To determine if your ground beef if spoiled, use your senses. Touch the ground beef. If it’s slimy, that’s not normal. Smell and visually examine at your ground beef, and if it’s brown or an off odor, those could be signs that your ground beef is spoiled.

Fresh ground beef may have a mild iron smell, but if it starts to smell rotten (beef tends to get a funky sweet odor), you should err on the side of caution and throw it out. But ground beef that’s starting to go bad can feel slimy, tacky, or sticky.

A spoiled steak will have a potent odor that no longer smells like raw steak but instead has an ammonia-clad aroma. You’ll definitely know the odor when you smell it, and it’s a sure-fire sign that you should not plan to eat it! It’s important to note that your nose may not also be the best thing to use.

Cooking and eating spoiled pork, old chicken or any other bad meat isn’t guaranteed to make you sick, though. Even when you kill these bacteria by cooking them, their toxins will remain in the food and cause you to become sick.

Proper cooking is the only reliable method of ensuring that ground meats are safe to eat. According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, ground beef should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 160ºF to kill bacteria.

Spoiled ground beef is dangerous to eat because it may contain pathogenic bacteria, which are responsible for foodborne illnesses. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea — which may be bloody ( 9 , 10 , 11 ).

Consuming raw beef is dangerous, as it can harbor illness-causing bacteria, including Salmonella, Escherichia coli (E. coli), Shigella, and Staphylococcus aureus, all of which are otherwise destroyed with heat during the cooking process ( 2 , 3 , 4 ).

It’s not the same as steak Considering everyone knows you can eat rare steak, you’d be forgiven for thinking rare burgers are fine to eat too. But this is in fact not the case. According to experts, eating a burger that’s pink inside could lead to food poisoning or even be fatal.

Ground beef is especially risky, because the bacteria can spread when meat is ground up. Symptoms of E. coli infection include severe abdominal cramps, watery diarrhea, and vomiting. The illness typically develops several days after exposure and can be severe in vulnerable people.

If your ground beef is gray, slimy, or smelly, it’s spoiled. The best way is to smell and look at the ground beef: signs of bad ground beef are a sour smell and a slimy texture; discard any ground beef with an off smell or appearance, do not taste first.

one to two days

Generally, you can expect to be able to use ground beef one to three days after the “sell by” date depending on how it has been handled. Quality begins to decline on the Sell by date, so you should try to use the meat as soon as you can. Don’t use foods that show signs of spoilage such as mold, off-odor, slimy texture.

two hours