Hacker News Reader

Comment by fulafel | Hacker News Reader

If only there was something renewable we could make or grow and could make a flame... but even if sucha thing was invented i guess that wouldn't have the centuries old traditional essence of natural gas any more?

View on HN

Traditional Korean bbq is done over hot charcoals without any natural gas. The few kbbq restaurants that have approval in the US to do this continue the tradition and the meat tastes way better without the butane taste the same way a bong rip tastes better when you don’t torch it with a lighter for a minute straight.

Of course, this comes with other issues like the potential liability of a server dropping hot coals on a customer.

Is this a wood joke? I'm not sure you want everyone burning wood.

Just the korean BBQs. Wood, or other biofuel that gets you a flame.

How is that better than natural gas for climate change and air quality?

biofuel is carbon-neutral. it might cause some particulate pollution, but if it's minimal enough for use in a restaurant dining area, then the environmental impact is probably negligible.

The occupational risk seems pretty high. I recall hearing that using a wood stove indoors to prepare 3 meals a day is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. People would be upset if their employer forced them to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. For the customer that's in there for an hour or two, though, not a big deal.

that's true, I didn't think about that. a restaurant probably has better ventilation and better fuel than a crappy household wood stove, but even, say, half a pack per day is a lot.

bamboo grown sustainably and turned to charcoal for use wouldn't be introducing new c02 into the atmosphere. it would be carbon neutral. Its definitely better than natural gas which uses carbon that was sequestered millions of years ago

Even if it wasn't, the benefits of the natural gas ban would be only minimally reduced due to small share of natural gas stove usage being in Korean BBQs.

I was thinking about this. What if you got something like a mini induction melting furnace, and then just had a fan blowing hot air up through a grate that the pan can rest on?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com