Category Archives: Thermometers

No passport, no lunch

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Aside from travelling, I don’t carry my Canadian passport with me — the last thing I need is to lose it while overseas. Sure, I understood when the doctor or Liquor King employee asked me to produce it, but not when I was refused a burger for lack of I.D.

This past sunny Sunday a few gal pals and I decided to grab a burger for lunch at an Irish pub-style restaurant. The place had appeal because of the outdoor seating and 10 dollar burger and fries (which we’d tried and loved before). Upon ordering our meals (sans alcohol) we were asked to present I.D. When I produced my Canadian driver’s license I was told that we could not eat at the establishment unless I presented my passport. Gutted, we grabbed a bite at Burger Fuel instead.

It’s probably not a common experience, but it had me thinking: Is the pub that’s so strict with its patrons equally as strict with its food safety? Would my burger have been cooked to the proper internal temperature using a meat thermometer – the passport of burgers?

Hamburgers and how to tell if they’re done – the Netherlands version

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A bites-barfblog reader from the Netherlands sent along this 2008 video, which has an English-speaking bit with a self-proclaimed hamburger professor in New York (New Amsterdam?) demonstrating the touch-the-hand method of determining whether a hamburger is properly cooked (note: this technique is complete BS).

The technique in question appears about five minutes in.

http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=8030954
 

Evan Henke: For the Jucy Lucy and stuffed burgers, the food safety jury is still out

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Evan Henke, a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (right, sorta as shown), writes in this guest barfblog.com post:

During a recent trip to a Minneapolis restaurant, I ordered what is perhaps Minneapolis’s most significant contribution to the culinary world: the “Jucy Lucy.”

Legend has it that the Lucy, a hamburger with cheese stuffed inside of the beef patty before cooking (right, not exactly as shown), was invented in Minneapolis, although debate still rages as to which burger joint was the first to offer the Lucy to its customers. As I bit into the Lucy, I noticed that the center of the burger was quite undercooked, and I did not notice the use of a thermometer on the nearby grill. I immediately wondered what effect stuffing the cheese inside of the patty had on the survival of foodborne pathogens during the cooking process.

Maybe the added weight of the cheese would better insulate the side of the burger exposed to the surface grill compared to cooking a normal patty of equal thickness without flipping. Maybe any added moisture in the cheese would help kill any pathogen present in the beef, as long as the moisture was present.

But the true food safety implications of stuffing a ground beef patty with cheese or other ingredients are not well documented (left, not exactly as shown). The amounts of fat and water that escape from the cheese during cooking are not documented, and how those amounts affect the survival of foodborne pathogens present in the patty is unclear. It has been documented that E. coli O157:H7 shows increased resistance to heat in patties with higher fat and lower moisture contents[1]. It is possible that the composition of a stuffed burger, depending on the stuffing and fat and moisture content of the ground beef, could favor the survival of foodborne pathogens relative to a burger with no stuffing.

In a world of foods that taste delicious but can be deleterious to your health, the Jucy Lucy and stuffed burgers sizzle in mystery. How the addition of cheese to the center of the patty affects the survival of foodborne pathogens ought to be documented, not just for the health of my fellow Minneapolitans, but for the health of burger eaters everywhere. And of course, thermometer use is recommended whenever preparing ground beef.

The Make Your Own Jucy Lucy video is included below http://heavytable.com/make-your-own-jucy-lucy/. Warning: Conventional safe cooking technique not displayed in video.

Evan Henke is a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health pursuing a Master’s degree in Environmental Health. An avid fan of foodborne disease epidemiology and food safety, he spends most of his free time angering his friends with his knowledge of the food chain and careful scrutiny of food safety practices.

1. Ahmed, Nahed M., Donald E. Conner, and Dale L. Huffman. "Heat-Resistance of Escherichia Coli O157:H7 in Meat and Poultry as Affected by Product Composition." Journal of Food Science 60.3 (1995): 606-10.

 

Making Your Own Jucy Lucys from The Heavy Table on Vimeo.

