Is It Okay To Eat Ground Beef That's Starting To Get Gray?

Ground beef is a super convenient and versatile protein, perfect for one-pot meals like taco spaghetti or fake-out Korean BBQ beef, not to mention meatloaf and cheeseburgers. But when you pull your package out of the fridge a few days after buying it, split it open, and see that the color has gone gray, you might wonder — is this safe to eat? It very well may be, but the answer depends on a few factors. 

The inside of your ground beef could be a lot duller in color compared to the outside because oxygen is not reaching the interior. A pigment called oxymyoglobin, found in the muscles of all mammals, gives meat a rich red color after it spends some time exposed to the air. However, the dense insides of a block of ground meat interact less with oxygen, resulting in that grayish-brown color. If only the inside has this hue, the meat is safe to eat, and the gray parts will cook up just the same as the red.

However, if your entire package of ground beef is starting to turn gray, including the outside, this is a sign that your meat could be starting to rot. You should toss the package in the garbage to avoid giving guests food poisoning at your cookout, especially if the color change is combined with other tell-tale signs.

One of the easiest ways to tell if your ground beef is going bad, beyond its color, is how it smells. Rotting meat has a pretty distinctive (and disgusting) odor, so if you break open the container and smell something foul, well, that's a do-not-use situation — it should go in the garbage (sorry to ruin your dinner plans).

There is also the texture to consider. Ground beef that is fresh and safe to eat likely has some red juices that collect in the package (typically in and around that soggy paper pad at the bottom of your meat). However, beef that's gone off may turn slimy, with a liquid ooze that has the viscosity of maple syrup. It could also start to show mold growth on the outside. Mold is a serious indication that ground beef is way past its prime, and like with bread, you cannot cut the moldy part off and eat the rest, tempting as it may be. What you see on the exterior of the meat is just the tip of the iceberg, and the mold's invisible roots are very likely spread all throughout the interior.