oh, for the love of tube meat, how to you keep ground meat crumbly, like taco meat.

M

marilynfl

Moderator
I'm cooking off some ground bulk breakfast sausage (pork) and it keeps cooking into flat sheafs of meat. I want crumbly...and it looks crumbly as I break it up and it browns but then I walk away and come back THREE MINUTES LATER and it's starting to merge again.

Is this some bonding issue? Do single meat molecules feel lonely? Is there a dating app for bulk pork that says the more the merrier, don't go it alone?

Or do restaurants just put the cooked meat through a machine afterward to get that crumbly texture (like Chipotle)?

Here I am, done in once again by a cooking method hundreds of years old.

 
One way to do it is to boil it like they do for Cincinnati chili. I was surprised.

Otherwise, it is crumbly when I use ground turkey which suggests that the grind of the sausage is not as fine as that.

 
If cooking fresh burger you can try a tater masher. . .

At the taco stand we used an industrial sized potato masher to break the burger up for taco meat. And I use a household sized one still for browning burger for tacos and spaghetti sauce and such. I recommend one of those back-and-forth zigzag types, but you can work the burger with the cross-hatch ones as well. Just keep mashing and breaking up, ESPECIALLY at the beginning of your cooking. Once the stuff gets browned (or should I say grayed?) it will not stick together.

And don't walk away!! smileys/wink.gif

 
Have had it happen. Cool it down some then toss it in a food processor and pulse it a few times.

 
Thanks all. This sounds like a normal occurrence, not a Marilyn-induced act of stupidity.

It's nice to be normal.

 
I really dislike that tube meat and try to avoid it. However, now and then I end up with a package

of it, usually the ground turkey. You have to start from the minute you put it into the pan, to break it up. I use a heavy wooden spoon, and using a twisting action, keep going at it, until it is cooked and broken down. A real pain to do, for sure, but the way that works best for me

 
I really wonder if the fat content or lack of it plus the grind of the meat is also

part of the answer as to whether it breaks apart.

 
I'm now wondering what you mean by "tube meat"? I am speaking about the meat, usually poultry

that is not ground like we think of hamburger meat, but is ground in the shape of a tube, and is packaged in a back and forth motion in a styrofoam container. The tubes are about half the circumference of a pencil. That way of processing is hard to break down into regular ground meat for tacos, etc.
The other tube meat, may be what I would call a chub. Some may refer that to a tube, I suppose.

http://www.cargillgroundbeef.com/images/img-learn-packaging-chub-r2.png

 
Well, that is really interesting. I don't believe I have ever seen what you are describing.

I assume what Marilyn was talking about is a "chub". ;o)

 
I get it now. Yes I agree it is annoying

Lately I've been buying this hamburger/ground pork mixture and it has that long string (your "tube") consistency just like when I get ground turkey at Costco or supermarket. When I used it in meatloaf I mushed it together by hand but when I first used it for taco meat I found the long stringy result unappealing so in future efforts I manually broke it down with a wooden spoon when browning the meat but still get a few stringy remnants.

When my wife was on a ground turkey kick, I experimented with extra ingredients to get a better consistency. I think oil helped but I have no aversion to fats so that may be counter productive for some.

 
I just browned some elkburger which is of course UBER lean and it broke up fine

in small pieces which brings me back to the fat content and whether it has something to do with how it browns. And sausage and its grind may have more fat--and coarser grind.

 
I just keep chopping it up with the edge of the spatula as it cooks, kind of a pain

but effective. I have to do it with ground beef and turkey, regardless of the fat content.

 
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