Is it Safe to Consume Raw Eggs?

Eggs have some impressive health credentials. They are full of high-quality protein and are one of the few natural sources of B  and D Vitamins. The yolks are no longer shunned because of their cholesterol content. Macrobiotic Nutritionist Shilpa Arora clears the air by suggesting that most people can eat 1 or 2 eggs with their yolks per day without measurable changes in their blood cholesterol levels. In fact, as compared to egg white, the yolk contains more folate, Vitamin B12 and an important nutrient for the brain called choline. While eggs are very versatile and can be cooked in many ways, raw eggs are often used in dipping sauces, milkshakes, baking batters and even in cocktails. However, the consumption of raw eggs has been a long-standing controversy as they are considered to be unsanitary. Does this mean no cookie dough?

Raw Eggs Versus Cooked Eggs

Like in most of the foods, it has been seen that some nutrients may be diminished on cooking eggs due to the heat applied. On comparing the nutrient value of one large raw egg with one large hard-boiled egg, Department of Agriculture in the United States has found that raw eggs contain 36% more Vitamin D, 23% more choline, 20% more biotin and 10% more zinc. Although it has also been noted that some nutrients like protein become more digestible on cooking eggs - hence there's a constant tug of war between raw foodists and traditional cooks.

Raw eggs are common in salads dressings or are used to make sauces like the creamy mayonnaise, add depth to drinks like the famous Christmas Eggnog and some may like their eggs half cooked with a runny yolk. The quintessential egg white protein shakes, most athletes and gym enthusiasts swear by, have become quite a thing in the world of fitness. They can be easily blended with juices or milkshakes and egg whites are low in calories and fats making it an excellent post-workout drink that can help you build muscle mass, increase your strength and encourage weight loss.

Let's Weigh the Risks

The US Food and Drugs Administration strictly warns against the consumption of raw eggs as it may increase the risk of contracting salmonella and other food-borne illnesses. There is no evidence to prove that raw eggs cause salmonella but as a preventive measure it is often suggested to avoid them. Raw eggs can get easily contaminated (if the hens are not bred under hygienic conditions) with bacteria that can also infect us on consumption.

According to Bangalore-based Nutritionist Dr. Anju Sood, "If your eat raw eggs regularly you're putting yourself at  a higher risk of developing food poisoning or Salmonella. Not all eggs are created equal, nor do they have the same nutrition. Therefore, you may never know the level of contamination. The World Health Organisation clearly states that food should be cooked and stored at proper temperatures to ensure safety. Under-cooked food, especially animal products, are the biggest threat to your gut."

She also agrees that your body may not be able to absorb much of the egg's protein when consumed raw which is one of the most important nutrients it contains. More research points out that you may not be able to absorb the biotin from raw eggs as the whites contain avidin, a glycoprotein that bonds with the biotin and impairs its bio-availability to the body. Avidin gets inactivated on applying heat and cooking the eggs.

Delhi-based Dietitian Dr. Anshul Jai Bharat does not recommend consuming raw eggs too," In case of eggs, you don't know the exact source from where it is coming from and therefore, consuming them raw may lead to bacterial infection. As per most of the food safety authorities all over the world, your food should be cooked thoroughly to kill food poisoning bacteria which means at least at 75 degrees Celsius for the right amount of time."

While in some cases, you may be able to detect whether or not eggs are fit for consumption or if they are stale by inspecting them, in case of Salmonella or any bacterial infection your sense of sight and smell may not really be helpful. These bacteria are invisible to the naked eye.

Essentially you don't need to fear raw eggs and rule them out by any means but it is good to be cautious especially if you love chugging protein milkshakes or are having them few times a week. To beat the risk, make sure you procure high-quality eggs directly from a local and known farm.

