Category Archives: Thermometers

Martha Stewart tries to kill Matt Lauer?

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On the 7/14/09 edition of the Today Show, Martha Stewart cooked “Zesty Chicken Burgers” for Meredith Viera and a somewhat reluctant Matt Lauer. While Martha was going on about how special chicken burgers are, Matt quietly asked a food safety question.

Matt: “Obviously people are going to say you have to be careful how to cook a chicken burger. You have to get it to a certain temperature. Is that about right?”

Martha: “Um. Yeah. Well, you’ll see. It’s… It’ll won’t be pink inside. It’ll get …

Meredith: “It will have to be white inside.”

Martha: “Yeah, all the way.”

And then on to how beautiful they are. Martha went on from touching raw chicken to touching the bun she served Matt’s finished burger on. He turned away from the camera both times he “took a bite” and claimed they were very good. Who knows if he really ate the potentially killer chicken burger. I wouldn’t have.

If you cook chicken burger, use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to make sure they reach an internal temperature of 165F. Wash your hands between touching raw meat and anything that is going to be served, especially if the person you are feeding is famous.

Many thanks to the barfblog fan who signaled Katie about yesterday’s Today Show.

Powell to Times – stick it in

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The following letter appeared in the Dining and Wine section of this morning’s N.Y. Times:

Re “The Perfect Burger and All Its Parts” July 1:

The only thin piece of metal that should be stuck into the side of a hamburger is a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. Chef Seamus Mullen’s recommendation to put any thin piece of metal into the side of a burger, and “If it’s barely warm to the lips, it’s rare. If it’s like bath water, it’s medium rare,” only demonstrates the divide between food safety and food pornography.

Color is a lousy indicator of burger safety, as is the taste of metal sticks. Rather than putting E. coli O157:H7 on precious testing lips, use a thermometer.

Dr. Douglas Powell
Manhattan, Kan.

The writer is an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.

Andrew Stormer: stick it in for safety (a thermometer)

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Andrew Stormer (right, exactly as shown), a Kansas State food science grad who used to work with me writes from Topeka:

Food is my career and a passion, so I often find myself in conversations with people regarding trendy food topics (organic, healthy, safe etc.).  Today I found myself in the midst of a debate about the doneness of burgers with a plant employee.

The other dude was talking about the burgers he had grilled on July 4th. I asked him if he used a tip sensitive digital thermometer to determine if it had been cooked to 160°F, and the debate ensued.  He proudly proclaimed that he could tell if they are cooked “just right” by looking at the color and pushing on them with his finger.  I countered, stating that both of his methods were terrible indicators of doneness and that temperature is the only way to tell for sure.  I mentioned premature browning and that 160°F was the necessary temperature to reach to ensure the death of the common patty-pathogen E. coli O157:H7.

He persisted, saying I was wrong, and that his method had always worked and he had never made anyone sick.  How did he know that for sure, I wondered, explaining that the incubation period for E. coli was usually anywhere from about 18 to 72 hours, and that a person won’t exhibit symptoms of the infection until well after leaving the BBQ. 

He didn’t have much of a response. 

I then offered to find and show him studies, books, articles etc. that supported my claim.  He wanted none of it, and wrapped up the debate nicely with, “I just know.”  I was left frustrated and dismayed. 

This is a dangerous and arrogant attitude to have towards food safety, but unfortunately I have come across countless others that share the same “I just know” train of thought.  That said; his method is still a step above the “put-a-thin-piece-of-metal-in-the-burger-and-taste” method.

From the we’ve never had a problem file: Salmonella in lasagna edition

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NBC 29 reports that a group of central Virginia guests have Salmonellosis that appears to be linked to frozen lasagna from a popular pasta shop. In a classic blame game maneuver and "wha happened?" defense, the owner of Mona Lisa (the pasta shop) says that if his food is the source of the outbreak, it was likely customer error.

