Sep. 25, 2007 - Issue #623: Booked
Well met, raw meat: hoorah for raw!
Why eat raw meat? For some people, it’s simply a matter of taste. Raw meats have a different flavour and texture than cooked meats. Some adventurous eaters simply want to expand their palates to include the raw meat dishes favoured by other cultures. Others choose diets that promote specific environmental and health benefits.
The paleodiet claims that humans are best served by mimicking the diets of their Stone Age ancestors. This means, among other things, that there’s no cooking.
Raw food movements have been around for a while, but most of these are vegetarian. Aajonus Vonderplanitz is a prominent proponent of a paleodiet that he calls the Primal Diet. Unlike vegetarian raw food diets, the Primal Diet includes meat and dairy products, both of which are served raw or unpasteurized.
Vonderplanitz’s The Recipe for Living Without Disease (Carnelian Bay Castle Press, 2002) contains many raw meat recipes for beef, chicken, turkey, lamb and seafood, including baby food recipes. Vonderplanitz’s dietary dictums derive from the health benefits of eating raw food that he claims cured him of a spectrum of diseases including autism and cancer. His advice counters pretty much every mainstream theory: Vonderplanitz favours the consumption of small amounts of rotten raw meat or animal feces as cures for depression and cancer. Most nutritionists believe, however, that raw meat is a recipe for disaster. Dana Wilkinson, research coordinator for the Human Nutrition Research Unit at the University of Alberta, says that “meat is almost entirely safe if you cook it to the right temperature.”
“If the meat is raw,” she cautions, “you are guaranteed to be eating many harmful bacteria.” Beef’s slaughtering process leads to risk of contamination with animals’ intestines and skin. Intestinal feces are a primary concern, since they contain harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli.
Public health organizations have a “zero tolerance policy” on certain types of E coli because even very small amounts can have lethal effects. In something like ground meat, typically clean inner surfaces of animals are exposed to the riskier outer surfaces, which is why hamburger meat is supposed to be cooked until completely well done.
Raw fish has less of a health risk than meat, Wilkinson says, since the slaughtering processes that can contaminate red meat are not involved, but even raw fish has some potential risk. In summary, Wilkinson says that as far as eating raw meat is considered, “I wouldn’t risk it.” Not even sushi? “I wouldn’t eat raw fish,” she answers.
Many restaurants do, however, serve dishes made with raw meats, with sushi being the most well known. Capital Health, which administers public health programs in Edmonton and area, even offers specific advice to this type of food in its information sheet, “Guidelines for the Preparation of Sushi Products.” Sushi and sashimi fish, for example, must be frozen below -35 degrees Celsius for 15 hours or below -20 degrees Celsius for one week prior to being served.
Besides sushi, perhaps the best-known raw meat dish is steak tartare, a central European meal of spiced, raw ground beef. The consistency is similar to paté and eaten by spreading it on toast or crackers. Edmonton restaurants such as Bistro Praha have served this dish for years.
Now, however, other raw meat dishes are becoming easier to find. The Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant serves kitfo ($11.99), chopped lean beef with spiced butter and mitmita (a peppery mix of spices) with homemade cottage cheese. Served in a bowl, diners eat the meat by scooping it up with injera, a tangy, spongy flatbread made of an African grain called teff. Kitfo tastes rather like a superbly marinated cooked meat, with no bloodiness, and has a mealy texture.
At Acajutla, you can order ceviche ($6.95), a traditional South American dish. Ceviche can be prepared with larger pieces of fish, similar in style to sashimi, but at Acajutla it is basically a salsa, served in a parfait glass with tortilla chips as an appetizer. The ceviche is made of small firm cubes of red snapper, tomatoes, onions, jalapeno, cilantro and lime juice. The acidity of the lime juice cures the fish, a step closer to cooking that might ameliorate the anxiety of some people for eating raw fish.
The River House Grill in St Albert offers bison carpaccio ($10) as an appetizer, a variation on traditional Italian beef carpaccio. The carpaccio is paper-thin slices of raw meat laid out on a dish and topped with a salad of arugula, asiago cheese and sprouts. The meat looks red-raw, but the edges are peppered, demonstrating that some care has indeed gone into its preparation. The meat does not have a strong flavour: the pleasure comes from the texture and colour of the meat in contrast with the greens.
When it comes to preparing raw meat dishes at home, agencies such as Capital Health and nutritionists such as Wilkinson would rather that you didn’t. Put aside the iconoclastic advice of Aajonus Vonderplanitz and use the standards mandated by standard public health bodies.
People with reduced immune systems, including children and the elderly, might pass on raw meat dishes, as should pregnant women. Buy meats from only the best suppliers (you might want to find out where restaurateurs acquire their meats). Rather than buy ground beef for dishes such as steak tartare, buy top-quality tenderloins or sirloins and have your butcher do the grinding just before you begin to prepare it. V
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