Hamburger bowls

Amy asked me in the comments what a hamburger bowl was, so I'll answer it here.

A hamburger bowl is just my shorthand way of saying ground beef cooked in crumbles and served in a bowl with the fat added back in.

I usually cook up 4 - 5 pounds of ground beef on Sunday for the week. I break it into bite sized chunks while cooking. I like the chunks versus a more crumbly texture, like taco meat. After it's cooked, I divide it into Tupperware bowls and then add back the fat to each of the bowls. I take one to work everyday for lunch.

I used to add some shredded cheese to the bowl after warming the ground beef. I called them cheeseburger bowls at the time. When I dropped the dairy, I took to calling them hamburger bowls.

I like doing it this way over burgers. Cooking burgers gets very messy, with grease splattering all over. It also takes a lot longer as I can only cook three patties per pan.

I should mention that I tend to use 80/20 ground beef. I accidentally got 85/15 last week and it was yucky and dry. I had to add butter to those to keep them from being too dry. 73/27 would work too but I can only get that in the chubs and I don't tend to like the chubs. I don't think they are as fresh as the 80/20 that the stores grind.

As for those that might be squeamish about adding the fat back to the ground beef, you get over it. I used to always religiously drain ground beef when I cooked it. When I decided to add it back in, I thought it was going to be disgusting but it was very good. It keeps the beef from being too dry and doesn't really add a flavor of its own.