Category Archives: Thermometers

Dipping Areas: The food on Top Chef sucked so bad no one got kicked off

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PhD student Ben is cursing me. I know he’s just finished watching Top Chef. So did I. So he had to endure smug stock-fixer Martha Stewart, who is constantly touching her hair when cooking. And the pretentiousness of food porn that is Top Chef.

But give credit when deserved. Two weeks ago some of the chefs served lamb and used a food thermometer – they just didn’t say anything about proper temp or whether the thermometer helped decide whether the lamb was done.

But this week, a refrigerator door was left open overnight and a bunch of pork and duck was sent to the trashbin after hours at room temp.

Said one aspiring top cheffie:

“I cannot serve meat that is not at a safe temperature. I could kill or make very sick everybody in the room.”

Oh, and 15 years before Top Chef showed up, Toronto comedy fabs, Kids in the Hall, were skewering the fascination with all things food porn.
 

Frozen to cooked in plastic to done – the bird worked out

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Amy and I usually host a Thanksgiving dinner for the Manhattan  (Kansas) stay-at-homes. With Amy almost 40 weeks pregnant and me driving to the Kansas City airport to pick up my youngest, Courtlynn, we kept things simple.

I was going to do another of those fresh turkey breasts, but the store was sold out. So in the name of science, or reality cooking, I got one of those Jennie-O turkeys I’d seen advertized. Pete Snyder has posted a method for cooking a bird direct from frozen, but I wanted to try out this technology.

The bird comes in a plastic bag, and while I’m not a fan of cooking things in plastic bags, this seemed to work. A half-dozen slits, into the oven, off the airport. Too much salt for my taste, and overcooked due to travel, but that’s what the gravy is for. And a day later, the leftovers are yummy.


 

Foo Fighters fans of Top Chef

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Team Sexy Pants edged out Team Cougar on Top Chef tonight as the wannabe celebs made a Thanksgiving meal for the Foo Fighters and their entourage of 60.

Dave Grohl, right, said, “Did someone offend the smores guy cause I think he spit on mine.”

And the smores guy got booted.

Drummer Taylor said of one desert, “I don’t like pumpkin foam … No more barfaits.”

Unfortunately, both teams cooked turkey in microwaves, and no one used a digital, tip sensitive thermometer, or any kind of thermometer.

Keep it safe for Thanksgiving, and stick it in.

Yes Virginia, you can thaw turkey on the counter

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I’ve gotten more done around the house in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. Must be the nesting hormones. Amy figures she’s had enough. Baby’s due in a few days, but Amy would rather have it out now.  My youngest daughter, Courtlynn, arrives on Thanksgiving for five days, and we hope the baby arrives then as well.

But, there’s still work to be done, and every year, it’s the same issue. We say it’s OK for people to do what they are already doing – thawing turkey on the counter – and people freak out. After all, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and their extension types insist it is never OK to thaw turkey at room temperature.

We have lots of evidence and have written about it in peer-reviewed journals. But why doesn’t USDA or FDA, with all their resources, tell people why it’s not OK to thaw poultry at room temperature instead of repeating — as my friend Marty once quipped — like a fascist calling out country line dancing instructions, that it is never OK to thaw at room temperature?

Show us the data.

Pete Snyder at the Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management in St. Paul, Minnesota, has a summary available demonstrating the safety of thawing poultry at room temperature at http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Thaw-counter.html.

My group wrote a review note on the topic a few years ago, and it is included in its entirety at http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/2007/10/articles/food-safety-communication/how-to-thaw-poultry-ignore-government/

However you thaw your turkey, use a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer to ensure it has reached an internal temperature of 165F. The laws of physics are apparently different north of the 49th parallel and poultry is required to reach 180F. No one knows why the Canadian government has different advice. And they’re not telling anyone.
 

Rob Mancini: Use a thermometer, and use it right

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“A concierge is the Winnipeg equivalent of a geisha.”

I thought that line was so good on the television show, The Office, last night –when a few of the staff took a business trip to Winnipeg, Canada — that I wrote it down for future use.

So when telegenic public health inspector Robert Mancini of Winnipeg (former co-host of the television series Kitchen Crimes, right, pretty much as shown) e-mailed me about something he saw, I had my excuse to use the Winnipeg line.

Rob writes:

“Yesterday, upon walking into a restaurant kitchen to perform a routine inspection, the chef was actually using a metal stem thermometer to determine doneness of a hamburger patty. Naturally, this excited me until I asked the chef what temperature he was aiming for. He said 130?? F. Lovely.

