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A few years back, there was a major salmonella outbreak from eating raw cookie dough. Several people died, but most recovered, although i recall one woman who had lots of complications, and will never be right again.
Don’t eat raw commetcial cookie dough, unless you made it yourself.
The last guy who asked the same thing got told to go ahead and try. He hasn’t been heard from since. Some say he’s just not finished trying the infinite variety of cookie dough.
Raw eggs are no problem I’ve seen Rocky
the risk mostly comes from the flour
According to an announcement by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), nearly 30,000 cases of cookie dough are being recalled due to potential Salmonella contamination. Though the recall was initiated on May 2, 2024, it remains ongoing.
The Rise Baking Company (under its subsidiary, South Coast Baking) is voluntarily recalling cases of cookie dough shipped across the nation. The recall includes eight different products sold at Costco, Sam’s Club, and Panera Bread, among others.
Sounds like a USA problem.
Come to Germany, here you can even eat raw pork! It’s called Met and it’s delicous.
UHHH
Nothing stops you eating raw pork here other than that pork used to be riddled with diseases in “ye good ole days,” and the fear still exists. You can buy it raw and eat it that way if you want.
Until USDA is gutted.
Still won’t be illegal. Just probably would actually be full of parasites again.
Some creepy video appeared to me yesterday where a woman poured soda on raw pork and a bunch of worms emerged. Seen it?
The Bundesinstitut für Risikoforschung (BfR) recommends to not eat raw dough, not because of salmonella but E. Coli and EHEC. Check out this publication: https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/429/010_stec_ehec-infektionen_durch_rohen_teig.pdf
mett, met is honey wine :D
I don’t know how people make cakes and cookies witbout eating it raw. It seems to be an american thing. Am I the only Australian eating cake batter and cookie dough?
Haha no you’re not the only one, I don’t do it after I became a chef and had sanitary practices drilled into my brainhole but whenever I’m cooking with someone in the kitchen they go nuts that they get to have all the batter to themselves.
It’s generally pretty safe, especially in Australia. You are still at risk for E Coli from eating the uncooked flour though.
I’ve still eaten things that AFAIK should’ve hospitalized me and I’ve been fine, the risks associated with food have come down a lot in recent years but there is still always a risk.
Cooking times, temps, danger zones etc just guarantee that the food is okay to be consumed but you can usually push the envelope if your adventurous and have no harm done.
Do stay away from old pastas and rices that haven’t kept properly, that shit will kill you.
If you’re making it from scratch (with vaccinated chicken’s eggs) and eating it right away, the risk of contamination is very low. It’s industrial mixes and old (or poorly handled) mix that are a problem.
I have never known anyone to get sick but my possibly not-quite-accurate understanding suggests this may be more of a North American thing because we blast our eggs with chemicals that weaken the shell. While the idea is to kill the salmonella, it also can allow it to permeate the shell and infect the egg, making the chance of getting sick from poorly handled uncooked eggs higher if they have not been kept refrigerated.
“North American”, no, just American. I eat my tartare with raw eggs just fine up here in Canada 😂
I’m Canadian. I’ve also worked at egg facilities here. We treat our eggs the same as the US. Result is the same risk.
As a kid I often got to lick the Mixmaster beaters when Mum was making biscuits or a cake.
It’s not just salmonella from the egg, it’s also e coli from the raw flour.
If you want to make yourself cookie dough, remember to bake loose flour for a bit first to kill any microbes in that, too.
You can tank both of those things. You might get sick but they probably wont kill you if you’re lucky. Cookie dough should have some risk, its the only way to balance it.
However, bacillus cereus and other bacillus strains can kill you or lead to amputation of limbs.
I can live with 1 less arm
I was initially mad at this comment but you’re right. Cookie dough is too good. Literally an OP food. The fear of shitting your guts out is the only thing stopping a somewhat reasonable person like me from eating a whole pound of it.
It’s just the universe’s way of maintaining balance. Kind of like when humanity invented Olestra and the universe said “ok that’s fine, but if you eat a bag of Doritos your ass is going to leak.”
I remember there being a comedy site back when olestra was a thing where some dude decided to test how much he’d have to eat before basically shitting himself inside out. He essentially journaled gradually increasing amounts for like a week and a half. If memory serves, it was roughly one whole bag of chips in a day before symptoms began and 2 bags before he hit full on ass leakage.
the funny thing is he continued to eat after symptoms started showing
Well duh, there was science to be done
How many bags before he can submit himself to NASA as a means of interstellar propulsion?
though home methods of making the raw flour edible is often inconsistent in terms of how safe it makes the flour, the best practice is to buy cookie dough made to be edible raw, rather than rely on your half-baked attempt at making raw flour edible 😅 (source)
While some recipes suggest DIY methods to “heat-treat” flour at home, such as baking it in the oven or microwaving it, these methods are inconsistent and may not effectively eliminate all pathogens, including Salmonella, which is particularly heat-resistant in low-moisture foods like flour.
