interior contamination of meat? yes or no?

This is of primary concern with sous vide cooking for all. I cook for elderly clients as a private chef and want to do so with the confidence of informed action. Please help...

I recall reading in Modernist Cuisine that the interior of most meat is sterile and surface pasteurization such as searing before sous vide effectively removes contamination in all but Jaccarded meat and ground meat. The only exception being parasites in fish and rarely also in pork etc.

However recently reading Douglas Baldwins book he operates from the opposite paradigm that meat is contaminated at the interior and bases times and temps on pasteurizing internally.

Which is correct here? Are intact muscle meats contaminated in the interior or not? To assume one or the other would suggest very different approaches to cooking.

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Comments

brian_martin2001

Is there a question here?

evilashaod

Are you currently cooking their meat well done? If you've been serving them medium rare meat cooked conventionally, they are still being exposed to risk. This is just the risk everyone takes. I haven't heavily gone through Baldwins book, but does he presear? As far as I know, his resource is more on a lab approach of, at x temp, it will take y min to kill z% of bacteria A.

When I took food science a long time ago, I was told that the inside of muscles are pretty much sterile, and that the bacteria was on the outside.

In conclusion, I think you could technically make your meals safer with sous vide if you want to hold the temps that long, but you may run into taste/texture vs completely safe.

hth

ethanunick

Yes simply my question is does the interior of intact muscle meat contain contamination ie:pathogens? If so what kinds? I was under the assumption from Modernist Cuisine that the interior is generally sterile but Baldwin's paradigm is completely different.

I also edited my question to be clearer thanks for the nudge haha

ethanunick

Thanks for the reply, the "interior is sterile" was largely what I understood after reading Modernist Cuisine book 2 but Baldwin's paradigm seems to strongly take for granted a completely opposite assumption, that the interior is contaminated and should be treated as such in time/temp pasteurization.

brian_martin2001

It is unlikely that, provided you haven't been puncturing your meat with a tenderizer, fork, skewer, etc. that the interior of your meat is contaminated with bacteria. There are types of bacteria that can migrate through muscle tissue, but these types of bacteria are not particularly common, and is not considered a reasonable risk.

montebello1964

To quote Baldwin regarding the times in his often referenced tables (differentiating time to reach a certain temperature in the center of the product, versus pasteurization time at that temperature):

"For tender cuts of beef–such as tenderloin, sirloin and rib-eye–season, vacuum seal in heat stable plastic pouches, and cook either very-rare (120°F/ 49°C), rare (125°F/51.5°C), medium-rare (130°F/ 54.5°C), or medium (140°F/60°C) for the time listed in Table 2.2. For extended shelf-life (i.e., cook-chill or cook-freeze) or when serving immune compromised individuals, the beef must be pasteurized for at least the times in Table 5.1."

I don't think most people actually read Baldwin, they just repeat what they've been told by other people who haven't actually read Baldwin.