SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the if-I-lick-it,-it-belongs-to-me dept.
Food that has been dropped on the floor is usually safe to eat under the so-called "five-second rule", a scientist has said.
Germ expert Professor Anthony Hilton, from Aston University, said that although retrieving these morsels can never be completely without risk, there is little to be concerned about if the food is only there momentarily.
Professor Hilton will be demonstrating how the five-second rule works at The Big Bang Fair – a celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people – which opens on Wednesday at the NEC in Birmingham.
He said: "Eating food that has spent a few moments on the floor can never be entirely risk-free. Obviously, food covered in visible dirt shouldn't be eaten, but as long as it's not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a few seconds spent on an indoor floor."
(Score: 2) by schad on Sunday April 02 2017, @04:40PM (3 children)
Most of my food safety rules actually came from high school photography class, as weird as that seems. When developing prints -- obviously this predates digital photography -- you need to move a print through a series of three (or more) chemical baths. If you "cross-contaminate," you ruin your print. And it's really immediate and obvious. It translates very well to food prep and service.
But you don't really need to be as obsessive about food safety as that. If you take some very basic, minimal precautions, whatever bugs you'd get from a home kitchen can be easily handled by your gut flora and immune system. The vast majority of food poisoning from home kitchens comes not from contamination but from undercooked foods. The single biggest thing you can do to improve food safety in your home is to buy a good digital instant or fast-read food thermometer and check everything. Chicken and turkey isn't cooked when the juices flow clear or the meat is white. It's cooked when it's 165F throughout. Ground beef isn't cooked when it's brown. It's cooked when it's 160F throughout. It's not cooked after a certain amount of time in the pan or on the grill, it's not cooked when the surface has a certain feel to it, it's not cooked until it hits the minimum safe temperature throughout. I mention these three meats specifically because it's not a question of whether they are contaminated with stuff that will make you sick. They absolutely are. That's why they need to be cooked thoroughly. And for chicken and turkey in particular, they have a real tendency to get dry and terrible when overcooked, which drives a lot of people to undercook them. That's how you get sick.
Remember, kids, there's no such thing as "the stomach flu." If it's coming out of both ends, what you've got is food poisoning, and it's probably from undercooked poultry or ground meat.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Sunday April 02 2017, @06:21PM (2 children)
And for chicken and turkey in particular
The tasteless styrofoams of the meat world. May as well go vegan rather than eat that stuff.
There are exceptions with careful treatment when cooking, a nice deeply citrus marinated chicken fajita meat is pretty good, it'll take awhile to boil the marinade down to a sauce then a crust but the flavor intensity is mindblowing, and since you're boiling the chicken in the marinate for like 10 minutes the internal temp is probably 212 but its so delicious no one cares. Also stir fries for chicken where the chicken is flavorless protein and really you're eating the flavors of broccoli and carrot and a few other veg. I've also made "smothered potatoe chicken" using chicken instead of potatoe as a low carb substitute, pretty tasty and it can't dry out because its in a casserole surrounded by ranch dressing (admittedly a mystery meat substance of its own) and cheese and bacon and all that delicious stuff put on potatoes to make them edible. I've also found dried almost crispy chicken is good as a bbq. Chicken BBQ with the sauce basted at the end so its practically crystallized (but not incinerated) when served is pretty delicious. Like the most amazing smoky chicken jerky ever. And I've slow cooked chicken and shredded it with a homemade BBQ spice mix (go light on the cayenne pepper) and its pretty tasty.
But yeah, mostly as cooked most of the time the styrofoam butchers packing plate has more flavor than the chicken, which is a shame. Which makes it even more ironic depressing when digestive systems explode over something with the flavor profile of cardboard.
Pork cuts have their own dangers where theres this inedible range from like 150-200 degrees where its legally/technically safe to eat, but I can't eat it. Its USDA approved to eat pork chops at 145 but the collagen hasn't broken down so its like jerky unless you get it to 200 for like 8 hours slow cook and the meat shreds apart and is fork tender. Likewise beef is USDA OK at 145 but I think medium is too low and you get more fat flavor at medium-well around 153-ish. Pork chops are tough until I got a thermometer I couldn't make edible chops, for decades I'd overshoot on temp and make jerky and undershoot on time so it's not slow cooked fork tender. I like to saute some shallots and white wine and some raw apple slices (well OK a couple apples worth) and essentially poach my chops until like 150F but seriously like one degree over and its jerky time.
Nothing revolutionizes cooking like a good calibrated or otherwise accurate digital thermometer. Boil some water, if you're around sea level that should be about 212F. Kinda like microwave revolutionized the boomer kitchen my kitchen is revolutionized by ACCURATE thermometer.
(Score: 2) by schad on Monday April 03 2017, @03:43AM (1 child)
Yeah, it seems like years of "bigger and faster" have bred the taste out of poultry just as surely as it did from tomatoes. Your tofu mention is a good one, I think, because tofu is also a largely tasteless protein that absorbs flavors like a sponge. Chicken does great both with big flavors and delicate ones, but not really anything in between.
Corn-fed beef is pretty damn tasteless too. A lot of people prefer the (absence of) taste, though. That makes me think that the blandness of poultry and everything else might actually not be an accident.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 03 2017, @08:27AM
Of course, a nice spicy coating, and the skin cooked till it's crispy and all the fat has rendered down, is also delicious. There's a local pub here where one of the bar snacks is crispy chicken skin - lovely!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves