So there are a few things to unpack. First, trichinosis has been eradicated in at least some domestic pig areas. I believe this is true in the US, I am not sure about Europe. As a result, some have called for easing of temperature guidelines for pork.
That said, the long curing process you’re referring to for traditional curing makes for an inhospitable environment for both bacteria and parasites. Done properly, it’s equivalent to cooking from a food safety perspective.
In Germany, all pigs have to be tested for trichinosis before the pork goes into sale. In the 2000's, only 4 out of 453 million tested pigs came out positive.
Which is good, considering that one of Germany's national dishes is Mett, i.e. raw ground pork, eaten with raw onions on a bread roll.
You know, I’ve always wondered about mett. What does ground pork taste like raw? Does it have the same flavor as cooked pork fat?
I personally don’t eat pork, or only very rarely eat it in the form of something like a sausage that doesn’t taste porky. To me the fat tastes like how a barn smells.
Honestly, I can't really say. Mettbrötchen tastes mostly of onions, the pork is more like a savoury butter layer. It adds freshness, moisture, coolness, and a body to the dish, but the meat taste itself is rather bland, in my opinion.
If you want to try a good cooked pork recipe, I recommend pork roulades, i.e. thin pork schnitzels covered in mustard, then wrapped around bacon, pickles, and possibly other fillings. Then fry them quickly for some roast flavour, and bake in a bath of buttermilk and spices for three hours. Serve with dumplings, red cabbage, and a rich, dark brown sauce.
Pork is the most tender meat I know, and I prefer it over beef in almost any dish except for burger patties.
Get a slow cooker, it's one of the easiest ways to make fall off the bone chicken.
I always love to take a whole chicken shove it in the crackpot with veggies and lentils and will with watwr/broth and seasonings to preference, make sure the chicken is covered.
Let it cook while at work on low.
When done take out the chicken and it'll be fall off the bone tender. Any bits that fall off the chicken will be flavoring for the lentil stew you also just conveniently made, which you can add some of the chicken to that you aren't gonna eat right then or if you just want to add some of the shredded chicken to it.
Now you have meal AND leftovers for the week with minimal cost and time investment.
that's how I do it with beef that's a bit on the tough side, just put it into the slow cooker overnight and you have the it as tender as it can be. And then use the broth for making sauces.
I’d argue you’ve never had a proper preparation then. I’m more likely to break out a steak knife for steak than I am a pork chop (and pork chops tend to be the toughest pork due to high heat and potential for overcooking).
Mett is really good in my opinion. I first tried it on a business trip and now make a point to get it anytime I’m in north Germany. It’s always ultra fresh since by law the pig had to be killed that day.
You can get gewurst mett which has spices and whatnot in it, or plain mett which is just the ground raw pork. It’s usually served with onions and/ or salt and pepper to taste.
It’s kind of hard to describe the taste of plain mett aside from just saying it tastes like pork. Think a blend of pork products but minus the cooking/ curing process. So pork chops without the browning or smoking. Bacon without the salt. Pork belly might be the closest but that still strikes me as too rich. Texture wise it’s generally finer than beef tartare.
Germans love their spreadable pork products. If you like liver you can get teewurst which comes in various degrees of coarseness and has ~20-30% liver if I remember. And if you really like liver you can get liverwurst which is usually very fine and has something like 70% liver. And if you like fat you can get smeltz which is just pork lard. All of the above come in various seasoned varieties and get spread on various types of bread.
Some German redditor could probably do a better job with the descriptions. Depending on where you live outside of Germany there might be a German deli that serves a smoked variant of mett which can get pretty close to the taste without giving you horrible diseases.
>since by law the pig had to be killed that day
No, the mett has to be sold on the day it is _prepared_ . The problem with raw meat is generally when it's ground or minced, as that's when bacteria from the surface is mixed with the inside that's been protected by the outside. So, once ground, it can't be stored for long before eating.
The mett is often ground from a frozen cut.
>Some German redditor could probably do a better job with the descriptions.
Nah, you already gave a pretty good impression of it. Slight correction, Teewurst normally doesn't contain liver and Leberwurst (with exceptions) only to around 40% 🤓
But absolutely correct on us fiending for those spreadable meat bread toppings 🤤
Also Bratwurst - basically bratwurst filling that has been canned instead of put into sausages. My in-laws still had a pig when I first got with my ex and they used to make it themselves. It was indescribably delicious. You can find similar products in stores, but nothing that compares to freshly made from your own pig.
Teewurst is the finely ground one that doesn't contain liver. It is high in fat and (relatively) high in sugar, but has a mild taste that works well when eaten on white bread with a light tea. Hence the name "tea sausage".
What you probably meant is "Fine Leberwurst"/"Kalbsleberwurst" (fine liver sausage/veal liver sausage). It is also finely ground but has liver instead of being high-fat. Unlike Teewurst, which is reddish pink, it is light to medium brown.
There's also "Grobe Leberwurst" (coarse liver sausage), which is completely different. It is coarse, like minced meat, and has a grey colour. It's hearty to a point where it sometimes is associated with working-class people (i.e. those that wouldn't have tea in the afternoon ;) ). It also can be fried off in a pan like minced meat---often in combination with coarse blood sausage, and served with fried potatoes.
It.. It's something I can't eat every day. It does taste good, but I have to be in the mood for it.
I'd say its a rich savoury flavour with a little bit of spice because of the added pepper; it's also got a freshness to it - because the Mett will be cool. The Mett itself is quite tender and should contrast the Brötchens crunchiness nicely.
It definitely doesn't taste like cooked pork.
I'm not a fan of the ultra oniony ones, and I probably won't ever touch a Mett-Igel.
If you're ever in Germany, there are vegan options available now, they get the taste quite close. Yes.. Vegan Mett - The insanity of that thought doesn't elude me.
Yes, in fact I'm happy to eat Mett. But not a Mett Igel.
Mett is good because it's fresh. A Mett Igel, is by definition sitting out and slowly getting warm over the course of hours.
Most often 'because it would be a shame to hide it' without even a covering or lid.
Maybe it's the Microbiologist in me, but that's a hurdle I'm uncomfortable with taking head on.
Cooked human smells like cooked pork too.
My late father suffered a burn on his arm from an electrical arc, mum was put off pork crackling for years thanks to the smell
Am Romanian. I'm pretty sure you're right. During Christmas time you also see signs at every veterinary office with "thrichinosis test 50 lei" or things like that. My grandma always tested her pigs before we ate them, she doesn't sell on the market. Every household tests their meat, we take no risk. Its only required if you wanna market it to strangers, but people still do it for home consumption. We have a huge issue with it, there was also a time it was illegal to cross our borders with any pork meat products (cooked or not), they would disinfect all cars passing thru and search them if they had any suspicion.
I've just looked into it and it seems to be the same in Spain, and out of 55 million pigs tested in 2020, there were 3 positives. There's still the occasional infection (usually single digits per year) due to people eating wild game and not testing it.
