Tag Archives: Meat

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.


 

Bunny burgers

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Kevin Nealon is great on Weeds and he’s great on this 1994 television pilot: Bunny Burgers.

Eat Me Daily writes that to see "just how low American marketers would go to help us to get a completely ridiculous to your shopping mall," they designed stationary, made a 24-page business plan, hired an actor to play the Japanese billionaire investor, and lured PR flacks to the Ritz Carlton to see if they wanted to represent the company. They ran focus groups and rented a store in a mall in New Jersey, offering bunny burgers to unsuspecting customers, complete with hot pink uniforms and creepy bunny mascot. Said one of the people in the mall: "Who dreamed up this name? It’s like trying to sell Bambi burgers, you know?"

The bunnies are eating the beans in my all-natural garden; the cats need to be more vigilant.

"Yummy yummy got bunny in my tummy / It’s the Bunny Burger taste sensation / Kinda like chicken / Kinda like roast beef / Pledge allegiance to the Bunny Burger nation / They love it in France / Come and give it a chance / Bunny Burger.

 

Street meat (and other roadside dishes) on the rise

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Last week, the Wall Street Journal profiled street food vendors throughout the U.S. highlighting the popularity of mobile/temporary/cart foods. It appears that the segment of foodservice is increasing in popularity as consumers want more than just hot dogs and sausages.  Many of the operators profiled by WSJ have online ordering, text message support and tweet (on twitter) to better connect with customers and provide speed and convenience.

With more complex foods (other than just reheating cooked meats) comes more complicated (and potentially risky) preparation and handling steps. Multiple raw ingredients need to be kept at the right temperature, operators have to avoid cross-contamination and, keep bacteria and viruses off of their hands. All within the confines of a cart or trailer.

Operators must know (and care) about the risks associated with the products they sell. Health inspectors are part of the solution, but a good street vendor manages the risks before the inspector points them out.

The WSJ also reported back in April that the strictly street meat industry is booming as well– hot dog cart sales for some manufactures have doubled.

Sales of carts, which start at about $2,000 new, have heated up in the past year. "Every model is…taking off," says Joel Goetz, owner of American Dream Hot Dog Carts Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla. Since January, he has sold about 25 carts a week, 15 more than usual.

"Business is really off the charts," says Dan Jackson, a division manager at Nation’s Leasing Services in Newbury Park, Calif. Leases for hot-dog carts account for about three-quarters of sales, and revenue is triple what it was this time a year ago, he says.

Some of the problems that can arise with mobile vendors were exemplified by the good folks at Seattle & King Co. Health. The Seattle Times reports that the health authorities closed a bistro-style mobile restaurant (which was profiled in the WSJ piece), operated out of an Airstream trailer by Skillet Street Food, after finding several health code violations.

The department found several issues — including no water in the hand-washing area, no cold storage for food and no arrangements for restrooms — and shut it down.

The trailer also reportedly didn’t have a license to operate (while a sister trailer, which remained open, did). 

In a follow-up article, chef-owner Josh Henderson tried to explain the situation:

"We have one trailer not fully approved," explained Henderson as he readied for tonight’s game. "The original trailer people see every day was having some mechanical issues, so we were forced to bring out the one that’s not approved."

Forced?

"We signed a contract with the Mariners for the season, saying we’ll be out in that lot." It was a choice between not operating and potentially having a breach of contract, he said, or not having a permit for the night and hoping they could get away with it. "We made a bad choice."

Henderson went on to say: 

"We’re a young business. We’ve invested money. We’re struggling to pay bills. We don’t have deep pockets and large investors. When it comes down to paying payroll and operating a business, sometimes these risks are outweighed by other stuff. That’s the reality."

Yeah, not so sure that potentially making a bunch of people sick so you can honor the terms of your contract the best risk to take. If something goes wrong you’re probably out of business (and not fulfilling that contract with the Mariners).

Stop tweeting, get some water and wash your hands.

