So after a protracted stint as Seattle's "Bad Boy", "Rogue", and "Enfant Terrible" I am hangin up my spurs. Figure I will let some of the young whippersnappers cut their teeth on KCHD. After almost 10 years in the Evil business, I am going to go and work with THE MAN... Turning "State's Evidence"... ;) I have become a consultant for chefs who have been told by KCHD that they need to stop making their favorite house cured meats, cheeses, and pickles.
Some explanation and background
There has been so much misinformation swirling around in the press and on blogs by irresponsible reporters and people who like to talk a lot, concerning Meat production here in King County and what I did or did not "get busted for"... and what is really going on in the Seattle Restaurant scene.
Just for the record: I never got shut down at all, by anyone. Liquor control threatened the crap out of me about Gypsy and the wine thing, but beyond that, never got busted for anything.
What actually happened was I got to be the guinea pig in a very large paradigm shift. King County adopted NYC's policies on HACCP, quietly, and then needed to figure out what the heck that means.
HACCP: Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points is a system of procedural documentation that has been used in the big factories for a very long time. it creates not only a safer product, but a easily documented one that if people ever got sick, can easily be traced back and lawsuits diverted.
FOR INSTANCE: everyone who has ever taken my classes or read Ruhlman's book (Charcuterie) should know this: When you make a salami, things could go wrong. Like what, you might ask?
Well, we are taking freaking meat, usually pork, and hanging it in the closet for 3 months. What on Earth about that sounds safe? Would you hang your pork chop up? What do we do differently? Grind it? ummm, that would be worse...
A HACCP plan would point out the Control Points:
- Use really fresh pork: something that can be proven to have never gone over 40F
- Use the correct amount of bacterial culture
- Make sure the pH drops below 5.3 in a certain amount of time
- Make sure it drys properly and is dry enough.
What could happen if these things didn't happen correctly?
- bacteria that is already on the pork will go nuts and grow like mad. Maybe even too much to be controlled by later steps.
- the good guys wouldn't be strong enough to overwhelm the bad guys
- Staph Aureus will create a heat stable enterotoxin which will kill you
- Trichina (if there) will survive, E-Coli will survive, hell even Samonella will survive. These would all be very bad things.
So now we can ask ourselves how would we measure success? How would we measure failure? If step one goes sideways, can we fix it? Do we throw it away? Etc...
While this thought process is not new, it has NEVER EVER been required in a non wholesale type environment. Which, frankly after getting deep into them, I don't know why it hasn't. Plans like this dramatically improve the safety of the product. I have talked to very talented chefs who are making salami for you to eat who don't know what could happen. It is all very cute to say: "It has been made for a thousand years, blah blah blah" and then think it is ok not to own a pH meter. It isn't. It pisses me off.
So back to my story: Randomly, I happened to sell that 1000# of bacon at the wrong time. The big bosses had just told the middle tier bosses that they had to make sure chefs had approved HACCP plans. Middle tier told street agents to go bust people... and I was jumping up and down screaming "Pick me, Pick me".
Chris Skilton came and told me I wasn't allowed to make any of it anymore, and predictably I threw a big ole hissy fit and said they are "pickin on me", and generally acted like a terrible child (Enfant). Thank God I am so full of myself, cause otherwise I would be really embarrassed for all of the times I have acted stupid.
Since I had all sorts of grand plans to make not only bacon, but salamis and salumis, and I wanted to do it at the farmers' markets (and because I was the notorious Gypsy guy), KCHD decided to take their time with the rest of the city. They had their guinea pig. I could twist in the wind a bit for having been making meats that were NO LONGER approved. They were still safe and yummy, but I couldn't explain in this new format why they were safe. Not really explain.
So over the next year, through help from my amazing friends who are bloody geniuses at this stuff and who wish to not be named, I got to understand how to write one of these things. They are very long and take a lot of knowledge that you can't just "google". Wiki doesn't really explain the concept of "degree hours". But I did it. I learned it. I got seven plans approved by KCHD and many more were on deck before I left the Swinery. It makes sense now. Kind of easy actually, just long.
Mainly, what I have learned from this process, is that things can go very wrong and people can die. I think HACCP is really important. I wish the agencies would help chefs understand how to do this, rather than just making them stop... but I suppose I can help.
These things that are no longer permissible:
- Using curing salts
- smoking (food)
- drying foods
- vacuum packing anything
- making salamis
- making salumis
- confiting makes them cranky (and they can't pronounce it)
- cheese making
- pickling
- sous vide
- or any combination of the above
Chefs don't have time to learn this crap. It is a really hard curve, and they are supposed to be: COOKING!!! Not sitting downtown arguing about their comma placement and whether they are using MEK-4 or MEK-6. I am not taking care of it for people. You want bacon? Pancetta? Jerky, camembert, sous vide, etc... call me. 206.551.2598
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