Dairy Queen Sells Man Four Delicious Burgers
We're not sure what Robert's problem is but apparently he doesn't appreciate the hard work Dairy Queen went into making him and his family four delicious cheeseburgers. Irregardless of the futility of the endeavor, he has decided to make it his personal mission to try to sic the health department on his local Dairy Queen, simply because his burgers came out nearly raw. News flash Robert! Ever heard of a steak tartare? This is a Freedom Steak, and you don't have to go into one of them fancy-pants restaurants to get it. His ill-informed ranting and more pictures of tasty burgers, after the jump...

I emailed about this in the past with a pic of a poorly assembled fish sandwich...now they are just trying to poison people by undercooking the meat. That may actually be an illegal act in the state of Washington since we have food safety laws about undercooking food. Anyway, here are some pics of the offending burgers and a copy of the message I sent to DQ via their web form. As usual, the phone in the local DQ went unanswered when I tried to call to complain. I left a message with the local health dept and am awaiting a call back from them.Our advice to Robert is to go back to this Dairy Queen and offer to work there for free for a few days to make up for his wasting the time of struggling small business owners by having the gall to file baseless complaints with the redtapeocrats.
What I sent to DQ...added the parenthesis after the fact, their form has that info already but thought it would be good to include here:
Went to this DQ (230 128th St W, Everett, WA 98204.) again tonight (03/09/08) after refusing to go there for a while due to their sub-par food. I have submitted multiple complaints about this store in the past and tonight's experience will lead me to go to the authorities. We purchased 4 cheeseburgers and a couple of Oreo brownie blast things. The cheeseburgers were basically raw. Not just 1 but every one we have looked at so far which is 3 of 4. They are not only dangerous but illegal in this state due to laws designed to keep from poisoning people. I will be taking them to the Snohomish County Health Dept. in the morning to illustrate my report. Also, I think I will be sending a copy of this message along with pics of the burgers to The Consumerist, a consumer blog located at http://www.consumerist.com so that everyone can see how Dairy Queen cooks their burgers incompletely.
Thank you for your time and attention,
Robert F.
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Comments:
I think C-ist's April Fool's gag is to post stories that are just confusing. This seems too absurd to be real, but then again... Is it a joke? Who knows?
Undercooked meat isn't automatically "poisonous," you know. I do wish I could get burgers like that, just not at Dairy Queen. Given the average level of food safety/quality at DQ they should probably be searing meat to ash before serving it. But is siccing the regulators on them really the best way to address this?
In any event, the funniest part of this news article/joke is "Went to this DQ ... again tonight ... after refusing to go there for a while due to their sub-par food." Did OP really expect that DQ had vastly improved their quality since last time? New chef, perhaps?
This is the exact thing that happened to me at a Dairy Queen here in Missouri, I even ordered 4 burgers (there's a promotion going on). It looked exactly like that. I wish I had called the health department, but I was so shocked I called the manager and she reimbursed us for the food we bought. I accepted the new food and then promptly never ate there again.
The reason that steaks can be pink in the middle but burgers can't is really quite simple.
The inside of the steak is contained by the outside of the steak, therefore there is no way for outside contaminates to get in. That's why you cook the outside.
A burger is ground beef. That means that the inside of the burger was likely on the outside at sometime, and you need to cook it thoroughly the whole way through to ensure that any and all contaminates get taken care of.
I hardly ever even cook and I know this. When cooking burgers poke them with a fork. When blood quits coming out of your fork holes, that means it's done (or close to it). I guess you could use a thermometer too, but a fork is generally cheaper and more readily available.
One the one hand though, what do you expect from Dairy Queen? I mean, it might be different in WA than in FL where I am, but you just don't get "food" from a DQ... you get ice cream and that's it... it's pretty hard to screw up or poison ice cream. (Though once I did get a cookie dough blizzard, and it was 4/5 cookie dough and 1/5 ice cream... like they forgot to add the ice cream basically!)
@Beerad: "Undercooked meat isn't automatically "poisonous," you know".
For most beef, rare is not a problem. Ground beef needs to be cooked all the way through. Has to do with the fact that the outside, which may have been sitting on a contaminated surface, is now on the inside due to the grinding process.
And yeah, 99% of the time it's not a problem, but you REALLY don't want to be part of that 1%.
@Beerad: I'm pretty sure the whole gimmick here is to parody the folks who don't immediately go running for the rakes and torches every time an article is posted detailing the horrible suffering that some poor consumer had to endure at the hands of a greedy, evil, multinationalist corporation.
@RamV10: You are correct to watch the blood and color of liquid coming out of the burger, but never poke your burger with a fork. You will end up with dry burgers.
@Booji_Boy: If you're careful about not contaminating the meat, it's not a problem. I wouldn't expect Dairy Queen to meet the highest levels of cleanliness, however.
I worked @ a very well run DQ as a manager right outta college for two years. I got paid VERY well for the job. I can tell you exactly what happend here- The burgers are put through a broiler to thaw/cook (they are frozen going in), this buy itself, if speeded up to hurry the burgers along will cause them to come out just like this guy's burgers did. Undercooked. You are SUPPOSED TO FINISH THEM ON THE FRIER! Obviously, these people are lazy, and that didn't get done. End of story.
@Booji_Boy: Like I said, I'm not comfortable enough with DQ's food handling procedures to trust anything cooked less than a dull grey color (same with McD, Wendy's, etc.). But I'll take my chances with a medium rare burger from just about any reputable local eatery I'm frequenting, thank you very much. I've had food poisoning before (I think from some tainted tortilla soup, go figure) and it's certainly no picnic (so to speak), but it hasn't deterred my preference in burger doneness.
Completely uncooked and it would have been a cannibal burger. And, yes, *some* people will eat cannibal burgers. (How many times can I say cannibal? Ooh, one more!) Cannibal, cannibal, cannibal.
Anywho, I saw a coworker that always orders a rare steak freak out at a rare burger. What do you think that steak turns into after the first chew? Maybe the steak sauce recolors the meat a brownish color. Ketchup wouldn't be helping the situation about the burger. Aah! It's bleeding vinegar and ketchup! Aah!
@llcooljabe: He only considers himself a victim because he chooses not to eat ground steak that happens to be a little rare. I don't recalling any information posted in DQ that promises their burgers will be completely cooked. He just needs to explain what he wants a little better and stop expecting DQ to be a mind reader.
If you grind meat yourself, and the cut comes from a good butcher, you should be able to grind your own beef and cook your burgers to whatever degree you want. The way I see it, unless you are grinding it yourself, burgers shouldn't have any pink to them. You just don't know what condition the grinding equipment is, or the quality of the meats that have gone through a commercial grinder. The main problem with ground beef is that all of it comes into contact with grinding blades, and if any one of those blades has any kind of bacteria on it, it's just spread it to every inch of that ground beef.
@langba:
I was just joking. I suppose I should have put one of those smiley faces on my post, or maybe a generous dose of "LOL" sprinkled in.























Wow, you can get a chain restaurant to sell you burgers that aren't overcooked? I'm with Congolmerist on this one. Stop bitching. Pink is how beef should be served.