Cooking Tips You Must Keep Handy

Mornings are not exactly the best part of the day for everyone. While some struggle to work up a quick breakfast, there are others who simply skip the first meal of the day and even forget to pay heed to packing lunch. When mornings are an absolute rush-rush affair and your lunch hour bears the brunt of it, we suggest that you work smarter, pre-prep and assemble a quick lunchbox in just no time. While breakfast is the most important meal of the day and should NEVER be skipped, experts put equal emphasis on lunchtime as well. If you have been skipping your afternoon meals or gobbling up just about anything, it is time to stop. We bring you brilliant tips, ingenious tricks and fuss-free recipes that will make the act of taking a lunchbox an exciting, joyous affair.

Quick tips:

- No time? No worries, simply scout your refrigerator for the leftovers from last night. Got some rajma-chawal? Perfect! Drop in some oil, mix the two, throw in some herbs or veggies and arrive at flavourful fried rice in no time.

- The easiest would be to work a box full of fruits or seasonal veggies into a quick salad.

- Soak legumes and beans overnight, toss together, add herbs and condiments. Pack.

- Sprouts can be your best bet. Light boil them, team with boiled eggs, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

- Sandwiches work the best - easy to put together, loaded with your favourite ingredients.

While these tips will come handy while you plan your lunchbox, what is sure to delight you are some of our choicest recipes created just to fit into your busy routine.

Lemon Rice
Recipe by Chef Niru Gupta

This classic recipe employs a host of ingredients to give it a flavourful twist. Done in under 30 minutes.

Aloo Bhaji
Recipe by Chef Naresh Kumar Jaypee Vasant Continental

Chunky potatoes are cooked with simple ingredients and done in just no time.

Mixed Bean Salad
Recipe by Chef Roopa Gulati

A fresh spin on salad - dried beans, capsicum and tomatoes dressed in sweet and sour flavours.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Recipe by Chef Niru Gupta

Easy, quick and yum, no wonder this recipe refuses to die down.

If you're not a fan of sweating it out in the kitchen, we suggest you work your way with the leftovers. Here is how you can smartly use leftover rotis and rice to quickly pack yourself some delicious lunch.

Using leftover rotis

There is a whole new world to explore, from roti tacos, rolls, wraps to other quick, flavourful bites.

Using leftover rice

If fried rice is the first thing that comes to your mind then move over the idea to explore other brilliant recipes that use leftover rice like never before.

8 Quick Remedies to Avoid Heartburn

Heartburn can be an extremely uncomfortable situation. At one moment, you are enjoying a delicious meal and in the next moment you are left to deal with a painful burning sensation in your chest.  Despite the name, it has actually nothing to do with the heart and is instead is a symptom of an acid reflux where some contents of the stomach are forced back up into the oesophagus leaving you with a burning feeling. Simply put, heartburn is experienced when the stomach acid flows back up into the oesophagus – the pipe that carries food from the mouth to the stomach and this causes an uncomfortable feeling around that region and in the lower chest.

Some common foods may stimulate increased stomach acid such as foods that are acidic in nature like meat, dairy products and some citrus fruits, foods that have a high sugar content and even common foods like onions, garlic and tomatoes may allow acid reflux into the oesophagus. If you have a weak gut or suffer from poor digestion, you may be vulnerable to acidity and heartburn. What can you do to avoid it? Here are seven quick things you can do to prevent heartburn.

1. Add probiotic to your diet: Macrobiotic Nutritionist Shilpa Arora suggests that you must add some form of probiotics to your diet like a bowl of yogurt or a glass of buttermilk. These contain lice enzymes that support your gut bacteria and keep you digestive system healthy.  In fact, you should even replace cream used in some dishes with yogurt.

2. Check for the Ph level of the food: In order to keep acidity and heartburn at bay, the pH level of the foods you consume regularly should be kept in mind. A pH below 7 implies that the particular food item is highly acidic.

3. Chew your food properly: Another quick tip for an acidic tummy is to eat foods that require more chewing and produce more saliva. Your saliva helps in neutralizing the acid that comes up from the stomach.

