73
votes
Accepted
Is my microwave damaged if I can smell the food inside it?
Microwave doors don't have an airtight seal; the window between the electronics and the cooking compartment is also not airtight, and the electronics are cooled by a fan. It would be surprising if ...
- 43.8k
45
votes
Accepted
Why do we need to reheat food?
The primary reason for reheating is just that warm food is more pleasant to eat. How warm, that is a personal preference - and stirring or heating longer can ensure more throughout heating.
Reheating ...
- 566
28
votes
Accepted
A cheap piece of equipment/appliance that can help with reducing stock in a room that is not suited for cooking
Well, what you’re looking for is called a “still”. It boils liquid and condenses and recovers the vapor. Most commonly (in cooking) a still is used to boil off and collect pure alcohol, but stills I’...
- 27k
27
votes
Accepted
What are the safety and warranty implications of steaming bread in a domestic oven?
I think you are being too conservative. The oven door and glass in there is built to handle some temperature differences. When someone opens an oven door and sets a room temperature pan or cooking ...
- 3,634
23
votes
Accepted
Melted plastic wrap in oven at high temp
It's doubtful the plastic vaporized. It probably just made a hole because it melted and stretched. I'm sure your oven is safe. Any tiny amount of plastic that might have melted and landed on a surface ...
- 458
18
votes
Accepted
How long can a virus (e.g. SARS-COV2) survive in food?
Kenji Lopez-Alt did a very in-depth article for Serious Eats about the coronavirus and food that is worth reading. There is no evidence of the coronavirus (or covid) being passed through food, because ...
- 5,972
18
votes
Why do we need to reheat food?
You don't. Reheating food does not improve food safety, it is purely a matter of taste. Even "piping hot" is not hot enough to kill off any pathogens. If it's safe to eat warm, it's safe to ...
- 10.6k
17
votes
Soujouk from hamburger
Without claiming to dive too deeply into food safety education, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use pre-ground store-bought hamburger for the following reasons:
A significant source of risk with ...
- 58.7k
15
votes
Accepted
safety of using chamotte stone from hardware supplies store for baking
General consensus is that you should not use something that is not food safe for cooking.
And in particular something made for construction/building, it probably contains lot of non-food safe ...
- 20.5k
15
votes
Should I refrigerate or freeze unopened canned food items?
If you can keep the temp below 85 °F (30 °C) you should be fine. There is no harm in placing your cans in the refrigerator, and I think this would be your best bet if you have the space. I would not ...
- 73.8k
14
votes
Accepted
Cracked egg leaves egg white residue. Should I worry about the other eggs?
If the egg actually exploded as in the title, then no, that egg is probably highly contaminated. Not only is it bad, but nothing its contents have touched can be considered safe to use and should be ...
- 8,673
12
votes
Is my microwave damaged if I can smell the food inside it?
It's totally normal to smell the food in a microwave as they aren't meant to be sealed. Microwaves have fans to circulate the air and keep the electronics cool, so they will circulate aromas.
- 75.4k
11
votes
A cheap piece of equipment/appliance that can help with reducing stock in a room that is not suited for cooking
It's probably a little more than your budget, but I run a dehumidifier in my kitchen in the winter. The utility room is adjacent and that's where I hang my washing up to dry so even without long ...
- 43.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Lysol on microwave, how to clean off?
To further @Tetsujin's answer.
The Lysol product you have specified as Lysol Clean & Fresh Multi-Surface Cleaner is made of a number of active ingredients. The primary decontaminating component ...
- 14k
9
votes
Is my microwave damaged if I can smell the food inside it?
One element missing from other answers is how microwave ovens keep the waves inside. They use a Faraday cage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage . The size of the holes you can have in those ...
- 450
9
votes
Accepted
What is a safe amount of juniper?
All juniper berries contain thujone, which is the primary source of toxicity concern. Thujone is psycoactive in minute quantities, but in larger ones is a convulsant and disruptor of the digestive ...
- 61.4k
8
votes
Cracked egg leaves egg white residue. Should I worry about the other eggs?
Edit after the question was substantially changed. This answer wasn't initially concerned with the fate of the broken egg itself, but the others around it.
If the white 'exploded' bin it. If it '...
- 29.9k
8
votes
Would some dry herbs sprinkled on the surface prevent water from superheating in the microwave?
The problem with sprinking herbs on the top, would be that the container of water can be superheated at the bottom and not superheated at the top. (In fact, the top tends to be much cooler than the ...
- 27k
7
votes
Accepted
How does one know if one can eat raw saltwater fish?
Because you know you have previously frozen the fish.
A lot of shop bought "fresh" fish is likely to have been frozen and defrosted, before sale. Often there is legislation about freezing ...
- 331
7
votes
What is the brown wormlike stuff on the outer edges inside my boiled egg?
These are a normal part of eggs, albeit an unusually large one. If you have ever broken open an egg and noticed reddish flecks in the albumen or around the yolk, then you have seen smaller versions of ...
- 14k
7
votes
Should I refrigerate or freeze unopened canned food items?
Harold McGee actually had an article on canned goods in the now defunct magazine Lucky Peach. Luckily, it’s also been posted to medium: On Cans
The relevant part is:
The trouble with aging canned ...
- 80.1k
7
votes
Should I refrigerate or freeze unopened canned food items?
The relationship (reactions doubling for every 10°C = 18°F ~=20°F) is pretty universal. For this reason I keep certain chemical items in a fridge. That means that lifetime is halved for every 10°C ...
- 243
7
votes
Using Pizza Stone as makeshift french top on electric coil range?
I see a few issues with your concept.
First, a pizza stone is not intended for uneven heat distribution and fast heating - used in an oven or barbecue, it needs time to heat and this ideally happens ...
- 58.7k
6
votes
Accepted
How does this kebab products ensure fat stays inside meat while maintaining a safe temp?
Fat doesn't just leave meat when it's cooked; plenty of it stays in the meat. Sure, some amount of water and fat comes out of meat during cooking. But it's by no means all, or even most of it! So ...
- 58.2k
6
votes
What are the safety and warranty implications of steaming bread in a domestic oven?
Turns out my self-cleaning gas oven is designed to have water in the bottom so as to use the steam generated to clean the oven. I cannot think of why this would cause a problem in your oven. The ...
- 69
6
votes
Accepted
Can I eat shrimp veins in sushi?
Shrimp "veins" are actually the shrimp intestines. They are unattractive and sometimes taste bad, but they are harmless to eat.
However, if I was eating in a sushi restaurant that failed to ...
- 61.4k
5
votes
Worried about raw eggs, Salmonella, and pasta maker.
You are worrying too much. Pasta has been made with egg for hundreds of years. While the tools may have changed a bit, the process remains the same. There has been some actual scientific research ...
- 73.8k
5
votes
Cracked egg leaves egg white residue. Should I worry about the other eggs?
Sure. Wash them off with a little cold water, rub them dry carefully with some paper towels in case you want to keep them for longer and not have sticky old egg whites on the outside.
- 3,518
5
votes
Home canning coffee?
For safe home canning in a water bath, you need the contents to have a pH below 4.6. Coffee typically has a pH of at least 4.8, so you need to either add an acid to bring the pH down or use a pressure ...
- 10.6k
5
votes
Is it safe if I use house hold scissors instead of special kitchen scissors?
The problem is that we don’t know what you did with the scissors, how well you cleaned them before and the straw after cutting.
If you used reasonably clean utensils (using the standard you would ...
- 58.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible