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Medium-Rare Burgers: A Risky Culinary Comeback

For those in the food industry, the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak of 1993 is known as the single event that convinced burger joints across the country to raise their internal cooking temperature by 15 degrees.

In that outbreak, hamburgers sold at Jack in the Box franchises predominantly in Washington state sickened more than 600 people and led to the deaths of four children. The chain’s beef supplier had been delivering E. coli-contaminated patties, which the restaurants were only cooking to an internal temperature of 140 degrees F, the federal requirement at the time.

Prior to the outbreak, the state of Washington had updated its minimum internal temperature requirements to 155 degrees based on new evidence that 140 degrees was not hot enough to kill some pathogens, including a little-known danger called E. coli O157:H7. However, many restaurants in the state failed to update their cooking procedures.

As the Jack in the Box outbreak unfortunately highlighted, cooking burgers to just 140 degrees F didn’t kill E. coli. If Jack in the Box had just cooked their burgers 15 degrees hotter, the outbreak wouldn’t have happened.

In the aftermath, restaurants across the country updated their cooking protocols. Many acknowledged that, with the wrong supplier, it could have been their brand making headlines and paying out millions of dollars from personal injury lawsuits.

But with the exploding popularity of gourmet burger restaurants and gastropubs in recent years, the lessons learned from Jack in the Box in 1993 appear to be fading from collective memory. Thanks in part to safety improvements in the beef supply, restaurants are warming up to rarer burgers in larger numbers, despite the warnings from food safety experts.

Food code requirements

In May 2014, Detroit-based beef supplier Wolverine Packing Co. recalled 1.8 million pounds of ground beef after the product was linked to 12 E. coli infections in Michigan, Ohio, Missouri and Massachusetts. Seven people were hospitalized.

The illnesses in that outbreak were traced back to restaurants where the ground beef was served, although health officials have refused to reveal any of the restaurants involved. They have said they believe undercooked burgers played a role in at least some of those cases, and they issued a number of warnings about the risks of consuming undercooked hamburger meat following the outbreak.

Serving and advertising medium-rare burgers has been a growing trend in the restaurant and “gastropub” industry, said Roy Costa, owner of Environ Health Associates, a food safety consulting firm for restaurants.

One of Costa’s clients is a gourmet burger chain with a handful of locations in California and a few other states. They recommend ordering their burgers medium-rare, which means the center remains pink, and, if there are any potential pathogens in the center of the meat, they would likely remain alive.

Costa would only work with the chain if they found a beef supplier that tested for E. coli O157:H7, which they did. But that’s still no guarantee that the meat won’t come with Salmonella or Campylobacter, he noted.

“It’s not a perfect situation, and there’s still a danger there,” Costa said.

But by finding a supplier who tests for E. coli, the chain is still going above and beyond the legal requirements in order to serve undercooked burgers.

The federal food code allows restaurants to serve undercooked burgers as long as they have a clear written warning, such as a statement on the menu, regarding the dangers of eating raw or undercooked meat. Servers also need to verbally inform the customer that a pink burger is potentially risky. It’s treated the same as other raw or rare meats such as sushi or raw oysters.

What counts as ‘undercooked’?


Lower temperatures require longer hold times. Lowering the burger’s temperature to 150 degrees F requires a full minute of holding at that temperature. At 145 degrees F, it should be three minutes. Any way you slice it, those temperatures and holding times probably won’t result in a pink center to your burger.

Numerous independent restaurants have sprouted up in recent years with a promise of delivering a true medium-rare burger. Even in Canada, where medium-rare burgers are illegal, a few daring restaurants — such as Vancouver’s now-closed ReFuel — staked their reputation on juicier, pinker patties. North Carolina recently amended its state food code to allow for medium-rare burgers, much to the rejoicing of aficionados.

In Ohio, the gastropub chain Bar145˚ takes its name from the internal temperature of 145 degrees F for a medium-rare burger, which its website claims makes for a perfectly cooked burger.

