07 December 2013

More On Food Safety, Internal Temperature, and Pathogens

or possibly moron food safety:

I'm really not bothered. I have never gotten sick from my own cooking and very, very rarely from restaurant cooking. I use raw eggs all the time. You can pasteurise eggs by holding them at 57C  internal for two hours. The proteins haven't denatured so it still looks and works exactly like a raw egg. I never do that because I use good eggs and also don't care. YMMV.

I eat rare beef, pink pork, pink poultry. I love oysters. I've gotten violently ill from bad oysters but they are worth it. I've gotten sick a few times from restaurant food. This can be down to poor hygiene by the food handlers or it can be from bad ingredients improperly cooked or tainted raw veg.

If you are nervous about food pathogens for whatever reason -- and some people have very good reason to be --  but still don't want to overcook things, definitely study the pathogens, study the time vs. temp data, get a good thermometer, and be disciplined in your cooking.

1 comment:

JustJoeP said...

having been violently ill while on business travel in China and Taiwan, 3 out of 13 times I've visited those countries - all while being Very Careful about what I ate - I can relate.

I also got violently ill for 3 solid says in North Carolina while being a strappingly healthy 19 year old while traveling with Steve Young to go visit his mom who was working in Carey NC (my very first encounter with food poisoning) - so I know it is not all internationally related.

Fresh ingredients from reliable sources, sanitary SOPs, and good kitchen hygiene, most food borne illness can be avoided.