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Chef Grills Steak, Volcano-Style, with Molten Lava
- spikels 11y agoCooking with natural lava in Hawaii http://www.dolphinbayhilo.com/cook.html http://www.dolphinbayhilo.com/cook.html
- yellowapple 11y agoThat's what I was hoping the video would show.
- Natsu 11y agoAm I crazy for wondering if the SO2 in the lava would make that unhealthy?
- derefr 11y agoI'd guess it's not as bad as wood-smoked meat.
- gambiter 11y agoSulphur Dioxide is better for you than Carbon?
- Lost_BiomedE 11y agoIf you wrap it well, no problem.
- batbomb 11y agotandoor ovens, salamanders, and wood fired ovens, while nowhere near 2000, can easily surpass 750 degrees.
- jacquesm 11y agoAnd coal can get you up to roughly 2000 celsius. http://rebuildingcivilization.com/content/how-hot-can-you-get-coal-fired-forge http://rebuildingcivilization.com/content/how-hot-can-you-ge... (apologies for the link source) That doesn't get you such nice videos though, and you won't have to travel to exotic places, and 'molten lava' is so much more sexy than an air boosted forge.
- pan69 11y agoFilmed by someone who's never used a camera before. Zoom out mate.
- xb 11y agoFor those interested in a practical method to cook steak with a perfect char + medium rare inside (no lava required), check out immersion cooking (aka sous vide). You can cook a steak edge to edge to exactly your desired doneness, cool it down, then char the outside with a hot skillet or open flame.
- weeksie 11y agoThis is the only way to cook meat. (Aside from special purpose stuff.) I thought I'd end up using my sous vide maybe once per month and I probably use it three times per week. It's perfect for fish, pork, duck, and of course steak. The best thing is that you can cook chef cuts (like hangar and such) that would otherwise be really tricky to get right. I generally finish in a cast iron skillet, and haven't seen any need to cool the meat off before the transfer. That's usually a good idea if you aren't going to sear right away, as it prevents bacteria growth from going into overdrive, but isn't strictly necessary to cooking if you're doing everything at once. Then again, I'm not an expert. I really want to get a good torch though, since skillets are a lousy way to finish bone-in meat since the meat contracts away from the bone.
- ciclista 11y agoFor an affordable yet great torch, try the Benzomatic TS8000, easily found at Home Depot, etc. for around $40.
- 2bit 11y agoThe Benzomatic takes a long time to develop a good sear. It's fun but not terribly effective in my experience. I should point out that I'm using it with the Searzall.
- dunham 11y agoI'm still using a skillet to finish, and then making a pan sauce. (I did a hanger last night, with a morel mushroom/cream sauce, crazy good.) If you want to do the torch thing, you should look into the "searzall" attachment.
- murbard2 11y agoCould you just throw in some charcoals in the lava to get diamonds and pay for the whole thing?
- deutronium 11y agoI believe making diamonds requires extreme pressure along with heat alas
- murbard2 11y agoOh I thought the pressure came from the contracting lava as it cooled down, but apparently you're right that's not enough.
- kijin 11y agoIsn't "molten lava" redundant? When lava is no longer molten, we just call it "rock". Anyway, I wonder how the flavor changes with the type of rock that is molten. The article mentions 1.1 billion year old basalt. Why that particular type of rock? Did it just happen to be around? Is basalt easier to melt? Is it easier or safer to handle once molten, or easier to clean up afterward? What would happen if you tried to melt a different type of rock such as granite or marble? Would they produce toxic gases?
- derefr 11y agoRe "molten lava": it's an idiom, probably one to do with "lava" being a surprising word to throw at people in a non-geological context, one they'll suffer a cache miss on. Leading up with "molten" primes them so that they can process "lava" in real time; otherwise they might not "hear" you, and will likely ask you to repeat yourself while their neurons finish firing. (See also, the end of http://lesswrong.com/lw/o1/entropy_and_short_codes/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/o1/entropy_and_short_codes/)
- voltagex_ 11y agoI've never thought about "cache miss" and "hit" in a spoken language context - interesting!
- markrages 11y agoThere's a chapter on this in Steven Pinker's English style book. You might enjoy it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons/dp/0670025852 http://www.amazon.com/The-Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons/dp/06...
