14 ms·

I always felt like she downplayed her WW2 service, which is fine. The article does the same. My Life in France was a fascinating book. At one point she descr

by pbj1968 3y ago

I always felt like she downplayed her WW2 service, which is fine. The article does the same. My Life in France was a fascinating book. At one point she describes dangling raw chickens out of her apartment window for three days before roasting. I guess we’d call that “dry aging” now but it repulses every fiber of my food safety being. However, it did not stunt her growth or shorten her lifespan.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> it repulses every fiber of my food safety being A lot of American food-safety guidance is needed because we sterilized away the food's natural defenses. Go to most parts of the world and you'll find meat and eggs left safely on the counter for hours, or even consumed raw. We can't do that in America, because we've bleached and washed the good stuff away.
- 3asdf123 3y ago
  Global South here, is this a new conspiracy? Food poisoning is very common, you should be thankful of your safety standard.
  - wfleming 3y ago
    Like a lot of stuff like this, it’s not that simple one way or the other. Eggs are the usual example. US regulations require eggs to washed, removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs. Many other developed nations forbid washing eggs with solutions that would remove the same protective coating, so eggs are frequently not refrigerated there because they don’t really need to be. The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs. Kind of different, but recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free. It’s not removing some natural defense from a food, but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options (and maybe made it more likely they’d buy something containing sesame by mistake if it was a product they’d been safe with before but had recently added sesame). So I very much agree with you that the food regulations of the FDA and similar institutions in other countries are largely a blessing and huge boon to human welfare. It’s great to be confident my bread isn’t 50% sawdust and there probably isn’t melamine in my milk and stuff. But like any big regulatory environment mistakes have been made, and also sometimes regulations that made sense at one time outlive their usefulness.
    - JCharante 3y ago
      > but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options Having eating restrictions / allergies, or even being handicapped, is a nightmare in the global south. I don't think it's a problem to restrict options out of an abundance of caution.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        It wasn't an abundance of caution, it was things (that you might previously have eaten and enjoyed as a sesame allergee) newly having non-trace amounts of sesame added deliberately, to save having to qualify the previous possible trace amount as low enough once it was recategorised. Well-intentioned change, unintentional bad outcome for those affected.
        ethanbond 3y ago
        Because they couldn’t prove safety… I.e. out of an abundance of caution.
        OJFord 3y ago
        ..I suppose you can read it that way if you want, but the result of something going from 'may contain trace amounts of sesame seeds' to 'definitely contains non-trivial amounts of sesame seed' is hardly a win if you're allergic to them. You at least had a choice to risk it before, or might have known it wasn't a risk because your allergy would only be triggered on a larger amount even if some did make its way in. (And the regulators/legislators intention had been to benefit those allergic, so it's not just an unfortunate side-effect, it totally backfired.)
        ethanbond 3y ago
        I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this rule change happened because people were getting hurt from sesame in unlabeled foods. So yeah, it is a bad side-effect, but it probably actually does solve the problem it was intended to: to prevent harm, not to expand food choices or even to hold the number of food options steady. It was obviously going to reduce options, it just did so much more than expected and in an unexpected manner.
- Exoristos 3y ago
  Also because our factory farms produce disease-ridden animals, our urban environments are polluted, etc. etc.
- ars 3y ago
  Yes you can. I haven't refrigerated eggs, in America, in decades. There's no problem at all. You can leave them out for at least 3 months, if not longer.
downut 3y ago
Hanging birds is a very old practice. Wait till you learn how long people hang pheasants. Brillat-Savarin: “the peak is reached when the pheasant begins to decompose; its aroma develops, and mixes with an oil which in order to form must undergo a certain amount of fermentation, just as the oil in coffee can only be drawn out by roasting it.”
- pea 3y ago
  Was always told it was ready when you could pull it's flesh off with two sticks. Then to be eaten bloody rare. It's delicious in that style but you don't see high pheasant served much anymore unfortunately. That said, you hang pheasants prior to plucking and gutting, so they are still sealed; feels odder hanging a plucked bird like a chicken. I'm not sure if the former is in fact safer?
  - kelipso 3y ago
    Hanging it prior to gutting sounds gross...organs go bad much quicker I would think.
    - hiatus 3y ago
      I think it is a different story because of the size of the animal. They do not retain as much heat as a larger animal like a goose or turkey.
- fransje26 3y ago
  In french they even have a verb derived from this process of hanging a pheasant to develop its aroma: "faisander", which comes from "faisan", the french word for pheasant.
  - downut 3y ago
    That's... so French. Thanks for adding this bit. I'm always in need of culinary history ammo when I am confronted with having to feed people who only trust industrially processed food. Such as many of my relatives.
bmelton 3y ago
Not that anyone in here is likely to be looking for cooking tips, but it is a fairly common practice to air-dry the skin of chicken meat to get it substantially crispier. My wife is more like you in the respect that she will not let me air dry chicken in our house. Even though she knows it is delicious, and even if I just keep (e.g.) chicken thighs uncovered in a refrigerator in accordance with a recipe, she won't eat the finished product because of that visceral response. I can sometimes exploit when she is away for work to air dry my chicken, then cook them before she can see that they've been air dried. She loves it so long as she does not know how it was prepared, and still loves it after she is told, but weirdly (to me, anyway) will not eat it if she knows it was air dried.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  I can understand not air-drying outside the fridge but why is she fearful of chicken air-dried in the fridge? I always, if time allows, salt and air-dry in the fridge my chickens for at least a day.
  - bmelton 3y ago
    Despite how much they tend to shape our patterns of thinking, I don't know if there's ever a good explanation for a visceral response.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  It’s standard practice to air dry most wild game. I have a deer hanging right now.
  - droopyEyelids 3y ago
    And it should be standard practice to air dry any sort of steak before grilling it. We season the steaks, and put a desk fan on them till the skin is dry before grilling. Patting them dry with a paper towel doesn't cut it.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> it repulses every fiber of my food safety being A lot of American food-safety guidance is needed because we sterilized away the food's natural defenses. Go to most parts of the world and you'll find meat and eggs left safely on the counter for hours, or even consumed raw. We can't do that in America, because we've bleached and washed the good stuff away.

