wff_ng_7 wrote:
"Doug Kanter" wrote:
I don't agree with leaving it on the counter for longer than it takes for
the hot pot to be safely placed on the next surface, but the fact is,
Sheldon's still alive, and who knows how long he's been doing this? Not
important, though. You encounter more potential pathogens in other places
each day than you'll EVER find in a pot of broth that's been off the stove
for a few hours.

There is a flaw in the logic that since Sheldon is still alive, that it must
be okay.

Many things end up being dangerous only part of the time. In those cases,
people tend to get a false sense of security that it then must be safe to
do. Take these two activities. If you take a gun, place it in your mouth,
and fire, there is a virtually 100% chance that you will be killed. On the
other hand, if you go speeding 90 mph through traffic, chances are you are
still going to survive. Because there is no immediate cause and effect
relationship, it may not appear to be risky. But statistically, if one
continues to drive 90 mph, one has a high probability of killing oneself.

I think a lot, if not most people have a hard time understanding statistical
chances of harm. They can't evaluate how risky something is, and whether the
risk is worth taking. Though many things might be a 1 in a 1,000 chance of
doing harm, we do thousands of things in our lives. Even at a 1 in a 1,000
chance of harm in any one activity, if you do enough of them, you are pretty
much guaranteed to get hurt.

I'm more willing to put my faith in someone well versed in the issues of
food safety than to be trusting some random idiot posting on the internet. I
know I am not a food safety expert, but the method I described to cool stock
is in line with what food safety experts advocate.

I agree, up to a point. This whole issue of safety, and food safety, is
being overdone these days as far as I'm concerned. Others have pointed
out that there are germs all around us, 24/7. If we think that by
removing them from our food, there won't be any, we're dillusional. If
I went to all the trouble that Alton Brown does to prepare poultry, I'd
just call a Hazmat crew in anytime I spotted the stuff and have it
removed, and the whole kitchen, if not the house, fumigated, sanitized,
then burned to the ground!

I'm told that back in the thirties, there was a sanitization craze
around babies. Babies should never touch anything that hadn't been
soaked in Chlorox then heated in an autoclave. Shouldn't crawl of
floors or rugs. Shouldn't ever be allowed to touch pets, much less go
outdoors except in a baby carriage or a car. Guess what? Those kids
whose mothers overdid the cleanliness thing had all kinds of medical
problems later on, when the started living more normally, because they
had no resistence to normal crud that lives all around us. Like
anything else, cleanliness can be carried to an unhealthy extreme.

I let my stock cool on the stove. When it's cool enough, it goes into
an ice cube tray, gets made into cubes, and goes in a plastic bag in
the freezer. So far, so good. And my brain still works, which is more
than dogturd can say!

--
( #wff_ng_7# at #verizon# period #net# )

Peter wrote:

Your hunch is backed up by science. The people who are most fearful of
germs and poisoning are the people who are most ignorant of the subject.
Now if you do not know the subject and want to be safe, then it makes
perfect sense to follow the recs of the "food safety experts," but the
fact is that they don't know the science either, and just parrot what
they have been taught. They go way overboard in recommending procedures
that go far beyond what is needed for safety. The idea is that it is
better for someone to boil longer than needed, or cool sooner than
needed, than to risk the chance that someone will not follow
instructions properly and have a problem. This started after WWII when
home canning was encouraged as part of the war effort, and there were
quite a few poisonings. The result was guidelines that went way beyond
what was needed. Sort of like recommending that for safe driving you
have to be in a car with 4 inch armor and 100 airbags.


If you go all the way back to the original post, the OP mentioned that
quickly-cooled stocks TASTED better than slowly-cooked stocks. The
slowly-cooled stocks were called "sour."

The discussion then morphed into what it's become, but it was originally a
discussion about taste, not about health risks.

Bob

"salgud" wrote in message
ups.com...

I agree, up to a point. This whole issue of safety, and food safety, is
being overdone these days as far as I'm concerned.