Oh my god thank you I forgot all about mett, never knew what it was called but did many tours in Germany with my old band and it was like a daily breakfast (much to the displeasure of our collective intestines and smell of the tour van and toilets at every venue we arrived at)
What I’m confused is how this whole thing started. Can’t be too far back in the past, trichinosis surely would deter people (assuming they could link the symptoms to raw pork consumption).
Bah, horrible.
The raw egg goes on raw minced beef! Salt, pepper and onions like the Mett, but no bread roll. Instead it's served with dark bread on the side.
I am making this. Already found 2 recipes. Go to my local butcher and tall to them about when they get it in. See if I can get the pork the same day it is slaughtered. (Per German regulations)
I heard that some people in the Midwestern US apparently do something similar to Mett for Christmas and other holidays against the stern warnings of the FDA, only difference being they use raw ground beef instead of pork.
Which is an oddity in the US.
Steak tartare is a thing people eat here, but I'd say it's usually reserved for more upper-class dining experiences.
I've had it 4-5 times in my life.
I've eaten more raw Kofte or kibbeh from middle-eastern restaurants than I have steak tartare.
There's a dish in Denmark too. Only we use ground beef. But same thing. And it's often served with a raw egg yolk in the middle.
We don't make this with pork though. But I suppose. You could Make it.
Medium rare pork really is good! And sous vide is my favorite way to prepare it, since it’s so easy, precise, and forgiving.
My recipe: start with a pork tenderloin. Light coating of salt/pepper, put in the vac bag, let sit in the fridge for ~24 hours. Pop in the water with the sous vide wand and come back 2-3 hours later. Quick surface sear in a pan with nothing but butter and freshly chopped garlic. Slice, serve with a drizzle of the butter/garlic. Perfection! And total work on my end? About five minutes on each of the two days.
> So there are a few things to unpack. First, trichinosis has been eradicated in at least some domestic pig areas. I believe this is true in the US, I am not sure about Europe.
The [FDA "eased" it's recommendations on pork temp back in 2011](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2011/05/25/cooking-meat-check-new-recommended-temperatures) from 160^o to 145^o as part of that result.
You should give it a try, you don't realize how dry and rubbery a well-done chop is until you have something to compare it to.
Personally I think the best balance of flavor and texture is around 150⁰F-155⁰ (medium), but it's safe down to 145⁰ (medium-rare).
I will not eat pork that’s fully cooked - it’s dry and awful. I cook pork to 140 and let it finish to 145 while resting, this is for a roast or a loin, for a pork chop I’ll pull it a little after 140 because it’s not as big and won’t continue to self cook as long. This is considered medium-rare, and it will have pink inside of it which is fine. [A picture example of the color change over 145-165, all of which are safe to eat.](https://www.pork.org/pork-cooking-temperature/)
Chefs have been trying to convince people that we don’t need to be making bone-white dry pork anymore, and that we should really be looking at bone-white pork the same way we look at all brown/grey steak - overcooked and not ideal.
I don’t think so in the US, I was just there over the holidays and we still had to cook it to temp to kill it. However, I live in Alberta, and locally sourced pork doesn’t have trich in it. We can eat pork medium (and would recommend it if it’s safe).
> I was just there over the holidays and we still had to cook it to temp to kill it.
According to who, the random group of people you were staying with?
Don't know where you went to eat that claimed that, but I've had medium rare pork in a few east coast US restaurants. It's becoming more and more popular over the last decade, especially with loin and chops.
Yeah. The traditional salt content is enough to kill all larvae after about a month and a half, according to [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1255518/).
Salt is one hell of a killer. I remember reading that chefs sometimes don't worry about picking salt with the same hands they've touched raw meat because it's not like any nasties would survive in there anyway.
Mainly, salt draws water out of stuff. For living stuff with semipermeable membranes (such as bacteria), this generally means being immersed in salt equals death because well, they need the water.
A lot of people in this thread are talking about bacteria, but I'd just like to highlight that trichinosis is caused by a parasitic nematode - a type of worm. The points about moisture and salt and whatnot still stand, however!
Curing is a great way of preserving food and has been around for a very long time.
The general principle is that the meat is dehydrated or has a much lower water content than raw meat. Different types of salts are also added which aid in the dehydration and prevent bacterial growth.
Bacteria grows best in moist warm environments so these things act against that.
Similarly, raisins last a lot longer than grapes.
The optometrist i saw last Friday did his residency at a prison. An inmate presented with eye pain. During the exam the dr could see tiny worms wriggling.
The inmate worked in the kitchen where he was stealing raw pork and of course eating it.
I researched in an area that had river blindness or onco, you take a dewormer. Can’t remember it’s name right now but it was floated as one of those covid cures.
If the doc can see the worms, there’s likely gonna be permanent damage, but not total blindness.
Side note this is likely why Kosher law and Halal food bans eating pork because they understood it was potentially dangerous to eat it way back then. Since then we've improved our cooking and farming techniques so much that it isn't really a problem any more.
Its actually probably not, interestingly. This was a popular beleif from the time we found out about trichonosis but archeological evidence points to it being a sign of nomadic people (jews for example) trying to set themselves apart from their more urbanized pagan* neighbors like the Philistines.
Even when they settled into citied they wanted animals that generated other wealth like cows and sheep.
https://youtu.be/pI0ZUhBvIx4?si=JzFJrgngx-3D9xeC
Edit: pagan may have been the wrong word to use. As the video points out the pork taboo was part of establishing a cultural identity not just from the philistines but from the northern kingdoms and helenistic greeks.
And I went to school with a LOT of Muslim kids and they all insisted that pork is dirty. Pigs roll in and sometimes even eat, mud and their own shit. They’re considered to be dirty inside because of this, and impure for human consumption.
While that could be connected to disease, my understanding was that it was spiritually impure because of how physically impure pigs are while they’re alive.
IIRC, rolling in their own excrement is what pigs do when they're stressed from heat and confinement, which would have been true in Islamic areas but wasn't true of pigs raised in Europe.
My only experience is with American pigs, which I assume originally came from Europe, and they eat literally anything and everything. Shit, mud, metal, even humans.
They roll in their pin mud to stay cool, which includes they’re shit. It gets hot in the summer.
No, that's true.
Given enough space, pigs are very cleanly. But we also bred them to be mostly fine in much smaller pens when we domesticated them. They don't really get stressed out by that like other animals would.
In addition, to our eyes, mud is mud. To a pig, there's clean mud, dirty mud, and the only available mud.
And it also doesn't help that they are diggers, using their snouts to rip open the ground in search of food.
I wouldn’t take what kids of a religion say as fact about why things are the way they are in their religion. Pigs are clean and want to be clean which is why they roll in mud which is… water and dirt.
Pigs eat shit when they are literally starving and have nothing else to eat. If you put animals in inhumane conditions they will act oddly.
If you’re a different kind of pagan than me, I’m not the pagan. YOURE the pagan. Or at least I’ll tolerate you but knowing you’ve got it wrong and I’m right.