To pasteurize wheat flour (e.g., in 5-lb bags) with different moisture contents (e.g., 11.6 percent and 14.5 percent) using an RF heating process (volumetric heating), the holding time required at a specific target temperature can be predicted by measuring or calculating the high-temperature water activities of the flour samples, and then determining their corresponding D-values for Salmonella. In this case, calculations indicate that the water activities at room temperature for the two batches of flour are 0.43 and 0.64, which would increase to 0.69 and 0.82, respectively, at 80°C. According to the equation shown in Figure 4, the D80 values of Salmonella at these water activity levels are 3.2 and 1.2 minutes, respectively. To achieve a 5-log reduction, the two flour batches must be held at 80 °C for 16 and 6 minutes, respectively.
I think the issue here is not that you can’t pasteurize flour yourself, but that many DIY tutorials are dangerous and they should be regulated.
Also it takes a very long time to heat raw flour and it hardly seems worth the effort. Just make oat flour from rolled oats. You’re eating the dough raw, so what do you need egg or gluten for in the first place?
Yeah, I think if the average person reads that they can heat treat the flour to make it safe, that it will lead some (most?) to then ineffectually heat treat the flour and then assume it’s no longer a risk.
I agree that it doesn’t make sense for most people to pasteurize the flour themselves 😅
And use unsweetened applesauce instead of eggs! If you get the cheap, bland stuff there’s no difference in flavor, and no risk from uncooked eggs!
Protip: do NOT use convection when baking loose flour . If you’re going to eat it raw you don’t need to use eggs at all (you shouldn’t, they don’t add any flavour you want here, and are only added to cookies for their protein which helps it set when cooked).
Oh yeah flour is flammable as hell lol. try not to set your kitchen on fire
If you were making cookie dough to be eaten raw, would you maybe substitute some pectin or gelatin to replace the egg, or are we just going with butter, sugar and flour?
The few times I’ve made it, I didn’t replace it with anything. I wouldn’t bother using pectin or gelatin. When egg is uncooked it won’t have a thickening effect, and that’s what you’re trying to match. So if the mix is too thick for your liking, add some water or apple sauce as others have said. But this is just for texture and thickness, to your liking.
Tumblr’s got you covered:
eating flour straight form the bag lol
Crying laughing so hard at this lmao
Who the hell is rawdogging their flour??
A bit of raw flour dusting on my cake.
If you made me this and it turned out not to be the real thing on the topping I’d be severely disappointed…
If that’s not love, I dont know what is
Why flour and not powder sugar?
For that genuine e coli taste.
Hahahaha that’s awesome
Don’t yuck someone else’s yum!
I once saw an episode of my strange addiction where a lady was eating a bag or two of corn starch every day so I’d expect somebody out there could handle flour. Edit: Here is the episode.
I’ve done it before dont judge me
Do you… do you not?
All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.
Yeah I did once, like when I was 8. I don’t recommend it, vomitting and shitting sucks a lot.
You can make your own edible cooking dough. You just have to pasteurize the eggs and flour. If I’m not mistaken, I think the flour is more dangerous than the eggs.
There are even shops which sell edible cookie dough pre-made if you’d prefer the convenience.
Wait what
What’s going on with the flour? Fungus?
You’re not going to like this, but the answer is rat poop. Before it’s packaged it’s often stored in large open piles in warehouses.
Raw flour may be contaminated with harmful bacteria such as E. coli.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/general-food-safety-tips/safe-handling-flour.html
Just skip the eggs entirely for a longer shelf life and more delicious, nutritious butter in your health food.
But it’s more work to make edible cookie dough than cookies, and edible cookie dough has a shorter shelf life, so I personally don’t understand the appeal.
It tastes better to me. 🙃
Eggs are hermetically sealed. As long as they aren’t covered in bird shit when you handle them, pasteurization is not needed.
*unless you are American and your retail eggs must be washed legally, thereby having their protective coating removed.
I would at least rinse off the egg shell before cracking, personally, and when I make raw cookie dough to serve to others, I make sure I follow all food handling best practices since I’d be horrified to give someone food poisoning, as unlikely as it may be.
There’s also this:
While most bacteria including Salmonella are found on the shell itself, Salmonella can sometimes get inside an egg or it can already be inside an egg when it is laid.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/meat-poultry-fish-seafood-safety/eggs.html
The flour is the biggest question mark.
