The Frying Pan - 2016-06-03

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4:09 AM

What number d'ja dial?

4 hours later…

8:17 AM

Hello @Huy & @rumtscho, just wanted to report back from my IKEA trip. I'm not broke and I stuck to my shopping list. Ok, when I was there, I realized I had forgotten to put a few things on the list, but that was quickly amended. Now I'm doing the usual "wield the Allen Key" game.

8:41 AM

hehe, good to hear you're not broke from your IKEA trip :P

Yeah - done. Now I finally don't have to guess what's on the top shelves of my cupboards (that the previous owners set up, I may add).

And the only impulse buy were two hydrangeas for my front step (heavily discounted and my last impulse flower has now bern blossoming for over two years in a row) and two packs of bandaids, which with scraped knee season coming up is something we go through like others go through paper towels.

9:23 AM

0

Q: Long Boiling/cooking of Pork?

I boiled 1kg chunk of pork 12 hours: fist boiling 45 min 8 h at low heat 45 min boiling low heat now some hours I am not sure if this was a good strategy. How long can you boil/cook chunk of pork?

cooking-time pork slow-cooking boiling

It seems to me almost closable, but only almost. How do you see it?

7 hours later…

4:32 PM

@rumtscho I dunno what the best way to ask it is, but I think it's probably fair to ask about the basic process of slow-cooking a (presumably slow-cooking-friendly) hunk of meat.

e.g. the 45 minutes of active boiling in the middle seems kinda weird.

and there's some very rough reasonable time range, at least a couple hours to get it to actually break down connective tissue, and then diminishing returns or falling apart past some point.

4:59 PM

@Jefromi you are right, there probably is a basic technique description possible

and the answers of the other question I linked try to go in that direction

but they are surprisingly bad at it when they do so

5:46 PM

@rumtscho I think the answers on the other question are a bit skewed by trying to provide the lowest and slowest, rather than general technique?

Yes, they are. The whole thing is confounded by the new asker also asking about lowest and slowest, though :(

I hope that the new question will get better answers than the old one - answers of the type you suggest would be a good asset - I am just a tad pessimistic that it will happen.

@Jefromi we had no tag wiki on cookbook, a very misused tag. I wrote one, you can take a look, and feel free to improve it.

cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/cookbook/info

6:02 PM

Maybe we should also say what you should ask about, something like "For questions about specific cookbooks. Please do not ask for recommendations."

I think that's the right way to use it?

I am not sure there is a "right" way to use it

if we take our guidelines literally, we should ban the whole tag, as it is not about the preparation of food.

I would hate to see that happen, as there are questions in the tag which do no harm.

I don't think that's what the guidelines literally say.

> Cooking & food preparation methods

and in the past, we have frequently used this to exclude a ton of other questions related to food but not its preparation

I think that's the concise version.

But there are other bullets, ingredient selection, equipment, etc, that make it pretty clear the scope includes some things directly associated with food preparation.

We tend to use this list as a whitelist, and cookbooks are not on it. Although this practice has been called into question.

6:06 PM

The best "concise" version might be "food preparation and most of the things you'll inevitably have to do in order to do food preparation"

Anyway, I am less bothered by the books not being on that list

@rumtscho I would certainly question that.

If something's not obviously covered, we should ask if it makes sense as part of the scope. If it doesn't, sure, say it's not on the list and isn't getting added. But it might make sense.

I am OK with saying that cookbook questions are generally included, but those of them which hurt other rules (not the scope rules) should be closed.

And I think things like "how different are the editions of Joy of Cooking?" seem fine scope-wise.

And a very large proportion of the questions about cookbooks we get hurt the "no big list rule

but as for the questions which don't hurt it, I am not sure I am seeing such a consistent pattern

the ones which ask for book recommendations are clearly excluded

mentioning this tells people "if it is about something else, it is probably OK"

I am worried that, if we also add a "if it is about a specific book" or another attempt to bundle the allowed question into one category, then people whose cookbook question falls in neither the one nor the other will be confused

6:10 PM

I'm not really trying to bundle everything cleanly, I'm just trying to avoid a tag wiki that only tells you what you can't ask.

and might think that their question is not OK because it's not about a specific cookbook, even when "specific cookbook" is just the largest category of OK questions.

What is the problem with a tag wiki which only tells you what you can't ask?

I would generally assume that such a tag wiki implies that anything not on the list is likely to be OK

do you have a specific problem with a negative tag wiki in mind, or are you just following general guidelines of "be positive"?

I think it's helpful to give an idea of what's acceptable, otherwise it makes it a little hard to tell how to correctly use the tag.

I guess the implication is "anything that's not a recommendation."

that's what my intention was, yes. "Not a recommendation and not hurting the rest of the rules in some other way".

If you think that this is too intransparent, I guess we can expand it with examples of acceptable uses.

Even just "Specific questions about cookbooks. Please do not use for general recommendations."

