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.

I hate April 1st. >.<

I forgot Dairy Queen served burgers for a minute, which made this whole post very, very confusing.

mmmm e.coli!

As long as it doesn't flinch when you bite into it, no problem.

That is pretty disgusting looking. I would vomit if I bit into something like that.

It's a good thing this guy wasn't eating it driving home at night.

I saw a show on Discovery, where a kid at a tiny bite, and later the bacteria ate through his large intestine.

Best post ever.

I like my hamburgers so fresh to the point that I still hear them moo-ing.

That's almost enough to turn me vegan. Almost.

Slap it on the ass and walk it by the fire.

It's funny how every generation has to be taught all over again how to cook stuff. You think babies would be born knowing how to grill hamburgers by now.

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?

God that makes me hungery.

So can't wait until may to get my in and out fix on!

@B: Steaks should be rare or medium rare - burgers should never be pink.

@Beerad: It's actually the Conglomerist now.

Normally if I cooked it, or I got it at a decent restaurant, I would ask them to cook it that way (even then I can rarely get a place to cook it to medium rare, forget about rare as it should be.

But Dairy Queen? Yeah that bitch better be charred to a crisp.

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.

@catcherintheeye: I think we'll just have to disagree on this one. I prefer burgers to be pink.

That's how they look when I make in the yard! Yum!

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.

Funny.. I had left this window open and accidentally hit refresh and the top picture was changed. At first it was just kind of a pale, normal camera phone picture. Now it's all enhanced to accentuate the pink, which showed up just fine before.

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!)

@sohmc: or barking.

@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%.

I saw something that said that overall, Dairy Queen was the most poorly run, and filthiest of the major chains.

The same story pointed out one of the filthiest which unfortunately was right down the street from where I used to live(Orlando, Florida) and visited by me and my wife on many occasions.

@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.

Pink* is the new Black.

* Sorry, T-Mobile!

Mmmm. Tasty.

I want them to bring me my burgers while they're still screaming thank you very much.

According to the article, these are FISH sandwhiches.

@tme2nsb: And i know what I did there. Damn no edit button.

@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.

Blow its nose, wipe its A** and throw it on the plate!

@Trai_Dep: As long as it's not magenta.

@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.

Well done, or it's going back!

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.

LOL, the picture quality isn't really up to par, not sure if those burgers are almost "raw" more like medium rare at most.

Yes!! It's about time business starts to FIGHT BACK.

@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.

I'm sick and tired of everyone blaming the victim.

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!

I wish I could get a restaurant to serve me a medium-rare burger these days. Damn germaphobes. We'd be healthier if all our food wasn't clinically sterile.
That being said, I probably wouldn't trust the ground beef to be as clean at Dairy Queen as it would be at finer dining establishments

It's a shame how one franchisee can make a whole chain look bad.

I love my DQ!

Are there really so many people who don't understand that this is a joke?

Personally, I have my fingers crossed for a Conglomerist "we just innocently asked to check this guy's receipt and he started screaming and ranting about the Fourth Amendment" post.

I believe that the beef supplied to Dairy Queen has been irradiated. Therefore there should be no concern about bacteria in an undercooked burger. Concern about irradiation is a whole new subject.

@A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: But when you can't tell the jokes from the regular content...

@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.

Is this a April Fools gag from The Consumerist? I may of been just reading this site for two weeks but this doesn't seem right to me. Blaming the customer? Something must be wrong.