Peanut butter recalls. Spinach scares. Contaminated meat. Is it any wonder Americans are jittery about their food?
With so many traditional recipes calling for uncooked egg — mayonnaise, Caesar salad, eggnog, carbonara, and the simple joy of dunking toast in soft-boiled eggs — many cooks question whether such dishes are safe.
Simply put, raw eggs can carry salmonella, bacteria that can cause serious food poisoning, even death. but to be fair, any raw food can be contaminated. after all, salmonella is what triggered the massive peanut butter recall last year.
The Food and Drug Administration is pretty clear on the matter, telling people eggs should be fully cooked until the yolks and the whites are firm. they tell people not to eat or even taste any foods that may contain raw or undercooked eggs.
Of course the risks are highest for very young people, elderly people and people who are pregnant or have a compromised immune system, says Catherine Donnelly, a professor and expert on the microbiology of food safety at the University of Vermont. Healthy adults might get sick from salmonella, but Donnelly says they are unlikely to die.
Still, not dying is a pretty low bar to set for dinner. Is it worth it?
Charles Reeves, chef and owner of Penny Cluse Cafe, a restaurant in Burlington, Vt., known for its from-scratch breakfasts and lunches, certainly thinks so.
“You can’t own a restaurant and call yourself a chef if you’re using mayonnaise out of a bottle,” he says.
In Reeves’ kitchen, the ubiquitous dressing (made with raw yolks and sometimes the whites) is prepared daily and used on numerous sandwiches. Raw eggs also show up in the base for several other dressings and sauces.
Though his customers’ safety is a primary concern, Reeves doesn’t think twice about using raw eggs, including serving them over easy and sunny side up.
“You just always have to use absolutely fresh eggs that come from a reputable source,” he says.
But Todd Pritchard, a food scientist at the University of Vermont, says farm fresh doesn’t necessarily mean bacteria free.
“Bacteria are blind,” he says. “They don’t see whether the eggs come from a local farmer or are free-range or organic.”
Much depends on how the eggs and chickens have been handled, says Pritchard. An unhealthy chicken can have salmonella in its reproductive tract and the bacteria can end up on the shell or even inside the egg.
That’s part of the reason California and New Jersey during the ’90s banned raw and undercooked eggs from restaurants. in both states there was a considerable outcry in favor of runny eggs, and the laws were quickly revised to make it easier for raw and undercooked eggs to be served so long as customers are informed of the risk, either on the menu or by a server.
