should burger be fully cooked?

jaydub58

I won't use any less fat content than 80/20, and then cook to med rare.
Except for the raw stuff I eat while making the patties!    

Miked125

If your ground the meat fresh or the meat has been recently ground(same day) it's fine. I'm in Canada everything is well done but I have spent enough time in the states so I do medium.

VANcouverEGG

Thanks for commenting. From reading responses, it seams like medium rare burgers are common. In Canada this is rare, pun intended. 
Thinking that i should get a grinder and sear a steak on both sides, then grind and no more worries. 

stemc33

Before someone digs up an old post of mine and calls me a hypocrite or a flipper flopper, my mind has evolved since first joining the forum. @VANcouverEGGTemp it, temp it, temp it, if your really concerned about safety. I thought people on the forum were crazy taking a temperature on a burger. With that said, a burger cooked to 160° could still be juicy and pink. A burger cooked to a supposedly unsafe 140° could be brown and dry.

Personally, I like all burgers(not fresh off the grinder raw like my aunt), but a 140°ish-180°ish. Too many factors go into what will kill you and what won't when dealing with bacteriology. Things like what your personal gut flora will withstand before it becomes overwhelmed. Not a biologist, but smart guys/gals are working on how to make the micro-world live in harmony as opposed to killing certain bacteria only to have it evolve to tolerate the antibiotics that ultimately overwhelms our systems and kills us. Worst case scenario, there's always fecal transplant(taking someone's healthy $#!+ and putting it in your gut. It's a real thing). 

Anyway, I temp thick burgers and just cook the crap out of thin burgers without temping. Sorry about the long post and I'm sure some smart guy like @Eggcelsior or @nolawill come along and correct me or add to the scientific aspect. 

I SAY JUST EAT, BE HAPPY, and remember there's always the fecal transplant option.
 

Skiddymarker

@stem33 - Ok after that post - go away again....Yuck!

stemc33

Not trying to high jack the thread of @VANcouverEGG, but here's a quick link to fecal transplants(stick figure explanation, no real poop). E.coli might be the the scary gut bug in food, but Clostridium difficile (C.diff) is the scary life threatening gut bug caught in hospitals. If you or your loved ones get hospitalized, make sure you wash your hands before eating and definitely make sure hospital workers wash their hands before touching you. No joke. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dim7YXYlRm0

VANcouverEGG

I love every post.

nolaegghead

If you enjoy the taste of burgers not overcooked (anywhere near the FDA "safe" temp), and you are healthy, not too young, not too old, no immunodeficiency, then grind them yourself or buy local fresh ground high quality meat and cook them the way you want.  I do.  If you want to live forever, don't drive or ride in cars, eat anything but canned food, smoke, drink, and construct a bubble around you.  To live without risk is to not live at all in my paradigm.  The risk is well defined and small.  Mitigate risk within reason and and enjoy life, in all aspects. If you fear food poisoning, don't eat undercooked meat or you won't enjoy it mentally.  Not many people die of food poisoning with modern medicine available who aren't compromised to begin with.  We have an acid bath in our stomach that's a first line defense to pathogens.  Some things like prions and e coli 0157:H7, aka "Shiga Toxin" are dangerous, but very rare.  Live a foodie, die a foodie.  But you'll probably live a foodie, die from something else.

Little Steven

Or you could spray with a mild bleach solution.

swordsmn

poster said:

growing up my mom would cook burgers so much nothing could survive in it, or on it after the fact because there wasn't much left to consume. Same went for chicken and steaks.

My dear mom went to Le Cordon Black as well.  Lol.   I miss her.

Little Steven

One of my fondest childhood memories is my Welsh Grandma starting the lunch burgers immediately after breakfast and frying them for three hours and my Scots Grandfather slapping me on the back of the head when I put ketchup on them. He said "ye'll ruin yer meat"

theyolksonyou

Le cordon black.  

Zmokin

nolaegghead said:

what the hell did we do before we invented fire?!

We usually died before the age of 40.

nolaegghead

Less than that on average.  And even after fire, until science and Louie Pasteur, we didn't know what was going on.