Posted: October 22nd, 2010 - 7:57am by Doug Powell

If you like steak tartare, you’ll love chicken tartare, a salmonella-laden crap-fest of raw chicken and egg.

Jonathan Kauffman of San Francisco Weekly writes readers were disgusted after his review of (raw) chicken tartare served at Ippuku, a Japanese restaurant in Berkeley.

Proving once again that most chefs know shit about food safety, chef Christian Geideman said that “since salmonella only lives in the digestive tracts of chickens, and since Geideman dipped strips of raw chicken breast meat in boiling water for 30 seconds before cutting it up and seasoning it, he'd eliminated the threat of salmonella contamination.”

Good thing Kauffman finally got in touch with friend of the barfblog, Harshavardhan Thippareddi, an associate professor of food science at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (left, sorta as shown).

Dr. Thippareddi – also known as Reddi – told Kaufmann that, no, a 30-second plunge in boiling water would do little to kill pathogens.

When asked how chicken tartare would compare to steak tartare, Reddi said,

"Actually, the risk is lower in beef. The normal percentage of beef carcasses contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 is 0.1 to 0.3 percent. In poultry, the prevalence of salmonella is higher — the legal limit for poultry processors is that less than 20 percent of the birds may be contaminated. In some processors, they may have lower rates — like 5 or 7 percent."

Kauffman said,

"But those rates are probably for confined chickens. These chickens are pasture raised, and probably organic. Does that make a difference?"

Reddi said,

"We'd like to think it does, but sadly, it doesn't.”

Science in a San Fran blog. Awesome.

Reddi added in a subsequent e-mail to the author,

"We all take risks in life. I suppose this is one of those 'acceptable' risks for some of us. However, I don't think you will ever find me eating steak tartare or sushi (knowing the risks)."