The big, scary word everyone brings up is salmonella or E. coli. Sure, if you grabbed a random package of ground beef from the supermarket and plopped it on a plate, you’d be playing Russian roulette with your stomach.
But here’s the secret: steak tartare isn’t made from that sad, pre-ground meat. It’s made from a single, high-quality cut of beef—usually tenderloin or sirloin—that’s been trimmed of any exterior bacteria.
The magic is in the whole cut. Bacteria live on the outside of meat, not the inside. When a chef sears a steak, they kill that surface layer. For tartare, they simply trim that outside layer away, leaving pure, sterile muscle inside.
