Hamburger Patties

Raw patties keep 1–2 days refrigerated on the FoodSafety.gov ground-beef row — they are ground beef, shaped. That fridge number is a safety window; past it, discard it. Freezer quality is about 3–4 months at 0°F. Store them on the bottom shelf and freeze anything not being cooked within the window.

Patties are one of the best things in this category to freeze, because they are already portioned. Stack them with parchment or wax paper between each one and they will separate cleanly frozen; without the paper you get a solid puck that has to be thawed whole.

Patties can be cooked from frozen, which sidesteps thawing entirely. Add roughly 50% to the cooking time and check the internal temperature rather than judging by time — cook to 160°F throughout. Color alone is not doneness (FSIS ground beef).

Cooked burgers keep 3–4 days refrigerated as leftovers; reheat to 165°F.

A hamburger patty is ground beef with a further complication: forming it by hand adds another round of contact and compresses the meat, and any bacteria introduced during shaping end up sealed inside the patty rather than sitting on a surface that will be seared.

This is precisely why the USDA specifies 160°F throughout for burgers and why a rare burger is a genuinely different risk proposition from a rare steak. On a steak, pathogens are on the outside and the sear destroys them. In a burger, they are in the middle, where a rare cook leaves them alive. The E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks that shaped modern US ground beef regulation were overwhelmingly linked to undercooked burgers.

Color is a poor doneness test. Ground beef can turn brown before reaching 160°F, or stay pink well past it, depending on pH, fat content, and how long it was exposed to air. Use a thermometer in the thickest part.

For spoilage, the signals are the standard ground-beef set: sour smell, sticky or slimy surface, uniform gray through the patty. Interior browning on its own is normal oxygen chemistry.

Patties inherit ground-beef dating rules. A "sell by" date on the tray is for the store; it does not give you extra refrigerator days. Raw patties: cook or freeze within 1–2 days. FSIS: if a use-by date passes during proper home storage, quality dating is not the same as a pathogen test — still follow the cold chart and discard spoiled product.