Our 18 year old daughter usually orders a hamburger and french fries when we go out to a restaurant. Every now-and-then the server will ask, “How would you like your hamburger cooked?”
Is it safe to eat a hamburger cooked, say, medium rare? I’ve always been under the impression that a hamburger should be grilled well done out of safety concerns. Or perhaps it’s only safe to eat a medium rare hamburger if the meat is ground immediately before grilling?
There’s no simple answer. The handling of the meat before and after grinding, and then the actual temperature it’s been cooked to, the thickness of the burger, and how long it was held at that temperature all make a difference. Properly cooked to medium should be safe. But it could look medium, still be undercooked right in the center, and with improperly handled meat there could be enough e coli in that undercooked center to make someone sick.
In many states where I’ve eaten, it’s board of health illegal to serve a less than medium well hamburger. I’ve asked for MW as close to medium as they can.
I’ve been eating medium rare burgers all my life - in fact I had a really rare one last night- and I’ve never had so much as a tummy ache. I know at one point some places refused to serve anything cooked less than medium out of safety concerns but I never have a problem getting a pretty rare burger anywhere and I assume if it was that dangerous it wouldn’t be an option.
Pretty much this.
I’ve been to places where they refuse to cook below medium, but most places I go to that are not fast food hamburger stands give me the choice. I tend to go rare or medium rare with my thick burgers, but I like a classic thin fast food patty well done–it needs to have that crispy brown edge and by the time you get that, any fast food patty will be well done except, perhaps, if you start it from frozen.
I ask for mine to be pink inside. It frustrates me when they insist on cooking it well done.
It’s safe if the meat has been handled properly. I cook burgers at home frequently with ground beef that was bought several days ago.
If the meat has not been handled properly and is contaminated with something nasty, it’s a bigger risk with a medium rare or medium hamburger than with a steak cooked to the same degree.
If the restaurant is confident in its raw food handling practices to safely offer the option, I’ll take my burger mid-rare.
If the place looks the least bit skeevy, I’ll go for well or more likely, go for something else.
Like most things in life, I’ll choose what I prefer over what is safest. medium rare or medium at most for me.
I often see a disclaimer on restaurant menus that says something like “raw or undercooked items may cause illness”, even if there’s nothing fancy like sushi or raw oysters on the menu. I suspect this is to cover the place in the case of people ordering things like medium rare burgers or eggs over easy.
Same here, although at a restaurant I ask for medium because of the volume of meat that is handled. Medium these days usually means a bit pink in the middle, but hot. Med-rare usually means very pink and just warm. The wife likes steak tartare, so rare is her usual choice.
Personally, I like my burgers medium well, or if they’re thin and crispy sliders, well done. But that’s not for safety reasons, just personal taste. I prefer medium rare steak, I just don’t like the texture of rare ground beef.
If the restaurant isn’t comfortable cooking my burger medium rare, I’ll go somewhere else.
Lately I’ve been getting steaks, grinding them, then cooking them sous vide to rare, then doing a 15 second sear. Excellent burgers!!
ETA: Cite (1/2 pound rare burger)
It used to be that Medium was just warm, so I had to order Medium-Well just to get good taste. This has changed and Medium is cooked and hot. I’ve learned to grill after decades and cook so that the pink is just about to disappear. This is the point where the meat is hot, still juicy, and has not begun to dry out.
It’s honestly not just the restaurant, a lot of e. coli contamination happens in processing before the meat ever gets to the restaurant. So even the best restaurant in the world, that sources its meat from the best suppliers, can end up with e. coli in their meat.
This is one reason health authorities in many countries outright prohibit anything less than “fully cooked” ground beef.
Now, for me, it’s all a matter of percentages. No restaurant can guarantee to me that a mid-rare burger is safe. But that’s how I order them–because the % chance any given piece of beef has e. coli is low, and you won’t always get sick from ingesting e. coli, and you won’t always get super sick. So basically the risk v reward for me comes down on the side of med rare burgers.
It would all be much easier if gamma ray irradiation were permitted. Doesn’t change anything about the food but ensures the food is sterile.
But your burger may hulk up and turn green.
Where does the term “mid-rare” come from? Is it a regionalism? I’ve never heard it before.
A typo, I meant to type med-rare ;).
Entirely depends on the burger and the place, as stated. If the burger is thin patty, then well-done. If the place serves a thicker hamburger, then medium-well. Nothing less than that with ground beef unless I’m eating steak tartar. I may want my steak rare, but that doesn’t mean I want my burger that way.
Most of the better restaurants don’t source their ground beef from elsewhere… they grind it on site. If this is the case there is very little risk if you have it done less than medium well.
