Do You Need To Cook Canned Ground Beef?

Humans will can just about anything if given half a chance. From a whole chicken to PB&J sandwiches to a full English breakfast, there's no canning frontier that humanity leaves unexplored. And one product that you might not be aware already exists in canned form is ground beef. Yes — you can open up a can of ground-up cow.

This isn't as weird as maybe you're thinking; if you've ever eaten Spaghetti-O's with meatballs or Chef Boyardee's beef ravioli, you've already had canned ground beef — albeit not in pure unadulterated meat form. But it does raise an interesting question: Since raw meat, and in particular ground beef, comes with serious potential health concerns, can you simply eat the ground beef straight from the can, or do you need to cook it after popping the tin? Interestingly, as long as it's been canned properly, the answer is the former: It's totally safe to eat.

Those health worries are not to be dismissed. Raw meat can contain bacteria like listeria, salmonella, campylobacter, and E. coli — none of which are things you want. These bacteria are killed by heat, and they only exist on the surface of the meat, which is why cooking a steak medium rare isn't a risk. But if those bacteria are present when the meat is ground up, they can get incorporated throughout the resulting mixture. If the hamburger you make isn't cooked through, those bacteria might still be present. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy a burger cooked to medium or medium rare; just know if you're doing so, there are certain risks involved.

Fortunately, canned ground beef doesn't suffer this issue at all. It's been thoroughly cooked through, so there are no extra concerns of food-borne illness. All you need to do is remove the top layer of fat (it's beef in a can, so this is perfectly normal), then drain the excess liquid. No one wants a soggy beef sandwich, after all. Use a strainer or sieve lined with cheesecloth and let the beef sit for a bit to really get the juices out. You can even use a potato ricer, if you have one, to push the extra liquid out fast. 

How you should be using that canned ground beef is another story. You don't want to try to form burgers out of it; it's already been cooked, so it's not going to stick together in patty form — and it's not going to taste very good even if you do manage to get it to splodge together using some sort of binding agent like eggs or mayonnaise. Instead, you want to use it in something that will disguise the rough edges to its flavor: soups, pasta sauce, or something like Hamburger Helper will still let the beef taste remain present while providing enough flavor balance to hopefully negate the metallic remnants of the canning process.

Canned ground beef may sound scary if you've never encountered it, but it's ultimately like any other canned protein if you really think about it. We eat canned tuna without reservation, so why not canned beef? It can save you both money and time. You don't need to cook it, and it's definitely cheaper than the fresh stuff.