Food safety

If I can’t see the sushi being made, I’m leaving it be. Never had an explosive experience with sushi, but have heard enough. I’m fortunate to have a local Japanese grocer who makes it right then and there and it’s been great.

1 Like

How would being able to watch someone make it protect you from anything? Unless what you’re worried about is that the fish will get dropped on the floor or something.

1 Like

There are various stages where food safety concerns might arise with sushi or sashimi: catching fish or, more likely, harvesting shellfish in polluted waters, transportation, storage, prep, and holding until consumption. Seeing it prepared crossed that last one off the list.

1 Like

Right, but that last one can happen with any type of food. Who knows what’s going on with your hamburger behind closed doors? Or your salad, if the danger is “raw”?

2 Likes

Absolutely so behind closed doors. Remember Julia Child saying, Remember, you’re the only one in the kitchen!" Picks up chicken from floor and flops it back on the counter.

3 Likes

Culinary PTSD :cry:

2 Likes

I was worried I gave my relative a parasite after undercooking some salmon. They tested her and it came back negative. I think it was probably that I didn’t simmer the fiddleheads long enough or over a hot enough simmer, before sautéeing them. Or maybe I should have used more water to cook them. They can be poisonous if they aren’t cooked for around 10 minutes before preparing them. I haven’t cooked fiddleheads since. I don’t like them that much, anyways. That’s the only food poisoning / GI tract illness we have had in our house over the last 3 1/2 years.

1 Like

I was at my expat Brit friends’ house for dinner many years ago. What a delight - they were much older than I, world travelers, , awesome cooks, interested in everything. The menu that evening - a fruit stuffed pork roast. Beautiful. Out of the oven it came, and on the way to the platter it took a detour - to the kitchen floor. We all looked at each other, shrugged, wiped/washed off the area of impact, and muttered the variation on Julia Child’s remark: “Oh well, we’re alone in the kitchen” and proceeded to have a wonderful meal and a lovely evening, with no ill after-affects. I will raise a glass to their memory tonight.

5 Likes

Thank you for the information about how to properly cook food fiddlehead ferns.

I think they are delicious. I’ve had them in restaurants. I’ve never cooked them because I’ve never seen them for sale.

1 Like

This year, I saw a warning posted next to them at the grocery store. The last time I cooked them was in the spring of 2021.

2 Likes

Newby foragers of 'rooms and greens need to be educated, too.

2 Likes
2 Likes

I collect fiddleheads and like them, but ramps are gold.

2 Likes

We have lots of ramps.
I let them be. I like them at restaurants but I don’t pick them.

In Ontario and Quebec, trespassers harvest the ramps on other people’s property, and they’re greedy, so they often take them all, which destroys the ramp situation moving forward.

Thanks for the tip! I did this yesterday. I cracked one for an egg dip for frying fish, and it was indistinguishable from a non-pasteurized egg. Next step, avgolemono and immersion-blender mayonnaise.

4 Likes

IIRC the pasteurized eggs in the shell that I bought looked pretty identical to unpasteurized.

2 Likes

I found some ramp diggers by me, too. I’m guessing I’ll come up empty next year. Pretty easy to harvest without roots; but some folks just don’t care. Strong allium, there. Asparagus declined quickly this year. Dry June. Grr. Just a seasonal thing I like., though. Secret ingredient to my oxtail stew.

1 Like

Has anyone here gotten sick within an hour of eating sushi? I picked up udon with shrimp, and a spicy tuna roll today. I’m fine but my dining companion got sick less than an hour after eating.

We each ate 4 pieces of spicy tuna roll. She ate 5 shrimp and I had 3.
I’m trying to figure out if it could be staph or vibrio, since the illness came on so quickly.

1 Like

Were the shrimp cooked?

Since vibrio is most often associated with raw oysters, cooked shrimp would be a less likely culprit.

Is your friend immune compromised? If you’re both similarly healthy and ate the same things but only one of you got sick, I’m inclined to think it was something else.

2 Likes

Thanks for your insights, @Babette.

The shrimp were cooked fully.

I think she may have a more delicate constitution than I have right now.

It looks like staph from dirty hands (maybe from the person rolling the sushi) , or vitrio or another seafood toxin can lead to symptoms within an hour or 2 of eating. It also crossed my mind that the broth used in the soup wasn’t kept hot enough by the restaurant or was getting old.

The tuna would have been frozen by the restaurant before being used for sushi.

We had this happen once about 14 years ago, and I suspect someone put escolar or butterfish in a dish stew in Halifax. We haven’t had this kind of foodborne thing in a long time.