Every time I try to cook burgers or meatloaf, my ground beef just ends up turning gray/white, instead of normal charred dark brown. I cant understand why.
I have tried buying lean ground beef and regular ground beef and I always get the same result.
I have tried cooking them in the oven and on a cast iron pan. I have even tried leaving them in the cast iron pan till they start to burn. (The meat just develops a sort of thin burnt, light brown crust, on top of the gray patty, which you can essentially peel off. The whole burger doesn't develop a nice dark brown crust)
I have tried making the burgers with egg, with breadcrumbs, and without either. I get the same result each time, just a unappetizing gray lump.
The patties are never crowded, I have even tried doing one at a time.
None of my raw ground beef is gray either, it is nicely red. It just slowly goes gray when cooking.
Please explain why this keeps happening.
Edit:
I have seen this link already Cook Burger on Stove - Turns Gray
This does not help me as I have already tried putting oil on the burgers and putting extra oil in the cast iron pan for them. Frying them does not make them dark brown either.
I also already mentioned I have tried making the patty without egg and breadcrumb.
I also mentioned I tried different variants of fat content. My supermarket only has mince labeled as lean, regular, and fatty (which is more fat than meat) . There are no fat percentages on them. I have tried Lean and regular separately, and I have tried mixing the two.
My cast iron pan is a large 30cm pan and is utilizing the largest gas plate on the grill, on its highest setting, therefore the temperature must be hot enough.
If there is something I seem to have missed from that "duplicate post", I would appreciate it if you could kindly point it out, otherwise can someone please possibly shed some insight as to why this happens? My burgers always end up as a gray lump throughout, sometimes with partial light browning due to overheating/crusting.
Thank you