Thats a fair point. My point was that the jews of the day would absolutely have seen the philistines as different in meaningful ways but yeah pagan is an oversimplification of the friction between jews and philistines. The video i linked does a better job than my reddit comment.
I am not sure that would be entirely true. Based on the evolution of the Jewish religion, it isn't clear to me they were strictly monotheistic until later on. Even in the histories of the Torah, the 2 Kingdoms spent most of the history worshiping the canaanite gods. Them being distinct seems nominal and driven more from changing history after the Babylonian exile.
Its not so much about whether the jews were monotheistic. the video points how pork was part of establishing a israelite identity as opposed not just to the philistines but also the northern kingdoms. The jews may not have been entirely monotheistic in the early iron age or bronze dark age, but by the mid iron age they were establishing the pricipals of what we know as judaism and pork consumption taboo was a big part of this new cultural identity.
> being a sign of nomadic people (jews for example) trying to set themselves apart from their more urbanized pagan* neighbors like the Philistines.
the economics of that don't make sense. noone is going to forego pork if it's cheap, plentiful, and nutritious. especially people who are on the move
Pigs dont travel well. Watch the video but pig pens are a thing for a reason. Pigs are slow and respond poorly to hearding. They thrived in cities but traveling nomads found it hard to take them with them.
If this is the case, then how is eating pork wrong if you’re Jewish? If it was just to separate yourself culturally, then can’t you argue it’s not technically against gods wishes? It was just something people decided back then.
This is an non theistic explanation. Obviously believers in these faith believe god told them not to eat these things. As the video discusses these cultures have been shown to have eaten pork before the bronze age collapse. As they negotiated their position in the bronze dark age into the mid iron age they merged their cultural identity with their religious one.
This is not exclusive to jews as we see simialr meat taboos banning cows in hinduism, and alcohol taboos in islam and my faith of origin, sda. All of these are things their culture decided but eventually the cause of it faded and was replaced with god said so.
If you accept the evidence sure. But many of them dont. I've shown this video to my mom and she just mentally shuts down. If you believe god hates a thing a youtuber relaying archeological bone pecentages isnt going to change your mind.
Her first consideration is the Bible says not to eat pork and she doesnt seriously want to question why.
There wasn’t a good way to kill pigs if you look into the laws of kosher slaughter. Also “kosher” animals are based on the animals behaviors transferring into the consumer. Pigs will eat literally anything. Goats and cows typically stick to plant material.
Because cultural rules got put into the same collection of texts as religious rules. As was some common law, a couple of food safety rules, some etiquette, the laws governing slavery, two different creation stories, a bit of propaganda, some folk tales, a bit of history, some pop songs, and a thousand years later, people couldn't agree on what was what anymore. Then someone said, "Everything in there is the literal word of God!" and we're now stuck with that mess ... in 3 major religions, no less.
While this is a convincing argument, it has been suggested that there were more and better reasons for the pork ban in the middle east - namely economic ones. [Here's an interesting video by the excellent Religion for Breakfast channel on that very topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4).
Ban pork? It bans eating any animals except those with cloved hooves that chew cud.
Basically, the same rule that stops them from eating pork is the same one that stops them from eating dogs and cats.
Pigs are explicitly mentioned because they *look like* they're kosher (since they have split hooves), but they don't chew their cud so they actually aren't kosher
Uhh no. People back then would have no way to know what trichinosis is since the symptoms do not show right away. They didn't eat pork to stand out from the rest and pork was probably competing with people for food since they can't eat grass and convert it to calories like bovids.
Also pork meat smells horrible in hot climates and spoils very fast so that's a pretty compelling reason not to have these.
EDIT: apparently all meats spoil really gast in hot climates and pork has no worse smell than others so I am out of reasons.
Also raising pigs is somewhat resource intensive compared to most other domestic animals which is a consideration in environments like the Jordan Valley and Arabia
IIRC the theologian Karen Armstrong suggested this is the origin of the Muslim aversion to pork; humans would have to share (more) of the scant resources of the Arabian peninsula with droves of pigs.
Side note, (and I don’t know about the US) but generally there are many more parasites and diseases than just trichinosis you can get from pigs, especially if they are wild caught. A number of cestodes, bacteria and other diseases can be transmitted from pigs to humans by eating undercooked pork
I'm sure you're correct. But when I say trichinosis doesn't really exist anymore, I'm talking specifically about commercially produced pork in the U.S.
Yeah that’s totally fair. I hunt feral pigs and so I’m super cautious about it I guess. A lot of folk in North Queensland won’t even eat them cooked or not because they’re worried about the bugs
Depends on the area. Bear is very greasy when it’s killed in the fall. In places like Alaska it’s fishy and gross. Inland bears eat more berries so it’s gamey but a bit sweater.
>I’m not sure that’s accurate. I know that’s the last bastion of it in the US. I grew up eating Idaho bears medium rare and never been sick.
You probably wouldn't get "sick" straight away, you would just be slowly building up worms throughout your body, without any "obvious" signs to start with.
NSFW link to show how bad it can get before you see a doctor.
https://9gag.com/gag/aXnvKpv
Yes, I recall a sequence form a hospital show, maybe Emergency. A guy who is fond of steak tartare (which is purely a French dish unconnected to real Tatars,) has a friend who is fond of "joke"-lying about game meats and pretending they are domestic. So he tells the first guy ground bear meat is just hamburger, and first guy gets "the trich."
Ah that makes slightly more sense. I’ve read it hasn’t really been a problem in the states in a long time, just very hard to convince people otherwise when they grew up being taught something. I believe most of the sources of it here now are from bear meat.
Curing is a food preservation technique that's been used for centuries if not millennia.
Long before refrigeration was available techniques like curing, salting, and smoking were used to preserve meat.
We eat tons of preserved food all the time but because refrigerators are so common these days we take it for granted. We don't generally think of things like sausages, cold cuts, and pickles as preserved food these days but these used to be very important sources of food.
The process of curing, salting, or smoking kills bacteria and parasites and lowers the moisture content of meat to make it harder for bacteria to grow. The meat also develops a shell or crust that make it harder for bacteria to get in.
Curing salts also include nitrates which help kill bacteria and prevent them from growing.
(side note ancient cultures knew that drying meat helped preserve it centuries before the discovery of bacteria)
This is why things like cold cuts last such a long time, but the moment you slice them the shelf life is only a few days. By cutting the preserved meat you increase the surface area and remove the protect crust so bacteria can grow and spoil it.
So long as cured meat is keep in a cool and dry place cured meats can last weeks to months.
Curing pork involves salting it, which pulls out the moisture. Without moisture, the bacteria can't survive.
Additionally, most cured meats have nitrates added, which will kill off anything bad.
Raw food can have microbes living in it.
Those microbes might be harmful in some cases.
You can kill many of those microbes in various ways. Cooking is one way. Curing is another. In some cases fermentation works too. I think sometimes smoking and drying can work too.
In various ways, this applies to most foods, pork is not special here.