The owner of Mona Lisa pasta says his kitchen is not to blame for six central Virginia dinner guests coming down with salmonella. While he says he sold the frozen lasagna, it was not his kitchen that was responsible for cooking it to code.

Chef Jim Winecoff has been creating Italian dishes at his Mona Lisa Pasta Shop on Preston Avenue in Charlottesville for years. Winecoff said, “We’ve been here for eight years now providing lasagna, fresh pastas, sausage, ravioli, through the company.”

Winecoff is confident his kitchen is not to blame. Winecoff stated, “We’ve had no trouble whatsoever with our food in the past and I hope this is not a problem with our food. The customer has written instructions as to how to prepare the food, to bake at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time, and that’s a food-safe temperature.”

It’s early on in the investigation and not much information is available but the "we’ve been doing things this way for a while and never had a problem" optimistic attitude doesn’t do much to build trust.

Especially in an outbreak situation.

An operator with a good food safety culture knows about the microbial risks associated with their products and who might screw up, whether it is suppliers, staff or customers. Blaming the customers is never a good thing, especially if you happened to sell them something with a pathogen in it. Ask the ConAgra pot pie folks. Or the Nebraska Beef ground beef folks.

Telling a customer the time of baking and at what temperature misses the measurable risk reduction step — endpoint temperature. Food businesses selling this-needs-to-be-cooked items should be stating what temperature the dish needs to be cooked to and how the temperature needs to be measured.

Five kids sick with E. coli in Ohio county

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The Cuyahoga County Board of Health confirms that three children have been exposed to the E. coli bacteria. Two more cases are under investigation.

"Five cases is very unusual for us to have," says Terry Allan, the health commissioner in Cuyahoga County.

The three children with confirmed cases also have what’s known as Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS).

Allan says the children must have contracted E. coli in one of two ways: either from a batch of meat that is contaminated or from just undercooked beef. Testing will be conducted on meat in the area, but so far, there is no indication that any particular batch of beef in Ohio is contaminated.

Or from thousands of other ways that E. coli O157:H7 can get into food or water or petting zoos.

Allan also says,

"If you don’t have a thermometer, it’s important that you cook that hamburger until it’s no longer pink in the middle."

This is wrong. Color is a lousy indicator. Use a meat thermometer, be careful about cross-contamination, and have more microbial awareness than the health commissioner in Cuyahoga County.
 

BBQ safely with Douglas Powell

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Look, I’m goofy. Probably the Brantford, Ontario, water, cause hometown pal Wayne Gretzky sure looked goofy on The Young and the Restless in 1981.

I don’t want to be on video. But if that’s what it takes to get the message out about how to safely grill burgers this holiday weekend, then why not.

As I wrote the N.Y. Times today in response to their July 1, 2009 piece, The Perfect Burger and All Its Parts, Chef Seamus Mullen’s recommendation to use any thin piece of metal into the side of a burger, and “if it’s barely warm to the lips, it’s rare. If it’s like bath water, it’s medium rare” only demonstrates the divide between food safety and food pornography.

The only thin piece of metal that should be stuck into the side of a hamburger is a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

Color is a lousy indicator of burger safety, as is the taste of metal sticks. Rather than putting E. coli O157:H7 on precious testing lips – stick a thermometer in.

Backyard bacteria and consumers: use a thermometer

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I’m really proud of the folks who contribute to barfblog and bites.ksu.edu.

This morning, I wrote all the contributors from yesterday and said, I’m really proud, or good job, or something like that. The mixture of food safety content and personal experience on barfblog.com was excellent yesterday.

Debora MacKenzie at New Scientist magazine seems to have noticed as well, and writes in a blog piece this evening,

Doug Powell food safety expert at Kansas State University and editor of the excellent barfblog says that the only way to ensure the safety of ground burgers is to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to make sure the whole patty has reached the 71 ??C (160 ??F) needed to kill E. coli.

Like I said, I’m proud to have a lot of smart folks around me.
 

