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For many, cooking is a gray area. Most people have personal preferences, specifications, and individual likes and dislikes when going out to dinner that oftentimes can make or break a dining experience. Chefs, too, have individual methods that can often be as unique as their customers’ palates.
When it comes to food safety, however, cooking is more black and white. Massachusetts food blogger and content creator Allie Hagerty (@thealliehagerty), who developed the digital publication Seasoned & Salted, took to TikTok to explain a huge food error she saw a chef make. And no, it wasn’t just forgetting an ingredient or accidentally adding too much salt. This mistake, according to her and many of her viewers, could be deadly.
As of this writing, her post has more than 468,000 views.
What Is the ‘Deadly’ Mistake?
Hagerty explained that while an executive chef was making a “pasta dish with clams, mussels, [and] shrimp,” he made a grievous error.
At first, the chef’s only mistake was putting various seafood into the dish “in the wrong order.” Generally, chefs cook shrimp, scallops, and soft shellfish in a separate pan or at the beginning of the cooking process. Then they set it aside. Clams and mussels are added to the final pasta dish before cooked shrimp gets reincorporated.
Then she noticed another issue.
“He adds pasta to the pan, he’s, like, mixing it up, and a clam didn’t open, so he takes his knife,” Hagerty said. “He thought … Like, he clearly thought it was a good move. He takes the knife, inserts it into the clam, and cracks it open and then serves that.”
Why Is That Mistake Deadly?
Hagerty explained why the mistake was more than just a personal preference.
“If a clam doesn’t open when it’s steamed, that’s a dead clam. So that’s, like, you can get, like, a seaborne illness from eating that. Um, it’s dangerous, and literally anyone that has ever cooked seafood, like, that’s, like, the number one thing that I tell people, and people should know,” Hagerty said.
Then the content creator expressed some doubt in the chef’s cooking skills. “Especially someone who’s licensed to cook, like … as an executive chef and, like, has been doing this for, like, twenty years or so should know that,” she added.
Hagerty is right. The FDA advises individuals cooking clams to discard clams that do not open during the cooking process. “The shells open during cooking — throw out ones that don’t open,” the administration says.
Takeout adds that “Healthy live clams usually keep their shells tightly shut with contracted muscles. During the cooking process, the clams die and their shells naturally open as their muscles relax. If the clams don’t open during cooking, it’s a sign that they may be contaminated, and are risky to consume.”
Is the Mistake Common Knowledge?
Viewers who saw Hagerty’s post seemed split down the middle as to whether her food safety recommendation was common knowledge.
One commenter remarked, “My grandpa always said, ‘You don’t cook an open one, and you don’t open a cooked one!’”
Another said, “Everyone saying this is common knowledge but i didnt know that… but i’m also not an executive chef and i didnt grow up eating mussels.”
While it may not necessarily be common for customers, most chefs learn basic food safety practices, either through culinary school or while actively working. And according to viewers, not opening up a dead clam is a fairly basic food safety practice.
“Honestly, everything outside of food safety is preference, the only 100% necessary part of being a chef is the food safety part lolol,” one viewer commented.
AllHipHop reached out to Hagerty via TikTok direct message and comment for more information. This story will be updated if she responds.
@thealliehagerty I’m appalled and shocked that a chef at a restaurant does not posses this basic seafood knowledge.
