In most cases, I prefer my fish nearly raw, my beef medium rare, and my white meats cooked through. However, I will admit the more time I spend tasting and eating, the more my standards of doneness slide towards bloody. I imagine that if I do this long enough, I’ll be chewing on the beating heart of a cow within the next decade.
Actually, I just grossed myself out, so maybe I’ll sear the heart over a fire for a second or two before chowing. That being said, the following form Susan Burton over at Slate grosses me out too:
I prefer my meat cooked through, gray, no trace of pink. Shoe leather? To me that signifies “food safety.” Mine is the hockey-puck, the charcoal, the hunk of tuna that is still on the grill.
Those are the opening sentences of an essay exploring the changing American standards of cooked meat temperatures. It’s a fascinating read that delves into “meat hipsters,” raw beef fetishists (same thing, I guess), and overwhelming fears of food safety—fears I know I should heed more often.
However, I’m happy to report in the years I’ve been eating adventurously (raw, buttered Ethiopian beef dishes, Elk tartar, unintentionally raw fried chicken) I’ve never once developed a food bourn illness. This either means I’m a lucky bastard, or our food fears are terribly overblown.
Either way, I am a firm believer that the less you cook most food, the better it is. Unless, of course, your braising the hell out of some deliciously fatty oxtail. That’s well-done I can get behind.
So, Blogtownies, how are you taking your steak these days?
Run the cow through a warm kitchen before clubbing it at my table
I am terrified of raw chicken. For reals.
My favorite growing up was a Cannibal Sandwich. Raw ground beef and mayo mixed together and served on a hamburger bun. Only need one and you will be stuffed to the gills. Try to get the leanest beef you can. mmmmmmm sammich!
I prefer my steak medium rare, hamburger cooked to medium and chicken cooked through. I find chicken to be the hardest one though. The line between perfectly cooked chicken and slightly overcooked and completely dry and tough chicken is a very fine one.
French steak tartare: you buy the patty all pre-made and bright-red, and instead of cooking it you put an egg yolk on top. Uncork wine. Enjoy.
If you’re eating farm-raised meat butchered in a clean environment, you have nothing to worry about. The only reason our food safety standards are so obscenely strict is that we raise our animals in factory environments that might as well have been purpose-built to spread disease.
I’m a vegetarian, but I remember how great it was to eat steak with mashed potatoes stained pink from the blood. My family was all about food safety, and my dad has been known to microwave (!) a freshly grilled hamburger because he saw pink in the middle. Somehow I got past that and learned to enjoy food that was just cooked enough to be at serving temperature. Boiled broccoli? Gross and floppy. Blanched broccoli? Crisp and flavorful.
I also only ate scrambled eggs as a kid, because I thought runny yolks were gross. A couple years ago, I sent food back at brunch because the eggs were on the cooked side of over medium instead of over easy.
Raw chicken? Please explain, PAC. Everything I’ve ever seen/heard says to scrub and sanitize everything raw chicken’s touched within a mile radius. How can my beautiful insides handle this?
Yay! Kitfo!
My husband has studied microbiology and therefore cooks everything to a dry puck. I’ve finally learned to just rescue my food earlier. He’s getting a little better, though. I’m with you — fish raw, beef almost raw, chicken/pork barely cooked. I’ve eaten some raw chicken too, when I couldn’t be arsed to cook longer after my “it’s done” guess was wrong.
@PDXwahine
In a previous life I was a nursing student. I took a terrifying semester of microbiology, and the associated micro lab, and came out with the conclusion I should be more afraid of having my flesh eaten off by a hospital MRSA infection than a mere 24 hours of intestinal discomfort from a delicious, if tainted, meal.
I’ve had campylobacter, and I still eat my steak rare as can be…
Any chance for less meat stories? I’ve never met a non-vegetarian Mercury reader.
@Bill
You’re right. It’s been pretty meat heavy ’round here. Probably the weather. I’ll try to give the veg set equal time.