Cooking BS

mete

mete

Joined
Jun 10, 2003
Messages
15,288
So Foxnews had a thing about dangerous things in your kitchen. One items was pots and pans and a maker , Gunter Wilhelm , was mentioned for his "safe " pots. 'They didn't have that nasty and "cheap" nickel in their steel.
The facts are that the outer layer was 430 stainless . Why ? because it's a magnetic stainless and can be used on induction surfaces !! However on the inside is 304 stainless [non-magnetic] containing large amounts of the nasty cheap nickel that can drop into the food !!
One more example of stupid, deceptive internet nonsense. Beware !
 
I attended a chef's cooking class with some friends, and during her knife skills demo said to only use a carbon steel knife because of the nickel in stainless steel. She said it would make food taste funny if you cut it with a stainless blade.
After the demo, I was introduced to her as a local knifemaker. When asked what steel I use, I told her most high end Japanese blades were made in Hitachi Aogomi, Shirogami, or suminagashi; and most others were made in CPM-S35VN stainless steel. She said she didn't know what Hitachi steel was, and re-iterated how the nickel in my stainless knives would ruin the food. I asked what brand knives she used, and she said they were custom made for her in a special culinary steel called L-6. I told her L-6 had 2% nickel, to which she said I was wrong because if there was any nickel she would be able to taste it....... so I politely excused myself and walked away (which took a lot of effort). I also resisted telling her that her stainless steel bowls she used had nickel in them. Uninformed people can be educated, but self deceived idiots are a waste of time.
 
bladsmth said:
I attended a chef's cooking class with some friends, and during her knife skills demo said to only use a carbon steel knife because of the nickel in stainless steel. She said it would make food taste funny if you cut it with a stainless blade.
After the demo, I was introduced to her as a local knifemaker. When asked what steel I use, I told her most high end Japanese blades were made in Hitachi Aogomi, Shirogami, or suminagashi; and most others were made in CPM-S35VN stainless steel. She said she didn't know what Hitachi steel was, and re-iterated how the nickel in my stainless knives would ruin the food. I asked what brand knives she used, and she said they were custom made for her in a special culinary steel called L-6. I told her L-6 had 2% nickel, to which she said I was wrong because if there was any nickel she would be able to taste it....... so I politely excused myself and walked away (which took a lot of effort). I also resisted telling her that her stainless steel bowls she used had nickel in them. Uninformed people can be educated, but self deceived idiots are a waste of time.
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Shit like that makes me lose faith in humanity.
 
Once upon a time at an ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so hoity toity dinner/dancing, charity event I was told by a renowned chef that he could tell if he eating with sterling silver or silver plate dinnerware MERELY by the taste. Being a gambler of sorts I offered a considerable donation if he was willing to PUBLICLY prove that statement then and there.

He failed miserably, as one might expect, and hates me for "ridiculing" and "humiliating" him to this day. My wife kicked in the cash anyway (against my vocal objections - she said I was squeeling like a stuck pig as I recall) I think that fact that it made some newspaper gossip column is what REALLY toasted his pistachios.

Think of all the people who deny that global warming exists................. similar mentalities

Corey
 
That's right! If people don't stop using Nickel in their pots, pans & knives and plated silverware this very minute!
We will all bake to death from global warming by next week!
 
the kitchen wold is almost as bad as the ninja want to be world.. i deal with it all the time. often i want to say what are you looking for how much care will you tret you knife too. what kind of handle are you thinking (i ll take care of the rest )
 
There appears to be quite a number of highly-educated chefs who know about as much about sharpening, steel and knives as I do about Ferrari engines (which ain't much, except that I'm pretty sure Ferraris do have engines). The difference is, I don't go around lecturing people about them.

A quick browse through youtube will give plenty of examples of bad advice and outright BS... much of it from respected/famous names... which seems odd to me, since it's one of the few professions that actually use knives every day :(
 
mete said:
So Foxnews had a thing about dangerous things in your kitchen. One items was pots and pans and a maker , Gunter Wilhelm , was mentioned for his "safe " pots. 'They didn't have that nasty and "cheap" nickel in their steel.
The facts are that the outer layer was 430 stainless . Why ? because it's a magnetic stainless and can be used on induction surfaces !! However on the inside is 304 stainless [non-magnetic] containing large amounts of the nasty cheap nickel that can drop into the food !!
One more example of stupid, deceptive internet nonsense. Beware !
Click to expand...

I think I found your problem. The highlighted part is a contradiction. :D
 
Cast iron is porous, you'll never be able to clean and sterilize it. Get in there with detergent and scrub, scrub, scrub! You come near my cast with that and I knife edge your wind pipe.

Butter is bad, use margarine; Margarine being only a molecule away from plastic.

Mete, not trying to pick a fight, just saying that everything changes from this day to that and I hate it just as much as everyone else here. Everything in moderation, then I get asked "what about cyanide?"