- kijin 11y agoIsn't "volcano style" enough to prime the cache in this case, though?
- gamache 11y agoThis is the best justification for "assless chaps" I have ever seen. I thank you.
- hurin 11y agoI feel like for efficiency the lava should be recirculated rather than just flowing by to turn rock at the bottom - that's a lot of wasted energy.
- jacquesm 11y agoIt's going to be a major feat of engineering to design a pump for molten lava. That would have been a much bigger technical achievement than roasting a steak with an exotic heat source.
- hurin 11y ago> It's going to be a major feat of engineering to design a pump for molten lava. I thought you could at least have some kind of primitive rotating water-wheel-like mechanism and a circular flow with the pot integrated along the way.
- michaelfeathers 11y agoI really want to know what it would be like to dip the steak in molten lava, let it solidify and then crack to serve. If there's a sweet spot between time to solidify, thickness of steak, and not burned to a gristle all the way through, it would be a great meal.
- nitrogen 11y agoI would be worried about toxic gases released from the rock being absorbed by the meat.
- michaelfeathers 11y agoSurely there's some sort of sous vide thing that could be done.
- jacquesm 11y agoSteam explosion.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoQuestion: how much force would you need to apply to break the surface of lava with a steak? I feel like "dip" is the wrong word.
- michaelfeathers 11y agoI've always wondered about the surface tension and viscosity of lava. Must vary with temperature, I suppose.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoCursory searching shows that the viscosity of lava indeed varies with temperature and chemical composition: http://www.gso.uri.edu/lava/MagmaProperties/properties.html http://www.gso.uri.edu/lava/MagmaProperties/properties.html There's a series of articles in wired discussing basically this question: http://www.wired.com/2011/12/the-right-and-wrong-way-to-die-when-you-fall-into-lava/ http://www.wired.com/2011/12/the-right-and-wrong-way-to-die-... http://www.wired.com/2012/01/can-you-walk-on-lava-falling-into-lava-revisited/ http://www.wired.com/2012/01/can-you-walk-on-lava-falling-in... From the first: > Water has a density of 1000 kg/m3 and a viscosity of 0.00089 Pascal-seconds. > Lava has a density of 3100 kg/m3 and a viscosity of 100-1000 Pascal-seconds. > most of the red-hot lava pictures in movies [are] likely basaltic lava at ~1,100 to 1,200°C (for comparison, your oven on broil is ~275°C) The general lesson here is that meat is much less dense than rock (astounding, I know) and that the more possible it is to penetrate a lava flow, the more likely that lava flow is to incinerate you just for being nearby. A steak that you managed to submerge in lava would most likely go through some combination of burning to a crisp and exploding (as any water within it rapidly vaporized).
- searine 11y agoWho likes heavy metals with their steak?
- guard-of-terra 11y agoI'm actually wondering why don't we make things out of liquid stone (aka lava). Like 3d printing but with stone. I guess the next years will figure this years and we'll go all neoclassical with granite statues, pylons and stuff.
- dsuth 11y agoIf I had to guess - the astronomical energy requirements to heat stone up to 3000 degF.
- DanBC 11y agoCement?
- jacquesm 11y agoMore likely: concrete. And that's exactly what it is: liquid stone that can be poured at room temperature. And if you add some rebar the compound material can have some pretty good tensile properties too.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoConcrete is ugly, rough and it crumbles. Good stone is beautiful and very durable.
- jacquesm 11y agoUgly -> taste, Rough -> you can have concrete with arbitrary levels of polish all the way up to shiny smooth if you finish it right, crumbling is a property common to all crystalline materials including all the stones found in nature, with the exception of some precious stones with incredible hardness. That's why stones tend to be round, erosion gets the better of them over time. Concrete takes a long time to really set (depending on the thickness of the pour: up to centuries!) but can be used relatively quickly after the pouring in a load bearing construction. And even if you don't particularly like the material, in the end it is what you can make out of it that is ugly or beautiful (Compare a bunker with say the CN Tower in Toronto or the Sydney Opera). For the general use case of 'poured stone' concrete does quite well.
- huhtenberg 11y agoNice. Cleanup is a bitch though :)