Is meringue buttercream hazardous??

It will be fine as long as you follow the instructions on the recipe. If using fresh eggs make sure you don't get any part of the yolk in the egg whites and heat the mixture to 140 degrees this pasteurizes the egg whites. Most bacteria is in the yolk. Your second option would be to purchase pasteurized just whites in the dairy (egg) section of the store.

Sorry to disagree, but the Egg Board and the FDA state that the eggs must reach 160 degrees to be safe.

Most SMBC recipes call for 140 degrees, but it just is not safe, especially for those who are highly succeptible, such as pregnant women.

I take my SMBC to 160 degrees and it is just fine.

Another highly undercooked item is custard, including pastry cream. If you are selling these items, use a thermometer and make sure the custard gets to 160, has the big burps of bubbles, and is then cooked for another one minute. Now it is safe, but still perishable.

scp1127 why is it that you always have to try and put other bakers information down. It's like you have to try to out shine everyone else. Yes you might have a business and be a wealth of information but you honestly don't know everything. An egg white begins to coagulate or change from a fluid to a solid or semi-solid form at 144F. Look it up online it's common knowledge. If you are concerned use pasteurized egg whites from the store.

A completely cooked egg white is called an egg white omelette. You can also get salmonella from the shell, but normally that is taken care of by the producers washing them.

try this:

Are powdered egg whites pasteurized?
Yes. Egg white powder is dried egg white (pure albumen). It can be reconstituted by mixing the powder with water. The reconstituted powder whips like fresh egg white and, because it is pasteurized, can be used safely without cooking or baking it. The product is usually sold along with supplies for cake baking and decorating.

http://www.incredibleegg.org/egg-facts/egg-safety/safe-food-handling-tips

Whether or not you follow these guidelines is up to you. FDA also says 160 degrees.

http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/Consumers/ucm077342.htm

food for thought: Poeple concerned should be more worried about fast food than eggs, and you can't get salmonella from a properly cooked egg.


In 2001 (the most current collection data available at the CDC), only 11.3 cases were found per 100,000 people. That is a percentage risk of only 0.0113%. Is there some under-reporting? Of course - mild cases probably go undetected. The 0.0113% represents the total risk of an average American (in New Zealand the risk is a bit higher, for some reason)- including all sources of infection and all strains. So the infection from an egg, is even smaller, and I'll look at that in a bit. Moreover, 26% of the cases were from children under the age of 5. So if you're older than 5 years of age, then your risk of getting salmonellosis is only .00836%

Just for reference, the odds of getting hit by lightning are 1 in 280,000 or 0.00036% (according to NOAA). - 31 more times likely to get salmonellosis than to be struck by lightning.

Now, the above figure is all types of salmonellosis, the one from eggs is usually only S. Enteritis. S. Enteritis accounts for 17.7% of the isolates found. So this means that
your risk of getting salmonellosis from S. Enteritis is only .002% and it falls to .00148% if you are over the age of 5.

As a side note, the risk of getting a Salmonella poona infection, is .00011% - this is salmonella found on fruits - such as melons - and vegetables. So where do we stop? Must we pasteurize melons and fruits before we eat them?

Salmonella typhimurium is by far the most frequent bacteria causing salmonellosis (representing 22% of all cases). Epidemiolgy suggests that the greatest source of this infection is from handling wild birds, from other people who are already infected, and from consumption of fast food. Statistically speaking, SCDer's not eating fast food should really help reduce your risk with this type of infection.

Could that be because the vast majority of eggs are cooked properly?

It could be. but 11.3/100,000 also takes into account people who like their eggs sunny side up and runny. or eat steak tartar with a raw egg yolk on top, or eat Tiramisu with raw egg yolks and sometime whipped raw egg whites too, protein drinks with raw eggs, eggnog, Caesar salad dressing and other recipes with raw egg yolks, whites or both.

A more relevant statistic would be cases per 100,000 people eating properly cooked eggs vs. cases per 100,000 people eating one of the underdone/raw examples you stated. If you want to know how much safer it is to cook eggs properly you would need to compare those two numbers, mixing these two data sets doesn't really tell you much.

but if you would have read the rest of it you would have seen that salmonella doesn't only come from eggs and the risk of getting it from eggs is about 18% of total cases, which is lower than from other foods.

That may be true, but it has no relevance to the relative safety of eating cooked vs. undercooked eggs.

The inside of an egg was once considered almost sterile. But, over recent years, the bacterium Salmonella enteritidis (Se) has been found inside a small number of eggs. Scientists estimate that, on average across the U.S., only 1 of every 20,000 eggs might contain the bacteria. So, the likelihood that an egg might contain Se is extremely small 0.005% (five one-thousandths of one percent). At this rate, if youre an average consumer, you might encounter a contaminated egg once every 84 years.

Bacteria, if they are present at all, are most likely to be in the white and will be unable to grow, mostly due to lack of nutrients. As the egg ages, however, the white thins and the yolk membrane weakens. This makes it possible for bacteria to reach the nutrient-dense yolk where they can grow over time if the egg is kept at warm temperatures. But, in a clean, uncracked, fresh shell egg, internal contamination occurs only rarely.

hazardous to your pockets possibly
hazardous to addiction HELL yes
Hazardous to health not unless the persons allergic to eggs
most recipes say cook to 140 but what does it kill anyone to cook the mixture to 160? I always cook my mixture to 160....
Don't know if anyone else responded about that, I didn't bother to read the rest of the post. You kind of get tired of seeing the same people make petty arguments ALL the time