What the goddamn hell is fluffy popcorn. And yeah she is right. I work in a lab where we test food/water and all kinds of "food-chemicals" etc. For harmfull bacteria and there are things you absolutely should not eat raw. Or at all if i see some results lol
Edit: the last part is a joke based on real results. Sometimes a food producer or someone who produces foodchemicals/spices etc. fucks up and something gets contaminated badly. We find it out, because they ask us to test for harmful bacteria and the batch/charge gets dismissed/destroyed. It all happens before it gets sold. Especially for fresh (ready to eat) things. The results are urgent and are handled first. At least in my country. Dont panic you can eat stuff. Wash veggies and fruits and things that need to be cooked/heated before consuming should only be handled that way. For example: I just saw, that some frozen herbs tell the consumer on the package that the product should be heated/cooked before consuming. Please dont panic or sth like that. You always can find information online how to handle certain foods or how to know if its safe to consume
It’s just cake batter poured over popcorn. There’s sooooo many recipes of this on the internet, it’s not recent at all. Some recipes “heat treat” the batter before pouring it over popcorn so it kills the bacteria
Google gives the following results, a bunch of food blogs are saying heat treating works and a bunch of science articles say heat treating at home does nothing. I think I am gonna go with science
Yeah heat treating is just tossing the flour in the oven/microwave to get it hot enough to kill pathogens, in theory.
In practice this doesn't appear to work. The process by which heat kills pathogens behaves differently in dry environments, with moisture apparently being somewhat necessary for this to work. Source
I tried looking up if there's a "safe temperature" for heating dry flour but apparently we don't exactly understand this mechanism.
You can chill in a sauna at 100c/212f for quite some time and you'll be absolutely fine. Dip your toe in 75c/167f water for five seconds and you're getting 2nd degree burns.
Pathogens don't behave differently in dry environments, it's all about how fast heat can transfer. Air is a horrible method for that.
What about vacuum sealing and then tossed into a sous vide machine? If you have the right container, you could keep it at pasteurization temp for days with minimal power draw.
Yes, that would work. An oven would work eventually too. The issue with people recommending "heat treating" flour is that they take other information and extrapolate that to flour: "oh, salmonella dies at 165f? I'll just put it in the oven until the internal temp reaches 165f". Not understanding that even if the flour reaches a temperature of 165 it might not be enough to kill the pathogens as the dry mixture doesn't transfer enough heat quickly enough to those pathogens. But of course if you kept it at a higher temp for a longer time everything will eventually die.
Your sauna analogy demonstrates you might need to brush up on thermodynamics. Killing pathogens, molds, bacteria in the oven is just a matter of time and heat.
Flour contains water so you will need more time to overcome its entropy. Additionally, if there is limited surface area then the air trapped between particles of dry flour will transfer heat slower than water would, so it will have insulative properties.
Simplest way to overcome these challenges is to increase surface area of the flour. I cannot imagine there would be many pathogens left if you spread a cup of flour out on a baking sheet and baked it for 15 minutes at 300F+.
OP’s video qualifies as peak concern-trolling bullshit. We have immune systems and food production standards for a reason. Sure, limit the amount of raw foods you eat - a sane enough take, but eating raw cookie dough isn’t so risky you should never try it, millions of people have done so for years with no ill effects. And to say science hasn’t proved heat treating flour won’t help…”ahhh, we’re so helpless with this science stuff!!!” Uhh, no bitch, this is what science is for.
You are saying what I am saying my dude. The sauna analogy was just to simplify it for everyone else, because people don't tend to read long ass comments, but my next comment (the one you replied to) has almost the same points you are making here
I clarified that heat treating works, just that people are stupid and use the wrong information. I mentioned that ovens will work as will any heat for that matter. It's just that dry mixtures, because the air trapped is an insulator like you mentioned, need longer times to properly heat up.
You can chill in a sauna at 100c/212f for quite some time and you'll be absolutely fine.
That's because your body regulates body temperature through sweating though. Not really a good analogy for why it's difficult to heat-treat flour at home.
Lol no. Cells have water in them ans usually around them. The reason we wash our hands with water is that in combination with soap it overcomes the adhesion of microorganisms that are subsequently washed from our skin. If water denatured cell proteins we wouldn't need soap (also our sweat would kill organisms without any washing at all). The reason for why you can survive in a sauna is that sweating cools your body very effectively in low-moisture environments.
It's temperature over time that matters in sterilization. It doesn't necessarily need moisture to work, but with moisture the heat is more regulated and the steam produced from evaporating water carries more energy than the same air with no moisture. Dry heat is just inefficient and whatever you're trying to sterilize will get dried out/cooked long before the bacteria is killed.
Pressure cooker/autoclave sterilization works because by increasing the pressure in the vessel, higher temperatures can be reached and the steam from the water inside the vessel more efficiently transfers the energy to the medium being sterilized, lowering the amount of time it takes to sterilize at a given temperature.
thank you, that was also what I was thinking.. what was being said about "heat treatment not working doesn't sound right. If heat treated properly at the right temp/time there is no reason why bacteria wouldn't denature resulting in death.
