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  • Blame the consumer or chef, Scottish-style; campylobacter found in 80% of chicken liver packs; just cook it

    Posted: March 8th, 2012 - 2:27am by Doug Powell

    Following a spate of campylobacter outbreaks linked to chicken liver paté in the U.K., researchers at Aberdeen University found the bug in more than 80 per cent of packs of chicken liver paté bought from supermarkets and butchers during a two-year survey.

    The Scotsman.com cites Dr Norval Strachan, the researcher in food safety and epidemiology who led the study, as saying the bug had been found in 81 per cent of raw chicken livers purchased from a typical range of supermarkets and butchers over a two-year period. “… last year 14 outbreaks of the bug in the UK were associated with consumers eating chicken or duck liver paté. By cooking the livers properly and ensuring good hygiene in the kitchen these episodes can be avoided. However, some celebrity chefs and many recipes advocate only partially cooking chicken liver to ensure that it is pink in the middle.”

    Dr Jacqui McElhiney, policy adviser at the Food Standards Agency in Scotland, underlined the need for proper precautions to be taken to prevent the risk of food poisoning.

    “Unfortunately, levels of campylobacter in raw chicken are high, so it’s really important that chefs thoroughly cook chicken livers fully to kill any bacteria, until there is no pinkness left in the centre, even if recipes call for them to be seared and left pink in the middle. “It’s the only way of ensuring the paté will be safe to serve.”

    This is all sorta confusing: researchers found 80 per cent of raw chicken liver contaminated with campylobacter, but said they were looking at packs of chicken liver pate at supermarkets. But the food safety folks blame celebrity chefs? Do they make pre-packaged pate? Are consumers supposed to cook paté they buy pre-packaged at the supermarket? Guess they were talking about raw liver. So then what about the risk of cross-contamination. Maybe something is lost in translation; I speak Scottish as fluently as Australian.

    And pinkness is a lousy indicator of whether any meat has been cooked to reduce dangerous bacteria such as campylobacter. So is piping hot.

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    Campylobacter, food safety, Pate, pink, Scotland, Uk
  • Simple roast chicken with a digital tip-sensitive thermometer

    Posted: September 9th, 2011 - 4:10am by Doug Powell

    Food safety has never been Mark Bitman’s strong point. The author of Don’t blame sprouts, and For the love of a good burger (in which he advocated rare hamburger consumption) usually sides with polemic rather than evidence. But yesterday in the N.Y. Times, Bittman offered his simple recipe for roast chicken and advocated the use of a thermometer.

    1. “Put a cast-iron skillet on a low rack in the oven and heat the oven to 500 degrees. Rub the chicken all over with the oil and sprinkle it generously with salt and pepper.

    2. “When the oven and skillet are hot, carefully put the chicken in the skillet, breast side up. Roast for 15 minutes, then turn the oven temperature down to 350 degrees. Continue to roast until the bird is golden brown and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the meaty part of the thigh reads 155 to 165 degrees.”

    Been doing a variation of this for years (right). In the accompanying video, Bittman makes no mention of the thermometer and instead says there should be the “tiniest trace of pink,” along with lots of cross-contamination, but it’s a baby step.

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    bittman, food safety, pink, Recipe, roast chicken, thermometer