4. Drink ginger and Tulsi juice before your meals:  "Drinking this concoction ensures proper absorption of food. Ginger is known to absorb excess stomach acid and thus, helps in digestion. It speeds up the process by pushing the food through bowels and so prevents the formation of gas in the stomach," says Shilpa.

5. Add more raw foods to your diet: Fresh, raw fruits and vegetables give you enough fiber to help the food in your stomach pass through easily. Avoid eating fruits after your meal as they will digest faster than your food and can cause acidity. Also, you should never eat citrus fruits or foods that are acidic on an empty stomach and this can trigger acidity and heartburn. If your body is prone to acidity, fruits such as prunes and plums should be avoided as they are high in natural sugars.

6. Grill or broil your foods: Avoid frying your ingredients and instead grill or broil them. Fried food is the biggest cause of an acid reflux due to their high-fat content.

7. Sip some water with your meals: Water will help in flushing out the toxins from the oesophagus. Natural drinks like coconut water are especially good in summers to relieve acidity as they have a soothing effect on your stomach.

8. Walk around after your meal: Don't lie down or hit the sack right after finishing your meal. This could force the food back up triggering heartburn. There take a quick walk for about minutes after you eat to help your digestive processes kick-in.

Stick to these basic diet rules and you'll be able to enjoy every meal you're served.

How to Make The Most Amazing Burgers

And now I'm going to tell you the secret to making amazing hamburgers. Actually, there's not just a single secret, there's about five of them, and they're not really secret what with me publishing them on the internet and all. But that's fine. Let everyone in the world enjoy perfect hamburgers is my feeling.

Note that I'm not going to tell you what to put on your burger. That's so much a matter of personal taste that I wouldn't presume.

Plus, can you imagine if I said the best burger has, say, avocado, bacon, grilled onions and American cheese on it? I guarantee I'd be getting emails from people complaining that I didn't mention pineapple or chipotle mayonnaise or tapioca balls.

What I will tell you is how to cook a burger so that it comes out juicy, flavorful and succulent.

1. Start With the Best Ground Beef
The first step is buying ground beef with an 80/20 lean-to-fat ratio, that was ground freshly in the store that day. If you can get 100% ground beef chuck, so much the better. Here's more about how to buy the best ground beef for your burgers.

I should mention here that I have been known to make burgers with three parts ground beef chuck and one part ground pork. If you try this, you may wonder why nobody ever told you about this before, and, well, you're welcome.

2. Season Responsibly
The next thing you want to do is season your ground beef with Kosher salt and maybe one or two other ingredients, like freshly ground black pepper, or garlic powder, or Worcestershire sauce.

But don't go overboard. And the most important seasoning is the salt. Remember, if you're making your burgers with beef chuck, they're going to have a deep, meaty flavor that you actually want to be able to taste. Keep it simple.

3. Form the Patties GENTLY
Now here comes the big pitfall for most people.

When they go to form the patties, they pack them WAY too tightly. Usually, if you watch someone making a burger patty, it's like the Incredible Hulk is crushing a tank with his bare hands.

Let me assure you that these feats of strength, while awe-inspiring, will cause the cooked burgers to become hockey pucks. What you want to do instead is just very gently shape the seasoned meat into balls, and then very gently flatten those balls into patties that are about 3/4 of an inch to an inch thick. Imagine you're giving a baby a back rub and you should have the right amount of pressure.

4. Cook It in a Cast Iron Skillet
A lot of people assume that the best way to cook a burger is on the grill, but interestingly enough, the very best way is in a cast-iron skillet. When you cook a burger over a grill, the fat melts and drips uselessly onto the coals, which means your efforts to procure 80/20 ground beef will have been for naught. Then the hot coals more or less dry out the surface of the meat and you end up with a burger that, while OK, is far from amazing.

