The article pointed out that we wouldn’t get sick. A few times, my pork roast was a bit undercooked. True, it was tender, juicy and still a bit pink, we didn’t get sick, but we felt a bit uncomfortable although it was delicious.
How about you? How’s your cooking of pork? Will you eat pink meat?
Trichinosis has been virtually eradicated from the US pork industry. The major trichinosis vector today is bear meat, not pork. Think of how many folks eat bear meat vs. pork, and that will give you an idea of how safe pork is. Here’s a quote from an article, “the odds of getting trichinosis from eating pork sold at retail stores is only 1 in 154 million.”
A friend recently got a pork tartare dish at a German restaurant and lived. I wouldn’t do it, but mainly because I don’t like the texture of raw meat. 145F works for me.
Absolutely, no fear here. I usually cook tenderloin no higher than 135, maybe 140. I’m fine with raw preparations too, although those I have encountered tend to be made of previously cured (though not always hot cured) meat. I’m thinking specifically of a spread I had at a winery in Austria - not sure what it was, exactly, but it tasted just like raw ground bacon. Absolutely fantastic on brown bread.
I have no problem with pink meat but I don’t like undercooked meat. There is still a lot of confusion that pink equals uncooked and (oddly) that pink is no reason to suspect it isn’t cooked.
I recently sent back a chicken dish in a restaurant that was obviously undercooked. The server pushed back that the blood by the bone was fine and pink was OK to eat…I had to point out that the texture of the meat showed it was clearly not cooked.
Cooked and pink is a tricky area as the temperature for the oxidation of myoglobin is affected by so many variables so I tend to rely on the temperature when cooking and texture when I eat out.
Once I had chicken carpaccio in a Zurich restaurant, completely raw. I figured, foolishly, that if they are offering it, they must know what they are doing. I suffered no ill effects from the dish, but it was far from the most enjoyable chicken I have ever eaten.
Once in a restaurant in Rome, whose name I forget, but it had a Michelin star at the time, I ate raw shrimp. Again, with no ill effects, but again, not to my taste.
Raw shrimp is common with sushi, but they need to be very fresh and of good quality. For fish, I like them raw than cooked. Like too much eating sushi .
We had a chicken carpaccio dish at an izakaya that at the time got a lot of press because of the raw chicken that was blanched for maybe 10 seconds before serving. We survived. The problem we had with the dish was that it was covered in a sesame oil-based sauce whose flavor dominated the dish. So whether the chicken was raw or cooked, texture aside, didn’t matter.