It sucks to be me sometimes!
 
I've had more than one person tell me they can tell if a blade is stainless or carbon by tasting it. :confused:
 
Steps , you have to separate real science from psuedo science . I'm one who knew that "global warming" was a fraud , a very big one . The butter thing was started by margarine makers and everybody got on the band wagon .We were told for 30 years or more that butter would kill you .I knew better and continued to use butter and I'm still here .The substitute ,hydrogenated fats are far more dangerous ! BTW when you 'cure' a cast iron pan you are taking oil and heating it to oxidize it to form a polymer - a plastic !! Soy oil is best .
And so it goes .Learn the real science behind these things and you'll do much better .
 
I worked in kitchens for years and i learned long ago to just let people blather on and use whatever suited you best. I will admit to a bias against stainless but thats mostly because of the crappy stainless knives my cheap boss always bought. We had three good knives and one of them was a 30 year old german butcher knife. It was the ugliest and best knife in the kitchen and I was the only one who used it. the rest were afraid it would spoil the food...
 
I could not agree with you more Mete, honestly. I fondly remember when they went to the orange to off yellow goop to put on popcorn, going away from butter, it was a sad day for me. On the cast, it took me a bit to learn to season my cast and keep it in good shape, it's that wonderful black oxidized, goodness!

Global warming, don't get me started... You want your scientific research funded, and I mean deep pocket funding, put a spin on some form or glacier melting, or temperature rise. I say this after the United States of America had for the most part just gone through one of the longest and harshest winters on record!

I've never tried Soy oil, I'll have to give it a try. I normally use plain old lard. Thanks.
 
A chemist explained why the fatty acids [fats] in soy are better. That's also why the people at Lodge use it !
 
james terrio said:
There appears to be quite a number of highly-educated chefs who know about as much about sharpening, steel and knives as I do about Ferrari engines (which ain't much, except that I'm pretty sure Ferraris do have engines). The difference is, I don't go around lecturing people about them.

A quick browse through youtube will give plenty of examples of bad advice and outright BS... much of it from respected/famous names... which seems odd to me, since it's one of the few professions that actually use knives every day :(
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Correction, James... Ferraris don't have engines... they have power plants. :D

I found this thread very amusing, though not the least bit surprising. I think I'll pass some of this along to my wife, who is signing up to take a cooking basics course (including a basic knife skills tutorial) next month. Forewarned is forearmed.

- Greg
 
Oh, and regarding "global warming"... I am ALWAYS amused that people who dispute it invariably call up some recent short term localized event (e.g. "harshest winter on record"), as if that disproved it out of hand. Funny, they never stop to consider that "harshest winter on record" says something in and of itself about the fact that something changed, and rather dramatically. Here on the west coast it was anything BUT the harshest winter on record. I guess that doesn't count for anything.

And my stainless tastes better than your sterling!!! Nyah!! ;)
 
tryppyr said:
Oh, and regarding "global warming"... I am ALWAYS amused that people who dispute it invariably call up some recent short term localized event (e.g. "harshest winter on record"), as if that disproved it out of hand. Funny, they never stop to consider that "harshest winter on record" says something in and of itself about the fact that something changed, and rather dramatically. Here on the west coast it was anything BUT the harshest winter on record. I guess that doesn't count for anything.

And my stainless tastes better than your sterling!!! Nyah!! ;)
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Tryppyr, I was going to say the same thing about global warming, but thought it would fall on deaf ears. Even the US government and oil companies don't debate the fact that it is happening! They say it's a good thing as the northern shipping lanes will open up. Only in the USA are climate change and evolution so strongly disputed. :thumbdn: this is all off topic anyway.
 
Willie71 said:
Tryppyr, I was going to say the same thing about global warming, but thought it would fall on deaf ears. Even the US government and oil companies don't debate the fact that it is happening! They say it's a good thing as the northern shipping lanes will open up. Only in the USA are climate change and evolution so strongly disputed. :thumbdn: this is all off topic anyway.
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+1

Although I had a smith tell me that you could tell the difference in carbon content by tasting the steel. I couldn't tell the difference between 1018 and 1095. Some say that a horse won't throw its bit if it is made out of sweet iron. But, some people can taste a certain bitterness in a mineral while others can't.
 
My wife swears she can taste the metal in Diet Coke from a can, as opposed to Diet Coke from a plastic bottle or fountain. She also swears she can taste the "chemicals" in plastic containers.

I'm not saying she's wrong. How would I know? For all I know knives do impart molecules of minerals onto food that the most sensitive tongues can detect. I will say I notice no such differences. But then I smoked for 17 years (20 years ago), so there's a lot that my nose and my taste buds miss.
 
"Supertasters" are a real thing, apparently some people have more tastebuds than normal and things taste more intense to them. Those people might be able to tell the difference but they're rare. Most people "bragging" about being able to taste differences in metal and such are probably full of it, but there might be some who actually can.
 
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