Ignoramus7068 said:In article said:Jennifer S. said:The pork industry has worked had and has almost eliminated the risks for
trichinosis in the United States. It is recommended that pork be cooked to
180 degrees in my smoker book.
Trichina are dead at 145°F. So's pretty much everything else. That
freezing thing can work, but it's a bit sketchy. Commercial pork has a
very good record in recent years. Trichinae are still out there, but
mostly in wild critters and mama-papa farm raised stock.
If all you want to do is kill stuff without actually cooking the
bacon, drop separated strips into boiling water for about 2 minutes.
Drain. Let cool to suit you. Eat.
Quoted message said:How about this idea. Boil water. Turn off the burner. Drop UNOPENED
package of bacon into water. Wait for say 10 minutes. Take out and let
cool.
That, to me, preserves flavor and does not let water in, and fat out,
and yet, kills everything that needs to be killed.
I'd say no. Several reasons: plastic wrap may (likely isn't) be
designed for hot handling. Will most likely shrink and deform and you
don't know what sorts of gasses it will release into the package. You
can't know if all the bacon has been heated to a high enough point for
absolute safety. More fat will be rendered by this approach than if
it's dropped naked into the water and retrieved more quickly than your
suggestion posits.
Dropping bacon into water won't end up with some waterlogged meat. The
fat won't take up any water at all, and the lean will only take enough
in that time to make it a tad more tender. You'll lost a tad of the
smoke flavor because it's not really smoke in most commercial bacon.
It's part of the wet-cure process used to make bacon in hours instead
of days or weeks. Liquid smoke. You could put a few drops of liquid
smoke into the boiling water to intensify it enough to offset the lost
flavor.
If you buy a dry-cure smoked bacon (typically, butcher shops will
carry it) the water immersion won't take much flavor out.
Pastorio
