Page 18 - February 2022 Barbecue News Magazine

14 ways to
Meathead, AmazingRibs.com
Cooking is an act of love so let’s protect the ones we love by making sure our burgers are safe. Unfortunately, the All- American hamburger can be among the riskiest foods we serve. According to the US Cen- ters for Disease Control an esti- mated 173,000 Americans fall ill from pathogenic strains of the bacteria E-coli each year, 2,400 are hospitalized, and 21 die, many of them as a result of tainted hamburger meat.
E-coli lives in fecal matter in a steer’s gut or in manure caked on its hide. In the butchering process it can get on the meat surfaces. Fortunately bacteria are too large to get beyond the surface of meat and they die almost instantly at 160°F, so
in the course of cooking, pathogens on the sur- face are killed quite quickly and quite thor- oughly. But if you grind raw meat, contamination on the outside is now on the in- side so the USDA says best way to be sure ground meats are safe is to cook them to 160°F as measured by a digital food thermometer. That pasteurizes the meat inside and out. If you don’t have a good thermometer, AmazingRibs.com has an electrical engineer who has tested, rated, and reviewed almost 200 of them, so that’s a good place to start shopping. We don’t sell any of them but we link to sellers.
How to make medium rare burgers safely
The problem is that 160°F is well done and it can be dry. You say want a medium rare burger? Me, too. But MR is 130-135°F so to eliminate risk you need to figure out how to pasteurize it at the lower temp. There are three ways to get pasteurized meat at temps lower than 160°F.
1) Hot tub a steak. Since contamination on a whole hunk of un- ground muscle is most likely to be on the surface, if you dip a steak in boiling water (212°F) for 20 seconds before grinding it yourself, any pathogens on the outside will die. Although the ex-
terior turns gray, the meat grinds well and makes flavorful, safe, medium rare patties. The beauty of grinding your own burgers is that you can use really fresh meat and control the lean to fat ratio. Pick up a tasty cut like short ribs, brisket point, or chuck, add fat, take it for a swim in the hot tub, and grind away. You can buy an inexpensive hand crank meat grinder, or put an attachment on a KitchenAid stand mixer, or pulse the meat in a food processor. Then make delicious steakhouse-style or diner-style burgers at whatever temp you like. Here’s a video of the process https://youtu.be/7-eoiwkkZ3k
2) Sous vide que those patties. Sous vide is a method of cooking food by sealing it in an almost air-free plastic bag, then putting the bag in a temperature-
controlled water bath. You
can use a vacuum sealer to suck the air out of the bag or just slip the bag into a pot of water until the water pres- sure squeezes the air out of the bag, and then zipper it shut. You can warm the water on the stovetop or in the oven, but the best method is to use one of the many sous vide devices available. My fa- vorite is the Joule from Bre- ville. It is about the size of
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FEBRUARY 2022
make safe juicy burgers