Ground meat

Ground meat (can be called mince or sometimes minced meat outside North America) is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife.

A common type of ground meat is ground beef, but many other meats are prepared ground in a similar fashion, including pork, lamb, and poultry. In South Asia, both lamb (mutton) and goat meat are also minced to produce keema, though the process of mincing is manual.

Food safety

Ground meat has food safety concerns not associated with whole cuts of meat. If undercooked, it can lead to sickness and food poisoning. In a whole cut from an animal, the interior of the meat is essentially sterile, even before cooking; any bacterial contamination is on the outer surface of the meat. When meat is ground, bacterial contamination from the surface can be distributed throughout the meat. If ground beef is not well cooked all the way through, there is a significant chance that enough pathogenic bacteria will survive to cause illness, moreover the warming will speed the reproduction of bacteria. Undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers contaminated in this manner were responsible for four deaths and the illness of hundreds of people in 1993.