Every week, I go to the grocery store to purchase my sustenance. And every week, my basket gets filled with the same items: cucumbers, a container of burrata (always), bell peppers, salad greens, and avocados (if they're on sale). Pasta, grains, bread, and eggs are purchased as needed. Other proteins and greens? Also bought when on sale. Rarely will I decide, S ure, I'll make steak tonight.
Unlike some friends who only ever make steak, to me, meat is a scary, foreign food substance. I'm perfectly happy eating a juicy steak or a roasted chicken — if someone else preps it for me. But if I'm making dinner for myself? Blame it on my irrational fear of getting a tapeworm, but I tend to stock up on vegetarian items first.
Of course, I am a grown-ass woman. As such, it might as well be time for me to get over this ridiculous fear. So I reached out to some real pros (professors at the Culinary Institute of America and the International Culinary Center) to get my facts straight and learn how to cook beef, chicken, and pork.
Hate cooking meat? Click ahead — some of this might help you get over this food fear, too.
I'm one for sales, because money is money and meat is expensive. But buying cheap meat sounds, well, unappetizing. So if I'm going to spend my hard-earned cash on beef, pork, or even chicken, it better be damn worth it. Here's how to tell if the meat is fresh.
1. Look for visual cues.
"Meat, specifically beef, is fresh if it looks dark red and has no superficial discoloration," says chef Marc Bauer, master chef and roundsman at the International Culinary Center. If it's off-color or sitting in juices, it's likely a sign that it has been temperature mismanaged or sitting around.
2. Smell it.
The meat shouldn't have any off-putting scent and should just smell like, well, meat. Watch out for what Suki Hertz, an associate professor at the Culinary Institute of America, calls "a decomposing-animal smell."
3. Shop at the right places.
"I'm an elitist when I come to meat, but it's because I'm not cooking for a huge family and I like to spend my money on food," says Hertz. "So I'm going to buy meat from places where I feel safe buying it from. Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and markets that have actual butchers. I would also feel really safe at Costco, which has a great reputation."
For many people, the biggest problem isn't cooking meat, but touching raw meat — the washing, cutting, and overall handling of the meat before it hits the pan. To avoid getting E. Coli, salmonella, or other gross bacteria everywhere, our pros recommend one major do and a major don't.
Don't: Wash meat in a sink
It turns out, however, that you don't have to wash chicken, steak, or pork before working with it. If you do, "What you have just done is that you have taken your bacteria on the outside on the chicken, and you’ve just gotten it all over your produce sink," Hertz says. "So I wouldn't wash meats. I would wash my hands very well before I start working with my meat. When I'm done, I would wash my hands again really well."
Even the USDA is behind this: "Washing raw poultry, beef, pork, lamb, or veal before cooking is not recommended. Bacteria [...] can be spread to other foods, utensils, and surfaces."
Do: Sanitize
You should be consistently washing your counters and sink with hot water and soap, which for the home cook, might just be enough. But if you're a little OCD about the cleanliness of your kitchen (like I am), you can take an extra step: bleach.
Mix 1 teaspoon of bleach for every 2 quarts of room-temperature water and you have yourself a strong sanitizing solution, Bauer says. (The USDA suggests 1 tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water, so just water that shit down). Every once in a while, for a thorough cleaning of your kitchen (including your knives, dish sponge, cutting board, faucet, counters, and sink), wash first with soap, rinse with clear water, and sanitize with the solution before dousing these items in hot water again.
Truthfully, my biggest fear here isn't giving myself food poisoning; it's poisoning other people. Which is why I rarely cook meat for dinner guests — I make other people do it.
Still, avoiding food poisoning can happen in many ways.
1. Buy good meat.
See slide one.
2. Store it correctly.
"You want to store the meat on the bottom of your fridge," Hertz says. "If you have a crisper there, put the meat on top of a sheet pan, so it doesn't drip onto your produce."
3. Keep Your Fridge Cold.
Your refrigerator should be at 41 degrees, which will keep your raw meat good for two-to-three days. If you know you're not going to cook it within the next few days? Freeze it and label it. Remember: "Freezing doesn't last forever," Hertz says.
