Why is steak tartare safe to eat

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Make sure that any meat products you consume are cooked to the proper internal temperature listed below: Beef, pork, lamb and veal steaks, chops and roasts: degrees F with a three minute rest. Ground beef, pork, lamb and veal: degrees F. Poultry, whole or ground: degrees F. The shorter the window the beef is exposed, the less time it will have to pick up any potential contamination, those in the know explain. If you are wishing to prepare your own steak tartare, there are precautions you can take in your home kitchen, even if you're not able to set aside a special area or any dedicated utensils for raw meat use only.

Several users of the Stack Exchange Seasoned Advice forum supplied tips meant to reassure one nervous home cook who was contemplating making steak tartare. Other helpful hints included minimizing any out-of-fridge time spent by the meat and, of course, using super-clean utensils. If you are not in a high-risk category, and you've taken all of the necessary precautions in preparing the dish itself or in selecting a good restaurant with absolutely no history of health code violations, then you might be able to enjoy steak tartare without having to spend the next few days in the bathroom or hospital.

Celeb chef Alton Brown himself endorses the dish, having dedicated an episode of Good Eats: The Return to its preparation. The story that circulates talks about the Tatars having a fondness for horse meat which is true but not having access to fire on the steppes, they resorted to eating the meat raw. To tenderize it they supposedly cut it into thin slivers and put it under their saddles; thus was borne "steak tartare. The dish derives its name from the fact that it was commonly served with "sauce tartare" which actually may have some Tatar origins.

But this is beside the point. The point is that numerous species of E. But some, like E. When an animal is butchered it is possible that the intestines are nicked and its content contaminate the meat. If the meat is cooked to a temperature of 71 C, the bacteria and its toxin are destroyed.

So even if a steak is contaminated on the outside, it can be eaten rare because bacteria do not penetrate significantly and the ones on the surface are killed. But hamburger is a different business because the "outside" becomes the "inside" when the meat is ground.