I am an honest-to-goodness freak about food safety. I am incredibly particular about how I handle and cook meat and egg dishes in particular. I’ve even been known to throw out my favorite leftovers if I realize I’ve let them sit on the counter just 30 minutes too long before refrigerating them.
And so for years, I have not made my favorite childhood dessert — lemon icebox pie. Because the recipes I’ve found for it all called for raw eggs. Try though I might to convince myself, I knew that the 15 minutes in the oven to brown the meringue weren’t enough to cook the eggs in the pie underneath, as well. [Though they are enough to make the egg whites in the meringue safe.]
That’s why I was so delighted to stumble across this article from the Louisiana Extension service — it tells you how to adapt traditional recipes with raw eggs for today’s salmonella-laden world.
It may be December, but I’m thinking I’ll give lemon icebox pie a try next week. It’s been way too long!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I am going to be at your house this week so save some lemon icebox pie for me. It has been way to long since I have had any also. By the way, when did the world become salmonella-laden. I ate all kind of dishes and even raw food–especially cookie and cake batter–that had raw eggs in them.
I am still around and kicking. Maybe eating raw eggs had a positive effect on my political beliefs. Ha, ha.
Pookie’s Ponderings is now back in vogue and on the web. Help me spread the word cause I know that at least 4 people–maybe 2–in the world want to know what I think.
Here is some info on salmonella in eggs. It is a more recent issue — so you are right, the eggs you and I ate in cookie dough and cake batter as kids were safe to eat. Now, the risk is much greater. Here’s what the CDC says about it.