Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I started this two days ago. I used ultra-pasteurized heavy whipping cream and cultured buttermilk. It took more like 24 hours before it thickened, but that may have been due to the cool temperature of the house (64 during the day and 56 at night). It tastes great. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. Creme fraiche in my morning oatmeal?

CARNITAS preferably given a final fry in lard.

@ Kenji -

Buy your meat from a trusted butcher who grinds their meat on-site (many supermarkets do this), or grind it yourself, and you'll greatly minimize that risk!

I like a medium rare burger as much as the next guy, but I don't eat them anymore because of the E. coli risk. Did you know the USDA allows meat companies to knowingly ship solid cuts of beef with E. coli on their exterior? The justification is that solid cuts get seared on the outside before eating, eliminating the risk. But when a local butcher or supermarket grinds their own hamburger onsite, the bacteria are distributed throughout the interior. Exterior searing no longer kills all the pathogens. There has been more than one E. coli outbreak due to locally-ground beef.

One thing that might work: a quick par-boil of the solid cut, maybe 30-seconds or so, followed by a home-grind on a sanitized machine. You'd end up with little cooked bits throughout an otherwise rare burger, but all the wee beasties would be dead.

It's common for those who have never experienced the effects of Salmonella to be cavalier about it. Those who have are often more cautious. In 2007, a reporter from the LA Times described his experiences following an infection with Salmonella traced to undercooked eggs. Big egg companies are doing a better job in recent years of keeping Salmonella out of raw eggs, but to risks are still meaningful when viewed at the national level. The risks are especially severe for young children, the elderly, and people who already have other illnesses - you know, many of the people we love.


That said, this sounds like an over-reaching inspector. The federal model food code allows restaurants to serve raw or undercooked eggs, as long as the restaurant discloses to presence of raw eggs to the customer and reminds them of the risks. The disclosure and reminder typically need to appear on the menu.

It took me a little while to warm up to In-N-Out's fries. At first, it seemed weird that they were made out of, you know, actual potatoes.

Pioneer Woman's Sweet Potatoes! That's gotta rock.

I really appreciate AB's concern for food safety. Nobody thinks they've ever sickened anyone, but the millions of people that get foodborne illnesses every year suggest otherwise. Around 80% of chickens sampled have campyloacter and/or salmonella. I'd bet the numbers are pretty high for turkey, too. Use a thermometer, like AB suggests, and make sure all parts of the bird and/or stuffing reach 165 for safety.

Does a carnitas experience count? If so, Las Fuentes in Reseda, CA. They drip with manteca goodness.

Good points re: handwashing. It's very important. Unfortunately it's not happening nearly enough. If it did, we wouldn't be having hundreds of outbreaks every year from foodworker's poop ending up in food.

Can people cross-contaminate with gloves on? Yes. Can people cross-contaminate with bare hands? Yes. Both happen all the time, unfortunately. The purpose of the gloves is not to prevent cross-contamination. The purpose of gloves is to cover up poop on the fingers of foodworkers who don't wash their hands well after using the toilet.

To reduce outbreaks, we need to emphasize three things: employees shouldn't work when sick, they must wash their hands, and they should wear gloves (or use utensils) to handle food.

He has apparently learned nothing from the Fat Duck outbreak. He and his students continue to touch people's food with their bare hands, running the risk of fecal-oral diseases like norovirus.

Great discussion. There are plenty of things everyone along the food chain - farmers, brokers, processors, distributors, and retailers - can do to preserve the microbiological safety of the food we eat. Food safety is fundamentally not about marketing designations like organic, local, sustainable, kosher, halal, etc. Its about whether or not the food safety risks have been properly controlled. Just because you can theoretically see your local organic farmer's face at the farmer's market, doesn't mean that he or she knows anything about managing the microbiological safety of the food or that he or she has made the personal commitment to do so. Food that's grown outside under God's blue sky will never be perfectly safe to eat - there are too many variables. But the farmer and others along the food chain can minimize the risks by learning about and applying sound food safety principles. There probably is some value in us, as consumers, buying food that has had a shorter food chain - i.e. buying directly from the farmer - because there have simply been fewer people in the mix and less opportunity for someone to screw something up. But being able to see the farmer is not a guarantee of safety.