[Sca-cooks] Chorizo report

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Randy Goldberg MD:
>  > I don't have a smoker.  I've read that one can improvise with a bbq
>>  grill, but I'm nervous about cooking pork thoroughly.  Trichinosis is
>>  *not* how I want to make my reputation as a cook.
>
>Modern farm-raised pigs almost never have Trichinella cysts anymore. There
>were 13 cases of trichinosis in 1997, and 19 in 1998, across the entire
>country according to CDC statistics. Overcooked pork is nasty, and the
>threat of trichinosis has essentially vanished (there were more cases of
>leprosy reported in 1998 than trichinosis), so cook your pork medium rare!
>
>Avraham

I gotta go with Avraham here. Brighid, you said you have a meat
thermometer. If it's one of those with the little dimple somewhere on
its length, that'll be the spot that you want in contact with the
central mass of your cooking meat. If not, well, just try not to put
the end point there, or stick it in so far that the neck of the thing
is there (in the middle of the beast). It won't much matter what
angle of approach you use, as long as the place where you're
measuring the temperature is the central mass, or center of gravity,
I guess you'd call it. Generally that's approximately the last place
for the cooking heat to penetrate. As for temperatures, the thing
about trichinosis is that it is killed at temperatures that are still
well within the "rare" temperature range (137 degrees F.) I know
medium rare pork does turn some people off, so what I usually go for
is medium, essentially completely opaque and white (or rather, at
least not pink, assuming your chorizos aren't artificially reddened
with paprika or something --it's early and I forget). But dried-up
pork is nothing less than a crime, and in the case of sausage it's
usually about 50% to do with fat content, and 50% an issue of
overcooking, if the meat is dry.

>OBTag: God may be subtle, but she isn't plain mean.

Ya know, feminist movements in religion notwithstanding, I had not
thought Einstein's statement on this subject (of which the above is a
paraphrase) could be improved upon. I think this shows I was right
;-).

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER