Meat stuffing is the main ingredient that the housewives use in cooking, both everyday and on holiday feasts. After all, it is almost universal product, from which it is possible to cook cutlets and cabbage rolls, pancakes and stuffed peppers, pies, casseroles and much, much more. You can cook a lot from it, but in order to make minced meat, you need to tinker a bit. In order to save a little time, modern housewives buy ready-made stuffing. As we know, the quality of the products depends on the taste of the prepared dishes, minced meat also concerns, it must be able to choose, so that it is fresh and tasty.
Here are a few rules that will help you choose the quality minced meat to make from it really tasty and healthy dishes.
- Packing and marking. When buying minced meat, be sure to pay attention to how this product is packaged and whether there is a marking. It is desirable that the packaging is transparent, this is necessary in order to see in what state the minced meat itself is. A marking must necessarily be on the packaging, and carry full information about the product: when issued, what is the expiration date, the address and phone number of the manufacturer, the composition, etc. If the packaging is not transparent and there is no marking, then it is better to refuse such a product for your own health.
- Inspect the stuffing. Minced meat can be sold as simply chilled or frozen, and the buyer does not always have the opportunity to become familiar with the labeling of this product. Therefore, pay attention to the color, if the mince is fresh, then its color should be from pink( pork) to dark red color( ground beef).
- If possible, be sure to inspect, probe forcemeat, because the good stuffing should be homogeneous, it should not have bones or cartilages, there should not be any dark spots either. Dark spots are the first signal that stale meat was used when preparing minced meat.
- The appearance of the forcemeat is important, before buying, pay attention to what the mincemeat looks like, if you find a matte film formed on minced meat, then know - this stuffing is not fresh. Remember that fresh minced meat has a bright color and smells like meat, and if you heard a smell of pepper and garlic in minced meat, then most likely the seller decided to spice up the stale smell of meat, and it's not worth buying such stuff.
- And the last. Consider what juice separates unfrozen minced meat, if it does not exist at all, then there are still some additives, most likely not meat. If the product is fresh, the juice will be pink, and if this stuffing lay long on the counter, the juice will be cloudy, dark and not very pleasant to smell.
As you can see, the choice of forcemeat is not an easy task. But, knowing the above rules, you will certainly choose what you and your guests need.