Simply Recipes explains how to use fingers to test if meat is cooked (total BS)

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In the expanding category of really bad food safety advice is this entry from Simply Recipes:

There are two basic methods to test for how done your meat is while you are cooking it – use a meat thermometer, or press on the meat with your finger tips. The problem with the meat thermometer approach is that when you poke a hole into the meat with a thermometer, it can let juices escape, juices that you would rather have stay in the meat. For this reason, most experienced cooks rely on a "finger test" method, especially on steaks (whole roasts are better tested with a thermometer).

For example, the story explains that to test for raw: Open the palm of your hand. Relax the hand. Take the index finger of your other hand and push on the fleshy area between the thumb and the base of the palm. Make sure your hand is relaxed. This is what raw meat feels like.

There’s more. This is what Johnny Cash and I think (below). Stick it in. Use a thermometer.

Thanks to another barfblog.com reader for the tip.


 

Yahoo Food sucks at food safety advice

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Among the six most common ways to ruin a burger, which Yahoo Food is promoting ahead of Labor Day, is this nose-stretcher:

Overcooking: This should be a crime recognized by the federal government. For the popular medium-rare, grill the meat exactly three minutes on one side (keeping the grill lid closed) and two minutes on the other. If you’re going to add cheese, let it melt on top for another minute (and keep that cover closed!).  We like our burgers medium rare, so much we’ve even sent them back at restaurants when they go beyond medium.

Nonsense. Using time make no allowances for variation in grill temperature, thickness of the hamburger patty and composition of the hamburger. A tip-sensitive digital thermometer is the only way to get a burger to the correct temperature of 160F, without overcooking.

Thanks to the barfblog reader who sent along the tip.

Living for, and hopefully not dying from, barbecue in Maryland

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Michelle Marcotte (bottom, exactly as shown), an ex-pat Canadian and regulatory affairs consultant based in Glenn Dale, Maryland, who has worked in 40 countries, eaten well, but carefully, and never been sick, writes:

My husband was born lacking the barbecue gene on his Y chromosome; so it is up to me to either cook or fetch barbecue. Here, in the steam bath that is Maryland in the summer, sensible people fetch barbecue from a roadside truck or trailer.

Barbecue is slow cooked pork ribs, chicken or brisket. It is cooked over a wood flame, on a grill. The grill is placed down the length of a converted home heating oil tank which has been turned on its side, cut open and hinged to form a lid. When the lid of the tank is down, the resulting oven is as hot as hell.

Since barbecue is a necessity of life, I watch for a smoking truck or van parked by the side of the road. A line of cars parked on the verge and the intoxicating smell of barbecue are evidence of other barbecue-addicted persons getting a hit.

So, this week, while waiting for my whole chicken to slowly cook, I thought to observe the food safety of these itinerant barbecue kings. It is a two-person operation: the cook and the boss. You give your order to the boss and he yells to the cook to start the selection process. You stand in line and wait, unable to speak because your mouth is watering.

The cook uses a very long-handled fork to move the dripping raw, marinated meat from the cooler to the grill and then, using exceptional genius, moves the meat around the flame, placing it in various positions sufficient to result in slow-cooked deliciousness. The raw meat and chicken juice drips on the almost done and finished cooked meat on the grill. But, after each addition of raw meat, that lid comes down for a few minutes, the smoke comes up, the heat waves distort the air for 4-5 feet above the tank. I pray it is enough to kill the bacteria spread from the raw chicken over the cooked meat.

The boss takes his long handled fork and spears the meat that the cook has placed on the front of the grill. He whacks it down on the cutting board that has been in use from early morning. He puts disposable gloves on, and chops the chicken into quarters, the ribs into halves and the brisket into slices. He places it all in a foil-lined Styrofoam take-out box. He slathers it with barbecue and hot sauce. He then takes the gloves off, takes your money, puts new gloves on and starts over with the next customer.

In this scenario there was no handwashing, not even a pretense of handwashing. There was no tub of water on the trailer. The nearest meat thermometer is 10 miles away. And that’s how it is when you have a barbecue addiction. You take risks.

