My grandma will never let us eat raw eggs in batter because she is paranoid about salmonella. Are there any documented cases of people actually becoming seriously ill from sneaking a bite of dough? And if so why do people eat cookie dough in ice cream? Does the freezing kill bacteria? And how about old key lime pie recipes where you don’t cook the pie? Can you kill the bacteria (by freezing of the like) and make the pie okay to eat or do I need a new cookbook?
palmolive*
Grandma loves you, honey.
I quote from a recent (7/1/99) Government Accounting Office report:
It’s more of a deal if you have health problems to begin with, or if your immune system is already compromised, but even if you’re 100% healthy, is that bit of raw cookie dough worth being so sick over?
your humble TubaDiva
sorry to be such a spoilsport
Cookie Dough Ice Cream is made from pasturized eggs. Thus it is safe. Ahhh another one of my favorite childhood memories gone. Remember how we fought each other as kids to see who could lick the spoon. Maybe this is why kids today grown up deprived?
I do actually know someone who got horribly sick from eating raw cookie dough. However, that doesn’t deter me in the slightest from licking the beaters. I eat french silk pie made from raw eggs too.
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
Bah humbug to all the statisticians out there! Is there the possibility? Sure, but there’s also the possibility of getting hit by a car.
Personnaly, I love fresh cookie dough. I don’t like the ice cream though. I like the dough before the chocolate chips go in. Just brown sugar, butter, flour and eggs. Yumm!!! I also like raw hamburger for the record, but maybe that’s too much information. Feel free to retch now. 
I love a milkshake with an egg in it. Not for any protein suppliment, but because the whites made it thicker and gave it a slight flavor which mingles so well with the malt and chocolate.
Alas, in NC you cannot use a raw egg in anything in a reatsurant. You also cannot get a burger with any pink in it - All ground beef has to be cooked all the way through.
Well, I never once got sick consuming eggs in shakes and medium rare burgers, and I hate the fact that my state won’t let me have it my way…
Brian O’Neill
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I have a few bites of raw cookie dough when I make them, couldn’t be more than a 1/4 teaspoon of egg in there (BTW I like mine with the choc chips and nuts in it!) But I do make my own mayonnaise with a whole egg and canola oil. I’ve had people freak over that but I’ve been doing it for YEARS and have never gotten sick. Maybe it’s just because I have a stomach of cast iron or a great constitution.
I rarely, maybe once every five years or so, get sick with a cold or something like that. And I’ve only had the flu once (the year I got a flu shot, incidentally. I think it was a shot for the wrong flu type). I don’t think I’d let kids eat it, though, since they are smaller and more susceptible to illness.
I remember seeing something like “Medical Detective” where a kid ate a wad of raw hamburger and it almost killed him. But I’ve never had the compulsion to eat raw meat. Maybe you have some werewolf blood in you if you do have that compulsion!
You can count the number of apples in one tree but never the number of trees in one apple.
you can’t get a medium rare steak in NC? Remind me not to go there.
Last (and best) steak I’ve had was at an Outback steakhouse. Medium rare, juicy, and when I cut it, it actually bled a little. Mmm.
Then again, I love the taste of blood. I’ve heard some people don’t, but I find that odd. Have you ever really tasted it?
Exqueeze me? You go to Rice (from your profile) and the best steak you’ve had is at an Outback?
Oh, my son, you’re missing the wonders of the universe! Houston was made for good steak.
Try Zagat’s . I can personally recommend Lynn’s and Brenner’s. And The Palm and Morton’s, while chains, generally do a good job. You’ll cough up an extra few bucks, but you’ll remember the rare, perfect steaks for months.
Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine
I actually got up the nerve to try Steak Tartare (that’s raw steak, chopped fine with a raw egg and fresh diced onions and herbs) when I was in Paris. Ahh! C’est magnifique! Those French can make ANYTHING taste good!
A clarification - you can get STEAK cooked rare in North Carolina. But HAMBURGER and GROUND BEEF have to be cooked Medium-Well or Well Done by law.
While we have had confirmation of the seriousness of salmonella poisoning, the orignal question hasn’t really been answered.
There are many foods that use raw eggs (homemade ice cream for one). Does freezing kill the salmonella?
Manhattan, I did say the best steak I’ve had lately. This is the summer, and I’ve not had an opportunity to be around the good restaurants recently. Besides, until that particular steak, I always ordered medium-well, just because that’s how they always cooked 'em at home.
I’ll keep those restaurants in mind. My girlfriend shares the same taste I do in most things, so good restaurants are a great find.
JAB - I think I did answer your question. They use Pasturized eggs in products calling for raw eggs. Thus they are safe. You can get these at health food stores. Very expensive though.
To all of you who have claimed “I’ve never gotten sick from eating raw eggs (in dough, shakes, pies, whatever)…” –
I have a question for you: Have you ever had a 24 hour flu whose symptoms were only vomiting and/or diarrhea (with a slight fever)? Have you ever had stomach or intestinal cramping without being sick in any other way?
If you answered yes to either question, then most likely you had food poisoning. Most probably from salmonella. Most probably from under- or uncooked meat or eggs. It wasn’t bad enough to send you to the hospital or the coroner. And that’s the problem with people’s perception of food poisoning. They only think of worst case scenarios and forget that the poisioning can be mild. But it was food poisoning and not a viral infection.
So, be careful in thinking you were never struck with food poisoning – you just may have, many times over.
[Totally tangential – many people who develop an allergy they never had before mistake their symptoms as that for a common cold.]
Peace.
No and yes but, ummmm, for a different reason. 
Freezing is not a good way to kill bacteria. It just slows down their rate of reproduction. In fact, some bacteria thrive in the freezer, for example Listeria, which is why you’re not supposed to eat meat that’s been in your freezer for several months. And did you know pregnant women should never, ever eat bologna or other processed meats because Listeria can cause severe birth defects (without the mom ever having any symptoms)?
Hamburger must be cooked thoroughly because the grinding mixes fecal material through the meat. Steaks can be pink in the middle because cooking kills the bacteria in the fecal matter on the surface. (If you poke the raw steak with a fork, you’re carrying fecal matter into the center of the steak.)
Eggs are becoming MORE dangerous as time goes by. In the days of yore, some eggs had salmonella bacteria on the surface. If you washed them first, they were safe to eat raw. Now the salmonella is inside the chickens and inside the eggs. One in three chickens is infected with salmonella and this percentage is growing. It’s estimated that each American has food poisoning about three times every year.
I don’t have the sources for these stats right off hand, but I can produce them if necessary. I had to memorize all this stuff in school. 
I usually hate it when a thread gets sidetracked to a different topic, but I just have to say this.
While I am sure most towns have legitimate steak houses that serve a better steak, if you are ever in a strange city where you don’t know the restaurants and want a good piece of meat, try the Bourbon Street Steak at Applebees.
It comes on a sizzling platter so that the last bite is still hot. And when I say sizzling platter, I mean sizzling platter. I’ve been to many places where the platter feels about as hot as you would expect it to be out of the dishwasher. But the platter at Applebees is hot enough that the wooden holders made for them show singe marks from the contact.
One word of advice, though. Order the steak a bit rarer than you usually like it, since the meat continues to cook at the table.
Who’s doing that estimating? That sounds like a ridiculously high number.
(Btw… I’m 46 years old and have never had food poisoning in my life).
Ditto for me.