How to Make Perfect Ground Beef | Tips & 11 Recipe Ideas. Want juicy, flavorful ground beef every time? 🍳 In this video, Refika shares 9 essential tips for cooking ground beef perfectly — no dryness, no blandness.
Plus, discover 11 delicious recipe ideas: from börek and lasagna to döner-style wraps and even a vegetarian mushroom version!

How to make perfect ground beef
1. Choose the right cut of meat
• The flavour starts with the cut. For beef, use fatty cuts like chuck, brisket, or short rib.
• For lamb, shoulder or ribs work great.
2. Grind texture matters
• Single grind: Good for burgers, where you want texture.
• Double grind: The go-to for most home cooking—ideal balance of texture and tenderness.
• Triple grind: Works best for cooking for babies
• Knife-chopped (zırh): Traditional kebabs and recipes where meat texture needs to be felt distinctly.
3. Don’t overcrowd the pan
• Use a wide pan or skillet to allow steam to escape.
• Max: 1 kg per batch. Ideally: 500 g for the best sear.
• If overcrowded, meat stews instead of browning—it boils in its own juice.
4. Use onions wisely
• For the dishes: 1 part onion to 1 part meat.
• For pastry fillings like börek: Up to 2 parts onion to 1 part meat.
• Onion does two things:
o Its acidity helps break down the meat fibers (tenderizing)
o Its natural sugars help with browning and flavour
• Add onions after the meat starts turning gray and releases its initial water. That way, the onions fry rather than stew.
• Grated onions release too much moisture. Finely chopping is better for balanced flavour and texture.
• Cook onions until they disappear—this creates deep, savoury flavour.
5. Season in three stages
• Stage 1: A pinch of salt when you add the onions
• Stage 2: Another pinch when onions start softening
• Stage 3: Final seasoning at the end to adjust flavour
This layering builds complexity and ensures seasoning isn’t just on the surface.
6. Final flavourings
• Once fully cooked, finish with black pepper and a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg if desired.
• Nutmeg may sound unusual, but just a touch enhances the beefy richness subtly.
Extra Tips
• Cook starting with high heat and after addin onions low to medium for control—don’t rush the process.
• Let the meat sit untouched for the first minute or two to build browning, then stir.
• Use a wooden spoon or spatula to break the meat into small crumbles early on.

1 kg(2 lbs) ground meat, veal or lamb or mix
1-2 kg onion, chopped
½ bunch parsley, chopped, optional
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
• Braising ground beef well is a useful skill like knowing a widely-spoken language. It provides one with many possibilities to cook very delicious meals. I always make my ground beef out of low-fat veal. But if you prefer, you can use 20-30% lamb – 80-70% veal, too. The important thing is that you should always be by the pan, waiting and braising it thoroughly.
• Start braising the ground beef over high heat without any added fat; while it is cooking, it will release its own. When this starts to happen, add the onion.
• When the onions start to turn golden brown and the meat starts to smell like a kebap — meaning, in 30–35 minutes — it means that your ground meat is now braised. Now, you can add parsley, black pepper and salt.
• This is a long process compared to other cooking times you will see here. Therefore, I braise a lot of ground beef and (without adding parsley), put it into small freezer bags and then into the deep freeze. They will act as lifesavers for a lot of recipes you will come across in this book.

Doner
🔗

Cauliflower Iskender Kebab
🔗

Ground Mushroom
🔗
🔗

Börek
🔗

Fried Eggs with Ground Beef
🔗

Lasagna
🔗

Burger
🔗

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