Dehydrating Hamburger

[mommato3boys]

OK so if you read my thread yesterday on scoring at WM you will know that I have 20 pounds of hamburger that must be cooked or froze by today. So I am going to try my hand at dehydrating hamburger.

 

I am only doing one package first. The other I am going to slice in hamburgers, some will be browned and froze so all I have to do is add it to a recipe and some will be froze in one lb chunks so I will have it to make meat loaf.

 

I have browned, drained, rinsed, and cooked down again. Now it is in a pan of water in the refrigerator letting the fat rise to the top.

[mommato3boys]

Ran into a slight problem draining the ground beef this morning. Since I had rinsed it and cooked it down yesterday there really was not much grease. I had a bunch of little balls on top of the water this morning. So when I went to pour the water off the grease stay. HUMMMM not working so I overflowed the pan. The ground beef stayed on the bottom and the grease floated off as the pan overflowed. After all the grease floated off I put the lid on and drained the water out. Put it back in the pan and cooked it dry. I then put it on a cookie sheet and spread it out to a thin layer. Put it in a preheated oven on 200 degrees and let it cook for about 4 hours. I stirred it occasionally when it was no longer gray I knew it was dry through and through.

 

I noticed on the package it said to heat to at least 160 degrees and cook thoroughly. So I guess 3 hours at 200 degrees counts as thoroughly cooked huh? Especially since I had already cooked it well done yesterday.

[Leah]

We are wild about our hamburger rocks! They rehydrate in sauces or boiling water and cannot be told from fresh. (I like to make them small like pop rocks.)

My SIL likes to munch them dry...