Whole Foods porn

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If you’re a retailer as big as Whole Foods, how hard is it to provide accurate information?

For their July 4 “perfect burgers” the food porn emporium says, “Grill meat to desired doneness; about 4 to 6 minutes per side over a medium hot fire. Be careful not to overcook, which will dry out the meat.”

This means nothing, but as a smart food science prof once told me, processing is all about adding air and water and charging more; Whole Foods adds swarmy words and charges more.

Color is a lousy indicator of safety. Use a tip-sensitive thermometer, and use food porn for titillation, not safety.

Watch where you’re sticking it in

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I’ve loved Chicken with Broccoli and Cheese (of various brands) since childhood. These prepared-but-raw entrees mostly fell by the wayside when I started cooking like a grown-up. But just last week, the crunchy broccoli with melted cheese hidden inside tasty breaded chicken thingies called out to me and my inner child, and a box of them was soon in my home freezer.

A couple years ago (under the alias C. Wilkinson), I watched a bunch of people cooking products just like these in model kitchens. I was helping graduate researcher Sarah DeDonder, who was curious what could be contributing to the half-dozen Salmonella outbreaks associated with such products that occurred in the ten years before the study (and the two outbreaks after).

The raw, frozen chicken thingies I brought home last week were made by Antioch Farms (a Koch Foods brand). The box’s front label proclaimed, in half-inch-high letters, that the products were indeed raw. The back label warned me not to cook them in the microwave. It also showed me how to stick a thermometer in to be sure each one reached a bacteria- and virus-killing 165 F.

I found each of these label features fairly helpful. However, when I baked them for dinner last night, I modified the depicted thermometer-sticking method a little to determine the internal temperature of the chicken, rather than the filling.

I’m happy to report that the chicken read 175 F before it reached the dinner table. And it was as delicious as I remembered.

N.Y. Times sucks at food safety: stick a piece of metal in a burger and lick it, rather than a thermometer, to tell if it’s done?

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In the continuing saga of bad food safety advice in the N.Y. Times – and the elevation of food pornography over food safety – the Times today ran a piece about the perfect burger.

In interviews with dozens of so-called chefs around the U.S., not one mentioned the use of a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure a final, safe temperature of 160F, or that color is an exceedingly lousy indicator of doneness or food safety (that’s Ben, right, exactly as shown, grillin’ up some Canada Day burgers)

The story does say, “testing for doneness is always a challenge for the home cook. Seamus Mullen, the chef and an owner of the Boqueria restaurants in the Flatiron district and SoHo, uses a wire cake tester. (Any thin, straight piece of metal will work as well.)

“We stick it in the middle through the side. If it’s barely warm to the lips, it’s rare. If it’s like bath water, it’s medium rare. The temperature will never lie. It takes the guesswork out of everything.”

Rather than putting E. coli O157:H7 on your precious testing lips, stick a thermometer in. You’re already sticking a piece of metal in so why not a thermometer?

Ben has just added to the Mark Bittman history of spewing out food safety nonsense that I have been tracking for at least two years.

The Times also published the whopper by Nina Planck, who at the height of the fall 2006 E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak, wrote in the Times that E. coli O157:H7 "is not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. … It’s the infected  manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater  and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on  neighboring farms."

This falsehood is routinely repeated, most recently in the entertaining but factually-challenged movie, Food Inc.

The natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7 and other verotoxigenic E. coli is the intestines of all ruminants, including cattle — grass or grain-fed — sheep, goats, deer and the like. The final report of the fall 2006 spinach outbreak identifies nearby grass-fed beef cattle as the likely source of the E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 200 and killed 4.

In my own unique version of how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people, I called Bittman and celebrity food porn doofus Jamie Oliver idiots for their advice on how to cook chicken and their ability to cross-contaminate an entire kitchen within seconds.

N.Y. Times, you are furthering your descent to irrelevancy.