When little, I used to love to take some hamburger meat before my mom cooked it and eat it. I liked the taste. I’ve heard this is really unsafe and theres lots of stuff to get sick from. Was I lucky? Or was meat safer back in the 60’s?
Mmmmmmmmmm…steak tartar. Great buffet item, with thin-sliced bermuda onions and rye bread. 'Course where I grew up they called it “cannibal meat”, but I still loved it.
These days, no one feels safe eating it, so there’s not much of a demand, I suppose. However, if you took a good cut of sirloin and ran it through a clean grinder, I don’t see much of a problem.
Your brain-in-a-jar,
Myron
Imbibo, ergo sum.
From what I understand, steak tartar is ok as it is a leaner cut of meat. The diseases tend to be transferred from the fat, so normal hamburger is a little riskier.
For what it’s worth, I remember when they used to put a raw egg on the steak tartar. You don’t see that anymore.
“In this life you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.” -Elwood P. Dowd in “Harvey”
The food problems in meat come from the grinding.
Most of the bad stuff is on the surface----so if you take a steak and broil/fry/whatever ,the heat to the surface kills the bacteria.
However,if you grind the steak into hamburger the bacteria is transported into the center and the meat must be cooked “well done” to make it safe
So—rare steak? OK–rare burgers----no no!
I’ve acquired a taste for raw filet mignon at our neighborhood sushi bar (served on a little pedestal of rice, just like the sushi). My wife keeps telling me I’m going to die of ecoli or whatever, but I figure the guys behind the counter know what they’re doing. I think the secret is in how the piece of meat is cleaned and butchered. The proceedures used by those who prepare raw fish for consumption are likely to be pretty safe. I would never try to prepare it for myself at home.
I always thought the reason for not eating raw meat was the risk of getting parasites. Bacteria are not a problem if the meat is freshly killed, but I guess unless you hunt down the cow yourself you wouldn’t know how fresh it is.
No, i’m talking about ground hamburger meat.
Guess I was just lucky…
Years ago when I spent some time in Europe, I had five or six people relate the same basic story on themselves. A (then) popular dish in Belgium was filet Americain–steak tatare. (It may still be popular, but I haven’t been back to check.) Each of these college kids told of getting off the plane on their first day in Europe, walking into a restaurant, spotting filet Americain on the menu, and asking the server what it was. The server always dutifully noted that it was American hamburger, and the kids would order it as a “safe” dish to try on their first afternoon away from the States.
Their reactions to what had been served were varied (some tried it, some lost their appetitite for a day or two), but they all agreed that learning to read the actual French or Flemish/Dutch menu became a high priority.
Tom~