That sort of business angle “flies in the face of prudent food safety practices,” said Dave Theno, food safety consultant and former vice president of technical services at Jack in the Box, where he was hired on in 1993 to rewrite the company’s food safety protocols after the big outbreak.

“The basic reality is that, if you’re cooking products below 150 degrees and not carefully timing it, pathogens could survive,” Theno said.

Informed consumer choice

One factor that further complicates the medium-rare burger issue is the fact that serving undercooked meat contaminated with E. coli is technically illegal under federal law. Even if a consumer orders their burger medium-rare, the restaurant is breaking the law if that burger happens to have E. coli in it.

But assuming no one is breaking the law, consumers should be given a choice regarding how their burgers are cooked, said Benjamin Chapman, assistant professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University.

The problem is that many consumers might not be given the information necessary to make that informed choice, he noted. NC State is currently conducting a nationwide study in which secret shoppers patronize restaurants and order medium-rare burgers to see if the server informs them of the risks associated with undercooked beef, as stipulated in the food code.

The study is still underway, and Chapman’s team is not yet releasing any data, but he did say he is not convinced the food code stipulation is very effective.

“Risk communication from a server-to-patron standpoint in certain cases is not well done,” he said, adding, “No pun intended.”

Another problem is that terms such as “medium-rare” and “well-done” have no temperature correlation.

“As a consumer, the only thing I can do to guarantee a fully cooked burger is to order it cooked to 155 degrees for 15 seconds,” Chapman said.

“I like the fact that people get to make their own decision,” he added, “but I’m not convinced that there are a lot of really good, informed choices happening.”

© Food Safety News
  • Jim Mann

    There is a definite opportunity for irradiated beef.

    • Julia

      In everything we have learned over the years I still cannot believe ordering a rare burger is an option. Irradiate it or make it illegal to serve rare burgers.

      • Or just ban burgers completely because they’re choking hazards.

        • TheLight

          A glass of water can be a choking hazard, should we ban those, too? Only fascists want to ban everything because it poses some sort of risk. Everything you do in life poses a risk, so lets all just commit mass suicide to protect ourselves from the millions of hazards of living.

  • mpat36

    Another important point to consider is that if you go to a restaurant that gives the option of cooking burgers medium-rare, you are still at risk even if your burger is cooked well-done. No one thinks about cross contamination from the cooking utensil that was just used to lift a medium rare burger off the grill. What if the cook takes your well-done burger off the grill and sits it temporarily on a plate next to a medium-well burger while he is preparing the bun? Those juices containing E. coli O157:H7 that may run off of it may come in contact with your well-done hamburger. The people who want to risk their health and the restaurants that cater to them are putting everyone’s health at risk.

    • ThinkAboutIt

      The risk of this would actually be quite low since the temperature of the surface of the burger, the part the touches the cooking surface and the cooking utensils, would generally be high enough for long enough to kill anything dangerous. The inside of the burger is where the danger lies.

    • Paul Merrit

      That’s why you use separate plates dolt. We marinate our burgers in 151 Rum or Moonshine 190 Proof kills all bacteria.

  • Cam Aujuard

    Restaurants and other establishments, can always have the customer / patron sign a non-liability agreement form so that if they want their burber / steak medium rare or red / bloody, the establishment would not be held accountable if any level of sicknes or “DEATH” occured. Oh thats right I almost forgot, “these people” need a body to point and place blame on due to their extreme ignorance and stupidity…..which they blame others for as well. Never mine.

  • Barb3000

    I can’t believe people would actually eat beef that’s not cooked done. Whats the difference between eating chicken half raw? None that I can see but the signing of a non-liability agreement would be a good idea that would at least protect the owner from a business killing lawsuit.

    • grifty

      Many people find well done beef disgusting. Personally, I only eat rare steaks.

      • brian whittle

        A steak rare is no problem, a burger rare is as any spoilage bacteria are mixed all through the burger not just on the outside as with a steak.

    • Jake

      I eat my steaks rare… it’s much more flavorful. The outside is seared and charred, but the inside is soft and delicious. As for burgers, I think pink ground beef tastes nasty. It’s not comparable to red or pink steak. I prefer it to be cooked somewhat dry.