Side trip: In this small town (Rochester NY), the evening news people go
apeshit and send out camera crews when some driver taps a parking meter with
his bumper. But, every now and then, they make a mistake and actually come
up with an interesting story. Last year, they talked to some (actual) smart
person from our county health department. This person did an experiment
which involved cleaning several countertops with various germicidal cleaners
available in supermarkets, and then somehow sampling what bacteria were
left. Interesting result: The cleaners did what they were supposed to:
reduce the concentration of pathogens per square cm, or however they measure
it. But guess what? Even if these products killed a large percentage, the
researcher found bacteria which refused to die, and they multiplied. In one
case, the countertop was as bad as before it was cleaned.

I wipe down the counters with a soapy sponge. If I've been preparing meat,
I use a capful of clorox on the sponge, then rinse down the counter. But,
I'm not gonna go nuts like that if a drop a little cooked oatmeal.

"Peter A" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
I've had food poisoning - the whole emergency room routine. (Theory:
Truck
stop chili). So, I'm obsessive about cleaning up after handling raw meats
&
seafood, to the point where certain individuals in this house aren't
allowed
to wash the utensils because they don't take it seriously. But, a pot of
broth that's been simmered for a number of hours? Intuitively, I just
don't
believe that's a high risk 2-4 hours after the heat's been turned off. I
have no damned links to back that up - it's a hunch.


Your hunch is backed up by science.

Not to send this off in yet another direction, but in various news sources
over the past week or two, there's been mention of a theory regarding
allergies, and why they're more prevalent now than 20-30-40 years ago: Some
kids live a life that's TOO clean. The immune system needs training.

In one of his routines, George Carlin comments that he's healthy because he
and his friends used to swim in the East River, with raw sewage floating
around.

"Bob Terwilliger" wrote in message
...
Peter wrote:

Your hunch is backed up by science. The people who are most fearful of
germs and poisoning are the people who are most ignorant of the subject.
Now if you do not know the subject and want to be safe, then it makes
perfect sense to follow the recs of the "food safety experts," but the
fact is that they don't know the science either, and just parrot what
they have been taught. They go way overboard in recommending procedures
that go far beyond what is needed for safety. The idea is that it is
better for someone to boil longer than needed, or cool sooner than
needed, than to risk the chance that someone will not follow
instructions properly and have a problem. This started after WWII when
home canning was encouraged as part of the war effort, and there were
quite a few poisonings. The result was guidelines that went way beyond
what was needed. Sort of like recommending that for safe driving you
have to be in a car with 4 inch armor and 100 airbags.


If you go all the way back to the original post, the OP mentioned that
quickly-cooled stocks TASTED better than slowly-cooked stocks. The
slowly-cooled stocks were called "sour."

The discussion then morphed into what it's become, but it was originally a
discussion about taste, not about health risks.

Bob


Have you ever noticed a sour taste like that in stock that you've made?

"salgud" wrote:
I agree, up to a point. This whole issue of safety, and food safety, is
being overdone these days as far as I'm concerned. Others have pointed
out that there are germs all around us, 24/7. If we think that by
removing them from our food, there won't be any, we're dillusional.

I agree a lot of people go overboard with the food safety thing. But I think
a lot of that is driven by companies trying to sell one product or another.
I'm not convinced the bulk of the going overboard is driven by government
agencies or educational institutions. Do we really all need a color coded
set of cutting boards and knives, for example? Do we really need veggie
washes?

One of the things that tends to get me is the cross contamination issue. The
way it's presented tends to be a worse case scenario for absolute idiots.
Maybe it has to be that way... I've run into a lot of people in my day who
can't comprehend some of the most basic things. Does it matter if you use
the same cutting board and knife (starting clean) to first cut some
vegetables to be eaten raw, followed by some raw meat? Or does it matter if
raw meat is cut first, followed by vegetables that are going to be cooked in
a similar manner to the meat, if not with the meat? But trying to explain
the sequencing rules is just too hard to do, so complete separation becomes
the order of the day.

I let my stock cool on the stove. When it's cool enough, it goes into
an ice cube tray, gets made into cubes, and goes in a plastic bag in
the freezer. So far, so good. And my brain still works, which is more
than dogturd can say!

