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I’ve got a cast iron stomach and can eat anything and get away with it, but I never, ever eat undercooked meat any more. I used to eat bacon that was barely warm, now that’ll twist your gut. Nowadays there’s way too much danger from E Coli to risk it.
People can eat rare steaks because steaks tend to be cut off in whole pieces from the cow and if cooked on the outside, rarely are contaminated on the inside. Ground beef, on the other hand, is mixed and ground with beef from hundreds of cows, inside and out. One sick cow can contaminate 8 tons of beef. That's why hamburger recalls are so huge.
As long as the temperature of the cooked patty is sufficient, it really doesn't matter if the beef is pink or not. Having said that, after reading umpteen books over the years about various epidemics and things, I don't think I'd eat a rare burger and I'm even leery about pink.
By the way, the library has a full section of books where e coli, SARS and other virus-caused epidemics are explained in layman's terms, so if anyone wishes to educate themselves about rare hamburger, it's pretty easy to do so.
The thing with e coli is you can play the odds and never get sick. But if you do get sick, you're going to get really, really sick, possibly contract HUS or even die. Your choice.
You can get E Coli from plenty of other foods. Hell, you can apparently get it from romaine lettuce. It's still pretty ahem ... uncommon (despite what the news media and social media would have you believe).
I think what you're most in danger of at this point stressing yourself out to the point of making yourself sick.
Agreed.
I like beef rare. In fact, I make my own steak tartare, so I'm eating raw ground beef & raw egg. I love it. Never been ill, in 30-yrs. I eat sushi, as well, regularly, which is raw fish.
Can you get ill? You can get ill if someone sneezes on you. In the future, don't be afraid to send back something not to your liking. Not everyone likes raw, rare or even med-rare. One of my brothers won't eat beef unless it's burnt to a crisp. So be it... he's paying for it. The rest of us like rare to med-rare.
When I was a kid (about 12) I went through a burger cooking phase. I would make them pretty rare. It seemed like each time I would be thinking, Maybe the next time I'll do it just a little less cooked.
I was at an Irish pub type place (wings, beer, sandwiches, etc) a couple of hours ago and ordered a cheeseburger medium rare. I understand the risks, but this place is very clean and specializes in sandwiches, salads, stuff like that. However, when I got the burger, it was even rarer than I had expected, but I decided to eat it anyway because it didn't look that terrible and certainly tasted fine to me. This was definitely the rarest burger I have ever eaten, and pieces of the pink meat were literally falling onto my plate when I picked it up. It was one of those instances where I don't think I should have done what I did, but it's too late now. I have been worried ever since we got the check, but so far I feel nothing, however it's only been about 3 hours. When I told my grandfather and asked him what he thought, he looked really concerned and said, "You're in for it later tonight." I have no idea whether this place grinds their own meat, but I wouldn't imagine so. I also didn't see a disclaimer written on the menu, but being that the menu was a few pages long, it could have been somewhere else besides underneath the burger section. So my main question is how long will it take before I know that I am home free? Also, are the odds really greatly in the favor of me getting dangerously ill, like to the point of hugging the toilet and requiring hospitalization? I'm really just looking for answers to the questions and not for people to tell me I did a stupid thing. If it helps, this place is not a fancy restaurant, but not a dump or a chain either. Just a run-of-the-mill Irish pub.
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