Ground meat

Ground meat in sausage making

Ground beef in an industrial grinder

Ground meat (can be called mince or sometimes minced meat outside North America) is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife.

A common type of ground meat is ground beef, but many other meats are prepared ground in a similar fashion, including pork, lamb, and poultry. In South Asia, both lamb (mutton) and goat meat are also minced to produce keema, though the process of mincing is manual.

Food safety

Ground meat has food safety concerns not associated with whole cuts of meat. If undercooked, it can lead to sickness and food poisoning. In a whole cut from an animal, the interior of the meat is essentially sterile, even before cooking; any bacterial contamination is on the outer surface of the meat. When meat is ground, bacterial contamination from the surface can be distributed throughout the meat. If ground beef is not well cooked all the way through, there is a significant chance that enough pathogenic bacteria will survive to cause illness, moreover the warming will speed the reproduction of bacteria.^[1][2] Undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers contaminated in this manner were responsible for four deaths and the illness of hundreds of people in 1993.^[3]

To ensure the safety of food distributed through the National School Lunch Program, food banks, and other federal food and nutrition programs, the United States Department of Agriculture has established food safety and quality requirements for the ground beef it purchases. A 2010 United States National Research Council report reviewed the scientific basis of the Department’s ground beef safety standards, evaluated how the standards compare to those used by large retail and commercial food service purchasers of ground beef, and looked at ways to establish periodic evaluations of the Federal Purchase Ground Beef Program.^[4] The report found that although the safety requirements could be strengthened using scientific concepts, the prevention of future outbreaks of food-borne disease will depend on eliminating contamination during production and ensuring meat is properly cooked before it is served.^[5]

See also

• Mincemeat
• Pink slime

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Minced meat.

Meat Main articles Entomophagy Meat Fish Game Livestock Poultry Seafood Poultry and game Alligator Chicken Crocodile Duck Goose Grouse Kangaroo Ostrich Partridge Pheasant Quail Rabbit Pigeon Snake Turkey Venison Livestock and Minilivestock Black soldier flies maggots Bison Beef and veal Camel Cat Cricket Dog Elephant Frog Grasshoppers Goat Guinea pig Horse Mealworm Lamb and mutton Llama Palm grub Pork Mopane worm Yak Fish and seafood Alligator Anchovy Basa Bass Carp Catfish Cod Pollock Crab Crappie Crayfish Dolphin Eel Pike Flounder Grouper Haddock Halibut Herring Kingfish Lobster Mackerel Mahi Mahi Marlin Milkfish Orange roughy Pacific saury Perch Salmon Sardine Shark Shrimp/prawn Sole Swordfish Tilapia Trout Tuna Walleye Whale Cuts and preparation, precooked Aged Bacon Barbecued Burger Braised Charcuterie Chop Corned Cured Cutlet Dried Dum Fried Ham Kebab Liver Luncheon meat Marinated Meatball Offal Pickled Poached Roasted Salt-cured Salumi Sausage Smoked Steak Stewed Tartare Tandoor Tenderized List articles Food and drink prohibitions Beef dishes Chicken dishes Countries by meat consumption Fish dishes Goat dishes Pork dishes Sausage dishes Sausages Seafood dishes Smoked foods Steaks Veal dishes Related Subjects Animal rights Bushmeat Butcher Cannibalism Carnism Ethics of eating meat Feed conversion ratio In vitro meat Factory farming Meat cutter Meat paradox Pescatarianism Plant-based diet Psychology of eating meat Preservation Red meat Semi-vegetarianism Slaughter Slaughterhouse Veganism Vegetarianism White meat