5 ms·
Frying would require some sort of oil or fat and it’s hard to tell but the pan looks clean. Anything with oil will dramatically bump up those numbers. It’s intu
by infecto 1y ago
Frying would require some sort of oil or fat and it’s hard to tell but the pan looks clean. Anything with oil will dramatically bump up those numbers. It’s intuitive just cleaning your kitchen, grease being cooked travels.
My one wish is the west adopted Chinese style kitchens. Even in new condo builds the kitchen will be isolated in a room you can close off, with an exterior wall and powerful exhaust vents. I always found it perplexing how ok folks are with what feels like cooking food in their bedroom.
- namibj 1y agoMy new kitchen will be separated from any other living spaces for exactly that reason; though the exhaust may need juicing.
- infecto 1y agoAfter being in a number of Chinese condo apartments I realize how awesome it was. Most had sliding glass doors so you could open it up if you want but if you were cooking something heavy, you could close the doors or internal windows, open that window or balcony door outside and let the cooking commence.
- dfxm12 1y agowhat feels like cooking food in their bedroom Aside from studio apartments, where space is at a huge premium, I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
- infecto 1y agoHave you been into a western home? The stove may not have a hood, if it does have one it’s usually inadequate. The kitchen will be in an open space so anything you cook travels everywhere. The number of homes without range hoods is wild to me. Hence cooking in your bedroom, you cook and the whole house smells.
- wffurr 1y agoExternally vented hoods are now required in my town in Massachusetts. But I have lived in several places like you describe and it’s sub par.
- dfxm12 1y agoYes, I've been in many Western homes, but never one without a hood over the stove. Perhaps it is a hasty generalization to assume they don't have hoods. Adequacy of the hood seems like it's not going to be usefully quantifiable or provable. I hope your analogy doesn't rely on this measure... I also don't think "you cook and the whole house smells" fits the analogy of "cooking in your bedroom". The key feature of the bedroom is that it's where you sleep, get dressed, etc., not the smell.
- jerf 1y agoI have a hood over my stove. It has a fan to pull smoke and steam up out of the cooking space. It blows the fan output right in my face, rather than outdoors. This does not contribute anything useful to the cooking process. It's fairly common in America. It's so common it appears it doesn't even cross your mind to consider it as something that might be desirable or useful. (For those who say "well fix it then", I've looked, but unfortunately if you just put a hole in the wall behind the fan you end up in another exterior wall that meets up with the house there. It's not an easy cheap fix.)
- buran77 1y agoHoods are a great addition but a closed kitchen is the real deal if you want to keep smells out of the house. Even the best hoods can't keep up with cooking anything remotely smelly. And in many places the hood doesn't extract outside but just filters and blows back in the kitchen. Even less efficient. In modern buildings you get these together: an open kitchen meant to make the living room look more spacious and a hood that and just spins the air around a bit because it can't blow it outside (it's nowhere near an outside wall, or you can't just drill a big vent, or mess with the air circulation). The smell will go to every place that didn't have the door closed. Don't get me wrong, the smell of good food is great, but not when it gets in your dresser full of clothes or when the house gets saturated with a cacophony of smells very difficult to remove.
- moduspol 1y agoEven in nicer houses in the US, they’ll have a range hood but no intake air! And then I’ll hear neighbors complaining about it not working well because nobody tells you that if you don’t have make-up air, you also need to open a window for it to work well.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoI have plenty of million dollar plus houses around me selling without any exhaust at all, just a cooktop on an island in the middle of the kitchen, and most of the times it is a gas cooktop! And in 80% of the houses, it's just a shitty microwave exhaust above the range. So right off the bat, you're down $20k at least to remodel the kitchen so it has proper ventilation, assuming you cook. Forget the health effects and whatnot, but are people not bothered by cooking smells pervading the house?
- unbalancedevh 1y agoGood cooking smells delicious. Let it permeate!
- trallnag 1y agoHave you ever smelled a room permeated by Indian food?
- bigstrat2003 1y agoYes, it smells amazing. One of the best things about Indian food tbh.
- whatevertrevor 1y agoMaybe you're making really mild "Indian" food haha. I'm Indian and if we're making anything remotely spicy, we're dumping lots of hot stuff in a tadka or pan frying it, which is not only unpleasant elsewhere (read: eye watering and cough inducing), but sometimes prohibitively much for the person doing the cooking, if the ventilation is inadequate.
- graeme 1y agoI've tested with oil. You don't see a large spike unless something is blackened or the oil smokes Biggest generator of pwm during cooking is when things actually burn. Which can be just a very tiny portion of the food, like one black speck that came off and heated extra. This produces more pwm than the mass of oil and food.