When I see this, I wonder if somebody without background knowledge will know what we mean by "general recommendations"

I must admit I haven't checked my current formulation under that aspect though, might be just as bad

6:16 PM

Well, phrase the "no recommendations" part how you like.

"Specific questions about cookbooks. Please do not use for recommendations on which cookbook to read". OK for you?

or "to use"

I'm just saying, even though it's not actually saying much more than "ask good questions" the first part does still help make it clearer what kinds of cookbook questions we take.

I am not so convinced that it is clear to an outsider what we mean with "specific questions about cookbooks". Without the second part, why wouldn't somebody think "I am asking which cookbook is the best for the Mediterannean diet, that's a very specific question"?

And with the second part, I see it as slightly redundant, but not really harmful. And somewhat friendlier.

Well we can't have it both ways, we can either spell out examples of what's okay, or say something wishy-washy like that.

When you put it that way, I am for the wishy-washy.

6:21 PM

It's just an excerpt, anyway :)

I am starting to feel that we have spent more time discussing that sentence than it deserves :) If you are OK with the last suggestion, let's just use it.

And in a perfect world, some community member will have a brilliant idea how to improve it, and will go and edit it.

Or people won't ask that many cookbook questions anyways :)

that one's for sure, we get less than one per month I think

and most of them are closed anyway

12

Q: Why doesn't the Related question list show that questions are closed?

I saw a question on Meta that was obviously going to be a duplicate: Difference Between SO and Programmers [closed] And indeed, looking at the "Related" questions list for that question showed a number of duplicates: Being the good citizen I am, I tried to vote to close (technically Flag...

feature-request related-questions

I had to manually go through the list of related question to that one, thinking that I will have to close most of them, and sighing to myself that we have so many Altlasten. Turned out they were already closed, but the list doesn't show it.

hey @derobert you are around! Haven't seen you in a while

@rumtscho yep, surprised no one else had heard of retort pouches

I think that people fall into three categories

1) do not can

2) want to heed official food safety standards and therefore follow the published methods (and the popular literature aimed at the home cook always assumes jars)

6:29 PM

@derobert I didn't realize it was a thing you could potentially do at home.

3) place higher value on tradition than on anything else, and so can the way their grandma did - in jars

I guess there is a potential 4) I want to experiment with canning crowd, but I expect it to be very low.

I should've thought to at least mention that there are obviously commercial versions of this though, and then I might've discovered what you said in your answer. But didn't know it off the top of my head.

@rumtscho hah, and not to mention quickly thinned out by failed experiments :-/

also

> In the consumer market, retort pouches have gained great popularity outside of the United States, particularly in the Pacific Rim region. However, American consumers have evidently demonstrated reluctance regarding the packaging technology, and its adoption has been slow. As a result, many retort packages sold in the United States are packaged in cartons to give them an appearance more familiar to consumers

Yeah, presumably half of the experimentation crowd eventually turns into the "follow the guidelines!!!" crowd.

6:31 PM

Americans dislike the stuff even if somebody else makes it for them

@rumtscho yeah, it's unfortunate, as the pouches are actually better than cans in a lot of ways...

I would guess that it is much less than half

Yeah I think there's a perception that it's much more processed, or something?

e.g., they can be thin instead of round, which means less processing time → increased quality

unsafe food has a rather low chance of getting you sick (per portion), and improper canning still reduces the risk quite a bit when compared to non-canned food.

In general, the "proper canning guidelines" are rather new (I remember reading about some drastic change in 1992), and contradict practices which have been widespread even in modern times, and produce an infection rate tolerated by the general population.

@Jefromi "less natural" is probably the correct term here

6:36 PM

@rumtscho Sure, almost said that too, I think they go hand-in-hand.

as my observation is that "natural" means "the way I imagine it was done in the time period in which I assume people were not yet subject to industrialization-related ills"

For some extreme people, that is paleo

yeah, it's amazing some of the recent food recalls—how many millions are we spending worrying about 20 people getting sick? At some point—there are much better ways to spend that money. But that's hardly unique to food recalls.

but for most of them, "that's how it was done in the 1850s" is a good definition of "natural"

even though they are not aware of it

hah, keep any canned food done the 1850s way far away from me!

so baking soda is a natural thing to them (because it is present in their picture of the wholesome household of the past) but, say, MSG is not.

6:39 PM

@rumtscho That's probably a decent description of the more extreme view, but I think there's probably also a more common and less extreme view.

Which would be?

Just a more basic notion of quality and freshness and naturalness all going together.

@rumtscho Hah, I think that has more to do with MSG going by a chemistry name... People would consider "sodium bicarbonate" un-natural.

Not necessarily about industrialization being unhealthy, just an instinctive notion of what is "good" food.

From what I have observed, the basic notion of quality and naturalness is the belief people think they hold

6:41 PM

And they'd go running from the chemical names of baking powder.

but it tends to bake down to the other one in the end

You can still tie it to "industrialization-related ills" if you like but I don't think most people are actually thinking of it that way.

no, they are not thinking of it that way

but as soon as something has been known for ages, they vehemently deny that it can be bad, because it is "natural"

It's about quality not just healthiness.