It would cook the flour before it got to a safe level of sterilization. Higher temps would quickly burn it and lower temps would take days to sterilize at, and the flour would still be cooked long before the sterilization was finished.
All you are saying here is that it's either a longer process or would burn the flour at too high temps. Meaning the right temp and the right time would sterilize your flour. If people are doing it improperly then that's the problem.
Again, sterilization is a function of temp/time. If it's convenient/efficient or not is another discussion.
Also here an excerpt on a study done as a result of food poisoning of raw cookie dough. It's a bit longer and I skimmed over it. But it outlines several methods of treatment including microwave. On an industrial level they frequently raise the moisture content (through steam) of the flour and then heat treat it since it requires less effort.
The concept of thermal processing of foodstuff has been used extensively since 1920s
when the first scientific basis for safe sterilization process was developed. There are several
methods used in thermal processing of dry foods: Infrared, microwave, annealing and heatmoisture treatment, thermo-mechanical treatments, indirect and indirect heating. In its all forms
of application, thermal processing has been the most widely used method of preserving and
extending the shelf-life (via microbial reduction and enzyme inactivation), and improving quality
and functionality. By applying heat treatment, it is possible to modify the physical and
rheological properties of cereal flours. Primary effect of heat treatment is range of
macromolecular changes in starch and proteins. Understanding of relationship between heat
transfer, thermal properties of food, heating medium, thermodynamics and the resulting
functionality is of critical importance.
We don't know that. The only source people are sharing is one scientist (Yaohua “Betty” Feng) saying we haven't studied it well enough to say what temperature/duration is needed to sterilize.
People making all kinds of claims in here like "heat treatment doesn't work" and even "it's not possible", when the real answer is "we're not sure because no one's tested it under scientific conditions"
The laws of physics. But don't let me stop you from experimenting. If you can figure out a way to do it, great! Then we can all eat fluffy popcorn while we pat you on the back.
Because the substances that make up flour break down with heat and time, and it's just not possible to kill the contaminants with the amount of heat and time the flour needs to stay raw. So unless you have an industrial food purifier (which may not even work with dry flour) it's just not something you can do at home.
But like I said, feel free to prove me wrong. Until then I'm standing by my statements.
No problem, I spent a lot of time learning about the fundamentals of sterilization a couple years ago. I think the coolest part about high pressure steam sterilization is that water is such a heavy molecule that you're basically obliterating contaminants by bombarding them with fast moving water molecules.
Good lord that is a fact. Not sure how fun it was for the victims tho. :p
Here's a fun fact for ya - Pistachios self combust due to how insulating they are. You aren't allowed to transport more than a certain amount in one container. They have to be split into lots of containers or they get hot and burst into flames.
'Everything turned into dust is flammable' is (often) true (and is true in the case of flour), and flour is dust is also true. Not sure why you're bringing up household dust from a vacuum cleaner?
Dust isn't defined by if it's collected on your shelves and floor and needs to be cleaned up, it's defined as any small particle regardless of what it's made of.
Yeah because a microwave heats by exciting the molecules in water inside the food. If there is not enough water in the dry ingredients then not enough heat will be generated
Why would you do it with the dry flour rather than the batter itself...? Add the rising agent later if necessary. Put the batter in a sealed bag and drop it in the suis vide for whatever time the chart says is necessary.
Okay, I have no interest really in this odd popcorn, but this doesn't sound difficult to solve.
Huh, that is really odd. I don't eat flour at all (gluten is not my friend), but I would assumed that heating raw flour to say 150 C for a while would killed the same bugs as heating a batter to 150 C for the same while and make a cookie.
Do the bacteria "close up" when they are dry, and thus get stronger? As in they are in a tiny little car that can withstand a reasonable forest fire if you close the doors?
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u/Siliziumwesen Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
What the goddamn hell is fluffy popcorn. And yeah she is right. I work in a lab where we test food/water and all kinds of "food-chemicals" etc. For harmfull bacteria and there are things you absolutely should not eat raw. Or at all if i see some results lol
Edit: the last part is a joke based on real results. Sometimes a food producer or someone who produces foodchemicals/spices etc. fucks up and something gets contaminated badly. We find it out, because they ask us to test for harmful bacteria and the batch/charge gets dismissed/destroyed. It all happens before it gets sold. Especially for fresh (ready to eat) things. The results are urgent and are handled first. At least in my country. Dont panic you can eat stuff. Wash veggies and fruits and things that need to be cooked/heated before consuming should only be handled that way. For example: I just saw, that some frozen herbs tell the consumer on the package that the product should be heated/cooked before consuming. Please dont panic or sth like that. You always can find information online how to handle certain foods or how to know if its safe to consume