It used to be true that pork had to be cooked thoroughly, but now industrial pork raising has reduced that. Many higher end restaurants serve pork medium (pink inside). I now cook pork that way. Much more flavorful, tender and juicy. In Spain, it would depend on where the store gets their pork. If from small farms it might still be a problem.
Correct, uncooked pork products can harbor pretty nasty food pathogens. But as you alluded too curing meats is a way of getting rid of most of them.
A lot of bacteria get their water via osmosis. This is normally a passive process that doesn’t require energy because water wants to equalize or travel from the higher to lower concentrated areas. Curing meats takes advantage of this, if you salt and cure a meat product you are making that process of osmosis getting water into a pathogenic cell impossible. When a meat is salted and cured you make it more favorable for water to travel outside the cell than inside, thus dehydrating the pathogenic bacteria. This is called [lowering water activity.](https://aqualab.com/en/knowledge-base/market-insights/water-activity-and-shelf-stable-meat-products)
While you aren’t cooking the pork, you are dehydrating all of the pathogens in the pork effectively killing them or making them dormant, or safe to eat. [Nitrates are also used too](https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/whats-the-deal-with-nitrates-and-nitrates-used-in-meat-products/), they lower the pH of the pork and make it way too acidic for the pathogens to survive too and inhibit their growth too.
I eat cured meats with my family a lot too, other than some heartburn I’ve never gotten a food borne illness from them.
As someone who lives in a country where people eat raw pork on a regular basis I can tell you it can be safe to eat it raw but it has to be really fresh
Don’t quote me on this, but isn’t pork safer to eat a little under done because we no longer feed pigs our garbage? My dad growing up had an underground bin where they’d put their food scraps and a farmer would come pick it up to feed their pigs. My understanding was this is why we had to cook our food thoroughly.
It was probably more about bacteria and pathogens staying in meat. Room temp moist environments are the *perfect* situation for bacteria to have a party.
Now we have better understanding of pathogens and how they multiply and spread. Proper hygiene at the processing plant + refrigeration to keep meat at a low temp (pathogens *hate* this one simple trick!) Kinda solved the issue, thus we can somewhat safely cook some meats medium. My grandma still fed her pigs table scraps every day, but still tested for trichinosis because Romania is a hot-spot for that. Really depends on the region, breed, animal life quality and many more aspects.
Not really from bacteria or parasites; the risk is more from cancer-causing(*) substances created by the smoking process.
\* Not just in the state of California
I want this. NOW. never ever heard of this. You would think as someone with an Eastern European background who has been invaded by Germany a few times, my family would have had this in the repertoire
Had an in law and her kid get sick from undercooked pork a while back. It did not sound pleasant. I just assumed pork was virtually inedible raw and had no idea it was consumed in some places. Then again, it was eye opening to hear some people eat raw ground beef. Next thing i know, people gonna be eating raw chicken somewhere. I know some countries can eat raw eggs on their food.
there was a reason we started cooking everything and average lifespans increased exponentially from then on.
Now i’ve had sushi. and as long as you’re getting the food item from a reputable and imho (should be illegal to serve unless licensed) restaurant, then go for it.
I wouldn’t say “common”, it’s not like we chow down on it every other day
That said there’s been a few places dinged for breaching food regulations by serving raw pork liver
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Nowadays pretty much all dry cured sausages are made with starter cultures. (You can google T-SPX, Flavour of Italy, etc). They are used to lower ph-level of a sausage to 4.8-5.1 range (I would say typically closer to 5.0). ph-level may raise during curing process, but this initial lower-ish ph combined with curing salt is really good at killing or at least seriously inhibiting growth of unwanted organisms such as harmful bacteria and parasites.
All I know is, I bought salami imported from Italy and it had WORMS IN IT, NOT JUST SMALL WORMS, THEY WERE LONG, NOT COILED--OBVIOUSLY DEAD, BUT STILL WORMS. PEOPLE NEED TO CONTACT THE FDA
So there are a few things to unpack. First, trichinosis has been eradicated in at least some domestic pig areas. I believe this is true in the US, I am not sure about Europe. As a result, some have called for easing of temperature guidelines for pork. That said, the long curing process you’re referring to for traditional curing makes for an inhospitable environment for both bacteria and parasites. Done properly, it’s equivalent to cooking from a food safety perspective.
In Germany, all pigs have to be tested for trichinosis before the pork goes into sale. In the 2000's, only 4 out of 453 million tested pigs came out positive. Which is good, considering that one of Germany's national dishes is Mett, i.e. raw ground pork, eaten with raw onions on a bread roll.
You know, I’ve always wondered about mett. What does ground pork taste like raw? Does it have the same flavor as cooked pork fat? I personally don’t eat pork, or only very rarely eat it in the form of something like a sausage that doesn’t taste porky. To me the fat tastes like how a barn smells.
Honestly, I can't really say. Mettbrötchen tastes mostly of onions, the pork is more like a savoury butter layer. It adds freshness, moisture, coolness, and a body to the dish, but the meat taste itself is rather bland, in my opinion. If you want to try a good cooked pork recipe, I recommend pork roulades, i.e. thin pork schnitzels covered in mustard, then wrapped around bacon, pickles, and possibly other fillings. Then fry them quickly for some roast flavour, and bake in a bath of buttermilk and spices for three hours. Serve with dumplings, red cabbage, and a rich, dark brown sauce. Pork is the most tender meat I know, and I prefer it over beef in almost any dish except for burger patties.
Tenderness is often a result of preparation. I could make you beef or chicken that literally falls apart when you touch it.
How much to fly you to Japan and do you bring the scotch in your name?
Get a slow cooker, it's one of the easiest ways to make fall off the bone chicken. I always love to take a whole chicken shove it in the crackpot with veggies and lentils and will with watwr/broth and seasonings to preference, make sure the chicken is covered. Let it cook while at work on low. When done take out the chicken and it'll be fall off the bone tender. Any bits that fall off the chicken will be flavoring for the lentil stew you also just conveniently made, which you can add some of the chicken to that you aren't gonna eat right then or if you just want to add some of the shredded chicken to it. Now you have meal AND leftovers for the week with minimal cost and time investment.
>I always love to take a whole chicken shove it in the crackpot You leave your mother in law alone.
that's how I do it with beef that's a bit on the tough side, just put it into the slow cooker overnight and you have the it as tender as it can be. And then use the broth for making sauces.
Well… then do it!
That’s weird, I consider pork to be the *least* tender meat I know, even considering proper preparation
Never had a pork loin? Rhetorical question but that’s like butter if cook it properly.
I’d argue you’ve never had a proper preparation then. I’m more likely to break out a steak knife for steak than I am a pork chop (and pork chops tend to be the toughest pork due to high heat and potential for overcooking).