You take the barbecue home and eat it promptly, praying to the foodsafety gods

Stick it in for safety

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The first thing I bought when we arrived in Florida a couple of weeks ago was a meat thermometer: groceries, wine, toilet paper – and a digital, tip-sensitive meat thermometer.

Can’t cook burgers without them.

Yesterday I ventured from our Venice Beach hideaway to the University of Florida in Gainesville to hang out with my friend Michael Batz and deliver a seminar at the Emerging Pathogens Institute about food safety culture stuf.

Michael and I went to lunch at some Spanish/Cuban place that seemed quite friendly, so, being the nerd I am, I ordered a hamburger.

The server asked me how I would like it, and I asked, what are my options?

She said however I wanted it (that’s really what she said).

I said, 160 F.

She said, we don’t do that.

I said, well-done.

Stick it in.
 

Is it a barbeque or grill?

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I am from California. In California, it’s called a barbeque. I went to college in Alabama and graduate school in Kansas where both places call it a grill. The box labeled it a barbeque grill, so I guess everyone is right.

Regardless of the name, I purchased my very first barbeque this weekend. I put it together correctly and cooked chicken on it. I had never barbequed (or grilled) by myself, but I knew exactly when my chicken was done cooking: my tip sensitive, digital thermometer told me so. My chicken was cooked to a perfect 165°F.

And yes, I also thoroughly washed my hands before cooking and after touching any raw chicken.

When you’re barbequing, stick it in.

Teenagers can use thermometers for food safety

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Food safety type and barfblog.com fan Valerie Hannig of Wilmington, Delaware, sent me a picture of hope this morning.

For all those government agencies who say people won’t use thermometers, so they have to be told to cook burgers until the juices run clear, or until the food is piping hot, or something equally useless, here is Valerie’s son, Alex, temping a chicken thingy (below).

Valerie says, “It makes me feel great that after all these years I have been in food safety, it is nice to see good habits passed down to the next generation of foodies.”

Stick it in.

Don’t kill your neighbor with undercooked hamburger

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It seems everyone in the media is bent on cross-contaminating and undercooking their food this summer. On Monday night’s “Great American Road Trip” (a poor replacement for the Amazing Race), the first challenge was for the men to cook hamburgers on a charcoal grill in 30 minutes for all the families to judge. The challenge took place in Sedan, Kansas at the Red Buffalo Ranch.

First, host Reno Collier made a cooking demonstration. No handwashing stations are present anywhere in sight (see right). After Collier explained how he likes to talk to his meat as he formed a raw patty, he threw it on the grill and wiped his hands on a towel. The condiment station was well stocked, but there were no meat thermometers and no safety instructions. The DiSalvatore dad said he’d never cooked anything in his life. Silvio quickly asked for tips from his wife Amy who said, “Just don’t overcook it.”

 

Silvio: “How do I know when it’s cooked?”

Amy: “A little bit of pink inside. Good luck.”

 

The father of the Rico family made the decision to cook his entire 5 lbs of meat and he commented, “I really misjudged how long it would take to cook those things.” Ricardo’s giant burgers were far from being done when it was time to serve. Host Collier yelled out, “Feel free to check these things out before you go sticking them in your mouth.” [Katie, that was for you.] One of the kids commented, “I was more nervous about barfing than about winning the challenge.”

 

It’s mindboggling how much cross-contamination took place in this highly edited clip (see approximately minutes 11 to 20). I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth while watching. In the end, the Ricos went home, but surprisingly they did not receive the lowest score for their burger.

 

Raw burger is not safe to eat. Hamburger is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 160F as measured by a tip sensitive meat thermometer. (See Doug’s videos on youtube.) Color is an unsafe indicator of doneness. Wash your hands after touching raw meat and before touching ready to eat products like buns. I personally find it challenging to grill and avoid cross-contamination … so why does everyone keep saying how simple it is to make a burger?

 

If you want to risk your own stomach or life, that’s your business; but please do not try to kill your neighbors or your children with undercooked meat or cross-contaminated condiments.