Category Archives: Thermometers

They don’t get Britain in Texas; bad advice on safe chicken livers

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Communication by stagecoach may be a Texas tradition but maybe they would have heard of all the outbreaks of campylobacter in poorly pate.beet.dp.mar.12prepared chicken pate in the UK.

David Uygur, chef and owner of Lucia, told the Dallas News, it’s important to cook the livers just to medium doneness, signaled by a rosy-pink center. “I think well-done chicken livers are gross. It’s not the end of the world if you overcook them, but they will have a grainy texture and a more iron-y flavor.”

Color tells a chef nothing. Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer and stick it in.

barfblog.Stick It In

Optimum cooking conditions for shrimp and Atlantic salmon

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Sorenne and I dismembered a muddy for dinner the other day (after humanely anesthetizing it in the freezer for an hour) before cooking and devouring muddy along with some bay bugs.

Daughter Courtlynn and I have been e-mailing about the virtues of Australian doug.sorenne.mud.crab.feb.13crabs versus the sweetness of the stone crabs we had in Florida.

Not bad for a couple of landlubbers.

But whatever your nautical preference, cook it safe.

The following abstract was published in the current Journal of Food Science, focusing on safe shrimp and salmon preparation. The problem is, how is an extra jumbo shrimp defined? Maybe it’s in the paper, but why not just use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to account for subjective variations?

Stick it in. I do

Optimum cooking conditions for shrimp and atlantic salmon

Journal of Food Science

Lauren Brookmire, P. Mallikarjunan, M. Jahncke, R. Grisso

The quality and safety of a cooked food product depends on many variables, including the cooking method and time–temperature combinations employed. The overall heating profile of the food can be useful in predicting the quality changes and microbial inactivation occurring during cooking. Mathematical barfblog.Stick It Inmodeling can be used to attain the complex heating profile of a food product during cooking. Studies were performed to monitor the product heating profile during the baking and boiling of shrimp and the baking and pan-frying of salmon. Product color, texture, moisture content, mass loss, and pressed juice were evaluated during the cooking processes as the products reached the internal temperature recommended by the FDA. Studies were also performed on the inactivation of Salmonella cocktails in shrimp and salmon. To effectively predict inactivation during cooking, the Bigelow, Fermi distribution, and Weibull distribution models were applied to the Salmonella thermal inactivation data. Minimum cooking temperatures necessary to destroy Salmonella in shrimp and salmon were determined. The heating profiles of the 2 products were modeled using the finite difference method. Temperature data directly from the modeled heating profiles were then used in the kinetic modeling of quality change and Salmonella inactivation during cooking. The optimum cooking times for a 3-log reduction of Salmonella and maintaining 95% of quality attributes are 100, 233, 159, 378, 1132, and 399 s for boiling extra jumbo shrimp, baking extra jumbo shrimp, boiling colossal shrimp, baking colossal shrimp, baking Atlantic salmon, and pan frying Atlantic Salmon, respectively.

 

A lunch of roast duck for Super Bowl Monday

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I spent halftime of the Super Bowl asking Amy, what kind of damn music is this?

duck.feb.13And eating yummy duck.

I’m not so much of a fan, but the faux Frenchy is, so I attempt duck occasionally. After the power outages associated with the ex-cyclone, I secured an inexpensive duck, and thought it would be suitable for Super Bowl Monday, what with Sorenne at school.

I butterflied the bird, marinated overnight, then slow roasted for four hours beginning at 6:30 am, and finished up with an apparently too high shot of 450F to crisp things. The bird was basted near the end with a sauce of orange, soy, honey and ginger.

Temperature-verified to be safe.

And I made it back from the last Kansas visit with my groovy fat separator, a key tool when making gravy in a hurry.

Delicious.

duck.fat.seperator.feb.13

Piping hot is not sound science

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Dr Andrew Wadge, chief scientist at the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA), told a webinar that food policies and advice based on the best available science are needed to protect consumers from 1M cases of UK foodborne illness every year.

Telling consumers to cook their turkey until it is piping hot is not sound science.

Stick it in.

bites.stick.it.in

Temperature-verified Gulf snapper

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Amy’s mom wants me to cook salmon while visiting us on Anna Maria Island in Florida. She says she can’t tell when it’s done

I said use a thermometer, and cook to about 120F (that should take care of the parasites).

But why preach when practice works better.

So off we went to the fishmonger in Cortez, a working fishing wharf on Sarasota Bay.

Following a delightful lunch of stone crabs, we had red snapper for dinner, accompanied by brown rice and baked veggies. The crab and snapper both came from the Gulf of Mexico.

I baked the snapper to about 130F, verified using my tip-sensitive digital thermometer I brought with me (I feel naked cooking without a thermometer).

The meal garnered rave reviews.

 

A Top Chef Thanksgiving

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Last night with the 80 degree temperatures outside, I curled up in bed with the seasonal spirit to watch the Top Chef Thanksgiving. The chefs split into teams with Emeril Lagasse and Tom Colicchio to cook their family favorite recipes.

On team Emeril, returning cheftestant Josie used her immunity to cook her team’s turkeys for the FareStart organization which trains disadvantaged individuals to become chefs. At some point her birds started looking blackened and she deemed the ovens to be too hot. She dialed down the temperature and played a guessing game.

During the meal the judges discussed the very pink meat on the birds:

“Not recommended by the USDA.”