3asdf123 3y ago
Global South here, is this a new conspiracy? Food poisoning is very common, you should be thankful of your safety standard.
- wfleming 3y ago
  Like a lot of stuff like this, it’s not that simple one way or the other. Eggs are the usual example. US regulations require eggs to washed, removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs. Many other developed nations forbid washing eggs with solutions that would remove the same protective coating, so eggs are frequently not refrigerated there because they don’t really need to be. The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs. Kind of different, but recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free. It’s not removing some natural defense from a food, but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options (and maybe made it more likely they’d buy something containing sesame by mistake if it was a product they’d been safe with before but had recently added sesame). So I very much agree with you that the food regulations of the FDA and similar institutions in other countries are largely a blessing and huge boon to human welfare. It’s great to be confident my bread isn’t 50% sawdust and there probably isn’t melamine in my milk and stuff. But like any big regulatory environment mistakes have been made, and also sometimes regulations that made sense at one time outlive their usefulness.
  - JCharante 3y ago
    > but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options Having eating restrictions / allergies, or even being handicapped, is a nightmare in the global south. I don't think it's a problem to restrict options out of an abundance of caution.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      It wasn't an abundance of caution, it was things (that you might previously have eaten and enjoyed as a sesame allergee) newly having non-trace amounts of sesame added deliberately, to save having to qualify the previous possible trace amount as low enough once it was recategorised. Well-intentioned change, unintentional bad outcome for those affected.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        Because they couldn’t prove safety… I.e. out of an abundance of caution.
        OJFord 3y ago
        ..I suppose you can read it that way if you want, but the result of something going from 'may contain trace amounts of sesame seeds' to 'definitely contains non-trivial amounts of sesame seed' is hardly a win if you're allergic to them. You at least had a choice to risk it before, or might have known it wasn't a risk because your allergy would only be triggered on a larger amount even if some did make its way in. (And the regulators/legislators intention had been to benefit those allergic, so it's not just an unfortunate side-effect, it totally backfired.)
        ethanbond 3y ago
        I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this rule change happened because people were getting hurt from sesame in unlabeled foods. So yeah, it is a bad side-effect, but it probably actually does solve the problem it was intended to: to prevent harm, not to expand food choices or even to hold the number of food options steady. It was obviously going to reduce options, it just did so much more than expected and in an unexpected manner.
Exoristos 3y ago
Also because our factory farms produce disease-ridden animals, our urban environments are polluted, etc. etc.
ars 3y ago
Yes you can. I haven't refrigerated eggs, in America, in decades. There's no problem at all. You can leave them out for at least 3 months, if not longer.

downut 3y ago

Hanging birds is a very old practice. Wait till you learn how long people hang pheasants. Brillat-Savarin: “the peak is reached when the pheasant begins to decompose; its aroma develops, and mixes with an oil which in order to form must undergo a certain amount of fermentation, just as the oil in coffee can only be drawn out by roasting it.”

pea 3y ago
Was always told it was ready when you could pull it's flesh off with two sticks. Then to be eaten bloody rare. It's delicious in that style but you don't see high pheasant served much anymore unfortunately. That said, you hang pheasants prior to plucking and gutting, so they are still sealed; feels odder hanging a plucked bird like a chicken. I'm not sure if the former is in fact safer?
- kelipso 3y ago
  Hanging it prior to gutting sounds gross...organs go bad much quicker I would think.
  - hiatus 3y ago
    I think it is a different story because of the size of the animal. They do not retain as much heat as a larger animal like a goose or turkey.
fransje26 3y ago
In french they even have a verb derived from this process of hanging a pheasant to develop its aroma: "faisander", which comes from "faisan", the french word for pheasant.
- downut 3y ago
  That's... so French. Thanks for adding this bit. I'm always in need of culinary history ammo when I am confronted with having to feed people who only trust industrially processed food. Such as many of my relatives.

bmelton 3y ago

Not that anyone in here is likely to be looking for cooking tips, but it is a fairly common practice to air-dry the skin of chicken meat to get it substantially crispier. My wife is more like you in the respect that she will not let me air dry chicken in our house. Even though she knows it is delicious, and even if I just keep (e.g.) chicken thighs uncovered in a refrigerator in accordance with a recipe, she won't eat the finished product because of that visceral response. I can sometimes exploit when she is away for work to air dry my chicken, then cook them before she can see that they've been air dried. She loves it so long as she does not know how it was prepared, and still loves it after she is told, but weirdly (to me, anyway) will not eat it if she knows it was air dried.

nemo44x 3y ago
I can understand not air-drying outside the fridge but why is she fearful of chicken air-dried in the fridge? I always, if time allows, salt and air-dry in the fridge my chickens for at least a day.
- bmelton 3y ago
  Despite how much they tend to shape our patterns of thinking, I don't know if there's ever a good explanation for a visceral response.
stcroixx 3y ago
It’s standard practice to air dry most wild game. I have a deer hanging right now.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  And it should be standard practice to air dry any sort of steak before grilling it. We season the steaks, and put a desk fan on them till the skin is dry before grilling. Patting them dry with a paper towel doesn't cut it.