There is a misconception about food safety, and particularly how low you can go with low-temperature cooking. But with a temperature-controlled water bath, you can not only cook chicken to lower temperatures, but more importantly, hold it there until it's completely safe to eat. What does this mean for a home cook? It means you no longer have to put up with dry, 165°F chicken. More
Here's how to store your cheddar collection. [Photograph: steve p2008 on Flickr] More Cheese 10 Things That Make a Great Cheese Shop » All About Cheese Knives » All Serious Cheese coverage » I've had a number of SE'ers here ask for my advice on storing cheese, and luckily it's not too hard to keep your cheese happy until it's consumed. I've got a particular wrapping technique for cheese storage that I hope everyone will find useful. When I worked as a cheesemonger, we always advised our customers never to store their cheeses in direct contact with plastic, and not to wrap them too tightly. There's some science behind this, as kitchen scientist extraordinaire Harold McGee writes in his... More
Two-thirds of fresh whole broiler chickens tested by Consumer Reports in 22 states contained salmonella and/or campylobacter bacteria, the magazine reports. Air-chilled organic birds (especially store-brand birds) fared best. Among name brands, Perdue's were cleanest while 80 percent of Tyson and Foster Farms chix registered for one or both pathogens. [via Civil Eats]... More
[Image: Good.is] E. coli in beef isn't the only troublemaker out there. Check out these other sources of food poisoning from Good magazine's latest Transparency featuring the top 10 FDA-regulated foods that have made the most people sick since 1990. Related Worldwide Meat Consumption Infographic White House Food Safety Group Has Website What Makes Raw Eggs Dangerous... More
In March, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the Food Safety Working Group, chaired by the secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. The group working to upgrade the U.S. food safety system now has a website.... More
Food Safety Music is the creation of Dr. Carl Winter of the University of California at Davis. By listening to Winter's songs and watching his music videos, you can learn about bacterial contamination, irradiation, pesticides, and more! His parodies may be silly, but they're more fun than taking a typical food safety class (I should know; I've taken a few of those classes). Watch his video for Stomachache Tonight about the dangers of undercooked chicken, after the jump.... More
This week the U.S. government reported that the safety of the nation's food supply has not improved over the past three years and infections might actually be increasing. Government health official said that to regulate an "increasingly global food industry" in which foods have more chances to become contaminated, compared to a time when most foods were grown locally, the nation's food safety system "needs a thorough overhaul." [New York Times]... More
Photograph from Wikimedia Commons A few weeks back, JGordon left a comment on my post regarding France's raw-milk cheese war: "Could someone explain the difference between pasteurized cheeses and raw milk cheeses? Does pasteurization just destroy the flavor of cheese?... Despite the near-illegality of raw milk and its rare consumption, several hundred people a year become ill from drinking raw milk, with the occasional death. Is cheese safer, or is the taste difference very significant?" The raw-milk debate isn't going away anytime soon, so I thought it would be a good time to answer questions like those above and lay down my take on the matter.... More
At House hearings today, members of the U.S. Congress from both parties declared the need for immediate changes in our food safety oversight systems. Let's hope that partisan bickering won't overwhelm the need to get control of our food supply. Some choice quotes from the New York Times story on the subject: "We have before us one of the finest messes in history," said Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who accused both Congress and the White House of allowing the FDA to become incompetent.“As a result of the failure of giving Food and Drug the resources it needs,” he continued, “people are dying.” What more is there to say?... More
That's the question New York Times reporters Kim Severson and Andrew Martin raise in a terrific piece in today's paper. Here's the paragraph that really hit home: The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut butter products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold, and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification. Yikes! What's going on here? Am I the only person who bought a product made with organic peanut butter because I thought it was safer?... More
