Has anyone ever tried?

[AprilB]

OK, with pasturizing and rare vs burned...

Anyone ever consider or prepare a rare tenderloin to 155 and then chilling and using the rare "cooked" inside for a steak tartar?

Hmmm...<scratching chin thoughtfully>

April

[Ma Facon]

Please clarify your question please. State exactly how you plan on preparing the tartare.

[MarkV]

And if it's cooked to 155 degrees it's well done, not rare.

[Jolly Roger]

True tartar is raw and dressed, usually served with micro greens and soome sort of crusty bread situation. It's beef sushi, baby! It's like having your A-1 grade tuna steamed before you eat it...driving a convertible '65 Mustang with the top up on a beautiful day...drinking a non-alcoholic beer. It aint tartar unless it's done classically. Else, you're just making fancy "ground round". If you have a "customer" that is unsure about about consuming raw beef, find out what they know they love and make that really well.

[AprilB]

What I'm wondering is:

With all of the 'concern' about raw ground meat has anyone thought of or has considered preparing a rare roast and used the 'rare' inside as a kind of 'tartar'?

Sort of like a pasturized egg. In other words: do you think it, or another process, would work to kill any of the 'problems' that you can have with rare ground meat?

I know all about tartar and had it often and love blood rare hamburgers, but it seems like in the past decade or two there has been too much negative press about the subject. I mean, it seems like there are way too many places that won't serve anything other than a medium well burger. Blea.

April

[higjse]

135 is still way too high for rare.... a whole tenderloin roasted to rare would come out of my oven at 100... and it would work except you wouldnt really have a tartare youd have a beef salad... and you wouldnt really have gotten rid of anything that would make you not to just use the raw meat...

so... I wouldnt waste the time to do it but I like where your head is at..

and I probably wouldnt eat a burger unless it was bloody, so therefore I dont eat burgers many places... usually only at work... we make our burgers from sirloin steak and tenderloin scraps anyway...

[ghost]

Originally Posted by AprilB

What I'm wondering is:

With all of the 'concern' about raw ground meat has anyone thought of or has considered preparing a rare roast and used the 'rare' inside as a kind of 'tartar'?

Sort of like a pasturized egg. In other words: do you think it, or another process, would work to kill any of the 'problems' that you can have with rare ground meat?

I know all about tartar and had it often and love blood rare hamburgers, but it seems like in the past decade or two there has been too much negative press about the subject. I mean, it seems like there are way too many places that won't serve anything other than a medium well burger. Blea.

April

Well I've read in some books that if you want to try and safely do a rare burger, assuming you were really afraid of foodborne illness, you could sear a whole steak and cook it to it was just about rare. Basically you're going on the assumption that the outside of the meat is where bacteria live, and the interior is sterile. So you're hopefully killing the bacteria. Then take your very rare steak and put it in a very clean grinder and use the result to make burgers. But since most grinders introduce more bacteria than the meat had originally, you'd want to make sure that yours was sterile to begin with.

Me?? I personally take a bunch of ground chuck in my hand, put it on the grill for a couple of minutes, and eat. Life's too short to worry about visiting the throne too often. :-)

Mike

[panini]

We bring up sanitation here. The very basics will tell you that once you've entered that 4 hr window you're risking any product. You either serve it under 40 or cook it. I think this example is a GREAT way to form an inviornment that is more likely to produce food borne illness. Am I wrong here? Isn't this like the first examp;e you get when going over temps?

[panini]

Sorry, I reread my post and it sounds harsh. I didn't mean it that way. This technique can be used as an example of speeding up food borne illness.
I guess I would compare this to cooking fish and using the uncooked raw part as shushi. I shouldn't have called this basic. I have to remember that all states do not have the same health requirements as ours.
pan

[blueschef]

All good Sushi is frozen to I think it is 10 below for a certan amount of time to kill parasites. Eating truely raw fresh fish is very dangerous due to parasites.

I have often wondered why so many people are afraid of iridated foods, it is an excellent way to kill surface bacteria and is harmless to people (radiation is everywhere anyhow - from natural sources to microwaves, x-ray machines, etc.).

[panini]

Blue,
I haven't read enough about irradiation to make a call. I think the feds did make that call on sushi. Although our shshi house insists it not. I just smile and don't think about it. I know the tanks they used to have a couple of years ago are gone.

[AprilB]

My idea actually was to hi-temp quick sear a tenderloin to sterilize the outside portion that would carry any bacteria. Then blast chill and remove the outside portion of the meat (a nice snack...<grin>) leaving the rare/raw inside to grind into tartar.

Anal perhaps, but I'm always considering things, like removing the outside of a raw steak can still "contaminate" the inside of the meat because of the knife...that kind of thing. I guess the bottom line is how real the concern is...

It's weird because I never grew up with that kind of 'food fear factor'. Anyone else from the same era? I SO miss bloody meat, (ground, not steaks) but have no idea if it's a real lackadaisical processing problem or just generalized California-like paranoia. OR maybe a lot of both?

Anyone have any idea about the incidence of problems with raw meat since Jack in the Box? I know everyone gets completely nuts in the immediate interrim, and then it calms down a bit...like with over easy or med eggs. Who can live without runny yolks?

I WAHHHHNNNNT A TWWWEEEENNNTYYYY POOOOUUUNNND BUUUUTTTTSSTTTEEAKKKK WITH ITS' HORNS CUT OFF....!!!! WAAAHHHH!!!!

OK, phewww....I feel better...

April

[AprilB]

For a variety of long shelf life foods. Milk and meats. A "box" of milk is good for zzzz years. I don't know about the process or the impact on the food or consumer, but the premise makes sense.

April

[Al_Dente]

Hello all
Just a few thoughts with regard to beef and the 'Well done' burger. And why, exactly, the various health departments insist that we treat ground beef with caution. It would seem, judging by the original question in this thread, that some of our younger cooks/chefs believe that ALL cuts of beef should be looked at with suspicion and aproached with caution. Where in reality GROUND beef is the true culprit. And under proper production methods, even ground beef is completely safe. We say 'Beef is dangerous' when we should say 'Butcher is dangerous'.

So here's the beef! (couldn't resist). There are a few bad apples in this cow, but mainly it is E-coli and (more recently) we hear about Mad Cow. However, with the exception of a full blown BSE infected animal, neither of these problems infect the flesh of the animal. Rather, they are limited to specific areas. In the case of E-coli it is the intestines. With mad cow it lies within the spinal cord and nervous tissues. (From what I understand, a full blown case of BSE involves mutated protiens which infect the entire animal and can be transfered to humans) Needless to say, the slaughter houses try to remove these areas as best they can.

However, during the trimming process, the prime cuts are sectioned out and whats left is used for various purposes including ground beef products. Often these scraps are not so closly cleaned and may contain snippits of 'Bad sections' . This is where it all happens. The beef is good. But just a bit of the bad stuff can kill you.

SO, In my opinion, don't sear that beautiful filet just to dig out some tartar from the middle. Dice it up right from the start I say!. But your customer is the one you will have to convince, which might be a daunting task. (Think the last time I made tartar was 20 years ago...go for beef carpaccio! )

Just some thoughts

AL

[CrazyTATT]

If you are using a QUALITY cut, then do watcha want with it, DONT WASTE IT BY SEARING IT TOO ****......in theroy it shouldnt matter. If you are cutting from a loin, if the outside is "kosher" then why worry about the interior, you arnt workin with ground beef...you have already killed it once, why kill it again.