Comments on: “How Not to Kill People”

By: Lawrence

Lawrence — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 04:01:20 +0000

Oh, and a nice little food safety trick: After the end of a dish washing session, soak your sponge and then microwave it at high power until too hot to touch comfortably. This should sterilize the sponge, so that you don’t have to deal with any enlightened bacterial civilizations the following morning.

By: Lawrence

Lawrence — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 03:57:58 +0000

J. Steingarten describes cooking a turducken at a ridiculously-hard-to-maintain 195 F.I’d agree with Elf that, for most cooking techniques, such low temperatures are inadvisable. Still, one has to imagine that everything in the oven has reached equilibrium after 18 hours or so. (We use an oven thermometer, since the oven’s thermostat is off by about 50 degrees. The "warm" setting keeps it a hair below 200 F.)

By: slutzman

slutzman — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 10:25:14 +0000

To interject some nerdy engineering in here, I’ll say that the surrounding temperature (be it the oven or other cooking device) only needs to be higher than the desired temperature of the food in order for it to cook. However, if it takes too long, you could be setting yourself up for failure. So, since the desired temperature of poultry is ~180 F (not necessarily the stuffing temp), the oven only needs to be higher than that. It is possible to cook things at 200 F, just not so well advised. For example, the turducken was cooked at around 250 F, but for about 10 hours.

By: elf

elf — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 23:54:20 +0000

212 degrees is boiling, so if your 200 is really 212 (ovens aren’t very precise), you’re fine. DH says that most harmful bacteria "don’t do that well at high temperatures, anyway." But I don’t see any reason to risk it.We have encountered underdone cholent a number of times, but it was probably cooked at a temperature significantly lower than 200 degrees.

By: Lawrence

Lawrence — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 15:07:43 +0000

Really? We’ve been cooking ours in a "warm" oven (about 200 degrees) and have never had a problem with undercooking. Doesn’t most meat register as "well done" by 160?

By: elf

elf — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 22:16:37 +0000

Thank you for this vital post. DH and I frequently discuss the importance of not killing our dinner guests. Undercooked cholent seems to be a common problem in Jewish households. Whether a crockpot or conventional oven is used, cholent should be brought to a boil so that the meat cooks through before the temperature is reduced.