Cooking Frozen Ground Beef

A scenario that is familiar to all is you wanted to cook ground beef for dinner, but you forgot to take that out of the freezer earlier to thaw. Or you thought that you want ground beef in your dinner, but it’s already 5 pm, and the beef is in the freezer.

The next question that pops up is, can you cook frozen beef?

The quick answer to this question is yes, you can, but the method and procedure might vary a little.

Stay with me, and we’ll go through all the requirements and procedures to help you with the grounded beef dinner on the table tonight.

Methods To Cook Frozen Ground Beef:

The best way to cook frozen ground beef includes the following methods.

1.  Use Instant Pots To Cook Frozen Beef:

The perfect and convenient way to cook the frozen ground beef is to use an instant pot. Use the steamer option of the instant pot to cook the beef.

Put a cup of water in the instant pot and put the trivet. Put your frozen grounded beef on it. Close the pot and give 25 minutes to steam the beef on full pressure and the last few minutes on slow pressure.

Now your beef is cooked, and you can use it in various ways, we’ll see later how.

2.  Use Pressure Cooker:

The pressure cooker is more or less the same as an instant pot. It also uses steam to cook the beef. The difference is that you need to put it on the stove. The method is the same; in the cooker, you again need to put the beef on a steaming rack with water and give it 25 minutes on high pressure.

Do not forget to add the slow pressure release at the end.

3.  Using Stove To Cook Frozen Ground Beef:

Yes, you can use the stove for cooking frozen ground beef. We all think that this is for thawed beef, but no, you can cook the frozen one too; the method is a little different.

Take your skillet to put it on the stove and fill the base with water. Add your frozen beef on it. When the top layer of the beef starts to turn brown, scrap that layer off with your spatula. Scrapping the brown one will give way to the underneath uncooked layer to cook. Keep on scrapping the brown layer until all the pink portion is gone.

Make sure not to dry up the base. Keep adding a little water if it dries up. Cover the skillet to brown the beef a little faster.

When almost all the beef is turned brown, add the vegetables you want to add, onions or garlic.

Mix and still all the beef and vegetables properly, you can add the seasonings if you want.

And your beef is ready to make a yummy dish for dinner.

4.  Using Sous Vide:

It is a very advanced technique, but yet very helpful. You need to put your beef in a tight airbag like the ones you use to put your beef in the freezer. Put this beef bag, and sous vide in water and turn it on.
That’s all your beef will be ready in 2 hours at 137 F.

5.  Using Air Fryer:

Yes, you can cook your beef in an air fryer. It is not a popular method, but you can utilize it if you want to and have no other options. The meat will cook well, especially if it is your uncooked hamburger patty.

To cook in an air fryer, you need to turn the settings to 375 F and give 15 to 20 minutes to your beef or until it is brown throughout.

6.  Grilling Your Ground Frozen Beef:

It is ideal for grilling your beef after it is being thawed, but you can also grill your frozen beef. You need to preheat the grill and then grill your patty for 20 minutes, rotating every 3 to 5 minutes.

For grilling patties, we have posted a full article related burgers grilling you can know everything about it. Could you give it a read too?

7.  Using Oven:

This method is quite recommendable. Using the oven will cook your frozen beef nicely. To cook in an oven, you need to preheat the oven at a temperature of 350 F. then grease your baking sheet and put the beef on it.

Now put the tray in the oven until they are fully cooked. This might take an hour.

These are the few methods from which you can cook your frozen beef and have it for dinner within an hour or two. So not to worry if you forgot to take out the frozen beef. Honestly, I forget to take that out quite often, but these tricks are always there to save me.

What Can You Cook Out Of Frozen Beef:

When now you know that you can cook frozen ground beef, the next thing to think upon is what to cook out of that beef? Well, there is a list that you can make from this frozen ground beef.

• Tomato pasta with ground beef.
• Cabbage skillet with beef
• Instant pot Bolognese sauce
• Cheesy beef potato skins
• Ground beef and vegetable skillet
• Beef burger
• Cheese beef burger pasta

And there are many more options available that you can cook out of your frozen ground beef.

Things you should never do:

While cooking frozen ground beef, things that you should never do is cooking it on a low temperature or with a slow method.

You should never cook your frozen beef directly in a slow cooker or a microwave.

Slow cooking will give a lot of time to the bacteria to grow on food, which would be super unhealthy.

You can thaw your frozen beef in the microwave by using the defrost setting but never cook it in it.

And if you want to use a slow cooker, you should use precooked frozen beef to avoid any risk.

Till here, I guess you got an idea of if you can use frozen ground beef and how you can use it.

FAQs

Q. How can we defrost ground beef quickly?

To quickly defrost your ground beef, you can use a microwave defrost option or putting it in cold water in an airtight plastic bag.

Q. Can I thaw my beef overnight over the kitchen shelf?

You should never leave your beef over the counter. When the temperature rises and goes to 40 F, the bacteria in the food will multiply drastically, and you will end up sick by consuming that.