We planned to eat hamburgers tonight, so I bought 1.5 Kg of fresh ground beef at my store, at 3 PM.
But then, we decided to postpone that to tomorrow night.
Ground beef can be kept for at most 24 hours in a fridge right ? It is not vacuum sealed, the butcher packed it in front of me.
So what should I do ? (it is 5:30 PM now)
- Leave in the fridge and cook the meat before 3 PM tomorrow (and reheat at dinner time)
- Freeze the meat as-is (in the store-sealed package)
- Prepare the patties and freeze them now
- Other ?
I don't have a microwave, I would defrost it in the fridge (I heard room temperature isn't appropriate, especially for ground meat in which micro-organisms develop quickly).
If I choose to freeze the meat as-is, I guess I would have to defrost it at least a bit to form patties. But if I freeze the patties, can I pan-fry them right away ?
Freezing should be safe, even though a friend of mine once tried to cook ground meat he had put in the freezer a few days before (right after buying it, he said) ; and it seemed not to be good anymore (rotten or something) ; so I'm not sure.
Thanks in advance, I'd rather not poison everyone tomorrow :)
EDIT : The hamburgers were fine — I lowered a bit my fridge temperature overnight, just to be sure, and cooked it well before serving.