Yeah....but if you puree it, it makes a good substitute for mace (not the spice, the spray used for defense).
Food and Related Myths or Highly Questionable Beliefs
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Michi
I dislike attempts to rewrite history
Turn them into sock bombs. Could make for quite a formidable weapon. The enemy leaves the battlefield of his own accord…
French Canadian mythology man. Some people get to read it, I got to live it.Dude. What did they do to you?
The risk of food poisoning from raw cookie dough constitutes reasonable grounds to prohibit its consumption.
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Heating honey makes it poisonous.
I just heard that one recently and was so baffled I did a little googling and turns out a lot of people believe it.
I just heard that one recently and was so baffled I did a little googling and turns out a lot of people believe it.
How do these people deal with crystalized honey? Throw it away?
Jovidah
I'll make you a sponsor offer you can't refuse...
I think it's really important to realize that a LOT of the myths; even in this thread, do have a grain of truth in them, or at least stem from something that made sense at one point.
For example:
-I can totally see how 'cold water boils faster' is at least linked to the Mpemba effect - which is similarly counterintuitive.
-Letting meat rest on the counter before cooking can actually have utility in that you lose less heat when tossing it in the pan; this can lead to a better outcome, especially on crappier pans and consumer level stoves.
-Wooden cutting boards CAN be very unsanitary if improperly utilized and maintained.
-Adding salt to yeast might actually kill it, but only in higher concentrations; which might happen if you're for whatever reason keeping just the salt and yeast together in the same bowl during mise-en-place.
-Heating honey doesn't make it poisonous but at high enough temperatures will kill pasteurize it; whether that's a good or a bad thing is up for debate.
-A lot of food rules, recipes and preparations made more sense in the past when food safety wasn't as good as it is now, and certain ingredients were very different from how they are now. Sifting flour for example was far more mandatory in the past when it was a more regular occurence to find small insects in the flour.
There's also a lot of common ones where the explanation might be wrong but the advice is generally sound, for example:
-Searing meat doesn't 'seal in the juice' but it does lead to a more flavorful end-product.
-Oiling pasta MIGHT make sense if you just leave the pasta to sit in a bowl or something after draining.
-You don't need liters of water to boil pasta, but the reason it's recommended is that it often makes the process more idiot proof and easier to make timing recommendations.
And I do actually think sharper knives are safer. Because with a sharp knife I barely use any pressure... and the knive goes where I intend it to go. Whenever I cut myself the cuts are small, superficial, clean and heal fast. On the contrary with a blunt knife I put far more pressure, the knife tends to not go where I want it to and there's a far higher risk of stab injuries, cutting myself since the knife went somewhere I didn't intend it to, and there's far more pressure behind it so whenever I hit something the damage tends to be worse.
For example:
-I can totally see how 'cold water boils faster' is at least linked to the Mpemba effect - which is similarly counterintuitive.
-Letting meat rest on the counter before cooking can actually have utility in that you lose less heat when tossing it in the pan; this can lead to a better outcome, especially on crappier pans and consumer level stoves.
-Wooden cutting boards CAN be very unsanitary if improperly utilized and maintained.
-Adding salt to yeast might actually kill it, but only in higher concentrations; which might happen if you're for whatever reason keeping just the salt and yeast together in the same bowl during mise-en-place.
-Heating honey doesn't make it poisonous but at high enough temperatures will kill pasteurize it; whether that's a good or a bad thing is up for debate.
-A lot of food rules, recipes and preparations made more sense in the past when food safety wasn't as good as it is now, and certain ingredients were very different from how they are now. Sifting flour for example was far more mandatory in the past when it was a more regular occurence to find small insects in the flour.
There's also a lot of common ones where the explanation might be wrong but the advice is generally sound, for example:
-Searing meat doesn't 'seal in the juice' but it does lead to a more flavorful end-product.
-Oiling pasta MIGHT make sense if you just leave the pasta to sit in a bowl or something after draining.
-You don't need liters of water to boil pasta, but the reason it's recommended is that it often makes the process more idiot proof and easier to make timing recommendations.
And I do actually think sharper knives are safer. Because with a sharp knife I barely use any pressure... and the knive goes where I intend it to go. Whenever I cut myself the cuts are small, superficial, clean and heal fast. On the contrary with a blunt knife I put far more pressure, the knife tends to not go where I want it to and there's a far higher risk of stab injuries, cutting myself since the knife went somewhere I didn't intend it to, and there's far more pressure behind it so whenever I hit something the damage tends to be worse.
Jovidah
I'll make you a sponsor offer you can't refuse...
Oh and I think knives actually can make you a better cook - but only when going from garbage to decent. Because it means I cut faster, cook faster, and as a result am willing to use ingredients and preparations that would otherwise be inaccessible to me. I use far more fresh produce than I otherwise would.
Having trash knives and 0 knife skills really can be limiting and implement a ceiling.
Having trash knives and 0 knife skills really can be limiting and implement a ceiling.
I oil my pasta water to break up the starch and keep it from boiling over. (And I only do it when I have to). Never heard about doing it to keep the pasta from sticking.
I gotta object to this one @ian.
Adding a few drops of oil to pasta water breaks the surface tension up a little and will help prevent the starchy water from foaming up and boiling over. Maybe not that important at home. But makes a huge difference if you are cooking 25 pounds of pasta at a time in a 40 gallon steam kettle. I used to keep a squirt bottle of olive oil right beside the kettle so that I could squirt the foam when it started forming.
