They say you shouldn't cook burgers less than medium-well because of the bacteria in ground beef. I was starving so I made a burger real quick, about 3 min. per side. I'm wolfing the thing down when I notice the inside is pretty pink. Am I looking at food poisoning or will I probably be OK?
by TheVampyresBride
4 Comments
That’s just fine. Potentially dangerous if you’re elderly, a small child, or immunocompromised, but honest to god, the average person can get away with eating totally raw ground beef.
I like my burgers a little less done than this, even.
You would probably be okay even if you just scarfed down on the completely raw beef. It all depends on how much risk you are willing to take. A medium burger is just a tiny bit of risk rather than none at all.
Depends….is is store bought ground beef, or was it ground in-house that day?
The reason why you can eat steak rare is that bacterial contamination is on the surface, and the bacteria are destroyed by the sear.
With ground beef, what’s on the surface is spread throughout the meat. Now, if it was just ground, the bacteria haven’t had much chance to multiply within the ground beef. If it’s store bought, it’s had hours to days.
And this is the same reason why I won’t buy mechanically tenderized steaks. They’re jabbed with thousands of needles to break down the muscle fibers. That’s like thousands of hypodermics injecting bacteria into the centre of the meat. A contaminated tenderizer machine was responsible for the 2012 beef recall in Canada: [https://globalnews.ca/news/291765/timeline-of-events-2012-e-coli-outbreak-and-meat-recall](https://globalnews.ca/news/291765/timeline-of-events-2012-e-coli-outbreak-and-meat-recall)
No