With ground beef, do you season the meat before, during, or after sauteeing, or any combination?
#Question
Kenji has convinced me that it’s not worth trying to get a good sear on ground meat in chili and bolognese. In his recipes the ground beef is cooked with the chili paste, garlic, and onions (or with other stuff in the ragu). The lost maillard flavors can be recovered with soy sauce, fish sauce, marmite, and MSG.
So to answer your question, during. Kind of, since it gets flavored by the other stuff.
I think the only wrong answer is before, because that will give the meat a sausage consistency. I don’t want rubbery beef in my chili.
Also well done on asking a chili question that doesn’t start a war about beans.
My chili powder (Alton Brown recipe and other stuff) goes into the pan with a little hot fat just before I brown the meat. This way it can borrow a truck from curry and fry the spices a minute before they come in contact with the meat.
During. Not sure if it makes a difference in the final product, but I want to make sure it tastes good before I toss it in with the rest of the chili.
Try stewing steak instead of ground beef… I won’t go back
When searing meat and adding spice in a more or less “dry way”, for taco meat or chili or some curries, I sear the meat to nearly where I want it, then add the dry spices to toast on lower heat before “deglazing” with water/stock/whatever else makes sense. You can also just toast the spices separately, but some toasting is nice either way and I think this is convenient.
Generally salting early is good for anything you want to get any kind of browning on, it’s just that the meat and any other additions might also be salty, so you don’t always get to. Spices will give a better flavor over time, like a “rub”, but you can’t necessarily sear meat with spices on it. Things are usually tradeoffs.
(Just noticed this post is 4 days old, my bad :p)
