Steak Tartare: Why is it called 'American Fillet'? Do Americans really eat raw hamburger?

Because it's the american idea that we're all sharks and will eat red meat. At least that's the explanation I got when I was in France and heard someone ask this very same question. I guess thats how America is viewed to the rest of the world.

oh dear... maybe you should wonder why you eat hamburgers and where the name 'hamburger' come from :

1238 - When Genghis Khan's grandson, Khubilai Khan (1215-1294), invaded Moscow, they naturally brought their unique dietary ground meat with them. The Russians adopted it into their own cuisine with the name "Steak Tartare," (Tartars being their name for the Mongols). Over many years, Russian chefs adapted and developed this dish and refining it with chopped onions and raw eggs.

Beginning in the fifteenth century, minced beef was a valued delicacy throughout Europe. Hashed beef was made into sausage in several different regions of Europe.

1600s - Ships from the German port of Hamburg, Germany began calling on Russian port. During this period the Russian steak tartare was brought back to Germany and called "tartare steak."

Hamburg Steak

In the late eighteenth century, the largest ports in Europe were in Germany. Sailors who had visited the ports of Hamburg, Germany and New York, brought this food and term "Hamburg Steak" into popular usage. To attract German sailors, eating stands along the New York city harbor offered "steak cooked in the Hamburg style."

It's actually a quite separate dish from Steak Tartare, called Filet Américain, originally Belgian, but popular throughout the Benelux, Switzerland as well as France herself.

The same cut as for Steak Tartare is ground even finer, almost paste like, and then seasoned with pepper, salt, mustard, (spring)onion/shallotts, chives, parsley, Worcestershire sauce, capers, and emulsified with egg yolks. Additional seasonings can include mayonnaise, gherkins and/or petits cornichons, cayenne or chile pepper, etc.

In Belgium, it's often served -- unsurprisingly <g> -- with pommes frites and (Belgian) beer, as a lunch, or a theatre supper dish.

Hope this helps.

steak Tartare is French. I've never heard it called American fillet before.

It is ground beef which you can season to your taste with tobasco, Wocestershire sauce, onions, gerkins, raw egg yolk, capers etc. It is one of the most delicious thing in the world.

The poster who is worried about worms - good beef never ever contains worms. I wouldn't eat wormy beef even if it had been cooked for hours.

LOL, I'm American too, and I don't know anyone who eats raw hamburger. Blondi must be right, it's just another thing foreigners think about us that isn't true.

Cheffy is, as always, dead right. As ever, the blighter got in first!

How is it that Cheffy always anwers the questions that I wish to answer before me? I'm in the UK, presumably Cheffy is in the US - is it something to do with time zones? LOL, etc!!!

Don't knock it til you try it. And you don't use the ground beef that you find in the store, you get a piece of beef and grind it or mince it yourself.

noone eats raw hamburger here, char broiled .............