FWIW, the USDA just lowered its recommended cooking temperatures for pork ! They now recommend the same temperatures as for other red meats (beef, lamb, etc).
Hmmm, Chicken Sashimi.
I was young and carefree, or is that careless.
I am glad to hear this as I have pushing the limit down anyway. I had hear somewhere that it is OK to cook pork so that it is "pink" rather than white.
I am getting an accurate thermometer.
Really?
I was always told that trichinosis is something to avoid. And that it can be avoided by cooking pork to at least medium/medium well.
I will admit that it tastes better when I undercook it.
I am a chef and have a culinary degree from ICE, NYC. Best burger is a blend of beef, veal and pork. Blend your own from separate meats or if you have a good butcher ask him to do it. Use egg whites only to hold it together on the grill. No yolks, as yolks pull the meat apart (yolks are good in the oven but can cause havoc on the grill). Salt, pepper, minced onion, minced garlic are always a good bet. You can baste the burger with a bit of barbecue sauce on the grill to keep it moist and give it a good crisp outside (I have a good recipe for a homemade sauce if you would like it). A burger is best eaten rare, so on a hot grill, 3 minutes and flip for another 3 minutes for a 1.5 inch burger. Cheers!
good god man, what is this blasphemy?
best burger is 100% beef, coarse ground.
Pork is really underrated. The best pork chop is slightly pink inside and cooked in stock. Chicken is the one you have to be aware of. Cheers to Clangers who ate it raw! 70% of our chicken has salmonella unless cooked to proper temps. And anyway, why eat a burger unless rare? You can't taste the meat!
Dude- the pork gives the flavor and fat the the veal balances it with a slightly gamey taste. Try it.
Absolutely. The American purists put nothing in their hamburgers. The only seasoning that you should add to a hamburger is (sea) salt the hell out of it, and then you can add some black pepper if you like it. And don't play around with it while it's grilling--smushing it with the spatula etc. Throw it on, flip it once, and pull it off. This is definitely a case of less is more.
Hehe. But that wasn't a joke; chicken sashimi is served in Japan. From what I've seen on TV, it is seared on the outside but raw inside; if poultry diseases work the same way as for red meats (i.e. transmitted to the surface of the meat from fecal matter in the slaughtering process), then cooking the outside of non-ground chicken should be reasonably safe.
Yup, pink pork is fine. Just like beef.
Thermometer's definitely the way to go if you don't have a good eye for it. Actually, thanks to that damned modified-atmosphere packaging the Migros loves, your eye is no longer reliable, because meat packed that way loses the pink color at a lower temperature, meaning that color is no longer a reliable indicator of doneness.
Trichinosis is now rare in industrialized nations, for one thing.
But moreover, it's simply not necessary to cook the living daylights out of the pork to kill trichinosis. The newly recommended 145oF internal temperature is sufficient to kill trichinosis. (Old recipes stated 160 or even 185 degrees for pork, since we just didn't know. But modern lean pork simply cannot handle that kind of abuse without becoming inedibly dry.)
The percentages vary wildly by country and farming practices. Beside salmonella, campylobacter and listeria are even more widespread. ( According to WP, nearly 100% of poultry carry campylobacter . Bad slaughterhouse and kitchen practices can then lead to contamination and subsequent food poisoning.)
I'll agree with the rare-ness, but having grown-up in corn and steer country, if you need to add veal and pork to your beef to make it taste good, and egg whites to bind it, you're doing it wrong. We call that mix "meatloaf". I'm not a chef, I just like good beef when I taste it. Sadly, it's hard to find even in the US anymore and here...if it exists, I probably can't afford it.
I'd be interested in your sauce recipe, though. I'm always experimenting with new tastes for sauces.
I'll have to post my BBQ sauce recipe sometime, then. However, it's only for those who like smoked chiles.
Tom
Yes, please!
Where are you from, son? And, yeah, I'd love to see your BBQ sauce recipe. I love anything with chilies.
Son? I'm probably older than you!
CT, but living here since '86, and raising, pickling, drying, and smoking chiles since '91.
Tom
Hee! I was just channelling my best midwestern matron as you seem to understand meat..at least the way we do back in the parts of the US that everyone else tries to imitate (Boston, Ima lookin' at choo). A CT Yankee who does a chili BBQ sauce? Bring it!
I really don't mean to be rude, but I am a plain normal customer and I expect the chef to cook it the way I tell him to. His taste is irrelevant, as I am the one eating it.
You are entitled to decide upon your own meat, but not upon mine.
Oh, yeah!
You have no idea how happy I am that I joined this thread.
I love rare and sashimi like meat.
To a certain point — part of the reason to go to a restaurant is to benefit from the chef's expertise. If you want 100% control, cook at home.
(I'll admit, I would have trouble with the way chefs in Japan reportedly work: their way or the highway. Asking for alterations is just asking for trouble, apparently!)
And between us: with real chefs, there is no need to send the plate back, they know, but the "expertise" you are talking about is not to be found in every restaurants. In other words, if you don't satisfy me, you are not as good as you think. Speaking generally, nothing personal. I do not go to a restaurant to be liked by the chef but to enjoy the meal. And no, chefs do not always know how I do enjoy my meal so I am nice enough to inform him in order to help him. It's my way of showing respect.
Call me names if you want, but it is not in the chef's interest to piss the client off. I am being reasonnable about my demand: it's only a cooking time and sometimes a warning about salt (always too much salt in French restaurants). That's not really being a diva.
Well, I can't really argue with that, there are plenty of restaurant chefs who can't cook! (Of course, those are also the restaurants I will never return to...)