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Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

cbc.ca

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Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#291

Post by lsc »

icantdrive55 wrote: post #185

I hate to add to the wire brush worry, but it's not just BBQ. So many resturants use wire brushes. The last burrito I had was a few months ago. It had piece of wire in it. I kept the wire for a few days, and thought about it. The wire was not from a brush. I think it was old copper telephone wire. It that might have fell onto the grill from the ceiling, or wall? Anyways, I haven't had a burrito since that instance. A…

I have a bunch of earplugs I got (on sale) that are "detectable" - they have a small steel rivet in them; the idea being that if you are manufacturing food on an industrial scale, you don't want some poor bastard finding your lost earplug in her "Hungry Man" dinner, so they just run 'em through a metal detector on the way out as part of the QC process.

I bet you could do the same thing with fresh food, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. If nothing else, I don't think your typical metal detector is going to detect copper.

For my money, I'd like my local food-serving establishment to put the effort into hygiene.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#292

Post by munificent »

reitoei wrote: post #218
Retra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the US and I've yet to BBQ with anyone who does. This is the first I've ever heard of it.

I'm in Ireland. WTF is a BBQ?

Imagine you're boiling potatoes.

Get rid of the water. Replace the pot with a metal grill. Replace the potatoes with meat. Pretty much that.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#294

Post by networked »

dguaraglia wrote: post #88
nikatwork wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> old newspapers... which of course we know today it's not such a great idea, heh Why is it a bad idea? The newspaper thing is common in Oz, and a quick Google turned up nothing.

What mattashii said: newspaper ink has (or at least used to have) lots of lead. I'm not sure how bad it is, but I'd imagine that long-term you might want to avoid it. Specially when something as easy to find as a potato or a bunch of leaves will do the same job without the risk :)

A former colleague of mine, a man in his seventies, told us a story from when he served in the Soviet army as a young man. He served with a guy who used to wipe his individual plate and utensils with the newspaper they got. Others warned him about the lead but he dismissed the warnings. After a while, he ended up with lead poisoning.

I don't think I heard how long it took for him to get it or how severe it was.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#295

Post by robotresearcher »

riffraff wrote: post #183
yladiz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the cases of product being banned for safety, one of the reasons it's generally due to is the potential of swallowing it and causing harm or choking being high enough that a simple warning isn't sufficient. E.g. Buckyballs (swallow two separate groups of those and you'll be lucky to be in IC), Kinder Surprise (sucks, but somewhat understandable). The brush, while potentially dangerous, isn't probably dangerous eno…

> Kinder Surprise (sucks, but somewhat understandable) I still don't understand this, the explanation I have read is that it's due to the inner plastic being totally hidden, but the potential to swallow a Kinder Surprise whole is very low, unless your kids are _really_ large.

Swallowing is not the problem, it's getting the plastic egg stuck in the back of the mouth or throat, blocking the airway.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#296

Post by alistairSH »

tmaly wrote: post #129
dguaraglia wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Argentinian trick is basically: 1. let the grill get hot 2. rub with something to clean old grit 3. rub again with a chunk of fat (from the meat) for flavor The "something" in step #2 has varied over the years. Back in the day, my grandpa used to use old newspapers... which of course we know today it's not such a great idea, heh. Onions, half a potato, a corn stalk, even a chunk of brick will do the trick. You ju…

what do you do about rust? The chrome coating on my grill comes off and the iron underneath rusts. The wire bristle was the only thing working.

Buy a grill with a cast-iron grate. Then, you season it with oil, just as you would a cast-iron pan/dutch oven.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#297

Post by yourapostasy »

yladiz wrote: post #230
yourapostasy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to sardonically quip that kids in the US are really large [1]. That only works if only the US bans the candy. I looked up Kinder Surprise on Wikipedia [2] and found out that Chile also bans it. So the quip doesn't work. Completely unsubstantiated, but I cynically interpret the ban as bribery purchased by Frito-Lay and General Mills to protect their Cracker Jack product [3] and breakfast cereal products. T…

Well, Chile's ban is different than US's ban. The US bans it because it's a potential public health risk[1], because someone may choke on the toy inside, while Chile bans it because they apparently banned all kinds of advertisements and products aimed at kids that have gifts that come with the product (I don't know the rationale; there is an article linked on Wikipedia but it's in Spanish and didn't translate well. M…

> ...but it wouldn't be comfortable...

Yes, when I saw the size of the capsule and toys inside, I thought there were many common household items that were far, far easier to ingest, were way more within daily reach than candy, and enforcing the ruling on these toys was arguably a waste of limited taxpayer-funded manpower.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#298

Post by logfromblammo »

sverige wrote: post #85

I follow Al Bundy's advice. I never clean my grill. "Ashes from the past for burgers of the future."

I was going to post exactly this before realizing that someone else undoubtedly posted it before me, and I should upvote them.

I will only clean my charcoal grill with some hotter fire and a good whack from the grill spatula. Excess [0] ashes go into a bucket for later non-cooking uses. The carbonized residues on the grill create an ablative non-stick coating for any foods you put on it. Also, they make your grill marks black, when they might otherwise be red from the rust.

[0] Excess being defined as so much that the charcoal won't light.

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#299

Post by reitoei »

munificent wrote: post #292
reitoei wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Ireland. WTF is a BBQ?

Imagine you're boiling potatoes. Get rid of the water. Replace the pot with a metal grill. Replace the potatoes with meat. Pretty much that.

Tip o' the hat to you, sonny!

Re: Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

#300

Post by dreamcompiler »

afarrell wrote: post #266
davegardner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just one of the many words that have different meanings in different countries. We Australians take our barbecueing very seriously and it rarely involves indirect cooking. :-) The most common form of barbecueing here involves cooking on a flat hotplate over direct heat.

The tragic thing about this is that it prevents people in places like the northeastern US from realising that the phenomenon of real BBQ exists. I know that until met my wife at age 23, I had never even seen actual slow-cooked collagen-has-turned-to-gelatin BBQ. This isn't an instance of the Scotsman fallacy, it is a genuine category error.

Exactly. I'm originally from Texas, where they have a pretty serious idea about what the label "BBQ" means. And it absolutely does not mean grilling burgers over charcoal.
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