There is never any flour inside the egg when it’s laid.
Hahahahaha, I actually laughed out loud
OK, but it’s still recommended to properly handle eggs, too. It’s not like it’s difficult to pasteurize eggs. You need a pot of water, a stove, and a thermometer.
The egg is only there to help bind it while it bakes so the butter doesn’tmelt and turn it into goo. If you are going to eat the dough just leave out the egg, it doesn’t do anything.
You can eat raw eggs. Raw flour is the question mark.
If your egg is clean on the outside where does the bad bacteria come from? Because its not from inside the egg.
If your egg is clean on the outside where does the bad bacteria come from? Because its not from inside the egg.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Don’t shoot the messenger.
While most bacteria including Salmonella are found on the shell itself, Salmonella can sometimes get inside an egg or it can already be inside an egg when it is laid.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/meat-poultry-fish-seafood-safety/eggs.html
They come out of the chicken with a coating that protects it, but the shell itself is not good enough. If the egg has been washed (which, if you’re in the US and not raising the chickens yourself, they have been) then it’s not totally safe. It’s really stupid that we do this, but we do.
Leave out the eggs and bake the flour at 350f/177-177C for a few minutes first.
This is true, but also I will always lick the spoon when making coookies.
Me too! And the bowl, and the whisk, and …
I’m shocked that there are shops that sell inedible cookie dough… why would you want such a thing?
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/flour-raw-food-and-other-safety-facts
https://www.cdc.gov/food-safety/foods/no-raw-dough.html
Yes, people have gotten sick from Salmonella and E. coli from eating raw flour.
In a flour recall that happened in March 2023, 14 people got sick with 3 hospitalizations.
Here were some others:
- 2021, cake mix recall that led to 16 sick and 7 hospitalized
- 2019, flour recall that led to 21 sick and 3 hospitalizations
- 2016, flour recall that led to 63 sick and 17 hospitalizations
Flour is one of the top ten foods that cause illnesses (source).
I got it from eating peanut butter once.
From raw vegan cookie dough? No :)
#govegan
Careful with the flower tho, that can get you e coli. But: you can bake it in the oven on it’s own to sterilize it. Then you’ve got yourself safe to eat raw flower
Lmao yeah the flour is the real reason you don’t eat raw cookie dough
oh pizza, double the reason, thank you for the heads up!
Lol at all the down votes. Clearly what you said is greatly offensive.
Just the word “vegan” is triggering for some people.
No because it’s the flour that is usually the problem. Veganism has no merit in this discussion making the comment unnecessarily self-righteous.
Most people aren’t aware of why cookie dough can be risky when raw, including the vegan poster here. As long as its not in bad faith its okay to be wrong. Vegans can learn new things too.
The word vegan scares people. Meanwhile for most it’s the only way to find something in America not lathered in cheese or made with a gallon of milk.
Can you pasteurize the dough with sous vide to make it safe to eat but not change the texture?
Eggs are actually a relatively low risk factor for salmonella. The bigger concern is flour; e.coli and salmonella are only able to exist on the surface of things, but flour is all surface area. It’s really good at harboring microbes, because anything on the surface of the grain gets mixed into the flour when it is milled. Raw flour will make you sick more often than raw eggs will.
You can make safe cookie dough by toasting your flour first. Just spread it on a cookie sheet, and pop it in the oven to bake for a few minutes. It’ll add a sort of nutty toasted flavor to the cookie dough, and it makes the flour safe.
Eggs got a bad reputation because the most likely time for people to consume raw eggs is when they’re also consuming raw flour. There is still some risk with the eggs, but it’s nowhere near as bad as people have come to believe.
And lastly, if you’re planning on eating it raw, you don’t even need the eggs. The egg only serves to hold the cookie together and keep the dough from melting into a batter in the oven (because the butter in the dough goes liquid when it gets hot, while egg proteins bind together). If you’re not baking it, that’s not an issue. Just toast your flour, skip the eggs, and your dough is 100% safe.
I make edible cookie dough all the time. You just need to bake or microwave the flour for a couple minutes until it hits 165. It doesn’t have eggs, but the odds of catching something from them is super low anyway.
Ah man raw flour is my favorite.
Doubtful, as the cookies normally have butter in them and the sous vide would melt the butter causing issues with the dough.
Can you sous vide the eggs to pasteurize them before you put them in the dough?
Yes, and the flour as well which should make it safe (raw flour has salmonella). The eggs would be better/easier to just buy pasteurized egg whites and yolks though.
