.). Cooking time is cut drastically because the meat is already done.

If boiling hamburger just seems too crazy, try one little batch and see how it turns out. The texture is fine and crumbly and can be on the tasteless side if not seasoned well, but when you can cook up 10 pounds of hamburger in minutes and have a freezer full of quick fixins for hectic nights–you might find yourself easily converted .

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