(and btw, MSG almost dates back to the 1850s...)

6:42 PM

Fruit paste shaped into a bar vs a piece of fruit.

unfortunately, these two get mixed also

Sure, I know it all gets mixed up, I'm just trying to point out it's not just about perception of healthiness, it's also just "am I going to get good food if I buy this".

yes, agreed here

but the judgment of "this" being in the "good" or "bad" category seems to not correlate with something like the amount of processing

So on one end of that spectrum there's a nice plate of food made just for you, and on the other end there's that same plate of food ground up and smooshed into protein bar. And I think people might see retort pouches as farther in that direction than cans.

@derobert Huh, didn't know that!

> Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University isolated glutamic acid as a taste substance in 1908 from the seaweed Laminaria japonica (kombu) by aqueous extraction and crystallization, calling its taste umami.

for example, salami made by a traditional recipe has a "good" vibe, while processed slices of ground up chicken breast have a "bad" vibe

6:45 PM

sure sure

and retort pouches aren't actually more processing than canning in glass jars

@Jefromi probably less processing

also, the same vegetables canned in a glass jar have a "good" vibe, while in a pouch they have a "bad" vibe. And the amount of processing is the same - jinx.

Yup :)

and my feeling is that it is really mostly connected to a picture of a wholesome living, dependent on some time period, which differs for different people

@rumtscho I've got to disagree that canned vegetables in any type of container have a good vibe. They all taste terrible :-P

6:49 PM

I mean, it's pattern recognition, right?

There's a lot of actually bad stuff in opaque vacuum-sealed packages.

Indeed. A lot of bad stuff in glass jars too, though. Like that whole jams, preserves, and jellies section isn't at all healthy.

But also things that are at least still whole.

So it's not surprising people end up making overeager judgments.

If your vegetables still look good after canning, you put them in a glass jar so it's visible!

@Jefromi That's true—you can at least see through the glass jar. But then why do people prefer metal cans over retort pouches? Can't see through aluminum or steel.

(Not to mention, seeing through the jar isn't really a good thing—darkness normally is better for preserving quality...)

I'd assume it's mostly the other part, retort pouches look similar to the packaging for all the super-processed blah stuff.

But also even with opaque cans people have learned there's whole food inside.

3

Q: Is all sausage considered a "Processed Meat"?

Over the years, I've read a lot of health information that says processed meats are some of the worst foods for you from a fat, sodium, and nitrate intake perspective. Then I read that Sausage is a processed meat, which, makes sense. Is all Sausage considered a "Processed Meat", and is therefor...

meat fats sausages charcuterie sodium

One of the deleted answers perfectly describes the attitude I'm referring to

> -1
down vote

Recently I sent my pigs for slaughter and asked the butcher to give me back mince only, which he did. I am now making 100% meat sausages from that mince, adding only herbs and seasoning (not seasoning mixes nor any breadcrumb or rusk). To me this is not processed meat in the sense it is meant in the media, nor are those sausages processed. What do people think? I know most include rusk or other things to flavour sausages, but to me, 100% meat sausages taste spectacular, so that's the way I'm going. In short I don't think a sausage has to be regarded as processed meat.

"Processed and bad is equivalent"

"Food I've made myself using traditional technologies is always good"

ergo, food I've made myself cannot be bad

ergo, food I've made myself cannot be called "processed"

6:59 PM

Yeah, that's definitely a thing too :)

It's not that people start from some quality of the food and categorize it as "good" or "bad" based on that quality

rather, they have the attitude first, and assign the qualities to align with the attitudes

similar with other things, such as fireplaces

Every time I've seen somebody confronted with the idea of "sitting around a fireplace is just as bad for your lungs as sitting around a smoker", I have seen the reaction "But this can't be true, fireplaces are a good thing!"

So I guess it's a combination of both

the pattern recognition you mentioned, of eating bad food coming from a pouch

but also the generally perceived "badness" of obviously industrially-created food

7:17 PM

Oh!

There is something I wanted to show you

user image

That's when I was at a conference a month ago

It was in an old monastery converted to a convention hotel

and this was hanging in a corridor close to the entry to the restaurant

I love the picture a lot

I considered changing my avatar to it, but 1) it would be stealing and 2) I don't feel entitled to it

7:39 PM

that's a neat picture

worrying when you need to magazine-load your chili peppers ;-D

8:02 PM

@rumtscho Awesome!

There should be a Mexican coat of arms in the middle of the flag though.

Mexican?!

Much more likely to need all those peppers!

I didn't even know the Mexican flag is so similar to the Italian one

but Italians love their pepperoni too

8:18 PM

whoaaa mind blown

by what?

I thought Mexico's flag was super famous!

But I suppose not everyone is from Texas.

hihi

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Jun '163

The Frying Pan

Sometimes hot, always heavy. (cooking.stackexchange.com)

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