I'm Just Here for the Food_ Version 2.0 - Alton Brown [118]
ACID
The strange case of fresh mayonnaise: Fresh mayonnaise is made with raw egg yolks, and that should tell you right off the bat that if you’re going to risk eating something that may, could, just might have a touch of salmonella in it, the very least you should do is get it in the fridge lickety-split, right? That way the cold and the acid in the vinegar can kick microbial butt, right? Wrong. Freshly made mayo is better off sitting on your kitchen counter for 8 to 12 hours after it’s made. How can this be? Turns out that acid is a very good disinfectant because acid coagulates proteins, and when cells get their proteins coagulated, they curl up and die. Acid assassinates best at room temperature. Nobody knows why. But if you refrigerate that golden goo right away, the best thing that will happen is the bacteria inside will stop reproducing. They won’t be nuked, however, as they would on the counter. So when it comes to acid, colder is not always better, sanitationally speaking.
MORE BAD NEWS
The globalization of our food supply—a result of our demand for strawberries in December and table grapes year round—requires that food, specifically produce, travel from further and further away. The consequence is salmonella on cantaloupes, shigella on green onions, and a host of other problems. Here at home, the upsurge in organic growing may also be a factor.
What You Can Do
At the Market
If you’ve never taken a close look at your market, take time to do it, because it doesn’t matter how carefully your food is raised and processed if it’s mishandled in transit or at the market itself. Some things to check for:
General cleanliness Dark, dingy, or dirty stores are generally run by dark, dingy, or dirty management and should be avoided.
Meat department If there are open cases, check a few meat packages. Are they tightly sealed? Do you see any leaking juices? Are the cases themselves clean? Are thermometers present? If not, bring one in and take the cases’ temperature yourself (an instant-read will arouse less suspicion, as you won’t have to stand around and wait for it to register). If it’s 40° F. or higher, mention it to the department manager. If he or she doesn’t jump, show them your thermometer and drop a reference to the article you’re writing for the local newspaper. That’ll put a chill in ’em.
Look in any closed cases Meat should be on clean trays, and there should be thermometers aplenty. Fish should be on lots of clean, well-drained ice. Now close your eyes and smell the air—really smell, the way Hannibal Lecter did when he was trying to figure out what perfume Agent Starling was wearing. If you smell anything other than clean, there’s a problem somewhere.
Dairy and egg case Again, check your thermometer. If you really want to know, stick the probe right into an egg (yes, you’ll then have to buy the carton). If it doesn’t read 40° F. or below, tell somebody, and if they don’t do anything about it, buy your eggs elsewhere.
Produce department Most folks don’t think of fruits and vegetables as being high-risk foods pathogenically speaking, but because of their high moisture content and neutral pH, most of these make excellent bacteria resorts. And don’t forget that produce does grow in dirt, and dirt is full of . . . you got it. I remember seeing a couple of very serious guys in white jackets rush into a produce department and remove every single alfalfa sprout in the place; alfalfa sprouts are major salmonella carriers (though not as bad as turtles and iguanas).
My favorite fresh market keeps all its produce on big carts that roll into giant walk-in refrigerators each night. During the day, highly perishable vegetables like broccoli and spinach and the like are kept on nice clean ice. There are no misting systems. I hate mister systems: I’ve yet to see a vegetable that actually likes to get wet once it’s been harvested. This has less to do with pathogenic trouble than good old-fashioned rotting. Greens and things lose their turgidity when exposed to long periods of