I guess it depends on whether you are meeting the "two hour rule", not that
one has to be so exact on this. The other advantage I find with a quick cool
is I can get the whole operation over and done with, and not risk getting
distracted with how long something has been left out. Minutes quickly turn
into hours when you forget about something and move on to other things.

--
( #wff_ng_7# at #verizon# period #net# )

wff_ng_7 wrote:
[snip]
I guess it depends on whether you are meeting the "two hour rule", not that
one has to be so exact on this.

The only "two hour rule" I am aware of has to do with the minimum time
that should be allocated to sex. I seriously doubt there is such a
rule for cooking, or for leaving stock to cool. -aem

ewdotson wrote:
Doug Kanter wrote:
ewdotson wrote:
Sheldon wrote:

That's just dumb... then most of the fat will remain with the stock
instead of rising to the top to solidify. And 4 quarts is not stock,
that's child's tea set cooking. And all those manual mashinations
contaminated whatever was in that pot... it's ALWAYS best to leave
stock cool undisturbed. There's really no reason to concern oneself in
how rapidly *sterile* stock cools. As far as culinarilly-wise this
was an exercise in lunacy. Don't yoose peeps have a life.

And your stock *stays* sterile as it cools down? What do you add to
it, Clorox?

Sheldon is correct about repeatedly mixing the fat back into the broth. If
you don't mind finding globs of fat on the surface of everything you make
later with the broth, then stir away. As far as "sterile", why would you be
concerned about that? Nothing else in your world is sterile, except
bandages, until you open them.

It was Sheldon who brought up the sterility of his stock, not me. It
was that specific claim that I was addressing, as it struck me as
rather ludicrous.

Ernest

That's because you're a low IQ pinhead.... of course boiled liquid
remains sterile as it cools down, unless your stick your widdle maggoty
peeppee in the pot. What kind of faggoty name is Errrrrnest... isn't
it Ernesto... you filthy dumb dago douchebag.

Mr. Sheldon to you, putz.

wff_ng_7 wrote:
"Sheldon" wrote:
That's just dumb... then most of the fat will remain with the stock
instead of rising to the top to solidify. And 4 quarts is not stock,
that's child's tea set cooking. And all those manual mashinations
contaminated whatever was in that pot... it's ALWAYS best to leave
stock cool undisturbed. There's really no reason to concern oneself in
how rapidly *sterile* stock cools. As far as culinarilly-wise this
was an exercise in lunacy. Don't yoose peeps have a life.

I figured rfc's resident twit would eventually check in.

I challenge the twit to produce a well recognized (if not authoritative)
reference condoning his method. Why not start with showing that the stock is
sterile. Most recipes recommend temperatures well below the boiling point,
and even cooking at the boiling point does not guarantee sterility. Most
recipes also recommend cooling NOT covered.

This stock cooling business is a very old topic, anyone with the grey
matter to seach the archives will find tons of info.... way back from
when rfc'ers could actually cook.

Stock remains sterile for a long time while the fat layer remains
unbroken, IDIOT! Anyone working in my kitchen poked into my stock I'd
whack their hand off with a cleaver... actually I'd fire their dumb ass
on the spot.

But don't feel lonely, you totally useless waste of protoplasm... VERY,
VERY FEW here can actually cook... perhaps fewer than the fingers of
one hand, and that is a fact... proven once again right here in this
thread. Not to worry, wff-JERK, you ain't one of the fingers (LOL),
you ain't even good enough to be dirt under my finger nail... each day
I forget more about cooking than you will ever know in your entire
lifetime, you wff-NEWBIE piece of shit g

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. . . .


confit
[kohn-FEE, kon-FEE]
This specialty of Gascony, France, is derived from an ancient method of
preserving meat (usually goose, duck or pork) whereby it is salted and
slowly cooked in its own fat. The cooked meat is then packed into a
crock or pot and covered with its cooking fat, which acts as a seal and
preservative. Confit can be refrigerated up to 6 months. Confit d'oie
and confit de canard are preserved goose and preserved duck,
respectively.

© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD
LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst.

Sheldon

Doug wrote:

Have you ever noticed a sour taste like that in stock that you've made?