- infecto 1y agoYou’re right but I also think as you hint, that it’s very hard to cook without causing this to happen. I would add that when frying, even if you are below smoke point, just the act of cooking food in that oil atomizes the oil enough that it lowers air quality.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- asdff 1y agoHave you ever wiped the top of the cabinets in your kitchen? Mine always get coated in grease. It is almost like the oil is being atomized like perfume. Hood works great with smoke testing but this still happens. Inside of the hood is also extremely gross to the point where the oil condenses and drips if I forget to clean it for a while.
- mushroomba 1y agoI personally take special care to never vaporize fat. It can be done but you have to change your cooking style and only cook with certain styles outside.
- asdff 1y agoHow do you prevent this? I keep temperature below smoke point already but also it has to be high enough so things actually cook upon the oil vs being saturated with oil.
- PeterStuer 1y ago
- MostlyStable 1y agoMy current kitchen has a quite good vent that exhausts outside. Several years ago when I was testing a weather station with a particulate sensor before deploying it, it would pick up large spikes when I cooked, even though it was across the house and behind several doors. For air quality specifically, I very much doubt that realistic levels of separation between the kitchen and the rest of the house make much difference.
- infecto 1y agoYou can doubt it but it’s a fairly simple idea. Most homes don’t have makeup air systems. You have adequate ventilation you need makeup air. A good compromise is having an area that does not allow odors and smoke to move around easily. Hence separation. Now of course an adequate hood is the best but only the 1% of homes have that.
- amluto 1y agoIf you had all the windows closed and you don’t have makeup air, then running the exhaust will suck air in through any available gaps, which can potentially worsen air quality. Try measuring PM2.5 in that room and log it as you turn on the fan for a while without cooking anything.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoBecause I want to feel connected with my family or my guests while I'm cooking. I spend a lot of the day in the kitchen preparing multiple meals for a family, I don't want to be closed off.
- kccqzy 1y agoA concept of a door is such that if you want to be closed off you can be and if you don't want to be you also have that choice. Having a door to the kitchen is strictly better than having no door. Personally I'd pick a glass sliding door too. The air quality depends on exactly what you are cooking. Close the door if your cooking involves high heat, open it otherwise. And incidentally I don't understand why the author would do testing while frying an egg. Frying an egg does not involve high heat. High heat means getting close to or past the smoke point of your oil. I would not close the door when frying an egg.
- groggler 1y agoDon't cook with high heat but do cook with high smoke point oil seems like a better solution. A lot of people seem to like to knock a lot of holes in their kitchen walls making doors and shutters complicated and rarely used. The chef breathes in the kitchen. Food cooked in high heat often has additional related risks.
- xkcd-sucks 1y agoSometimes you have to make the Pan hot enough so all the food goes "Tssss!" immediately and loudly when it goes in, and doesn't boil in its own moisture. Doing this appropriately is one thing that separates okay cooks from terrible cooks
- AlecSchueler 1y ago> A concept of a door is such that.... If you feel the need to condescend to the point that you're explaining what a door is please ask yourself if you're underestimating the intelligence of the person you're speaking to.
- anikom15 1y agoAt least in America, most places will have big enough kitchens that can isolate grease to the area around the stove. Good design will put the stove far enough from living and dining areas.
- infecto 1y agoGood design probably exists in the minority then? I live in America and venting requirements are terrible and open concepts lend to lots of smells across a house with central air.
- yoshuaw 1y agoSome anecdata from my kitchen, which has an air quality monitor positioned approx. 4 meters away from the stove: - Most days when cooking PM2.5 doesn't exceed 5ppm. - I accidentally burned some vegetable oil this week, and PM2.5 shot up to around 70ppm. - I fried up pancetta a little too hot a few months ago, rendering the fat entirely, and both PM2.5 and PM10 went up to >999ppm.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tomxor 1y agoI wonder what the difference between PM2.5 from cooking oil or fat vs PM2.5 from combustion engines is on the lungs. My instinct is that it should be less toxic from vegetable oil, if it's just vaporised... past the smoke point maybe the chemistry changes enough to make it more toxic. The body has mechanisms to remove foreign matter from the lungs, but how easily and how much it clogs up your lymph nodes seems to depend on what it's made of.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> one wish is the west adopted Chinese style kitchens This works if there is a designated member of the household (whether family or employee) who prepares food away from everyone else. It doesn't for a social setting. Fortunately, the only thing you need to reach the health benefits of the former in an open kitchen is a good vent. If you have a multi-story home, the motor doesn't even have to be in the kitchen, allowing for quiet designs.
- infecto 1y agoSure but most homes in America don’t have a good vent and often with new builds, to have a good vent you need makeup air and you then introduce a lot of annoying issues. The socializing part feels like an edge case but I guess it depends if you are cooking to entertain or cooking for your daily food. The daily food only a small portion of the cooking requires closing up the kitchen.
- casualphysics 1y agoHey, the author here! Thanks for your suggestion. I did use oil here, but not alot. I should measure it next time. I'm trying to figure out how to synthetically generate uniform particles for testing some DIY filters I'm making, and just frying stuff in more and more oil seems like a good bet.