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evgen12/09/20242 repliesview on HN

Bacteria contaminates the exposed surface of foods. Pre-ground meat has a _lot_ of surface area exposed so the potential for contamination is high. If you get your meat as a chunk of chuck roast or larger primal cut, follow good food safety practices in how you maintain your workspace, and then grind the chuck and turn it into patties to be grilled the probability for serving a contaminated product is low.

The problem is that this is more expensive and time consuming so almost no one actually does this in a commercial setting. If you tell me you do this when I come over to your home cook-out I will possibly trust you to serve me a burger with some pink in it, but if your restaurant tries to sell a $6 burger that you let someone order medium-rare bad things are going to eventually happen...


Replies

canucker201612/09/2024

There are small burger restaurant chains in Canada that grind their meat on the premises. Burger's Priest (they used to tout this, but since the franchising push, this link is the only mention about grinding their own meat - https://www.recipeunlimited.com/en/franchising/burger-priest...) and Holy Chuck Burgers - https://holychuckburgers.com/.

Some meat sellers mechanically tenderize (blading) their cuts of beef. This may cause E.coli on the surface of the beef to enter the interior of the beef. Costco was linked to E.coli cases in 2012 due to this practice. See https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2013/06/has-you...

BenjiWiebe12/09/2024

For added safety, you can even sear the outside of the cut, then trim the seared part before grinding the rest.