Browning Frozen Hamburger

Here is another tip courtesy of my mother:

When you need to brown hamburger but you don't have any thawed, put the frozen ground beef in a pan and add a little water (enough to cover the bottom or so). Cover the pan tightly, and cook it over medium heat. The water will create steam and will cook the hamburger on all sides. (If you're not getting much steam, turn it up a bit. If it's really boiling, turn it down.)

As it cooks, uncover and use a spoon to scrape cooked meat off the top and sides of the block of hamburger, then flip the block over and scrape the bottom in a similar fashion. Recover, and repeat. As the block gets pretty small, leave your pan uncovered so the water can cook out, or you can use a slotted spoon and/or colander to drain the meat.

It's ready to use in your recipe in a fraction of the time! As a bonus tip, if you like your browned hamburger broken up in small pieces, use a potato masher like I did in my freezer sloppy joe recipe.

Along those lines, you can also brown several pounds at a time using this method. You can either put two cups (or any amount!) in a freezer bag, label, and refreeze; or add the rest of the recipe (as is the case with my sloppy joes) and then portion out and refreeze.

For those of you that just came over for Kitchen Tip Tuesday, I just posted about the cloth ABC book I sewed for my daughter's second birthday; you can see it here. I'm excited about how it turned out, and the little one loves it!

For more kitchen tips, visit Tammy's Recipes.