You’ve likely heard you should never lick the spoon when baking cookies. This is due to the dough’s two main ingredients: raw eggs and flour. When not cooked, both eggs and flour can potentially harbor diseases (including Salmonella), rendering them unsafe to eat raw. The flour risk means even egg-free raw dough can still be dangerous. While that’s the case for homemade cookie dough, what does that mean for cookie dough ice cream?
Commercially made ice cream is safe to eat as long as the company producing it uses heat-treated products. The good news is many brands have said they don’t put raw products in their cookie dough ice cream, including Ben & Jerry’s, Häagen-Dazs, and Edy’s. If you’re unsure whether your favorite ice cream brand uses heat-treated products, check the ingredients list for labels or reach out to the brand to confirm the ingredients involved. If you want to make homemade cookie dough ice cream, purchase safe-to-eat raw cookie dough made with heat-treated ingredients rather than making your own.
Why can eggs and flour make you sick?
It isn’t just raw cookie dough that can potentially cause illness. Any raw dough containing flour or eggs technically poses a risk. The risk of Salmonella in eggs is low (in 2003, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated one in 20,000 eggs faced contamination). Flour, on the other hand, has a chance to make you sick with E. coli, Salmonella, and other diseases, though statistical data isn’t available in the same way.
Raw products don’t often go through any sort of sterilization process before arriving on our plates. If germs end up on grains that are later turned into flour, those germs can carry through — from the time the flour is still a plant to the time we’re measuring it from the paper bag on our kitchen counters. Other raw foods, such as steak, can also harbor potential bacteria while fruits and vegetables can be contaminated with pesticides and norovirus. Ultimately, raw food almost always poses some kind of risk, even if it’s minimal. It’s best not to consume any raw products and to wash produce thoroughly — even your bananas — before eating it.
