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Comment by fencepost | Hacker News Reader

Based on the (2013) article, Heat kills it, but not just boiling water heat - you need the 250 degree pressure cooking heat.

Not really mentioned is that it's lack of oxygen that really enables things to go downhill, which is why you should never make your own infused oils - "homemade garlic infused olive oil, what could go wrong?" DEATH

Also, I can't think of the last thing I ate that was kept at a rolling boil for 10 minutes, and I probably don't want to. Botox is not the only thing that would eliminate.

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Another reason that contributes to garlic-infused olive oil's danger is that the garlic tends to kill off other microorganisms that could compete with botulism, but it doesn't kill botulism itself.

See this is why people die. I had no idea of this danger and was just thinking the other day of making a garlic-infuses oil.

You absolutely can make garlic oil; you just shouldn't hold it for very long.

There are techniques you can use to make long-holding garlic oil, too. The simplest is to make mojo, which is garlic oil acidified with lime juice. But there are also techniques to directly acidify the garlic without drastically modifying the flavor.

Garlic infuses fast, so an even simpler strategy is just to make it the day you're planning to use it.

I often made garlic/oil/chili pepper spaghetti in the past. IMO doing anything fancy with the oil is completely unnecessary as you can infuse tons of flavour right at the cooking stage that happens 10min before eating: Use four garlic cloves per person, slice as thinly as you can (think Good Fellas), boil together with chili at the lowest heat in a high quality olive oil just until soft, take off the heat. Add pasta water, salt, fresh italian flat parsley, almost cooked spaghetti and heat/soak for another minute, serve with parmesan. I also like to add sun dried oil tomatoes (commercial of course) together with the parsley. There, I don't understand how you need more garlic flavour.

I do sort of the opposite thing: I dump a whole mess of whole cloves --- sometimes even the supermarket jugs of peeled garlic (which are for any other application pretty gross) --- into a saucier, cover with oil (cheap oil is fine, I think, because cooking is going to destroy the subtle flavors), and cook in a very slow oven until the garlic is soft.

Slightly off topic: I want to take a moment to point out something else that is completely unnecessary: Flambé. If anything I think that adding alcohol and immediately burning it off will only remove the subtle flavors the food already has.

Sorry, I can't agree. "Crêpes Suzette" are delicious...

I agree that Crepes are amazing - I make them often (Nutella and banana mostly, sometimes just sugar), but I disagree that Flambe improves the flavor at all.. There is no need to Flambe the dish prior to serving it.

Almost all flavor is in the aroma. Flambe does nothing to add flavor - at best it is removing those precious aromatic compounds and at worst an inexperienced cook is going to burn down their kitchen. Flambe is all for show.

If you want to add flavor from alcohol (like Grand Marnier), you should just render it down into a syrup. Anyway, that's the advice I got from a better chef than myself, just passing along the knowledge.

Yeah, food safety is a bit of a mine field. Other common foods to watch out for are improperly cooked beans and green potatoes.

Undercooked shitake mushrooms are also sometimes poisonous.

Cooked and chilled rice used to be the leading cause of food poisoning in the UK, which is saying something when you consider how many chickens are infected with salmonella and campylobacter. (campylobacter has recently taken the lead in number of food poisoning cases).

What is it about cooked and chilled rice that makes it a leading source of food poisoning?

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-po...

> Yes, you can get food poisoning from eating reheated rice. However, it's not the reheating that causes the problem, but the way the rice has been stored before it is reheated.

> How does reheated rice cause food poisoning?

> Uncooked rice can contain spores of Bacillus cereus, a bacterium that can cause food poisoning. The spores can survive when rice is cooked.

> If rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores can grow into bacteria. These bacteria will multiply and may produce toxins (poisons) that cause vomiting or diarrhoea.

> The longer cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that the bacteria or toxins could make the rice unsafe to eat.

Reheating the rice will kill the bacteria, but will not remove the toxin. It also puts the rice at bacteria breeding temperature again.

Didn't know either, found this[1]: "Uncooked rice frequently contains bacteria called Bacillus cereus. These bacteria can form protective spores that survive the cooking process. If cooled slowly, these spores can germinate, grow and produce an emetic (vomit inducing) toxin. Reheating rice before serving will not inactivate the emetic toxin or kill all the bacterial cells, so the rice may not be safe."

