To ask if you clean your meat?

[Cleopatois]

I use lemon and water or white vinegar and water to clean all my meat.

A colleague said she didn't just through it from pack to pan :O

Her reasoning was 'its free range so that means it clean'.

Another colleague said it is a culture thing. What do you do?

Cooking it removes bacteria. And rawness.

I seriously doubt vinegar has any true antibacterial properties when it comes to washing meat otherwise we'd be using it to rinse salad with (as per my previous post) as surely it would be much cheaper from a restaurant point of view.

The most important think when it comes to meat safety is cooking it hot enough and for long enough. If you want to be super cautious then nothing should be rare, everything should be well done. However plenty of people make a calculated risk choice and prefer rare... nowadays it's becoming more popular to cook pork more on the rarer side as meat standards are now so high the risk of catching anything from a slightly undercooked joint brought from a UK source is extremely low.

(Personally I prefer everything cooked until well done anyway).

Without outing myself I used to work for two different major chains or restaurants.... same rules all over everywhere.

So you don't care if people have been touching your meat, its been soaking in its own juices and bacteria and then you fling it straight in the oven or pan.

It's the cooking that removes the raw taste.

Thing, not think.

Cooking removes the raw taste. ONLY cooking.

I've never seen Delia/Jamie/Gordon or anyone else wash their meat.

Yes, black pudding Mmm. And it's not just a British thing. They're keen on it in Spain and Italy and probably other places.

My MIL makes jugged hare which she thickens with its blood. It's very nice.

She's even made it with road kill.

Fresh road kill, mind. Not something that had suffered such a going over that she had to scrape it off the road.

Nope. Don't care at all Cleo

" I think it's the bacteria, who has touched your chicken"

So? You cook it.

I think it is definately a cultural thing then because the Caribbean people on this thread have said that they do wash their meat and its the English/Scottish 'white' people who do not.

All my caribbean work colleagues wash meat before we cook it and sometimes burn off little hairs on the stove too (we cook at work).

I have NEVER seen a Carribean, African or Asian person prepare meat without cleaning it.

It is definitely a cultural thing. Growing up and seeing Caucasian friends parents prepare meat was one of those OMG moments for me and most of my ethnic friends at one point or another.

There is a lot to be said for how ethnic minorities buy their meat though! Quite often we go to outdoor or market based butchers and 20 years ago that would have been the only way we bought meat.

There is no way I would consider putting anything straight from the counter into a pot without cleaning it after seeing numerous flies and juices from other meats fly all over it and there is a huge difference between that and packet based meat.

By definition, raw meat is meat that has not been cooked. You can do whatever you want to it, but until it is cooked, it is still raw. Once it is cooked, it no longer tastes raw, because it isn't raw!

There is no slime or dirt in the meat I buy so therefore NO reason for it to be washed.

As for the 'blood it sits in' that get thrown in the pan as well, where the heck do you think this blood has come from and what are the juicy bits of the meat ? the blood from the muscle fibre.

Never. The cooking of it raises the temperature so that any bacteria are killed anyway.

Jamie Oliver's food hygeine is disgusting he is not a good example . He's always licking his fingers and poking around.

Those of you who do not wash and clean your meat- do you not notice a raw smell when it is in the oven or even on your plate?

So you don't care if people have been touching your meat, its been soaking in its own juices and bacteria and then you fling it straight in the oven or pan.

Well yeah. I don't know or care how many people have handled the meat. I buy from reputable places, store and cook it properly. If it was slimy, I wouldn't chance it. No food poisoning ever.

No, I can honestly say I don't care, Cleo and my life is easier for it. I know germs are killed more effectively by heat than any chemical that I would wish to be eating residue of in my food.

Squoosh, I mean that RAAAAW taste and smell. No washing and barely any seasoning...no amount of cooking can get rid of it, trust me.
It's nothing to do with with enhancing the flavour. Perhaps there is a reason,after all why British food is looked down upon. No care is taken. You sound intelligent, but I've seen the most intelligent "Brits" get too defensive about this subject. Then people wonder why "foreign" food seems to be more popular over here than "indigenous" food.
Most of the world's good cuisine evolved by taking something and using tricks to turn it into something else. Not a lot of that can evolve by "opening pack and chucking it in the pan", can it?
But thank you for your sarcasm. It's nearly up to my standards. (your cooking won't reach mine, though).

WOOOOW on come dine with me one time the voice over guy was laughing at the way the caribbean girl was burning the hairs off the chicken wings!! Like it was something so abnormal.

No tippytoe, because it isn't raw after coming out of the oven!

Bugger that don't have time to mess about with the meat, just get it cooked.

No, if you marinade meat in lemon juice, soy sauce or whatever, it tastes a bit different, this is not vastly different from that.

The 'raw' taste does not refer to the meat being cooked or not, it is a taste that we obviously don't mind so much in the UK but a bit different than elsewhere in the world. I know what they mean by 'raw' tasting and just cooking say some lamb without soaking it a bit first makes it taste different than if you soaked it in water and wine for 15 min.

It's partly a taste thing, it's partly beliefs about hygiene which might not be so relevant now.

Oh stooshe run along a scrub your mince.