Can you eat burgers rare? Beef patty questions answered

It's not the same as steak

Considering everyone knows you can eat rare steak, you'd be forgiven for thinking rare burgers are fine to eat too.

But this is in fact not the case.

According to experts, eating a burger that’s pink inside could lead to food poisoning or even be fatal.

The reason for this is that bacteria (salmonella, e-coli and campylobacter, for example) live on the outside of meats - when you sear a steak, this kills the bacteria. But as the meat is minced up in a burger, those bacteria could still be living on the inside.

Falko Molitor, General Manager of meat specialist restaurant Smith & Wollensky explained to The Independent that you can eat rare burgers, “but if harmful bacteria is present in the middle of the burger which hasn’t been cooked it may survive and make you ill.”

That’s why it’s crucial to fully cook through a burger.

Beef is largely considered safe, but if a chef touched some bacteria before handling your burger and didn’t cook it through properly, you could be in trouble.

According to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), you should cook burgers until steaming hot all the way through, until no pink meat remains and the juices run clear.

If you have a food thermometer, you can test the middle of the burger - it should reach 70°C for two minutes.

Cases of food poisoning double over the summer months, which is partly due to undercooked meats at barbecues.

When eating out, you may be OK to order a rarer burger though.

The reason for this is that some restaurants can put strict controls on their meat from the start of the process to the end, in order to prevent contamination. This isn’t the case with supermarket or butchers’ meat though.

But even in restaurants with strict controls there can still be risks, particularly for young people or anyone more vulnerable to food poisoning, such as the elderly, pregnant women and people with a weakened immune system.

The FSA advise these people only ever eat burgers that are thoroughly cooked all the way through.