A cast iron skillet, on the other hand, keeps that fat right there where it can coat the burger and give it a luscious, meaty, fatty sheen, while also helping to produce a flavorful, almost crispy exterior. But again, most of that fat will end up in the pan. Keep a can in the kitchen and pour it there, and when the can is full just toss it in the trash. Or let the fat solidify in the pan, scrape it out and transfer it to the bin. But whatever you do, don't pour the liquid fat down the drain. Tell me you don't do that. Right?

Okay, so about the cast iron. It works so well, and the burgers cooked that way are so superior, that on nights when it's too hot to cook inside, I will get some charcoal going and plunk the cast iron skillet right down on the grill and cook my burgers in the skillet, on the grill. It works perfectly.

5. Cook The Burgers All The Way
This isn't really one of the secrets to making amazing burgers, but in the interests of food safety, I need to mention that it's a good idea to cook your burgers all the way through. I started out when it came to burgers as a pink-in-the-middle guy, but I really can't do that anymore, and I don't recommend you do either. But if you must, you should learn how to grind your own meat. If you're going to consume undercooked ground beef, you should at least know that it came from chunks of fresh beef chuck that you ground yourself moments earlier.

The Best Way to Store Lettuce to Keep it Fresh and Crisp

One of the keys to making a good salad is ensuring that your lettuce is fresh and crisp. Nothing makes for a disappointing salad like a plateful of limp, wilted greens.

There are two things salad greens need to stay crisp: moisture and air. You may have heard otherwise. Specifically, many people seem to think that the best way to keep lettuce crisp is to seal it up in a bag with all the air squeezed out.

I've even read some suggestions that involve inserting a straw into the bag to suck out every last molecule of air before sealing it shut.

Unfortunately, that advice is completely off base. Lettuce actually needs a good amount of air flow, in addition to a bit of moisture, in order to stay crisp. That's why restaurants store their lettuce in special perforated bins that allow for air circulation while it's held in the fridge.

(Removing the air does help prevent oxidation, which is what causes lettuce to turn brown, but has nothing to do with lettuce staying crisp. In any case, oxidation isn't something you should have to worry about as long as you buy fresh lettuce and use it within a few days.)

So here's the best way to keep your lettuce crisp at home:

Trim off the end of the stem and separate the leaves.

Fill up the sink (or a very large bowl) with cold water and submerge the leaves. Gently swish the leaves around in the water. Any grit will sink to the bottom of the sink. Remove the clean lettuce, or empty the bowl and repeat this step for especially dirty lettuce.

Now you're going to want to dry the lettuce. The best way to do this is in a salad spinner. But don't cram the leaves into the salad spinner. Cut the leaves in half (or smaller) so that you don't bruise them trying to squeeze them in.

Salad-spin until all the water has drained away. The leaves will still be slightly damp — that's what you want.

Now take the basket out of the salad spinner and cover the leaves with damp paper towels. Transfer the basket to the fridge. (You could use a large colander instead of the salad spinner basket.) You might want to set it on a plate or tray to catch any additional drainage, but don't use a bowl — remember, you want airflow.

Once the greens have chilled for about 30 minutes, they'll be crisp and ready to use. But you can store your lettuce in the fridge this way for 3 to 5 days. Rewet the paper towels if they dry out. Squeeze out excess water — they only need to be damp, not soaking.
Note that this technique is the exact opposite of the way mixed greens are sold. Mixed salad greens come either in a bag or in one of those plastic clamshell containers. Neither one of these storage methods allows for any airflow, which is why those types of greens turn limp so quickly after you buy them.

The good news is you can use the method described above for your loose greens, too. Yes, usually those mixed greens have already been washed, but remember, it's the residual moisture from washing and then draining the greens, along with the wet paper towel, that help keep them crisp and fresh, along with adequate airflow.

(Not to mention, bagged greens have been found to be the culprit in a number of outbreaks of food poisoning, so it's a good idea to wash them yourself anyway.)

With your greens fresh and crisp, you're ready to make a perfect green salad. Also, here are some tips for making a great vinaigrette.