The more you know. The suggestion is to cool it down as fast as possible and put it in the fridge. NHS says the "symptoms are relatively mild and usually last about 24 hours", so it seems unlikely that it's gonna kill you (IANA doctor).

[1] http://www.foodsafety.govt.nz/elibrary/industry/safe_cooling...

[2] http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-po...

I can't find it now, but I remember reading a stat about far more sushi restaurants in the US getting fined by health inspectors due to improper rice temperature handling rather than fish handling as I had intuitively expected.

The fish is easy, just keep it cold. The rice, not so simple. :)

Wow crazy.

This always struck me as weird because of how many people I know who cook a giant pot of rice in a rice cooker and just leave it on the counter as they eat the rice over a couple days. Never knew it to cause vomiting.

That's a good point and made me do some more research. The range at which B. cereus grows ends at around 50C -- the exact figure varies depending on the source. Generally, 65C seems to be considered safe. The "warm" mode of (some? check your manual) rice cookers is designed specifically to target that temperature range to avoid contamination[2][3].

[1] Gilbert RJ, Stringer MF, Peace TC. The survival and growth of Bacillus cereus in boiled and fried rice in relation to outbreaks of food poisoning. The Journal of Hygiene. 1974;73(3):433-444. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130471/ Possibly the "seminal paper" when it comes to rice and B. cereus?

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_cooker#History

[3] Manual for some random rice cooker on Amazon: "In Keep warm status, it will reheat to maintain the temperature at 73C" http://img1.midea.com/my/Local_Library/info_instructions/ins...

It's also related the surface area of grains of cooked rice. http://www.bbc.com/food/rice

According to this Lifehacker article (http://skillet.lifehacker.com/leftover-rice-could-make-you-v...)

> According to food scientist Donald Schaffner of Rutgers University, some restaurants “cook up a large batch of rice, hold it at room temperature all day,” and then take portions from the batch as needed. “Because Bacillus makes a heat stable toxin,” he explained “this is not a best practice, and has led to outbreaks in the past.”

That doesn't sound like something you would do in home cooking, so if the large number of food poisoning cases come from restaurants doing that, they may not be a good guide to the "absolute" danger from rice.

Lots of outbreaks come from home cooks making a big batch of rice and then saving a portion to make fried rice the next day.

If it's a large portion of rice, and you don't spread it out to allow it to cool, the temperature of the rice will stay in the danger zone for hours--even in a refrigerator.

I've been sickened by this before eating leftover fried rice from a Chinese restaurant. It was the first time I went there and I really liked the food, but I can't stomach going back. It's also known as "Fried Rice Syndrome".

Chickens have been vaccinated against Salmonella in the UK since the '90s. (Vaguely remember the Salmonella scandal in the '80s as a kid.)

It is indeed. I often wonder whether there is a website out there that lists every single risky food out there and gives you tips on how to prepare it without dying. As an example, I often wash my hands incredibly frequently when cooking food, but I see professional chefs who just wipe their hands on their apron. Where is the balance?

It's not a website, but there's a great book about cooking called Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee. (It's not really a cookbook because there aren't any recipes in it.) Each chapter begins with a section on food safety for that particular category.

Things that are ready to eat, won't get anyone sick. With raw meat, you have to wash your hands. If you touch cooked meat it's fine to wipe off your hands and handle bread. Because the cooked meat is safe to eat, it can't contaminate anything in such a way to make it dangerous.

Just be cautions of the unsafe side. You can never wipe your hands when they're unsafe (raw meat juice). Because the next time you wipe your hands, you're bringing the contamination back. I wash spatulas and forks that handle unsafe stuff like meat and eggs while they're cooking to help contain that danger.

https://www.foodsafety.gov

As far as hand washing goes. Wash your hands at the start. Avoid cross contamination by washing your hands immediately after handling raw meat. You can wipe your hands on a (clean) apron or towel if you want to go from chopping veggies to handling raw chicken but not the other way around.

Always wash all fresh fruits and vegetables even ones you don't eat the outside of (oranges, grapefruits)

When I handle raw meat I always wear gloves and wash my hands after j take the gloves off. The gloves remind me that I'm "unsafe" when I am wearing them.

The health department required us to have separate cutting boards for meat and veggies when I worked in a kitchen. I think that's a good idea for home as well.

> improperly cooked beans

Can you expand on this one? A quick google search and I'm not finding anything. Do you mean bean sprouts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_bean#Toxicity

So dont use the fancy decanters you find at Goodwill.

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