Ellie wrote:

> Yes, I agree completely. Typically, I would use seasoned iron, which is my
> favorite. But since in this case I would be adding tomato sauce I didn't
> use my iron pans. What surprised me is not that the meat produced some
> water, but that there was so much more than I have ever seen, and this
> seems to be the case consistently. My husband has commented on it as well.
> We're both retired and have been cooking a lot of years. We're comparing
> this to previous experience.

I don't have anything to contribute to the central discussion about the
hamburger; I think it probably was adulterated with water, and there wasn't
anything you could have done to brown it. But this caught my eye:


> Typically, I would use seasoned iron, which is my favorite. But since in
> this case I would be adding tomato sauce I didn't use my iron pans.

You used a copper pan because you didn't want to use iron with tomato sauce?
But isn't copper a reactive surface also? Or was it coated on the inside?
My experience has been that if cast iron is seasoned well enough, the
seasoning prevents the chemical reaction with acidic ingredients; maybe the
iron pan would have been a better choice (because of the heat retention
which others have mentioned).

Oh, there is one other thing: Hand-grinding meat isn't that big a deal,
unless you're grinding a LOT. If it was really difficult to grind beef using
your hand grinder, then maybe the grinder wasn't set up properly. (Or maybe
it was just poorly designed or poorly built. How long was the crank?)

Bob