![]() Forget "browning" as a way to seal in flavour: slow'n'low is the key, say Heston and co. It is why sous-vide (slow cooking in vacuum packs, in a water bath at a set temperature) is said by Heston Blumenthal and many others to be the most important cooking innovation of the last century. Thus low-temperature cooking is one of the key - though little spoken of - trends of modern professional cooking. It still holds oxygen, and its juices do not evaporate much: so more flavour and colour will be retained. That is around 55C - cooked at that temperature for given amounts of time meat can be relied on to get less tough and more healthy. The collagen that makes up most of the connective tissue of meats start to break down and dissolve at around the same temperature that bacteria like E coli die in numbers deemed safe - also known as the pasteurisation temperature. But more important are the gains in taste and texture. There are savings in energy costs, of course. Chefs, from the highest to the lowest, are very interested in cooking meat at temperatures that would horrify many home cooks. Temperatures are a hot topic (ahem) because this is the key area in cooking where issues of safety and enjoyment clash. (This is not a debate the UK government enters into - but here's the NHS advice on cooking, temperature and hygiene). Another US body, the Food and Drug Administration suggests even lower cooking temperatures if combined with longer cooking periods for baked and roasted meats: 130F (54C) for over 112 minutes, or 140F (60 degrees C) for over 12 minutes. The "to" is important, of course - the meat has to reach this temperature internally, and then stay at it for three minutes. That's 20F less than poultry, which must still be cooked to 165F (74C). So pork may now be lawfully cooked In the United States at 145F (62C), the same temperature as whole cuts of beef and lamb. David Chang, the two Michelin-starred chef / proprietor of Manhattan's Momofuku restaurants declared in the New York Times this morning the death of a terrible dogma: "Everyone thought the sun revolved around the earth, too." The revolution is that science has overcome misguided fears about the inherent dirtiness of pigs: the key disease associated with them, trichinosis, appears to have been wiped out in US pork production, mainly because most pigs are raised indoors and chemicals have largely dealt with the parasites. That may not seem worth a crackling to you, but to pork chefs it is a victory of the light over ancient forces of prejudice and ignorance. It is a momentous day in meat cookery: the US Department of Agriculture has lowered the recommended minimum cooking temperature of pork by 15 degrees Fahrenheit (9.5C).
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