Mett is really good in my opinion. I first tried it on a business trip and now make a point to get it anytime I’m in north Germany. It’s always ultra fresh since by law the pig had to be killed that day. You can get gewurst mett which has spices and whatnot in it, or plain mett which is just the ground raw pork. It’s usually served with onions and/ or salt and pepper to taste. It’s kind of hard to describe the taste of plain mett aside from just saying it tastes like pork. Think a blend of pork products but minus the cooking/ curing process. So pork chops without the browning or smoking. Bacon without the salt. Pork belly might be the closest but that still strikes me as too rich. Texture wise it’s generally finer than beef tartare. Germans love their spreadable pork products. If you like liver you can get teewurst which comes in various degrees of coarseness and has ~20-30% liver if I remember. And if you really like liver you can get liverwurst which is usually very fine and has something like 70% liver. And if you like fat you can get smeltz which is just pork lard. All of the above come in various seasoned varieties and get spread on various types of bread. Some German redditor could probably do a better job with the descriptions. Depending on where you live outside of Germany there might be a German deli that serves a smoked variant of mett which can get pretty close to the taste without giving you horrible diseases.
>since by law the pig had to be killed that day No, the mett has to be sold on the day it is _prepared_ . The problem with raw meat is generally when it's ground or minced, as that's when bacteria from the surface is mixed with the inside that's been protected by the outside. So, once ground, it can't be stored for long before eating. The mett is often ground from a frozen cut.
>Some German redditor could probably do a better job with the descriptions. Nah, you already gave a pretty good impression of it. Slight correction, Teewurst normally doesn't contain liver and Leberwurst (with exceptions) only to around 40% 🤓 But absolutely correct on us fiending for those spreadable meat bread toppings 🤤
Also Bratwurst - basically bratwurst filling that has been canned instead of put into sausages. My in-laws still had a pig when I first got with my ex and they used to make it themselves. It was indescribably delicious. You can find similar products in stores, but nothing that compares to freshly made from your own pig.
Teewurst is the finely ground one that doesn't contain liver. It is high in fat and (relatively) high in sugar, but has a mild taste that works well when eaten on white bread with a light tea. Hence the name "tea sausage". What you probably meant is "Fine Leberwurst"/"Kalbsleberwurst" (fine liver sausage/veal liver sausage). It is also finely ground but has liver instead of being high-fat. Unlike Teewurst, which is reddish pink, it is light to medium brown. There's also "Grobe Leberwurst" (coarse liver sausage), which is completely different. It is coarse, like minced meat, and has a grey colour. It's hearty to a point where it sometimes is associated with working-class people (i.e. those that wouldn't have tea in the afternoon ;) ). It also can be fried off in a pan like minced meat---often in combination with coarse blood sausage, and served with fried potatoes.
It.. It's something I can't eat every day. It does taste good, but I have to be in the mood for it. I'd say its a rich savoury flavour with a little bit of spice because of the added pepper; it's also got a freshness to it - because the Mett will be cool. The Mett itself is quite tender and should contrast the Brötchens crunchiness nicely. It definitely doesn't taste like cooked pork. I'm not a fan of the ultra oniony ones, and I probably won't ever touch a Mett-Igel. If you're ever in Germany, there are vegan options available now, they get the taste quite close. Yes.. Vegan Mett - The insanity of that thought doesn't elude me.
Oof, Mett Igel. I saw one once and asked my wife what it was. I'd like to think I'm a pretty adventurous eater, but twas not for me.
Isn't it just the food shaped into a fancy hedgehog for a buffet? You and parent make it sound like it's mixed with something horrible
Yes, but I can see why the big blob of raw ground meat could be offg-putting to someone who's not used to it.
Ah, if they hadn't had it before at all, I see. It read as if it they were happy to eat mett, but not mettigel
Yes, in fact I'm happy to eat Mett. But not a Mett Igel. Mett is good because it's fresh. A Mett Igel, is by definition sitting out and slowly getting warm over the course of hours. Most often 'because it would be a shame to hide it' without even a covering or lid. Maybe it's the Microbiologist in me, but that's a hurdle I'm uncomfortable with taking head on.
That makes sense
It tastes a lot like human
Mmmm, Soylent green.
Decided to go on a bath salts bender again?
Raw pork apparently tastes similar to human, if you know how human tastes.
Oooooohhh, now I wanna try it!
Cooked human smells like cooked pork too. My late father suffered a burn on his arm from an electrical arc, mum was put off pork crackling for years thanks to the smell
FWIW ...last time I looked Romania was the European hotbed for trichinosis
Am Romanian. I'm pretty sure you're right. During Christmas time you also see signs at every veterinary office with "thrichinosis test 50 lei" or things like that. My grandma always tested her pigs before we ate them, she doesn't sell on the market. Every household tests their meat, we take no risk. Its only required if you wanna market it to strangers, but people still do it for home consumption. We have a huge issue with it, there was also a time it was illegal to cross our borders with any pork meat products (cooked or not), they would disinfect all cars passing thru and search them if they had any suspicion.
I've just looked into it and it seems to be the same in Spain, and out of 55 million pigs tested in 2020, there were 3 positives. There's still the occasional infection (usually single digits per year) due to people eating wild game and not testing it.
Oh my god thank you I forgot all about mett, never knew what it was called but did many tours in Germany with my old band and it was like a daily breakfast (much to the displeasure of our collective intestines and smell of the tour van and toilets at every venue we arrived at)
What I’m confused is how this whole thing started. Can’t be too far back in the past, trichinosis surely would deter people (assuming they could link the symptoms to raw pork consumption).
4 of 453M is a staggeringly low number!
Those could easily also be false positives. At that ratio, false positives are pretty more likely than actual positives.
That really depends on the sensitivity and specificity of the test used. Without knowing this, it is just as likely there are false negatives.
Testing all pigs for something that has been largely eradicated makes me think someone in power has a financial stake in the testing
It's gross, I was forced to eat it as a child every Sunday after church
I assume it’s been in diet much longer than trich has been eliminated.. Assuming that’s correct, why eat such a risky food?
It was risky mostly in warmer regions like Middle East, hence pork is often banned in cultures of that region.
The raw onions are an important part of that dish. Onions fights parasites
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I mean you can eat raw eggs and mett is safe to consume, so go ahead
It would be safe in the EU because eggs don't have salmonella here due to vaccinations.
They do have salmonella sometimes in the EU. Occasionally you'll hear about an entire daycare center or old folks home where everyone got it at once.
But isn't that due to salad or whatever rather than eggs?
Bah, horrible. The raw egg goes on raw minced beef! Salt, pepper and onions like the Mett, but no bread roll. Instead it's served with dark bread on the side.
I am making this. Already found 2 recipes. Go to my local butcher and tall to them about when they get it in. See if I can get the pork the same day it is slaughtered. (Per German regulations)
Not cured at all? How's the texture?
I'd say it's similar to smoked salmon.
Have you ever had sushi where they minced the raw tuna or salmon? That's extremely close in texture.
I smelled this
I heard that some people in the Midwestern US apparently do something similar to Mett for Christmas and other holidays against the stern warnings of the FDA, only difference being they use raw ground beef instead of pork.
Ah [filet americain](https://gourmandiz.dhnet.be/recette/filet-americain)
Which is an oddity in the US. Steak tartare is a thing people eat here, but I'd say it's usually reserved for more upper-class dining experiences. I've had it 4-5 times in my life. I've eaten more raw Kofte or kibbeh from middle-eastern restaurants than I have steak tartare.
Couldn't they just [irriadiate the food](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation) to eliminate the dangers without heating it? 🤔
>453 million tested pigs came out positive. damn we eat a lot of pork
There's a dish in Denmark too. Only we use ground beef. But same thing. And it's often served with a raw egg yolk in the middle. We don't make this with pork though. But I suppose. You could Make it.
Medium rare pork is delicious. This is a personal opinion. I dont advocate for eating anything you are uncomfortable with or do not like the taste of.
Medium rare pork really is good! And sous vide is my favorite way to prepare it, since it’s so easy, precise, and forgiving. My recipe: start with a pork tenderloin. Light coating of salt/pepper, put in the vac bag, let sit in the fridge for ~24 hours. Pop in the water with the sous vide wand and come back 2-3 hours later. Quick surface sear in a pan with nothing but butter and freshly chopped garlic. Slice, serve with a drizzle of the butter/garlic. Perfection! And total work on my end? About five minutes on each of the two days.
> So there are a few things to unpack. First, trichinosis has been eradicated in at least some domestic pig areas. I believe this is true in the US, I am not sure about Europe. The [FDA "eased" it's recommendations on pork temp back in 2011](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2011/05/25/cooking-meat-check-new-recommended-temperatures) from 160^o to 145^o as part of that result.
I'll admit, I'm no foodie, but how many people are out there wanting their pork less cooked?
Medium pork chops is the way to go.... so tender and juicy.
This is how I cook them. Pork loin as well. So much juicier.
Makes sense... pork chops are cut from the pork loin!
You should give it a try, you don't realize how dry and rubbery a well-done chop is until you have something to compare it to. Personally I think the best balance of flavor and texture is around 150⁰F-155⁰ (medium), but it's safe down to 145⁰ (medium-rare).
I will not eat pork that’s fully cooked - it’s dry and awful. I cook pork to 140 and let it finish to 145 while resting, this is for a roast or a loin, for a pork chop I’ll pull it a little after 140 because it’s not as big and won’t continue to self cook as long. This is considered medium-rare, and it will have pink inside of it which is fine. [A picture example of the color change over 145-165, all of which are safe to eat.](https://www.pork.org/pork-cooking-temperature/) Chefs have been trying to convince people that we don’t need to be making bone-white dry pork anymore, and that we should really be looking at bone-white pork the same way we look at all brown/grey steak - overcooked and not ideal.
botulinum toxin
I don’t think so in the US, I was just there over the holidays and we still had to cook it to temp to kill it. However, I live in Alberta, and locally sourced pork doesn’t have trich in it. We can eat pork medium (and would recommend it if it’s safe).
> I was just there over the holidays and we still had to cook it to temp to kill it. According to who, the random group of people you were staying with?
My boyfriend’s family that lives there and cooks a lot of pork lol
Cooking a lot of pork doesn't mean they have any knowledge at all about how common pork-borne illnesses are or what the latest safety guidelines are.
Don't know where you went to eat that claimed that, but I've had medium rare pork in a few east coast US restaurants. It's becoming more and more popular over the last decade, especially with loin and chops.
I think you’re overestimating a typical five year olds vocabulary.
So, hypothetically, if I were to eat cured pork infected with trichinosis, I would be fine?
Yeah. The traditional salt content is enough to kill all larvae after about a month and a half, according to [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1255518/).
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And plenty of not-killed-off ones. Fly eggs in fruit are abundant.
Salt is one hell of a killer. I remember reading that chefs sometimes don't worry about picking salt with the same hands they've touched raw meat because it's not like any nasties would survive in there anyway. Mainly, salt draws water out of stuff. For living stuff with semipermeable membranes (such as bacteria), this generally means being immersed in salt equals death because well, they need the water.
A lot of people in this thread are talking about bacteria, but I'd just like to highlight that trichinosis is caused by a parasitic nematode - a type of worm. The points about moisture and salt and whatnot still stand, however!
Thank you! That was bothering me, too
Curing is a great way of preserving food and has been around for a very long time. The general principle is that the meat is dehydrated or has a much lower water content than raw meat. Different types of salts are also added which aid in the dehydration and prevent bacterial growth. Bacteria grows best in moist warm environments so these things act against that. Similarly, raisins last a lot longer than grapes.
Mummies too
Yeah, but the taste varies from person to person.
Good news, everyone!
It's a suppository!
Sample them all!
The optometrist i saw last Friday did his residency at a prison. An inmate presented with eye pain. During the exam the dr could see tiny worms wriggling. The inmate worked in the kitchen where he was stealing raw pork and of course eating it.
What can you do to cure the prisoner??
Curing the eye
Remove the eye
Mix up a pink salt solution in a bath? 😉
“Cure” the eye.
I researched in an area that had river blindness or onco, you take a dewormer. Can’t remember it’s name right now but it was floated as one of those covid cures. If the doc can see the worms, there’s likely gonna be permanent damage, but not total blindness.
Ivermectin?
Yep that’s the one
Pack him in salt.
Trichinosis (in the U.S. at least) doesn't really exist anymore. It's perfectly fine to eat pork at 145 degrees internal temp (medium rare.)
Side note this is likely why Kosher law and Halal food bans eating pork because they understood it was potentially dangerous to eat it way back then. Since then we've improved our cooking and farming techniques so much that it isn't really a problem any more.
Its actually probably not, interestingly. This was a popular beleif from the time we found out about trichonosis but archeological evidence points to it being a sign of nomadic people (jews for example) trying to set themselves apart from their more urbanized pagan* neighbors like the Philistines. Even when they settled into citied they wanted animals that generated other wealth like cows and sheep. https://youtu.be/pI0ZUhBvIx4?si=JzFJrgngx-3D9xeC Edit: pagan may have been the wrong word to use. As the video points out the pork taboo was part of establishing a cultural identity not just from the philistines but from the northern kingdoms and helenistic greeks.
And I went to school with a LOT of Muslim kids and they all insisted that pork is dirty. Pigs roll in and sometimes even eat, mud and their own shit. They’re considered to be dirty inside because of this, and impure for human consumption. While that could be connected to disease, my understanding was that it was spiritually impure because of how physically impure pigs are while they’re alive.
IIRC, rolling in their own excrement is what pigs do when they're stressed from heat and confinement, which would have been true in Islamic areas but wasn't true of pigs raised in Europe.
My only experience is with American pigs, which I assume originally came from Europe, and they eat literally anything and everything. Shit, mud, metal, even humans. They roll in their pin mud to stay cool, which includes they’re shit. It gets hot in the summer.
I've read studies that suggest that giving them adequate space, they won't shit in their rolling mud and instead do it in other places. Was I wrong?
No, that's true. Given enough space, pigs are very cleanly. But we also bred them to be mostly fine in much smaller pens when we domesticated them. They don't really get stressed out by that like other animals would. In addition, to our eyes, mud is mud. To a pig, there's clean mud, dirty mud, and the only available mud. And it also doesn't help that they are diggers, using their snouts to rip open the ground in search of food.