Only if it's been in the refrigerator more than a week or in the freezer
longer than several months. When I make stock, I generally refrigerate
about a quart of it and freeze the rest in muffin tins. (When they're
frozen I scrape off the fat and then pop them out into freezer bags.)

I cool stock fairly quickly by pouring it from one pot to another through a
succession of finer and finer strainers.

Bob

"Sheldon" wrote:
This stock cooling business is a very old topic, anyone with the grey
matter to seach the archives will find tons of info.... way back from
when rfc'ers could actually cook.

Stock remains sterile for a long time while the fat layer remains
unbroken, IDIOT! Anyone working in my kitchen poked into my stock I'd
whack their hand off with a cleaver... actually I'd fire their dumb ass
on the spot.

But don't feel lonely, you totally useless waste of protoplasm... VERY,
VERY FEW here can actually cook... perhaps fewer than the fingers of
one hand, and that is a fact... proven once again right here in this
thread. Not to worry, wff-JERK, you ain't one of the fingers (LOL),
you ain't even good enough to be dirt under my finger nail... each day
I forget more about cooking than you will ever know in your entire
lifetime, you wff-NEWBIE piece of shit g

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. . . .

This last paragraph is really what the issue is all about for Sheldon...
it's not about stock, it's not about cooking, and it's not about food. It
about Sheldon's emotional problems where he has to be "king of the hill" to
show his "superior" knowledge and abilities. If anyone dares offer an
alternative viewpoint, he invariably responds with pejoratives to belittle
that person... among them in this thread: pinhead, dago, faggot... in other
threads: WOP, mother****er, etc.

Classic bullying, in my opinion. He must have some severe insecurity issues
to have to resort to this kind of behavior, week after week, month after
month, year after year.

One might be able to just ignore his behavior if it wasn't so pervasive, and
if he weren't so emphatic in spouting plainly false information, over and
over. Above he again states that stock is sterile. Far from it, but you'll
never convince him, you'll never get him to admit he is wrong.

Last night I went to the library to return some books that were due, and
while browsing came across an interesting book by a person that writes a
column in the Washington Post food section. It's called "What Einstein Told
His Cook 2" by Professor Robert L. Wolke of the University of Pittsburgh.
Though he is not a "food safety expert", he is very knowledgeable on
scientific issues, and is very good at explaning them in terms a layman
(excluding Sheldon) should be able to understand. He puts quite a bit of
humor into his explanations.

When I got home, it occurred to me to look and see if there was anything
about stock in this book. Sure enough, there's several pages on the topic
(p. 303-312). The book is largely in a question and answer format, and one
of the questions is explicitly about the sterility of stock. He discusses
why stock is definitely not sterile, and the science behind it. I'd suggest
that Sheldon read that section (or another source), but of course, as I said
above, that is really not the issue here.

--
( #wff_ng_7# at #verizon# period #net# )

Sheldon wrote:
ewdotson wrote:
Sheldon wrote:

That's just dumb... then most of the fat will remain with the stock
instead of rising to the top to solidify. And 4 quarts is not stock,
that's child's tea set cooking. And all those manual mashinations
contaminated whatever was in that pot... it's ALWAYS best to leave
stock cool undisturbed. There's really no reason to concern oneself in
how rapidly *sterile* stock cools. As far as culinarilly-wise this
was an exercise in lunacy. Don't yoose peeps have a life.

And your stock *stays* sterile as it cools down? What do you add to
it, Clorox?

[snip]

That's because you're a low IQ pinhead.... of course boiled liquid
remains sterile as it cools down, unless your stick your widdle maggoty
peeppee in the pot. What kind of faggoty name is Errrrrnest... isn't
it Ernesto... you filthy dumb dago douchebag.

Mr. Sheldon to you, putz.

You know, it's really quite remarkable how well matched your knowledge
of science and your smack-talking skills are.

--
Ernest

Janet Bostwick wrote:
"Doug Kanter" wrote:

Sheldon is correct about repeatedly mixing the fat back into the broth. If
you don't mind finding globs of fat on the surface of everything you make
later with the broth, then stir away. As far as "sterile", why would you
be concerned about that? Nothing else in your world is sterile, except
bandages, until you open them.