“Just because a chef has a thermometer and uses it once in a while doesn’t really mean anything, they need to be aware of proper cooking temperatures. The chef, assuming that I was a health inspector (I guess all my fancy gadgets gave that away) used the thermometer to impress me and perhaps gain some extra bonus points.  It almost did as I scurried over, maybe too excitedly, but sadly left disappointed. Let’s get people talking about food safety.”

Bad cooking advice from Australian chicken industry

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This is a picture I got from Pete Snyder years ago. It’s a chicken leg, back attached and it’s fully cooked. The red stuff has to do with the age the chick was harvested at. The point is, the only way to accurately cook meat is using a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer. Color is a lousy indicator.

Not so says the Australian Chicken Meat Federation (ACMF), which highlights a host of BBQ food safety failings, yet inexplicitly insists,

“Consumers need to be encouraged to routinely adopt simple food safety practices. The best way to check your chicken is to pierce it and see if the juices run clear.”

If it’s so simple, why can’t the industry get it right? Stick it in, and use a thermometer.
 

What do rare, medium and well-done mean? Especially with hamburgers?

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Amy and I are at the University of Wisconsin in Madison — and I’m struck by how food safety things seem the same.

Amy got invited to speak at a French conference, and we didn’t know if we’d embark on the 10-hour drive this late in the pregnancy, but she said yes, so I tagged along.

Last time I was in Madison was 1997, when I gave a couple of talks at a BSE seminar for the Food Research Institute (FRI). A cursory look back and there were outbreaks involving petting zoos, unpastuerized apple cider, contaminated meat, and listeria. Once I get caught up on news you’ll see the outbreaks are still the same.

So we’ll keep looking for new messages and new media to reduce the number of sick people. As part of that, I had lunch with some FRI friends at The Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co.

Under the sandwiches and burgers section, the menu states,

“We cook our hamburgers and steaks to temperature. Here is a general guideline:

Rare – a cool red center
Medium Rare – a warm red center
Medium – a pink center
Medium Well – a slight hint of pink
Well Done – no pink."

Veteran barfbloggers will know that color – especially with beef – is a lousy indicator of doneness, and an even worse indicator of safety. Over half of all burgers will turn brown before they reach a safe temperature of 160F.

So I told the waitress I wanted a burger, and, when she asked me how I wanted it, I said 160F.

She looked at me.

My guests started to chime in, “You have to understand, he’s an assh…” but I cut them off.

Your menu says, cooked to temperature. That is the temperature I want it.

She started to back away slowly …

OK, well-done, but tell me what the cook says when you ask for 160.

When the waitress returned with the burger, she looked at me, like, you really are an asshole, but did tell me the cook said, if he wants it 160F, he wants it well-done. Why didn’t he just ask for that?

Because temperature is the only way to tell. Stick it in – for safety.

How to know if it’s done? Don’t listen to Good Housekeeping or NBC

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 Amy’s getting to the final stages of pregnancy. Our house on the hill isn’t quite so attractive. All of her teaching is in the afternoon, so lunch-time TV usually includes Days of Our Lives. Sure it’s a stupid soap opera, but if hockey great and hometown pal Wayne Gretzky can appear on The Young and the Restless with a bad mullet, Amy can tune out to an hour of Days of Our Lives.

Loving husband that I am, I flipped the TV to NBC about 10 minutes before the soap was due to start. What I saw was horrifying.

Kathie Lee Gifford has apparently attempted to resurrect her career by doing some NBC Today Show extension. And they did a piece with some woman from Good Housekeeping on how do you know if it’s done. These people perpetuated every food safety myth and probably made some folks ill. The only way to tell if it’s done is to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. Color is a lousy indicator.

Stick it in.

Canadian Thanksgiving dinner tonight – hopefully I won’t make anyone barf

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Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday – a celebration of the harvest with food, friends and family.

Canadian Thanksgiving is today, so in an effort to enhance Canadian Studies, or at least the ability of Kansans to be able to geographically identify Canada as that place up north, Amy and I host an annual dinner, for ex-pats and, this year, our students.

They never turn down food. We remember what it’s like to be students.

But the supermarket I frequent didn’t have whole turkeys – American Thanksgiving isn’t until the end of November. There was, however, a fresh, huge turkey breast, reduced for quick sale (which meant I couldn’t thaw my turkey on the kitchen counter). So I bought two, experimented, and will be using the trusty meat thermometer.

We’re going to go eat, when the other 10 people arrive.

A video will be up in a few days.