Just take the whole compressed, square, package-shaped "patty" of ground meat from the plastic and drop it into a ripping hot pan intact, and don't touch it until it browns pretty darkly on the bottom, then proceed to break it up and cook as normal. This gets you quite a lot of Maillard flavor without having to cook crumbled meat within an inch of its life. (As with most good ideas, this one came from Kenji.)
This relates to my biggest objection to this article, which is that the best cooking tip for ground meat (blind or not) is that it's really easy to hear the difference between the "hiss" of water evaporating as steam and the "sizzle" of it frying/browning, and the two things do not happen at the same time. Alternative title: "how to slowly steam ground meat flavorlessly without vision."
This relates to my biggest objection to this article, which is that the best cooking tip for ground meat (blind or not) is that it's really easy to hear the difference between the "hiss" of water evaporating as steam and the "sizzle" of it frying/browning, and the two things do not happen at the same time. Alternative title: "how to slowly steam ground meat flavorlessly without vision."