Why is it okay to eat steak when it’s pink in the middle, but not hamburger patties?
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Chef here. Most of the answers here about the surface of the steak being the dangerous part are correct, but boy oh boy is there a lot of misinformation about why that actually is.
The bacteria that get you sick in meat originate in the digestive system of the animal. This is why in smaller animals like poultry where all of the meat is near the digestive system during the slaughtering process, every bit of meat is considered contaminated and must be cooked to avoid food poisoning. Large animals like cows however have muscle tissue so far from the digestive system that if the animal is slaughtered incredibly carefully, the meat can be eaten raw with little risk.
However the majority of cows are not slaughtered in this incredibly careful way because it is expected that the meat will be cooked and it would be a waste of time. Therefore the inside of the muscle tissue that is never exposed to potential contamination is relatively safe raw, and the outside of the cut requires cooking to make certain.
Minced meat like that used for burgers complicate things because all that surface meat gets ground together with the inside meat. The chances for potential contamination just went up hugely, and its simply safer to cook a burger completely through. Of course if you can source your mince from somewhere that can guarantee a careful slaughtering process, then it’s safe to eat your burger medium, which is what a lot of restaurants now do.
This is not, I repeat NOT, safe to do with standard mince that you buy from the supermarket. Restaurants usually have close contact with their suppliers to ensure the meat they’re serving medium is safe to eat as such. Supermarkets don’t bother, it would eat into their profits.
ELI5; Bugs in cow doodoo can get on the meat when you kill them. But the inside of the meat gets no poopy on it so its safe. But if you mix all the meat together to make burgers then the poop bugs get mixed in as well and you have to cook it all through to kill the bugs. Otherwise you’ll be the one doing poopies all night
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