There is a local chain here that proudly serves its burgers at medium doneness. Apparently they pasteurize their beef before grinding to kill off the bad bugs.
We had been eating our steaks medium-well for years when I was served a steak that was about 2 inches thick and was red and bloody inside…what a beautiful experience. Now we go for rare to medium-rare.
IIRC, blue rare is named that because after cooking, you are still able to see the blue ink from the stamp on the outside of the side of beef (from grading).
Chicago is charred on the outside, but cool on the inside, right?
Called a “bleu” from the French, the colour IIRC comes from a very swift turning in hot butter.
A recipe for Steak Tartare
One Cecil’s little elves also mentions it here.
MsWhatsit, you nailed it. What bacteria present in less-than-well-done meat is harmful to AIDS patients but perfectly acceptable for the rest of us? My only guess is that it’s a percentages game (ie if even one bacterium survives and you’ve got AIDS, you might be screwed). But that doesn’t even make sense in light of the “ALL bacteria die at 160 degrees” data you cited to begin with.
Strange.
Let me restate:
Since air doesn’t transfer heat very well, the air temp has to be around 325 in order to trasfer enough heat to the meat to raise its temperature to around 160.
It’s a problem of energy transfer.
IANAP(athologist), So this is open to correction by anybody smarter than me.
But basically What I understand is this. The big problem with raw steak is E. Coli obviously. There are lots of strains of helpful E. Coli that run around our bodies, doing good things, but there is one particular bad strain that is also running around the world. In eating non sterilized meat, you run a decent chance of getting some Bad E. coli. With an immune system running at full speed, the body quickly reacts to the Bacteria, and destroys it either immediatly unnoticed, or after a mild infection(which both probably happen fairly often). Not being a doctor, I’m not able to go into numbers, but a healthy adult generally doesn’t have much to worry about from raw beef(mmmmm Carpaccio), except possibly a half-day case of the runs and feeling bad, which most likely wouldn’t even been recognized as being poisioned.
However someone with a compromised immune system(like an AIDS Patient) or young kid(whose probably doesn’t have the ability to react quickly enough) may not be able to fight off small amounts of the bacteria, an has a decent threat of becoming a full-scale infection. IIRC the Bacteria releases a toxin that causes intestinal bleeding, and can be fatal, especially in babies who don’t have much resiliance yet.
catholicguy—that makes more sense, but in the case of, say, the bacon i’ve got at home that says “cook at 325 degrees,” we’re not talking about an oven, we’re talking about a frying pan. so it’s not the air that’s doing most of the heat transfer anyway.