I was only thinking of the most efficient way to cool a body of liquid by
the method described. I recently heard of someone pouring hot concentrated
stock over ice in a strainer as a way of capturing the fat.

The hot stock would simply melt the ice, there'd be no ice for the fat
to cling to, not that it would cling anyway, it won't... by the time
the stock cooled it would have melted so much ice you'd have stock tea
(weak stock tea). Then you'd need to reduce the stock, you'd have
created a viscious cycle of cooling, heating, and reducing, removing no
fat at all, none. And why would you want to remove the fat prior to
the stock cooling, the fat layer more than anything else is what
prevents contamination.

Again, there is no reason whatsoever to cool stock quickly (stock is
not like custard). Freshly made stock is virtually sterile, certainly
as sterile as bottled water. Actually with foods there is no such
thing is absolute sterile (even hermatically sealed medically sterile
saline solution has a shelf life)... but for all practical purposes all
freshly boiled liquids are plenty sterile enough to safely remain at
room temperature, *undisturbed*, for many, many hours... the fat layer
maintains the stock sterilility/integrity for a long time.... one of
the oldest food preservation methods... sealing foods in their own fat
is not much different from sealing foods with wax. Wax coated cheeses
can stay at room temperature for a long time too.

Anyone whose chicken stock tastes sour it's not from cooling slowly at
room temperature, it's from using poultry backs and other garbage to
make stock, spinal cord creates sour tasting stock, fact. Anyone who
saves poultry trimmings for stock is making swill, not stock. Next
time yoose plan on making stock ask yourselves whether yoose live in a
third world country, that to survive you need to salvage garbage... the
bums who dumpster dive US restaurants for half eaten food are dining
better than yoose.

I only buy whole chickens (cut-up parts is salvage from cancerous
birds), the very first thing I do is cut out the back and toss it where
it belongs, in the trash. I never roast a whole chicken without first
cutting out the back. I save no trimmings, I make stock from whole
birds that have been well cleaned including cutting out the backs,
chicken is cheap... I can afford $5 worth of chicken to make two
gallons of stock. And I'm not about to invest all the time and effort
to make swill... I don't use rotting tomatoes in my sauce either, those
go in my composter, not my sauce pot. Yoose scraps savers can't tell
me you don't eat shit.

Sheldon

wff_ng_7 wrote:
"Sheldon" wrote:

But don't feel lonely, you totally useless waste of protoplasm... VERY,
VERY FEW here can actually cook... perhaps fewer than the fingers of
one hand, and that is a fact... proven once again right here in this
thread. Not to worry, wff-JERK, you ain't one of the fingers (LOL),
you ain't even good enough to be dirt under my finger nail... each day
I forget more about cooking than you will ever know in your entire
lifetime, you wff-NEWBIE piece of shit g

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. . . .

This last paragraph is really what the issue is all about for Sheldon...
it's not about stock, it's not about cooking, and it's not about food. It
about Sheldon's emotional problems where he has to be "king of the hill" to
show his "superior" knowledge and abilities.

I agree, but you do have to admit that his statement "VERY, VERY FEW
here can actually cook" has a grain of truth.

--Bryan

"Food Snob" wrote:
I agree, but you do have to admit that his statement "VERY, VERY FEW
here can actually cook" has a grain of truth.

I don't know about that. Maybe just a grain. Off the top of my head, I can
think of probably two dozen that would seem to have a pretty good handle on
it, based on their descriptions of or questions about what they are doing.
Many of the "dumb" postings that do appear are by people that may very well
be quite proficient in one area of cooking but not another. For example, a
person might know a thousand things to do with various cuts of beef, but not
have a clue as to how to get an oyster open. My guess is the majority of the
multiple time posters, if not of all posters, know how to cook, in spite of
how things might look in a single message.

Aside from all of that, I don't like the behavior of cutting down someone
starting out with a new interest in the field, whether it be someone in
their 20s, or someone much older taking cooking seriously for the first
time.

--
( #wff_ng_7# at #verizon# period #net# )