Of course I like my steak medium rare, but I doesn't always come out perfectly evenly.
Sometimes the steak has a thick part and a thin part. Sometimes, I don't know, maybe
I'm just not he world's greatest cooker of steak, crazy idea! So when I make it, I always
try to tack toward it being a little bit too rare. I'd really rather have one little part
of it be rare and the rest of it be perfectly medium rare, than one little part of it be
medium rare and the rest of it be medium. Because who eats their steak medium? I'm sorry,
I don't mean to judge you.
But what makes this rare piece of steak totally safe to eat, when it’s quite dangerous to
eat a rare chicken breast or maybe even a rare hamburger? Well, let’s head to the
Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia and talk to its director, Dr. Francisco
Diez-Gonzalez.
“When the muscle has been intact, let’s say in a piece of red meat, the contamination
might be at the surface. So, as long as it’s been perfectly cooked on the surface, then
it most likely is going to be safe to consume.”
If you want to understand why that’s the case, you gotta think through some kinda gruesome
stuff. A lot of the bugs in beef that can make you sick, like E. coli? They don’t
really live in the muscle itself. They live in — let’s just say — the animal's digestive
system.
“You could also have other pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella, that could also be carried
by cattle in their intestinal tract and eventually, when the animal is slaughtered, the carcass
could get contaminated, and it could still be on the surface. But if you cook it well,
you won’t have any problems.”
That’s why the equation with ground beef is totally different. The outside part of
the muscle that might have been exposed to those gut germs in the slaughterhouse has
been mixed in with all of the other parts of the meat. The outside is on the inside.
Salmonella and E. coli can be particularly heat resistant, so that's why the expert advice
is to cook ground beef to 160 F. That's a lot.
Now what about chicken? You’re supposed to cook chicken all the way through to 165
F, regardless of whether it’s ground, or in a whole piece, or in a whole bird. What
gives?
“Chicken, there’s plenty of evidence in the scientific literature that the pathogenoc
bacteria can be internalized inside of the chicken pieces. So you should not compromise
on eating a half-cooked piece of chicken, because that’s the possibility, you will
find organisms such as Campylobacter or Salmonella, that they’re still alive and may still make
you sick.”
Alright, 165 F for poultry. How about fish?
“It varies from species to species, but in the case of fish, we’re eating a lot
of sushi right now.”
And by “we,” Dr. Diez means you and me, not him. He’s kinda squicked out by raw
fish, perhaps as an occupational hazard of being an expert on food-borne pathogens, but..
“Being very honest, regarding the literature, if you look at how many cases of sushi — related
to its consumption — there are not that many, actually, it’s gotta be acknowledged.”
One reason for that might be that a lot of even very good fish these days has been flash-frozen.
“Freezing can kill some pathogens, such as Vibrio. Freezing, it helps.”
Lastly, let’s talk about pork. The United States Department of Agriculture used to recommend
cooking whole cuts of pork to 160 F. This was guidance that basically every competent
cook ignored. And indeed, in 2011, the feds relaxed a little bit and said that 145 F is
just fine as long as you let it rest for a couple of minutes to let the internal temperature
go up a little bit, which is a good thing to do anyway. And 145 F post-rest is gonna
look like this — slightly pink pork. Very tasty.
The old, more conservative guidance was based in part on fear of Trichinosis, a really terrible
parasitic disease. But thanks in part to improved practices from the pork industry, cases of
Trichinosis are way down in the United States, and most people who get it here seem to get
it these days from wild game.
That said, bacteria like Salmonella can still be an issue with pork, mostly on the outside
of the muscle, for the same reasons as beef. So pink pork chops are just fine, but pink
sausage is a bad idea.
You know, I think it’s totally impossible to write cooking show copy that doesn't inspire
certain people to make immature joke. I’ve tried. I’ve failed.