On cooking pork and handling meat

A very pleasant grilled pork chop (more truly a rack of pork) with mole at Don Juan showed a pinkish cast Saturday night, which reminded me of my rebellion against FDA guidelines on cooking pork. To wit, since there have been no reported cases of Trichina in the US for decades, I am not overcooking my meat to protect me against a very unlikely threat. Outside the US my attitude is markedly different.

I also am not terribly afraid of leaving meat unrefrigrated for a while, though I balance that by rinsing the meat off carefully before cooking. And washing my hands and all surfaces carefully abd repeatedly.

Curious how others approach this.

I'd say err in the favor of keeping meats cool as long as possible, but there should be no problem in allowing a steak or chop to come up to room temperature before cooking..

Regarding trichinosis, you're right. Trichinosis is pretty much nonexistent nowadays in commercial pork, largely because hogs are fed real food instead of slop/garbage (the slop would sometimes contain brain/spinal fluids of other hogs, leading to trichinosis, is my understanding). As a result you can pretty safely cook your chops to a medium or medium well, or whatever. Don't sue me if you get sick, though

regarding washing your cutting boards and such, I'd still definitely recommend doing that. With poultry it's obviously a must, but also especially with beef. Most e. coli resides on the surface of a cut steak (not inside the meat) due to contamination at the meatpacking plant, butcher, or whatever.

Searing meat generally kills off the e. coli very quickly, which is why steaks can be cooked to medium rare or rare while burgers are generally cooked further... (grinding the meat mixes the surface of the cut steak in with the rest of it, so the e. coli is spread about fairly evenly throughout the patty).

However, since your cutting board never gets seared like the steak does, e. coli can hang around on that thing and spread and grow and make you unhappy.

Unlike trichinosis, e. coli is only life threatening usually to children/elderly/people with weak immune systems. Adults can expect a ton of pain and suffering and such from an e. coli or salmonella infection, but they probably won't need to be hospitalized.

The biggest tip I have for making burgers you can cook to medium rare is to either

a: buy steaks and grind the meat yourself in a meat grinder or food processor
b: go only to butchers you know grind the meat in small batches
c: if you must go to a larger grocery store, buy the meat that they've packed themselves, not stuff packed by emmpack or one of the other giant meat packing companies.

basically, avoid any ground beef packed by the largest of the meat packing companies. they run their operations faster and cheaper than the smaller places in order to cut costs, and they grind far more meat per batch as well, so literal tons of beef will be ground before the machine is cleaned. Cross-contamination galore.

This is also why one "mad cow" in a meat packing plant is bad news -- that beef is likely to end up in thousands or tens of thousands of packages of meat, far more than if that one cow were sent to a local butcher and processed locally.

-ed

Ed-

Just a quick distinction in your post. Below is a link to the CDC fact sheet on trichinosis. It's a bit over-conservative in the case of your post, but particularly where health concerns are involved, it pays for us to simply link to an offical site rather than provide an off the cuff answer.

Trichinosis was spread by feeding animals raw meat, not just the spine and brains. Feeding animals the central nervous system, including spine and brains is how BSE or "mad cow" is spread. Feeding animals raw meat or CNS are both discouraged (maybe unlawful) practices.

Just a bit of trivia, the crystallis of the trichonella larvae digest in stomach acid allowing the bloom or hatching. Pigs have a digestive track more like humans, one stomach or rather they are not ruminants (redigest by chewing cud), that is why trichinosis was more commonly found in non-ruminant animals like pigs. It is also found in other wild non-ruminant animals.

Anyway...read the fact sheet below on trichinosis.


http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites ... inosis.htm

Regards,
Peter

Hi,

Trichinosis is alive and well in Europe. In that part of the world, pork cooked through is the only way to go.

In our country, you can have your pork a delightful pink rather than solid white thoroughly cooked through because trichinosis has been so well eradicated.

CAthy2

ahh, thanks peter. definitely a better way to handle it.

dicksond wrote: I am not overcooking my meat to protect me against a very unlikely threat. Outside the US my attitude is markedly different.

I also am not terribly afraid of leaving meat unrefrigrated for a while, though I balance that by rinsing the meat off carefully before cooking. And washing my hands and all surfaces carefully abd repeatedly.

Curious how others approach this.

Same as you, except I'm pretty poor at the repeatedly part.

I mean, to hear people on the Food Network talk, you have to hose your entire house down with ammonia if a chicken breast enters the place.
How likely is one to get salmonella from, say, an unwitting scrape of the knife across raw poultry before using it again to actually eat?

Its all those dang lawyers!! Oops, I am one. I have had this discussion with many of my friends, both lawyers and non-lawyers...with the amount of fear that comes from nannyisms, its a wonder some folks get out of bed. In other words, I am agreeing with your "its foolish to hose the whole house down" point.

That said, I would shy from discussing or more accurately speculating about the causes and effects of certain food handling techniques on this site. Much the same as you don't want your kids learning about sexually transmitted diseases on the street corner, there are much, much better sources out there for this sort of information and they are only a few clicks away.

I believe the forum hopes to have a resource page up shortly which should reduce the number of clicks away to two or three.

Regards,
Peter

so this in an e-mail from cooks illustrated and thought it was a good explanation of what is needed to know and follow to allow for food safety.
Pork Paradox
Guidelines for cooking pork to temperatures as high as 190 degrees
originated decades ago when pork was much fattier, its quality was
inconsistent, and fears of trichinosis ran high. Today the risk of
trichinosis is nearly nonexistent; only 13 human cases of trichinosis
were confirmed in 2002, and the source of contamination for eight of
those cases was wild game. What's more, even when the trichina
parasite is present, it is killed when the temperature of the meat
rises to 137 degrees. However, other pathogens, including salmonella,
are not killed at this low temperature. That is why both the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the National Pork Board recommend
cooking pork to a final internal temperature of 160 degrees. What to
do? We cook pork to a final internal temperature of 145 degrees (the
roasts or chops are often taken out of the oven at a lower internal
temperature, tented, and then allowed to rise to their final
temperature), but, if safety is your key concern, follow the
USDA guidelines.

Hope this helps
Paulette

The USDA has revised its guidelines for cooking pork. The previous guidelines said pork should be cooked to 160 degrees. The new guidelines indicate 145 degrees with a three minute rest (except for ground pork which should still be cooked to 160 degrees because of salmonella).

For safety, the USDA recommends cooking ground pork patties and ground pork mixtures such as meat loaf to 160 °F. Cook all raw pork steaks, chops, and roasts to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F as measured with a food thermometer before removing meat from the heat source. For safety and quality, allow meat to rest for at least three minutes before carving or consuming. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook meat to higher temperatures.

See http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/Por ... dex.asp#19

Here is some reaction from local chefs and others:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/ ... 6286.story

Good news! Now if the industry would put some fat back into the loins........