Botulism is why you cannot make and keep garlic oil, every time you want to use it you must make a fresh batch.
The World's Deadliest Thing
81–90 of 231 posts
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#82Only two mentions of 'nitrites'? Botulism is the reason we started curing meats with nitrite and nitrate in the first place. Canning is fine, but being able to keep meat at room temperature by just adding common (e.g. available in urine, and celery) chemicals is far more interesting.
so does ham cured with celery also contain nitrites? I've been buying free range ham cured with celery because I thought it was free of nitrites.
If you read closely the ingredients don't list celery, they list "celery seed extract". They're extracting the nitrates, it's just a ploy to avoid having to list nitrates in the ingredients but still use it. Next to the statement saying "No added nitrates!" there will be a tiny asterisk adding "except those naturally present (and extracted and concentrated) in celery seeds."
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#83Pop quiz! Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish. One reason is that the sealed pouch keeps oxygen out. Have you wondered why it says "remove all packaging before defrosting"? And ignored that advice like I did for many years? After all, the fish seems to defrost just fin…
Any people from developing countries reading this thread? What are your thoughts when you hear Westerners talking about the danger of leaving a meat out of the fridge for a couple of hours and stuff like that?
As long as it’s not vacuum sealed, you can leave it on the counter all day. Even in the west we defrost meat this way :)
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#84Pop quiz! Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish. One reason is that the sealed pouch keeps oxygen out. Have you wondered why it says "remove all packaging before defrosting"? And ignored that advice like I did for many years? After all, the fish seems to defrost just fin…
Any people from developing countries reading this thread? What are your thoughts when you hear Westerners talking about the danger of leaving a meat out of the fridge for a couple of hours and stuff like that?
We are talking about leaving meat out of the fridge in a sealed anaerobic environment, which is quite different.
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#85Botulism is why you cannot make and keep garlic oil, every time you want to use it you must make a fresh batch.
This is the main danger of homemade mayonnaise as well - it’s not the raw egg that gets you.
If you don’t add sufficient acid to the mayo, then your potato salad ends up in a perfect oxygen-free environment for botulism…
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#86That was awesome to read.
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#87> The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense. That's right - it makes no sense. How could such a small amount of anything do enough damage to shut down your entire body? According to wikipedi…
Terrifying, really
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps its one of those things where “95% of the time you’ll be fine, but be careful if you do it 20 times, because botulism only needs to happen once.”
> be careful if you do it 20 times Probably just a locution, but be careful with that idea about numbers: The probability of remaining in a safe zone of 95% for 20 consecutive times is ~36%. It ( (1-(1/n))^n ) approximates to 1/e. The number of tries to reduce that 95% to a 50% coin toss is 13. It is not fully intuitive. One will put his threshold wherever one may think appropriate, but. A chance of tenth, a hundredt…
So that explains the seven lives of cats, who 9 times out of 10 land on their feet.
(Also, 85% of statistics are made up on the spot.)
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#89Surprised the article doesn't mention honey, which if you're a new parent, is an important thing to know about, on this topic. To quote the US CDC: "Honey can contain the bacteria that causes infant botulism, so do not feed honey to children younger than 12 months. Honey is safe for people 1 year of age and older." Despite this being reasonably well-known, usually, you still get idiocy like this: https://www.fda.gov/…
On top of that, people should remember that while honey is naturally microbially stable. It is not actively anti microbial. Mixing it into your dish will not make it more shelf stable. The stability is simply because it's too dry for microbial activity. I'm mentioning this because it's a common misconception in fermentation communities.
You’d imagine the fermentation communities have heard of mead!
Re: The World's Deadliest Thing
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I defrost my fish in the package by putting it in hot tap water. You, sire, drastically reduced my chance of dying. Thank you very much.
Do not do that. Defrosting should be done slowly in the fridge. Or you can cook frozen food directly. But do not defrost at or about room temperature, this will breed bacteria like crazy.
eep, my girlfriend insists on leaving meat out on the counter top for most of the day to defrost. I mean it feels cold to the touch still when we're ready to cook, and everything is cooked thoroughly, and we've never gotten sick yet but. Still dubious.
Putting it in the fridge to defrost takes 24 hours or so though.