I made another batch of the ginger brew - this time with meyer lemon and honey.
It's even better than the last batch.
I may have to offer this as a secret off-menu item. Make it ridiculous expensive - like $5 a glass. It's pretty costly to make.
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I made another batch of the ginger brew - this time with meyer lemon and honey.
It's even better than the last batch.
I may have to offer this as a secret off-menu item. Make it ridiculous expensive - like $5 a glass. It's pretty costly to make.
How can a sushi joint even operate, then? (not sarcastic, I'm curious) I mean I appreciate that rare meat is a statistically higher risk (though I maintain if it's fresh and it's cooked properly, that risk is very low), but it's across the board safer than any sushi.Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
I eat beef sahsimi at sushi joints too. I really do just enjoy raw beef.
Cooking a rare burger is hard(er). When I make my own I usually go medium rare because I'm lazy, I'm not a good cook, and meat that's been in my fridge a few days isn't the best. I'm not getting rare burgers off the grease trucks on the street either.Quote:
Also: my preference is for a medium burger. It's how I think a burger tastes best, so it's the default at the owl. To get a good sear on a rare burger is more difficult - often we'll sprinkle a little sugar on the meat to get a better crust on a rare order.
But if I'm at a restaurant it's something I expect to be available. Like a rare steak. Anything cooked past medium rare just tastes dry to me and it loses that flavor that the juice has. Makes me sad. I appreciate it's not everyone's taste, but it's one of those perks of eating at a decent place that makes me want to sit down and pay more than I would to go to the short order joint on the corner.
There's a world of difference between fish and meat. It's really about the fat that's in the meat. A land animal's fat goes rancid in a much different way than an ocean creature. You're far more likely to notice off fish than off beef. The fish fat starts to turn into ammonia when it oxidizes and gives it the distinctive "off fish" scent. Beef fat doesn't go rancid the same way - it starts to smell 'sweeter' before it smells off. Then you take into account meat sometimes having a "gamey" scent from the beginning and it's harder to tell with a quick sniff. It just takes a more trained nose.
Also, a sushi joint is more geared to storing protein below 40º at all times. Opening and closing a fridge during service makes it warm up some. It's not uncommon to find your reach in at 50º at the end of the night. The refrigeration fish joints use is a bit more on the high end. And they can literally keep the product on ice until the moment it hits a plate. There's no cooking to take into account, so the fish never even hits the temperature for bacterial growth.
When you're dealing with pre-ground beef the dangers increase dramatically. The beef has now been handled 3 times before it gets to your table. We'll be using pre ground beef for many reasons (mainly that we don't have the space to be grinding our own), but I'm confident in our purveyors and the quality of the beef we're using. Especially the local rancher stuff. I've been to the rancher's operation an know them personally - they can't hide behind a lawyer, so their product has to be fantastic to start with. Even when we do use SYSCO or Us Foods to source, we're using the grass fed higher quality option they sell.
Meat is only graded according to its fat content (select, choice, prime, and no-roll), but you can imagine that this doesn't tell the whole story. Just because a steak is well marbled doesn't mean it's quality meat. If an animal led a tough life the muscles will be tougher and less resilient than those on a pasture raised cow. Diet is a factor as well. Cows don't digest corn well and it basically just bloats them to market weight. A purchaser doesn't buy beef based on the finished poundage, they buy it based on the "hanging weight" which is what the cow weighs immediately after evisceration.
All this is a long winded way of saying you're much more likely to get fresh, quality fish than high grade beef. And the fish is more likely to be less handled, and better refrigerated.
Well that was a surprisingly detailed and informative answer.
Still, though, a rare burger is red inside, not raw pink. It's been cooked, that has to help when compared to sushi, which is just raw, no?
Rare beef is really just warmed up. It's not what I'd call cooked and hasn't reached an internal temperature capable of killing anything. There's a ring of searing around the inside that has killed any surface bacteria which is where the majority of any accumulated horror lives.
That's why ground beef is more dangerous than steak - crevices. Ground beef is like play-doh noodles all pushed together in a patty. There's a lot of surface area throughout the whole web for evil to grow.
It really just comes down to the quality of the product and the quality of the people handling it. If it's a good place you're very unlikely to get ill on a statistic level - though you most likely have been the victim of the shits many times from mild food poisoning.
I mean if I have, I've never noticed. And I've had some burgers that would be worth a shift on the bowl even if I had.
My fear of undercooked meat stems from that X-Files episode about the liver fluke people.
Wouldn't you also agree that more of the meat comes in contact with more surfaces during the grinding process? If I grind my own, I'll eat it med rare.Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
Can I get my rare burger cooked at 92 F for six hours? Can you cook the egg at that temp, too?
Make me a sandwich with that 72 hour pastrami that the Modernist Cuisine guy served to Colbert.