      • TheLight

        Steaks and ground beef are not the same thing. With steaks, the only contamination is on the outer surface and that is cooked hot enough to kill any bacteria lingering on it. It never gets down into the center of the meat. With hamburger, the bacteria from the surface gets ground in and mixes throughout the meat. There is bacteria on the inside of a burger, or any ground meat for that matter, that isn’t present in the middle of a whole cut. That’s why ground meats need to be treated for bacterial contamination before they enter the food chain. Whole cuts of meat do not.

  • FoodLover

    One thing that people need to keep in mind is that temperature is the key factor and not color. I have seen burgers that are completely brown in the middle temp below 155F, and on the flipside, have seen ones with “some pink” that temp out above 170F. It all depending on the meat, the cooking method, thickness, etcetera.

  • Twampson

    This article is bias , chief contributors are jack in the box… Trash it

    • TheLight

      Really? And what proof do you have of this? I would think a restaurant chain that suffered an outbreak of e-coli that killed or sickened dozens of people would want the public to forget. They would only harm themselves by mentioning it in an article that might be read by people who either weren’t alive then or had forgotten about it until now.

  • Dave Horn

    I own a restaurant. We are a full-service restaurant, sports bar and grill. We do all of the standard pub grub, pizzas, sandwiches, pasta, steaks, seafood and we also have our own indoor smoker.


    One of our most popular items is our half pound Angus beef burger. We don’t serve rare or medium rare burgers at this time but I have considered changing this policy. The only reason is that a lot of customers get really pissed off when you tell them that the only way they can have their burger is medium and up.

    I think at the end of the day you have to be confident that your distributor is selling you a quality product that is butchered and ground with high safety and quality standards. We sell a very high quality burger. It is an Angus beef burger which is packaged, refrigerated (never frozen) and each burger is individually vacuum sealed. I’m told by my distributor that the manufacturer does test for E. coli and that their burger is 100% E. coli free.

    But to play the devil’s advocate, that’s a little like sex without a condom when they tell you they are 100% disease-free.

    And I think that is a very good comparison when it comes to raw meats. The reality is, if you eat raw meat and you’re not eating at Jack-in-the-Box but in a restaurant that serves quality beef, not $1 hamburgers, the vast majority of the time they’re going to be just fine. But not always and that’s a choice you have to make. It’s also my choice to serve or not to serve and I only choose not to serve because I don’t want to get sued if someone does get sick.

    So couple of comments on some things mentioned by others on this blog. As far as a waiver is concerned, it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. As with most restaurants I have a disclaimer written on my menu that indicates the dangers of eating raw or undercooked food. And yet, even with this I’m still legally liable if someone gets sick.

    Irradiating is never a good idea. If you do even a little bit of homework on you will find all the negatives far outweigh any positive. Irradiating beef causes tons of free radicals to be formed as well as all kinds of weird toxic chemicals that form when the beef is irradiated. Personally, I’d rather eat raw meat and chance it than irradiated beef. It also destroys any nutritional content of the beef, i.e. vitamins and healthy living enzymes.

    So that’s my 2 cents. Personally, I believe that customers should have this choice. I’m a child of the 60s. All my young life I remember eating medium rare burgers and I’m still around. I choose to eat medium burgers now because I like the flavor better.

  • TheLight

    I would think the damage to their reputation after an outbreak of foodborne illness would be enough to stop restaurants from offering undercooked hamburgers. Even if there are laws that prevent criminal prosecution, people who get sick from food have a tendency to talk to the media and once your restaurant is named on national television or in the papers as a source of food poisoning, you’re pretty much done in the restaurant business. Large restaurant chains have PR departments that can do damage control, but a small, local place won’t have access to those resources and would be devastated if people suddenly stopped coming in because they were afraid. Remember, a satisfied customer never tells more than 3 people at most but a dissatisfied one will tell anyone who will listen in perpetuity. Just look at some of the scathing reviews on Yelp! for examples.