“Coulda cooked a little more, unfortunately, but well seasoned.”

“Good flavor from the outside, but the inside was practically raw.”

All the while, there were no thermometers anywhere. Given the feedback, I presume the judges ate the pink birds.

Back in the kitchen Josie commented, “I’ve had my ups and downs on Top Chef, but, I’m happy with the turkey over all. But the question is, ‘is it overcooked?’ ‘is it dry?’ ‘is it moist?'” Josie was shocked when the judges told her it was undercooked.

Had she used a tip-sensitive digital thermometer, she would have known the answer. Blackened skin does not mean the turkey is cooked to a safe internal temperature of 165F.

 

Talking turkey: Provide evidence-based information and let folks make their own risk decisions

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I still listen to a lot of punk rock and I don’t really like being told what to do. I’m not sure many folks do. The approach I use is to provide the best available evidence culled from the literature to help eaters calculate the risks and benefits of food choices. Present the info in a compelling way and then step back to let the individual do their thing.

Hopefully the choice results in the least amount of barf. Eating has risks, whether it’s raw oysters, sprouts, or Thanksgiving dinner. USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise deconstructs the risks associated with cooking turkey and all the fixin’s:

Step away from the sink, and no one will get hurt.

You don’t need to wash your turkey before you roast it, and doing so can be dangerous. A British study found that washing poultry in the sink can spray bacteria up to 3 feet away. And with one in 50 turkeys estimated to be contaminated with salmonella, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food-safety inspectors, you don’t want a mist of turkey juice on your relish platter.

Given this contamination rate, the chef’s job is to keep the raw turkey juices away from anything that isn’t going to be cooked to 165 degrees, the temperature required to kill disease-causing bugs (the ones of interest in poultry -ben). Unfortunately, too many people start their feast preparations by plopping their turkey in the sink and giving it a good wash. There’s no need to do that. It’s a holdover from long ago when poultry routinely arrived with bits of blood and pinfeathers still attached. Cooks were instructed to wash the carcass well and use tweezers to remove any feathers that didn’t get plucked. With today’s modern processing, none of that is necessary. You just want to get the turkey into its pan and into the oven with as little dripping and splashing as possible.

If it’s a lack of refrigerator space that’s impeding your thawing, Doug Powell, a food-safety scientist at Kansas State University, notes that in any Northern climate, you can simply put the turkey outside in the garage in a closed cooler to keep out pets and vermin. His department wrote a paper on the topic and found that as long as the temperature is below 40 to 45 degrees it’s perfectly safe.

Then there’s the big question of whether it’s safe to lick the beaters when you’re making dessert. According to the Food and Drug Administration, approximately one in 20,000 eggs is contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis, the most common type of illness-causing salmonella. Benjamin Chapman, a(n assistant) professor of food safety at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says he’s content to “let others make their own risk decisions.”
But for himself and his family, the answer is no (at least when I’m around and influence the decision – ben).

Check out these videos for risk-reduction steps:
Thawing the Turkey
Turkey Preparation and Preventing Cross-Contamination
How to tell when the turkey is safe to eat
Handling the Leftovers

How to have an uninvited Thanksgiving guest: Washing turkey, not using thermometer can be recipe for food poisoning

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From a Kansas State University press release:

When it comes to your Thanksgiving turkey, a Kansas State University food safety expert has two tips that could help keep your holiday meal safer:

* Don’t give your turkey a bath.

* Always take your turkey’s temperature.

Washing the turkey before popping it in the oven may be something you saw your mom — or grandmother — do, but Doug Powell, professor of food safety, said it’s a practice where mom really didn’t know best.

“Washing the bird has long been disregarded because of the food safety risk of cross-contamination,” he said. “Do not wash that bird — you’ll spread bacteria everywhere.”

Studies have found food poisoning bacteria like campylobacter or salmonella are common on poultry carcasses and can easily be spread by the splashes from washing the bird, Powell said. That means the sink, countertops, water taps and anything else in the vicinity — including other food — can become cross-contaminated. Washing hands after handling and preparing the bird also is a must.

Once the unwashed bird is in the oven, Powell said cooks should do themselves a favor and rely on a good thermometer to let them know when the main attraction is ready. Turkey should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Just checking to see if the juices from the bird run clear when the bird is pricked isn’t an accurate indicator of its doneness.

“Color is a lousy indicator of safety,” Powell said. “No matter how you cook your bird, the key is to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to verify safety.”

To help keep foodborne illness from spoiling the Thanksgiving holiday, check out food safety infosheets, prepared by Powell and Benjamin Chapman, a food safety specialist and assistant professor of family and consumer sciences at North Carolina State University, available at Powell’s blog:

* For tips on why not to bathe the bird, https://barfblog.com/infosheet/bathing-birds-is-a-food-safety-mess/.

* For tips on preventing holiday foodborne illness, https://barfblog.com/infosheet/avoid-foodborne-illness-during-the-holidays.

* For tips on holiday meal safety, https://barfblog.com/infosheet/holiday-meal-food-safety-2/.

A holiday food safety video also is available at https://barfblog.com/holiday-food-safety-dont-wear-the-turkey-on-your-head-and-other-tips/. And the Spanish and French translations of the infosheets can be found athttps://barfblog.com/infosheets-esp/ and https://barfblog.com/infosheets-fra/.