I was cooking meat (beef mince) in an open pan the other day and my husband suggested that i should pressure cook meat well to kill germs in the meat (meat was thawed before cooking). Should i pressure cook meat (in a pressure cooker) or can I cook in an open pan???
My aunt had a terrible accident with an exploading pressure cooker when i was a kid so I am so anti them. All they do is speed up the time you have to cook the food so there is no real difference between an open pan and a pressure cooker.
I usually brown the meat on a high flame and then add the sauce and good on a medium flame with the lid on the pan for about an hour. The meat should be bubbling at this point so there is no way any germs can survive that heat.
As long as meat is cooked on a very high flame, it will be fine. You have to be more careful with chicken and never cook raw meat and nearly cooked meat in the same pan/grill.
Being in the US, I hear so much about Ecoli and Madcow disease that sometimes it scares me cooking meat in an open pan. Besides speeding up cooking i am believe that cooking meat in a pressure cooker kills whatever bacteria is there which i presume does not happen when u cook in an open pan
How do I find the time?
But you can always put a lid on a pan and then the food gets to such a temperature that all the bacteria are killed.
cafemama
no. you do not need a pressure cooker to kill bacteria. it's temperature that kills bacteria -- and if you've got chopped-up bits of meat you have zero worries. and if you get your meat from a reputable source you'll have far fewer concerns in the future. i buy all my beef from local farmers (the ones whose practices I know are sound) so i know i can trust how they fed and handled their cows.
a pressure cooker is really only necessary if you want to cook something (like a large cut of meat) very quickly. i don't think a typical home cook really needs a pressure cooker for *anything*.
Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I am glad, i can show these messages to my husband and explain to him that i after all know how to cook :-)
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