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Comment by RandomInteger4 | Hacker News Reader

Who the fuck wants their burger to bleed? Seriously, why is this a thing? If it were real meat, I'd be even more concerned if it were bleeding, because undercooked ground meat is one of the worst things you can put in your food-hole.

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They are taking artistic liberty with the term "bleed". Obviously, the fake meat doesn't have a blood analog, but it does have a myoglobin analog, which is what causes the juices secreted by real meat to be red.

Burgers don't ever really bleed, the blood was removed when the animal was slaughtered or it would go bad quickly. When people talk about their meat bleeding it the juice coming out of it, which isn't there if you cook it well done as you've boiled it all off

> it the juice coming out of it

What do you think is in that juice? Sure the cattle are bled after slaughter, but you never get all the blood out, even after it's been hung, which is still retained in the tissue.

EDIT: Ah ha! My apologies and I stand corrected :) Apparently the red colouring in the steak juice is myoglobin and not in fact blood:

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/8964/33

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/32619/33

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/meat/INT-what-meat-colo...

https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/stop-calling-juicy-steak-bl...

So you learn something new every day.

Cells are mostly made up of water

There might be some residual blood but not enough to start pooling around your meal.

Yep, you're absolutely right. I've amended my previous comment.

You get a greater level of flavor from a medium rare burger than you do a well done one. Also if the health risks are that high I must be an extremely lucky man as I have only ever consumed burgers medium rare.

> If it were real meat, I'd be even more concerned if it were bleeding, because undercooked ground meat is one of the worst things you can put in your food-hole.

I get the general argument being made, but if this were true steak tartare would not be a thing.

Burgers served medium-rare should (probably) not be made from beef you buy ground.

Ground meat is only dangerous if it's been sitting. Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it's been ground the day of serving. Personally I think medium is the absolute minimum, not because safety concerns, but more because burger falls apart more easily the less it's cooked.

> Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it's been ground the day of serving

Why would that be the case?

The reason we can cook and eat steaks rare is because dangerous bacteria form on the outside surface of the steak, and cooking the outside while leaving the inside rare destroys the bacteria. Grinding the beef mixes the surface of the beef with the inside, meaning you should cook the inside to 165F as well.

That's my understanding at least...

Beef before it's cut has the potential to have harmful microbes on it's surface, but they don't travel very fast, so they can't get deep, which is why it's safer to cook to a lesser degree than ground meat.

Ground meat on the other hand can introduce those harmful surface microbes to the rest of the meat, so burgers have to be cooked all the way through to ensure those microbes are successfully deaded.

From the article: "But Impossible Foods thinks the essence of a meat lies in a compound called heme, which gives ground beef its color and vaguely metallic taste—thanks to iron in the heme molecule. In blood, heme lives in a protein called hemoglobin; in muscle, it's in myoglobin."

The blood might cook out of the final burger, but it affects the taste and texture. In that respect it's not unlike cooking with wine, liquor, or cider, with which the alcohol will cook out.

Blood should not ever be present in ground beef, cooked or not.

Half the world disagrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steak_tartare#Regional_variati...

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