WineLovers Discussion Group

My best friend is a very fussy eater, but one thing she loves is raw meat. Go figure. She also loves Ann Rice novels. Part vampire maybe?
Her favorite dish is Steak Tartare and often orders it as her main course in a restaurant. I'd like to make it for her, but like her too much to make her sick. Between the raw meat and the raw egg, I'm a bit nervous.

Anyone have any tips? My inclination would be to start with filet mignon ground by the butcher, then add some pasteurized egg...

Help?

I don't know what a pastuerized egg is...though I have heard of the egg-leery coddling an egg for Caesar salad.

Anyways, for steak tartare, remember the capers, some chopped onions, mustard, brandy....

When my mother shuddered at my father feeding his signature steak tartare to us young'uns, he would reply, "He who afraid to die is not fit to...eat!"

barbara

I think the safest thing to do is to buy the filet and mince it yourself. The shorter time between mincing and serving means less time for any wayward bacteria to get going.

I know eggs can be problematic, but I eat them raw once in a while in cocktails and cookie dough and such and I never worry about them too much.

I'm no expert though - hopefully some of the others will chime in.


Mike

The odds are very long against being sickened by a bad egg - they're out there, sure, but if you look up the odds, you probably have a better chance of tripping and cracking your skull open while making the dish than you do getting sick from it.

I agree with Mike - mince the meat yourself to insure freshness.

Remember, there's no guarantees......I am not a doctor.....blah blah blah

But I say go ahead and make the dish.

Mike Filigenzi (Sacto) wrote:I think the safest thing to do is to buy the filet and mince it yourself.

I agree.

And classic preparation would probably dictate not mincing through a grinder, mind you, but cutting with a couple of very sharp knives.

The most common mistake I see is getting too free with the additions - you don't need more than just enough to add a bit of flavour - a splash of cognac a few capers, some Dijon......

Some of the restaurant preps I see are way overdone - you could flatten it, toss it on a grill and you'd end up with a hamburger that wouldn't need any additional condiments.

As an allied matter, I have made Carpaccio using lamb instead of beef and it worked very well. I wonder if you could do lamb tartare - anyone tried it?

Bill, an Armenian family I used to know made an Eastern European version of lamb tartare that was delicious. No egg, and the meat was seasoned with chopped onion, green chile and mint.

Jenise wrote:Bill, an Armenian family I used to know made an Eastern European version of lamb tartare that was delicious. No egg, and the meat was seasoned with chopped onion, green chile and mint.

Did that derive from the traditional Mongol dish of raw meat tenderised by putting it between the saddle and the horse during the day's ride?

I understand it would feed a horde......

Jenise, I grew up with a Lebanese friend, and her family made a raw ground lamb dish (heavily spiced) that sounded something like "Kibbie." I'm not at all sure of the spelling. Whatever was left over after the evening of eating it raw, they would bake like a meatloaf.

i was served a version in canelli, italy that is a local variation. with the raw beef - single grind, processor, or chopped as others have noted - add olive oil, lemon, garlic anchovie paste and ground pepper. let it sit an hour or so in the frig, drain, and serve with jardiniere - those pickled veggies. it was served with a young barolo - which i don't recommend. you could also do beef carpaccio - with either olive oil or truffle oil. both avoid the egg.

Anyone for pork tartare?

Not a joke - I have a client who is a German butcher - they make a pork product (can't recall the name) that is based on raw ground pork. They have to freeze the meat extra cold to ensure health safety. Not sure it would be my choice (I've never tasted it - has anyone else?)

[img]http://www.techhelpers.net/e4u/animal/630.gif[/img][img]http://www.techhelpers.net/e4u/animal/630.gif[/img][img]http://www.techhelpers.net/e4u/animal/630.gif[/img]

Carrie, that's the stuff. There seems to more than one way to spell it but kibbeh is the most common, and I will admit to being confused because the one word apparently applies almost any ground lamb prep whether it's served tartare or surrounded with a shell of bulgar wheat and deep fried.

Speaking of tartare, in Belgium which you mentioned loving, I believe their name for steak tartare is Steak Americain.

Interesting about the name of it in Belgium, Jenise! I didn't notice that, but then again, I'm not someone who usually orders steak tartare. Carpaccio yes, tartare not usually.

I've made steak tartare several times, it's fairly easy, though I do admit to worrying about it. Here's my procedure:

Buy chateaubriand (filet mignon is too mushy when cut up in the correct way). Wash the outside of the steak, pat dry. Take a no-rinse sanitizing solution such as used for brewing. I use diluted Star-San, but iodine will also work. With an extremely sharp knife dipped in santizing solution, cut off the outside of the steak. Use a big cutting board so you never place a cut surface where an uncut surface has been. Rub the sanitizing solution on the knife after each cut. Use the trimmings to make a wonderful steak omlette the next day.

This process is not endorsed by the USDA (as if they would ever endorse tartare) but it seems likely to keep most of the E. Coli. and nasty bugs out of the tartare. E. Coli. in particular is one of the few forms of food poisoning that can kill or permanently injure a healthy adult, so I take it seriously. The raw eggs have salmonella at the worst and are an order of magnitude safer in terms of probability and direness, so I enjoy them without a second thought.

Walt

Carrie L. wrote:Jenise, I grew up with a Lebanese friend, and her family made a raw ground lamb dish (heavily spiced) that sounded something like "Kibbie." I'm not at all sure of the spelling. Whatever was left over after the evening of eating it raw, they would bake like a meatloaf.

"Kibbah niyah" (also spelled kibbe niye because the feminine ending -ah is often pronouned as a semi-long -e in Lebanese Arabic) is an approximation of the phonetic outlook of the original Arabic. I love it. I love steak tartare also, but Kibbe niye is my favourite!

Jenise wrote:Carrie, that's the stuff. There seems to more than one way to spell it but kibbeh is the most common, and I will admit to being confused because the one word apparently applies almost any ground lamb prep whether it's served tartare or surrounded with a shell of bulgar wheat and deep fried.

Well, the consonantal root of KBB which forms such words as kabáb, kubbah and kibbah actually has a meaning "to roll up into a ball". And this is the traditional form that these dishes were put into, hence the name - even though "Kebabs" don't come in that form over here anyway! At least in Syria (and remember: Lebanon was considered a part of the geographical [and linguistic] area of Syria until modern politics intervened) kubbah is the name for a ground up ball of meat and bulgur - whether fried or raw or prepared anyway. It's the general shape of the dish that the name comes from, not the material it's made of! (Lahm = meat.) Of course kubbah has attributes which will tell how it is prepared, e.g. Kibbah niyah = from raw meat, Kubbat ul-Taráblus = (lit. A rolled up ball of meat from the town of Tripoli) a deep fried ball of meat, etc. ad inf. The words used in cookbooks in Europe and the States are a bit over-simplistic, IMO!

-Otto-