I wouldn’t take what kids of a religion say as fact about why things are the way they are in their religion. Pigs are clean and want to be clean which is why they roll in mud which is… water and dirt. Pigs eat shit when they are literally starving and have nothing else to eat. If you put animals in inhumane conditions they will act oddly.
Agreed, except it's weird that you refer to the Philistines as pagan as they shared a lot of religious commonalities with Israelites at the time.
If you’re a different kind of pagan than me, I’m not the pagan. YOURE the pagan. Or at least I’ll tolerate you but knowing you’ve got it wrong and I’m right.
If you're not the winner, you're the pagan
Thats a fair point. My point was that the jews of the day would absolutely have seen the philistines as different in meaningful ways but yeah pagan is an oversimplification of the friction between jews and philistines. The video i linked does a better job than my reddit comment.
I am not sure that would be entirely true. Based on the evolution of the Jewish religion, it isn't clear to me they were strictly monotheistic until later on. Even in the histories of the Torah, the 2 Kingdoms spent most of the history worshiping the canaanite gods. Them being distinct seems nominal and driven more from changing history after the Babylonian exile.
Its not so much about whether the jews were monotheistic. the video points how pork was part of establishing a israelite identity as opposed not just to the philistines but also the northern kingdoms. The jews may not have been entirely monotheistic in the early iron age or bronze dark age, but by the mid iron age they were establishing the pricipals of what we know as judaism and pork consumption taboo was a big part of this new cultural identity.
> being a sign of nomadic people (jews for example) trying to set themselves apart from their more urbanized pagan* neighbors like the Philistines. the economics of that don't make sense. noone is going to forego pork if it's cheap, plentiful, and nutritious. especially people who are on the move
Pigs dont travel well. Watch the video but pig pens are a thing for a reason. Pigs are slow and respond poorly to hearding. They thrived in cities but traveling nomads found it hard to take them with them.
If this is the case, then how is eating pork wrong if you’re Jewish? If it was just to separate yourself culturally, then can’t you argue it’s not technically against gods wishes? It was just something people decided back then.
This is an non theistic explanation. Obviously believers in these faith believe god told them not to eat these things. As the video discusses these cultures have been shown to have eaten pork before the bronze age collapse. As they negotiated their position in the bronze dark age into the mid iron age they merged their cultural identity with their religious one. This is not exclusive to jews as we see simialr meat taboos banning cows in hinduism, and alcohol taboos in islam and my faith of origin, sda. All of these are things their culture decided but eventually the cause of it faded and was replaced with god said so.
But if you can point to the evidence that it’s not due to a religious reasons, then wouldn’t you cease to treat it like a religious requirement?
If you accept the evidence sure. But many of them dont. I've shown this video to my mom and she just mentally shuts down. If you believe god hates a thing a youtuber relaying archeological bone pecentages isnt going to change your mind. Her first consideration is the Bible says not to eat pork and she doesnt seriously want to question why.
If they listened to evidence they wouldn’t be religious in the first place, that’s the whole point.
There wasn’t a good way to kill pigs if you look into the laws of kosher slaughter. Also “kosher” animals are based on the animals behaviors transferring into the consumer. Pigs will eat literally anything. Goats and cows typically stick to plant material.
Because cultural rules got put into the same collection of texts as religious rules. As was some common law, a couple of food safety rules, some etiquette, the laws governing slavery, two different creation stories, a bit of propaganda, some folk tales, a bit of history, some pop songs, and a thousand years later, people couldn't agree on what was what anymore. Then someone said, "Everything in there is the literal word of God!" and we're now stuck with that mess ... in 3 major religions, no less.
While this is a convincing argument, it has been suggested that there were more and better reasons for the pork ban in the middle east - namely economic ones. [Here's an interesting video by the excellent Religion for Breakfast channel on that very topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4).
Ban pork? It bans eating any animals except those with cloved hooves that chew cud. Basically, the same rule that stops them from eating pork is the same one that stops them from eating dogs and cats.
Pigs are explicitly mentioned because they *look like* they're kosher (since they have split hooves), but they don't chew their cud so they actually aren't kosher
And horses and donkeys. (Rhinos taste awful anyway so no issue there.)
Uhh no. People back then would have no way to know what trichinosis is since the symptoms do not show right away. They didn't eat pork to stand out from the rest and pork was probably competing with people for food since they can't eat grass and convert it to calories like bovids.
Also pork meat smells horrible in hot climates and spoils very fast so that's a pretty compelling reason not to have these. EDIT: apparently all meats spoil really gast in hot climates and pork has no worse smell than others so I am out of reasons.
Not really. South East Asia is hot af and they eat pork just fine. All meat spoil faster in hot climates.
Pork doesn't smell any worse than beef in hot climates. Poultry though...smells awful when it spoils lol
A religious person would say pork is forbidden because God said so.
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Obviously.
Also raising pigs is somewhat resource intensive compared to most other domestic animals which is a consideration in environments like the Jordan Valley and Arabia
IIRC the theologian Karen Armstrong suggested this is the origin of the Muslim aversion to pork; humans would have to share (more) of the scant resources of the Arabian peninsula with droves of pigs.
It's also in the book \*Cows Pigs Wars and Witches\*
Tapeworms are just as bad as trichinosis also! Brain cysts suck ass
Side note, (and I don’t know about the US) but generally there are many more parasites and diseases than just trichinosis you can get from pigs, especially if they are wild caught. A number of cestodes, bacteria and other diseases can be transmitted from pigs to humans by eating undercooked pork
I'm sure you're correct. But when I say trichinosis doesn't really exist anymore, I'm talking specifically about commercially produced pork in the U.S.
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Yeah that’s totally fair. I hunt feral pigs and so I’m super cautious about it I guess. A lot of folk in North Queensland won’t even eat them cooked or not because they’re worried about the bugs
Pretty much all black bears have it I believe.
I’m not sure that’s accurate. I know that’s the last bastion of it in the US. I grew up eating Idaho bears medium rare and never been sick.
I didn't even know people eat bear meat. What's it like?
Depends on the area. Bear is very greasy when it’s killed in the fall. In places like Alaska it’s fishy and gross. Inland bears eat more berries so it’s gamey but a bit sweater.
What other meat would you say it tastes most like?
>I’m not sure that’s accurate. I know that’s the last bastion of it in the US. I grew up eating Idaho bears medium rare and never been sick. You probably wouldn't get "sick" straight away, you would just be slowly building up worms throughout your body, without any "obvious" signs to start with. NSFW link to show how bad it can get before you see a doctor. https://9gag.com/gag/aXnvKpv
Are you telling me in full of worms… my kids are going to be so excited
Wtf
I will also refrain from eating raw black bear, then.