Adding oil to cooked pasta immediately after it is shocked cool is the best way to prevent sticking.
Adding a few drops of oil to pasta water breaks the surface tension up a little and will help prevent the starchy water from foaming up and boiling over. Maybe not that important at home. But makes a huge difference if you are cooking 25 pounds of pasta at a time in a 40 gallon steam kettle. I used to keep a squirt bottle of olive oil right beside the kettle so that I could squirt the foam when it started forming.
Adding oil to cooked pasta immediately after it is shocked cool is the best way to prevent sticking.
Should have read all the way down. I second @esoo
Ya, that makes sense. It's the sticking explanation I was talking about. Like Jovidah mentioned, some of the myths are more incorrect explanations than bad practices.
- Putting a potato in soup will absorb excess salt.
- Chicken has to be cooked to 165F.
- Chicken has to be cooked to 165F.
Jovidah
I'll make you a sponsor offer you can't refuse...
Actually the potato thing will work to some extent simply because you're adding volume. The solution to pollution is dillution!
The chicken thing also isn't entirely without merit or good reasons. For a long time - and this is probably still the case in some parts of the world - significant amounts of poultry meat were infected with stuff like salmonella, campylobacter and other nasties that you really don't want to ingest. There was a similar thing going on with pork (trichinosis).
The 165F became the idiotproof gold standard in both cases because it killed enough of it fast enough that it's hard to screw it up. You can reach the same effect heating at lower temperature but this would usually require quite long cooking times and there'd be a lot of margin for error.
Unfortunately I can't find the link right now but there's a study out there that shows just how quickly all the bad stuff dies on a temp gradient chart. You don't have to maintain a 155 temp for long at all, like seconds. I don't remember exactly.
Yes, 165 is foolproof but and people who are concerned should do what think is best but I believe it's all dead already.
The "potato trick" is to put the potato in the soup whole, let it sit or cook a while, and then take it out, thinking that it'll leach out all the salt. Probably does take out some small amount of salt, as well as desirable flavors, and makes the soup a bit starchier. Thumbs down.
This isn't the exact data I was wanting but it's got the pertinent info all the same:
https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast
https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast
Here are a few I encounter often:
Raw chickens should be rinsed.
Metal can never go in the microwave.
It is best to pour grease down the drain.
Veggies should be coated in oil before roasting.
You should leave the root end of the onion on to help hold it together when you cut it.
Extra lean ground turkey is healthier than extra lean ground beef.
Raw chickens should be rinsed.
Metal can never go in the microwave.
It is best to pour grease down the drain.
Veggies should be coated in oil before roasting.
You should leave the root end of the onion on to help hold it together when you cut it.
Extra lean ground turkey is healthier than extra lean ground beef.
Works okay if you don't need a sauce to stick to/ soak into the pasta.
(I should qualify this -- the negative effect is when you have a drop-in strainer so you pull the cooked pasta out through the oil layer, and enough oil is used to cover the top of the water (yes, I have seen people do that).
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Chef Mike strikes again!I have a microwave at work specifically for melting metal.
Xunzi
Well-Known Member
Isn't the knife safety thing a case of - "less likely it will happen" but "much worse outcome when it does happen?". As a parallel - I've used a straight razor for a long time - I always found the warnings of nicks exaggerated - actually, I used to get nicks more often with cartridge razors since I'd sometimes had to push those dull blades with force - on the other hand, I once messed up and I almost cut off the tip of my finger with the straight razor...
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Or if your sauce is of the sort that would stick to teflon, like the spicy peanut/sesame sauce used for Dan Dan noodles.
Yeah I'm calling BS on this one until I see some science to back it up (I didn't see any studies after a quick Google search). I believe you are referring to the process of creating a forcemeat "protein mesh" which has nothing to do with aligning muscle fibers parallel to each other. The protein mesh is a matrix of salt, water, fat, and protein that is created when salt solubilizes protein in the muscle cells during mixing.
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Huh. I've been doing this one routinely. It seems to take off a thin layer of scunge I can both smell up close, and feel with my fingers, and gets blood out of the inside (important for the kind of clean tastes one wants in Cantonese dishes). Why should I not do it?
Before adding oil, it’s important to preheat the pan, so the pores open.
Before adding oil, it’s important to preheat the pan, so the pores close.
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/120071
https://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/51385/heat-pan-before-adding-oil-why/amp/
Before adding oil, it’s important to preheat the pan, so the pores close.
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/120071
https://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/51385/heat-pan-before-adding-oil-why/amp/
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-Use a honing rod "re-aligns" a bend knife edge instead of sharpening it. I believe the science of sharp thoroughly debunked this one, but the myth is still ubiquitous.
-cooking meat on the bone adds flavor to the meat. Serious Eats debunked this one awhile ago.
-cooking meat on the bone adds flavor to the meat. Serious Eats debunked this one awhile ago.
Because it sprays bacterial scunge all over one’s sink and nearby countertop, which is a problem if one is a home cook with limited sanitizing sensibilities.
Also, the alleged “scunge” adds COMPLEXITY OF FLAVOUR! (Source: am Cantonese.) ((joking))
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If I invite an attractive lady back to my den to view my impressive knife collection, she will accept the invitation, and be impressed.
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FTFY...
