AboutTanya Zilberter Expertise I can answer any question about basics, history, tips and tricks, recipes, menus,
foods, drinks, and nutrition values.
Experience
Experience in the area My grandmother collected recipes all her life. This collection evolved into a huge battered cookbook that was passed down to mother who, though less domestic than grandmother, continued the tradition. Since my family background is mixture of Russian, German, Hungarian, Armenian, Jewish and Ukrainian roots, the recipes are vast and varied.
Question HI Every year we serve stuffed cabbage leaves at our church festival. we cook them a minimum of 3 hours. for some reason the ground beef inside the leaves has a red color even after it is cooked.they are done but people are reluctant to eat them because the beef is red???i have heard that some meat cos. dye their ground beef ??? i wonder how we can get the beef to brown? Thank you in advance. i would sure appreciate any help on this.........
Answer John,
The internal color of cooked ground beef depends on several factors:
1. Was it cooked from frozen or fresh beef? Fresh beef tends to brown better than frozen.
2. If frozen, how long has it been thawing? Fast thawing tends to result in a redder beef inside, for example, patties.
The internal color of patties thawed within 12 hours at 7°C remained red-pink. Only after thawing for 18 h or longer resulted in a well-done appearance.
The color of patties thawed while vacuum packaged and then cooked was more red than the color of non-vacuum-packaged patties after cooking.
3. How long has it been stored frozen?
After 1 year of storage at -27°C, beef products were red/pink when cooked to internal temperature of 71°C (the temperature of meet readiness)
4. Acidity (pH less than 7) is also important and this can be your case because of the cabbage leaves.
Now, what can be done (other than explaining the possible reasons to the church members)?
I personally cook the cabbage rolls using a traditional Ukrainian recipe where the beef color is less important because the tomatoe sauce and fried onions the recipe calls for git it their own, darker color.
