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How not to die of botulism: Understand home food preservation and follow the recipe. The rules are simple: 1. C. Botulinin is everywhere. It is in the food you
by dbcurtis 9y ago
How not to die of botulism: Understand home food preservation and follow the recipe.
The rules are simple:
1. C. Botulinin is everywhere. It is in the food you are preserving. Deal with it.
2. Heat kills C. Botulinin. Propper pressure canning times and temperatures of properly diced foods will kill it.
3. Acidity inhibits C. Botulinun metabolism. Boiling water bath canning of high acid foods like dill pickles is sufficient to keep any remaining microbes from producing toxins. (Botulism toxin is a metabolism byproduct. )
4. 10 minutes at boiling temperatures before serving will break down botulism toxin.
5. When in doubt, throw it out.
Was that hard?
The most subtle mistake to make is if the canning recipe says dice into 1/4 inch cubes, don't use a different size. It changes the convection currents in the jar and it may not reach required temperature/times in the core. Also be careful with home made salsa as the acidity can vary wildly depending on numerous factors.
- fencepost 9y agoBased 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.
- pmoriarty 9y agoAnother 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.
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoSee 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.
- tptacek 9y agoYou 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.
- m_mueller 9y agoI 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.
- tptacek 9y agoI 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.
- porlune 9y agoSlightly 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.
- 9y ago
- ngold 9y agoSo dont use the fancy decanters you find at Goodwill.
- batbomb 9y agoHigh Sugar environments too
- tptacek 9y agoYes, it is pretty hard. The article is largely about foods that are not made in boiling water or pressure canners. The Underground Meats HACCP plan is not simply "10 minutes at boiling temperatures".
- mc32 9y agoWhat got me was learning more about dishonest labeling: > "... “Nitrate-free” and “no nitrite added” meats, Hunter adds, are a “huge hoax,” as they are made with celery powder—an alternative source of nitrates, albeit not labeled as such." And not only that but despite claims, nitrates seem to not have negative health effects at the levels used in cured meats.
- hammock 9y agoNitrites
- pacaro 9y agoWhich puts me in mind of the "the sandwich" scene from The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson "If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: "Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guiness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings."
- notadoc 9y ago> The most subtle mistake to make is if the canning recipe says dice into 1/4 inch cubes How do pickles work then? They're never diced.
- magic_beans 9y agoThe salt and acidity kill botulism.