Burger safety rules trigger concerns
The New South Wales Food Authority has raised eyebrows threatening chefs with $1540 fines for not cooking hamburgers properly.
Food inspectors cracking down on Sydney’s burger joints have instructed upmarket chefs to make sure all meat patties are cooked to well done.
The gourmet chefs have a problem with this: they say frying minced meat to 71C leaves their burgers dry and tasteless.
All of this is coming at a time when Sydney burger lovers are being treated to a rise in places selling gourmet burgers, all mostly cooked to medium, made by some of Australia’s best chefs.
‘These include Rockpool’s Neil Perry, whose Burger Project chain serves patties cooked to medium, and former two-hat chef Warren Turnbull’s Chur Burger.
For their part, the bureaucrats are talking about people who have fallen ill, including some who have died. They’re blaming it on mincemeat.
“Hamburger Food Safety” guidelines have been sent to Environment Health Officers, attached to the state’s 152 councils, stating that “mincemeat should be cooked right through to the centre.”
And that means a temperature of 71C.
Renowned Sydney chef Neil Perry says the important part is that staff at his outlets grind meat fresh every day, keeping it safe.
He explained that bacteria starts growing as soon as meat is minced. That means chefs need to mince and cook on the same day and keep meat refrigerated at the right temperature.
His outlets cook patties to medium, about 60C.
“We can do medium-rare, which is about 55C, but we rarely get asked for that,” Perry told the Daily Telegraph. “About 10 per cent of orders are for ‘well done’.”
He said the guidelines were a “worst case scenario” which did not anticipate people treating the meat property.
“Those guidelines from the health department are important because a lot of burger places have their patties supplied by butchers and have already been minced,” he said.
“So you effectively don’t know when they were minced or when the meat was cut back through itself or how long they have been stored or at what temperature.”
By Leon Gettler, May 5th 2016