Don’t eat poop cupcakes and more

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Things are winding down at Kansas State University for the year – at least on the teaching side. In the past, Amy and I have planned some exotic trip to France or Canada to get out of Kansas for the summer, but this year, we’re staying fairly put, with baby Sorenne. Maybe she’ll get acclimated to the heat.

On Friday, for the second year now, Amy hosted the Modern Languages departmental end-of-semester soiree, where all the language professors get together in a Tower of Babel sorta thing. Good fun, good food. And in a food porn moment, Katie made language-based cupcakes. What’s your favorite?

(Oh, and the A-Goo cupcake was in honor of baby Sorenne, cause she says that a lot.)
 

Are disposable gloves necessary to prepare meat in a home kitchen?

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Food is marketed as 21st century snake oil — a veritable sideshow of hucksters and buskers, flogging their wares to the highest bidder or at least the most fashionable.

And never underestimate the ability of American industry to make a buck off a trend. In this case, it’s food safety, and keeping those nasty bugs away from clean hands.

A colleague passed along this picture of the latest kitchen necessity – Playtex Disposable Gloves, to “Handle raw meat, poultry and seafood with confidence.”

But just like in food service, gloves can provide a false sense of security. Doesn’t matter whether someone is wearing gloves or not, they scratch their ass and cross-contamination is a possibility.

It goes both ways.

If I’m wearing these things while preparing my raw meat, and baby Sorenne or the dogs or Amy demands attention, I may forget I’m wearing bacterial-laden gloves and cross-contaminate.

Reminds me of 2002 when some PR type contacted me to see if I’d endorse Saran Cutting Sheets. These were the new thing, a way to reduce cross-contamination through disposable cutting sheets. The manufacturers commissioned a survey in Oct. 2002 that allegedly found that 65 per cent of Canadians are concerned about food poisoning and nearly as many, 62 per cent, feel they know how to prevent it.

After asking why anyone would want me to endorse anything, me and the PR person had a chat about the human behavior research they had done to verify that people wouldn’t cross-contaminate on these disposable sheets. They hadn’t done any such research, but insisted they knew how all Canadians would handle the new product.

I also said the sheets were unnecessary for the typical kitchen, ad the PR type assured me the sheets were for times when soap, water and cutting boards weren’t readily available, like camping.

I said, maybe there was a role for the things in such situations but without the consumer behavior research, I wasn’t endorsing anything.

When the TV blitz began, with some celebrity chef, the tagline was, Saran Cutting Sheets – No Kitchen is Complete Without Them.
 

Maple Lodge to market food safety on deli meats; will Maple Leaf follow?

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Maple Lodge Farms is Canada’s largest independent chicken processor and I’ve been to the slaughter plant in Brampton, Ontario. With all the Maple Leaf listeria stuff over the past eight months, Maple Lodge has been sorta quiet.

Until today.

Maple Lodge chief executive officer Michael Burrows unveiled a new high-pressure method of killing listeria and other bacteria in sliced luncheon meats after the package is sealed. The process applies water under extremely high pressure to the packaged product, has no adverse impact on the product itself, and has been approved by Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

So Maple Leaf, using that newfangled blogging technology, responded by saying Maple Leaf Foods was an early adopter of Ultra High Pressure (UHP) technology in Canada and began using it in Maple Leaf Simply Fresh entree products when they were introduced more than two years ago, in a bunch of other products, and will look at using it in deli meat if it can provide added food safety assurance to consumers.

Maple Leaf, seriously, you need better writers.

But this is what I like about the Maple Lodge approach:

They came out and said internal research showed consumer demand for higher levels of food safety has risen sharply in the past year, and that consumers would be willing to pay a premium of 1-2 cents per 100 grams of product to get it.

Maybe, consumers will say anything on a survey but vote with their money at checkout.

But Maple Lodge is going to label the stuff with a" SafeSure" sticker and market food safety at retail.

Good for them. Rather than lecturing consumers, let them choose. At checkout.

Stick a thermometer in cheap, stinky meat

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The quest for discounted groceries has hit the news again with South Carolina news reporter Larry Collins asking,

“Stores slash prices about 50% – 60% on meat when it is nearing the date on the packaging. But, is that food safe to eat?”