How can you actually your meat taste good and not end up with a rubbery meal?
1. Know your temperatures.
This is the first piece of advice Hertz gives me when I call her up to chat. "I have the temperatures memorized," she says. "Chicken you want to take it to 165 F. And you’re not doing yourself any favors taking it over 165, 165 is fine. You want to hold it there at least 15 seconds."
You want to cook ground and brined meats to 155 degrees. Pork, lamb, and seafood? Typically around 145. And steak — well, a rare steak is going to be around 125 to 135.
2. Practice
The temperatures and a good thermometer will only get you so far. "You cannot generalize cooking times, as the time will depend on different variables such as what medium your using, how thick the steak is, how hot the medium is," Bauer says. "Temperature certainly affects cooking times."
3. Don't be afraid of cooking beef rare...
...especially if you've bought it from a good purveyor. "When you take a steak, there are pathogens on the outside of the steak, but as soon as you put it in the skillet, the heat is going to be so high it’s going to kill the E. coli," Hertz says. "So I wouldn't be worried about a steak; the outside is going to be so seared that anything on the outside will be gone."
4. Watch out for "problem meats."
Chicken and ground meats are the proteins you want to be the most careful about. "Ground meat may be number one," Hertz says. If a steak has all the pathogens on the outside, searing it will kill a good portion of anything that might cause stomach problems.
Ground meat, however, churns them all together and brings those pathogens onto the inside, while increasing the surface area for bacteria to breed.
"Now, the pathogen is on the inside. If you take your burgers to rare or medium-rare, you're not killing them all." Your best bet? Avoid pre-ground meat and ask your butcher to grind a fresh steak right in front of you.
Look, we all wish we could make sushi at home, but generally, any raw protein should probably be isolated until properly cooked. Here are a few ways to avoid cross-contamination.
1. Separate meat and produce like church and state.
Keep raw meat away from produce until it's cooked. Don't wash meats in your sink. Wash hands before and after handling any meats of any kind. And never, ever flip your cutting board over if you're looking to move from chopping chicken to cutting cantaloupe.
"You want to keep things clean and tidy. Wash your cutting boards really well," Hertz says. Even better? Have separate cutting boards for meats and produce.
2. Avoid the dirty dish towel.
"You know around Thanksgiving when they get that dishwashing line, and they're drying with a wet, dirty towel? That’s one of the worst things you can do," Hertz says. Air-dry your dishes — it'll save you time and maybe, a stomachache.
The perks of cooking at home? Often, you have enough for leftovers. But yes, things can go wrong even from here, too. To avoid any problems, cool and store the dish properly. How?
Bring the dish to room temperature first
If you're packing leftovers, be sure to store the food back at 41 degrees in the fridge. But — here's the catch — the food should be at room temperature before you store it.
"When you put hot food in the refrigerator, you just heated up your fridge," Hertz says. "So make sure you let it cool down naturally — you technically have six hours to let it cool down, but I would just give it an hour — and you want to get it in the fridge."
If the dish has been cooked and cooled properly, it should be perfectly fine to eat chicken, beef, and pork cold — which means a slice of cold sausage pizza for breakfast is totally fine. So yes, that steak from last night doesn't need to go in the microwave for it to be "safe."
The FDA does set rules for reheating food, which is bringing it up to 165 degrees within two hours. But for home cooks, well, reheat it as you see fit. And that means...
1. Get creative.
"If I had a rare burger and was reheating it, I wouldn't eat it as a burger — I would turn it into a chili," Hertz says. "I would cut up a large chicken breast and turn it into a stir-fry."
But just as it's okay to eat food cold, it's not necessarily important to get it back up to temperature if the dish has been cooled and stored correctly. "Even if you walk into a restaurant and you say, 'I want the chili,' they pull it out and only have to heat it up to a temperature that tastes good," Hertz says.
2. Give it a deadline.
As tempting as last week's leftovers might be, try not to leave those Tupperware containers in your fridge for too long. "If the meat is cooked on a Monday, it needs to be disposed of at the latest, the following Sunday evening," Bauer says. That leftover Thai from Saturday might just be reaching its limit.
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