Raw Cookie Dough

[lpellegr]

Yes, I know eggs are potentially dangerous to eat raw, but at 1 in 20,000 potentially contaminated with salmonella I sometimes play those odds . I had a hankering for raw chocolate chip cookie dough, and thought it might be better without the xanthan gum, which always seems to make the uncooked dough slimy. Then add a little if there's any remaining dough to be baked into cookies. Has anybody tried this either way?

[mommida]

I'd leave it out, unless you bake them.

L.

[2kids4me]

leave out the xanthem gum, frezze portions of the cookie dough - then you can indulge your craving for cookie dough late at night without the fuss

[plantime]

I can't eat eggs at all, so I would just leave out the xanthan and the eggs, and eat all I wanted.

[lpellegr]

I knew you guys would come through! I love this forum. No xanthan gum and the freezer it is!

[lonewolf]

I'm just curious - how much xanthan gum do you put in? I've never had slimy cookie dough and we eat it raw all the time.

[RiceGuy]

I just don't like the idea of a slime from microbes in my food, so I'd be using guar gum anyway. Then you wouldn't have to try adding it later. But the eggs I'd leave out, though for me it's a replacement there too anyway.

[eKatherine]

I have used 1/2 teaspoon per cup of flour, but I'm not sure it's needed in cookie recipes.

[jerseyangel]

I don't use it at all in my grain free (potato starch) cookies.

[Nantzie]

I heard that if you use pasteurized eggs you won't get salmonella.

[clbevilacqua]

I have never found xantham to make a cookie dough slimy and haven't found the taste with or without it raw to be much different. I do, however, notice a difference when I don't use eggs. Our supermarket has eggs that are pasturized in the shell so you don't end up playing Russian Roulette with salmonella (cases are increasing and if you or someone you know happens to get it the disease is VERY nasty). Another option for eggs would be to use egg whites that come from a carton-most, if not all, are pasturized. Keep trying!

[RiceGuy]

I heard that all eggs have salmonella, but that it takes a certain amount before we notice it. The more there is, the more effect it can have AFAIK. The pasteurized ones may be something different, but I don't know - never looked into it.

[lpellegr]

Before I got my Kitchenaid mixer I used to mix up recipes by hand and always found the bowl and spoon slimy when I washed them, so I attributed this to the xanthan gum, which my old recipes didn't have and they didn't feel slimy. I think once the xanthan gum completely absorbs enough water it changes, but if it hasn't been mixed for long I can still feel individual slimy grains of it under my fingers when I clean up. And I can smell it in the recipes as they mix and bake. I don't mind that it's a bacterial product - yeast is a microorganism and most of us don't mind consuming it, and we eat yogurt and other products with live bacteria - but I'm not wild about the smell and feel of it, especially in raw batters. So if I can leave it out, I will. Raw dough doesn't need to hold together for me to eat it. And yes, something like egg beaters is safer than raw eggs - I always forget about that option. Incidentally, I once read a series of science fiction/fantasy books by Piers Anthony set in a land called Xanth, and their main export was - xanthan gum. Now you know where it comes from .

[NicoleAJ]

None of this has ever occured to me. I make my cookies with Xanthan gum, and I've never noticed sliminess. Moreover, I eat the cookie dough raw, and I save some so that I can mix it with vanilla bean haagen dazs--the most unbelievable cookie dough ice cream ever. Knock on wood, I haven't gotten sick yet.

[clbevilacqua]

You probably don't want to use egg beaters in a cookie recipe-they have onion powder in them. Try All Whites brand or there are organic options, too.

[JenKuz]

I heard that all eggs have salmonella, but that it takes a certain amount before we notice it. The more there is, the more effect it can have AFAIK. The pasteurized ones may be something different, but I don't know - never looked into it.

I think it used to be the case that all eggs had salmonella on the shells, and the salmonella may or may not have gotten into food when the eggs were handled and cracked.

Now eggs are sanitized in-shell. However, there is one kind of salmonella that actually gets inside the egg from the momma hen while the egg is developing. That kind is found in about 1 in 10,000 eggs or less. The hens who have it may only occasionally lay an egg with the bacterium inside it.

In any case, some strains are more pathogenic than others. On average it takes from 10 to the 5 to 10 to the 9 S. typhi cells to make 50% of volunteers sick. Eggs that have S. typhi may be below the infectious dose, but the bacteria multiply fast outside the refrigerator.

So if you eat raw cookie dough, it's really not so bad as long as you are keeping the dough refrigerated, not letting it sit out in a warm kitchen, etc.

On the other hand, I got salmonella poisoning from a barbecue in Zambia and I swear I considered asking to be put down. It was awful. For about three days I wanted to die. Then it was over, and I felt fine in no time.

Incidentally, what we now call salmonella used to go by the lovely name "typhoid." Granted, typhoid still exists, and it refers to an infection of salmonella that gets into the blood. Much rarer than the "acute gastroenteritis" form. Still, it's interesting that most of us would attach much deadlier associations to typhoid than salmonella.

You'd think knowing all this I would know better than to eat raw eggs. But I still lick the beaters. It is a calculated risk, but in north america and europe, with our egg sanitation and inspection requirements, it's an okay risk in general I'd say.