Tube Packed Ground Beef Question

[Parnicus]

So every recipe for burgers I read it says to keep the ground beef as "loose" as possible. I usually buy my ground beef in cases of 1lb packed tubes from my local butcher. The meat itself tastes awesome, but I'm wondering if I am missing out since I am using ground beef that is packed really tightly. Is there a convenient way to loosen up the ground beef that has been packed in a tube? Just pulling it apart and lightly packing it doesn't seem to give the same consistency as if it came out of the grinder. Does it really make a huge difference?

[Atalanta]

I personally haven't found much of a difference. I used to buy the 3lb tubes at the meat market. I would get them starting to freeze and then slice them into burgers and re-freeze.

[Jerod Broussard]

Now that is a pretty neat idea. We have a patty press but I prefer to just shape by hand.

[Craigar]

We pretty much do the same thing with the 10 lbs chubs from our grocery store. We usually cut them into 2 lbs chubs to freeze.

[Parnicus]

What a great idea! I never really thought of that! Thank you for the reassurance. its nice to know i'm not really missing out on much!

[Mikey C]

Just make sure you know who's packing your tubes most of them contain the pink slime.

[Abom]

Plus one! We buy the tubes occasionally for the dogs, and it's not appealing to look at. Never got up the nerve to find out for sure though.

[Jerod Broussard]

What's wrong with pink slime? It's lean beef trim.

[Michael Brinton]

It is worth it to grind your own though. You know what your grinding, so you can select your cuts. The packaged meat is going to be somewhat compressed just from sitting in the packaging. It can be a pain but once you start grinding yourself you probably won't go back to packaged.