According to registered dietitian Charlotte Caperton-Kilburn, such meat is typically safe to consume as long as you cook or freeze it as soon as you bring it home… and it smells okay.

“If the meat smells even remotely strange it should be returned to the store or thrown away,” Caperton-Kilburn told the news station.

In Ireland, Darina Allen wrote in an opinion piece for the Irish Examiner that, just the other night, she found a vac-packed duck in the back of her fridge that smelled “good and high.” Rather than throw it out, she “gave it a good wash inside and out and rubbed a bit of salt into the skin and roasted it.”

Her guests said it was delicious.

Allen reminisced about life before modern conveniences like electric refrigeration and explained, “We learned from our mothers how to judge with our senses whether food was safe.” She asserted that, “in just a few years, many people have lost the ability to judge for themselves when food is safe to eat.”

While most groceries sold in the US have a date consumers can read and use, the USDA only requires manufacturers of infant formula and baby food to determine and display a “Use by” date on their products—and this is mainly for the sake of ensuring nutrient quality. The others are voluntary and only describe when the food will probably taste best. Assessing safety is still up to the consumer.

Modern technologies like stamped dates and color-changing barcodes can help consumers with that assessment, as can the senses of sight and smell. The most reliable safeguard, though, is cooking to a temperature that studies have found will effectively kill pathogens. For poultry, this is 165F.

Chefs may tell you to use your senses to figure temperature, too, but only by using a tip-sensitive digital thermometer can you know for sure.  It’s the consumer’s choice, as always, but I’d rather be sure than be positive for salmonella.
 

Sewing needles in Maple Leaf meats

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In what appears to be an isolated incident, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Loblaw Companies Limited are warning the public after 50 mm sewing needles were found in certain luncheon meat kits and wieners at the No Frills Store located on Silvercreek Parkway in Guelph, Ontario. That’s in Canada.

Hamburgers in France, steak tartare in the Netherlands linked to shiga-toxin E. coli

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Epidemiological studies conducted in France show that beef burger consumption is the main risk factor of a serious disease caused by Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli bacteria or STEC.

A quantitative risk assessment for the consumption of beef burgers containing STEC by the Agence Francaise De Securite Sanitaire Des Aliments concluded that almost 50% of children under the age of 5 eat well-done beef burgers (as well as 29% and 24% of 5-10 year olds and 10-15 year olds respectively). The proportion of beef burgers consumed rare increases with the children’s age: 10%, 17% then 20% for each of the age groups defined (under 5, 5-10 year olds and 10-15 year olds). Regarding the effectiveness of cooking (a frozen beef burger being pan-fried and turned over once), it should be noted that cooking “rare” is associated with a percentage of STEC destruction of 0% to 87% ; “medium” 37% to 96% and “well done” 94% to 99.8%. Concerning the consumption habits that prevail in French households today, these results highlight the importance of the length of cooking on STEC destruction (currently not enough), and the hygiene of beef burger production.

A place to start might be to accurately define what rare, medium and well-done actually mean, as quantified by time and temperature

Eurosurveillance reports that the Netherlands experienced a nationwide outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157 with onset of symptoms from the end of December 2008 until the end of January 2009. A total of 20 laboratory-confirmed cases were linked to the outbreak strain, serotype O157: H-, stx1, stx2, eae and e-hly positive.  The investigation into the source of this outbreak is still ongoing, but evidence so far suggests that infection occurred as a result of consuming contaminated raw meat (steak tartare). 

Jennifer Aniston eats dog biscuit – Salmonella risk?

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Dlisted reports that Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson were on Germany’s Wetten Dass… to promote that movie about a dead dog when they had to eat a doggy biscuit after losing a bet.

People magazine says that the bet was that a woman claimed she could correctly identity her team of Husky dogs just from listening to them drink soup. Jennifer and Owen and the host all indulged. People magazine even asked readers, “Have you ever tried your pet’s food?”

This is a bad idea. Salmonella has been routinely found in dried dog food and doggy treats. People worried about barfing should wash their hands after handling either – dog food or treats, Jennifer or Owen.