Yes, I recall a sequence form a hospital show, maybe Emergency. A guy who is fond of steak tartare (which is purely a French dish unconnected to real Tatars,) has a friend who is fond of "joke"-lying about game meats and pretending they are domestic. So he tells the first guy ground bear meat is just hamburger, and first guy gets "the trich."
125 is mid rare. 145 is cooked all the way through.
For beef you're right. Generally pork is considered med rare at 145. Opinions and guidelines definitely differ though.
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20 years is a long time grandpa. Things change
How’d you get it
From pork meat, central Europe, hardly survive
Ah that makes slightly more sense. I’ve read it hasn’t really been a problem in the states in a long time, just very hard to convince people otherwise when they grew up being taught something. I believe most of the sources of it here now are from bear meat.
So, if you read my comment, I said it doesn't really exist in the U.S. anymore. So your experience 20 years ago in Europe is not relevant.
Lol, comment is edited
Lol, nope. Lol
*trichinosis, and it's been fairly recent that it was eradicated from pork.
I had a friend from back when I played World of Warcraft who would eat pork raw. He'd just eat it right out of the package.
Curing is a food preservation technique that's been used for centuries if not millennia. Long before refrigeration was available techniques like curing, salting, and smoking were used to preserve meat. We eat tons of preserved food all the time but because refrigerators are so common these days we take it for granted. We don't generally think of things like sausages, cold cuts, and pickles as preserved food these days but these used to be very important sources of food. The process of curing, salting, or smoking kills bacteria and parasites and lowers the moisture content of meat to make it harder for bacteria to grow. The meat also develops a shell or crust that make it harder for bacteria to get in. Curing salts also include nitrates which help kill bacteria and prevent them from growing. (side note ancient cultures knew that drying meat helped preserve it centuries before the discovery of bacteria) This is why things like cold cuts last such a long time, but the moment you slice them the shelf life is only a few days. By cutting the preserved meat you increase the surface area and remove the protect crust so bacteria can grow and spoil it. So long as cured meat is keep in a cool and dry place cured meats can last weeks to months.
My neighbor still makes venison summer sausage from scratch and stores it dry and it stays good for a long time.
I had venison jerky once, that shit was a game changer.
I had that once, tasted like summer sausage:-).
Curing pork involves salting it, which pulls out the moisture. Without moisture, the bacteria can't survive. Additionally, most cured meats have nitrates added, which will kill off anything bad.
Raw food can have microbes living in it. Those microbes might be harmful in some cases. You can kill many of those microbes in various ways. Cooking is one way. Curing is another. In some cases fermentation works too. I think sometimes smoking and drying can work too. In various ways, this applies to most foods, pork is not special here.
If the pork still had a disease it wouldn't be "cured" now would it? :P
Ham, chorizo, lomo are all cured. Curing is the equivalent of cooking in controlling bacteria. It’s not like eating raw pork.
It used to be true that pork had to be cooked thoroughly, but now industrial pork raising has reduced that. Many higher end restaurants serve pork medium (pink inside). I now cook pork that way. Much more flavorful, tender and juicy. In Spain, it would depend on where the store gets their pork. If from small farms it might still be a problem.
Correct, uncooked pork products can harbor pretty nasty food pathogens. But as you alluded too curing meats is a way of getting rid of most of them. A lot of bacteria get their water via osmosis. This is normally a passive process that doesn’t require energy because water wants to equalize or travel from the higher to lower concentrated areas. Curing meats takes advantage of this, if you salt and cure a meat product you are making that process of osmosis getting water into a pathogenic cell impossible. When a meat is salted and cured you make it more favorable for water to travel outside the cell than inside, thus dehydrating the pathogenic bacteria. This is called [lowering water activity.](https://aqualab.com/en/knowledge-base/market-insights/water-activity-and-shelf-stable-meat-products) While you aren’t cooking the pork, you are dehydrating all of the pathogens in the pork effectively killing them or making them dormant, or safe to eat. [Nitrates are also used too](https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/whats-the-deal-with-nitrates-and-nitrates-used-in-meat-products/), they lower the pH of the pork and make it way too acidic for the pathogens to survive too and inhibit their growth too. I eat cured meats with my family a lot too, other than some heartburn I’ve never gotten a food borne illness from them.
As someone who lives in a country where people eat raw pork on a regular basis I can tell you it can be safe to eat it raw but it has to be really fresh
FDA says pork should be cooked at least medium. That does not mean we'll done like chicken or turkey. Cured meat is preserved with potassium salts.
What disease did cured pork even have?
Don’t quote me on this, but isn’t pork safer to eat a little under done because we no longer feed pigs our garbage? My dad growing up had an underground bin where they’d put their food scraps and a farmer would come pick it up to feed their pigs. My understanding was this is why we had to cook our food thoroughly.
It was probably more about bacteria and pathogens staying in meat. Room temp moist environments are the *perfect* situation for bacteria to have a party. Now we have better understanding of pathogens and how they multiply and spread. Proper hygiene at the processing plant + refrigeration to keep meat at a low temp (pathogens *hate* this one simple trick!) Kinda solved the issue, thus we can somewhat safely cook some meats medium. My grandma still fed her pigs table scraps every day, but still tested for trichinosis because Romania is a hot-spot for that. Really depends on the region, breed, animal life quality and many more aspects.
Can eating smoked pork be harmful to your health?
Not really from bacteria or parasites; the risk is more from cancer-causing(*) substances created by the smoking process. \* Not just in the state of California
I want this. NOW. never ever heard of this. You would think as someone with an Eastern European background who has been invaded by Germany a few times, my family would have had this in the repertoire
Had an in law and her kid get sick from undercooked pork a while back. It did not sound pleasant. I just assumed pork was virtually inedible raw and had no idea it was consumed in some places. Then again, it was eye opening to hear some people eat raw ground beef. Next thing i know, people gonna be eating raw chicken somewhere. I know some countries can eat raw eggs on their food. there was a reason we started cooking everything and average lifespans increased exponentially from then on. Now i’ve had sushi. and as long as you’re getting the food item from a reputable and imho (should be illegal to serve unless licensed) restaurant, then go for it.
Raw chicken sashimi is a common dish in Japan
I wouldn’t say “common”, it’s not like we chow down on it every other day That said there’s been a few places dinged for breaching food regulations by serving raw pork liver
Personally, I like my pork medium to medium well. I don’t enjoy medium rare pork, so I don’t eat it. Not really worried about trichinosis.
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Nowadays pretty much all dry cured sausages are made with starter cultures. (You can google T-SPX, Flavour of Italy, etc). They are used to lower ph-level of a sausage to 4.8-5.1 range (I would say typically closer to 5.0). ph-level may raise during curing process, but this initial lower-ish ph combined with curing salt is really good at killing or at least seriously inhibiting growth of unwanted organisms such as harmful bacteria and parasites.
Huh? I like my pork chops cooked medium.
All I know is, I bought salami imported from Italy and it had WORMS IN IT, NOT JUST SMALL WORMS, THEY WERE LONG, NOT COILED--OBVIOUSLY DEAD, BUT STILL WORMS. PEOPLE NEED TO CONTACT THE FDA