outlandish cooking tips

i was “surfing the net” looking for a few different ideas about what to do with pastrami and happened upon this epic technique for bringing refrigerated pastrami to room temperature:

Cook's Note: If you're using homemade pastrami that has been refrigerated, take the chill off before making the sandwich by putting it in an oven-safe dish with a little bit of water. Cover the dish tightly with foil and warm it in a 350°F oven for bout 15 minutes.

dr strongo stirs in his neuvo crypt

Indeed. But whil(st?)e strongo’s cookbook contains our dreams, this thread chronicles the nightmarish reality of absolutely wackadoo “tricks” from actual websites that purport to be “helping”

I’ve pondered the pastrami tip for awhile and the only justification I can think of for firing up an entire oven for 15 minutes in order to “take the chill off” some cold cuts is a particularly American aversion to leaving food at room temp for ANY length of time. (Curiously this phobia does not seem to extend to potluck barbecues on sweltering summer days.) The idea being - maybe? I guess? - that you are RAPIDLY bringing the pastrami to its lukewarm state and staying one step ahead of those tireless bacteria

I mean leaving aside for a second that you are about to heat this pastrami up in a sandwich anyway; that nothing needs to be cooked at all; etc etc etc

Food banks BAN Jack Monroe's cookbook after celebrity chef told readers to open cans with knife and HAMMER if they couldn't afford a tin opener

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11609279/Trussell-Trust-bans-Jack-Monroes-cookbook-dangerous-advice.html

Sickle would prob do a better job with the hammer than a knife?

that was the least of the problems with Jack Monroe's despicably vile recipes

With the pastrami thing, it seems like it would be much quicker, easier, and probably about the same effect to just put the pastrami in a saucepan with a little bit of water and warm it on the stove?

yeah or microwave

the only justification I can think of for firing up an entire oven for 15 minutes in order to “take the chill off” some cold cuts is a particularly American aversion to leaving food at room temp for ANY length of time

pastrami is often served warm if not hot tho right? like if you order pastrami at katz's it's not coming cold. so isn't the point of this to get the pastrami past the stage of room temp? whether that's enough justification to turn on an entire oven i guess is another discussion but not everyone has a toaster oven

i have seen this specific method (water + foil coverage) suggested for reheating leftover meat (i.e. meatballs) before. it's not all that great tbh

According to Cal Code leftovers are supposed to be reheated to internal temp of165 F. Just throwing this out there in case anyone is cooking for an at-risk population/person

The oven part seems weird, unless it's imagining a small toaster oven or something. The water part I will cosign! If you heat up pastrami by itself, it's liable to kinda fry in its own rendered fat. A splash of water helps get you a steamy-moist hot pastrami instead of one with dry or crisped spots.

(Katz's also recommends this if you order big boxes of pastrami from them, which let's say a guy I know does)

Or you could just leave it out for half an hour like you do with all refrigerated stuff you want to cook with?

Or you could also just... make your hot pastrami sandwich, which will heat it up anyway?

Guys I want to cook a hot dog but first I'm going to run a tub of boiling water and submerge the dog in it for 10 minutes

lol Jack Monroe "hammer trick" is impressively dangerous. to be fair I have made firelighters from dryer lint and wax, that one is legit

"with all refrigerated stuff you want to cook with" - meat in particular i should say. but again pastrami is already cooked so

Leaving food out on the counter for half an hour is either pointless or dangerous IIRC. It’s either thick enough so that the core temp isn’t going to move or it’s thin enough that it’s going to end up on the danger zone.

milo

Maybe I’m weird but I like a big stack of hot pastrami, cool mustard, and plain rye. The simplest way to accomplish this is to water-steam pastrami in the microwave and then just slap it on. Even if I were doing a whole grilled sandwich I would not expect the central pastrami to get enough heat before the bread was overcooked

ahh we do it differently. i like to fry the whole damn sandwich in butter lol

but yeah if i wanted to get JUST the pastrami hot that sounds like the way to do it

If you want to leave meat out on the counter to do whatever, cool, but it's bad advice as I understand it. My mom left chicken out on the counter to defrost back in the day and no one died but I prefer to let that happen over a longer period of time in the fridge.

https://nocrumbsleft.net/2022/04/05/griddled-pastrami-sandwich/

The original advice doesn't seem that bad for this particular use? Warm pastrami is going to help the entire sandwich get hot enough without the bread burning.

but leaving chicken to defrost is so different than a half hour on the counter. i mean the Temperature Danger Zone is where bacti may increase exponentially, but a half hour is really nothing. If you are concerned about that I would reconsider ever going out to eat, tbh

You left out the pointless part. Butter isn't even going from fridge to spreadable in 30 minutes at room temperature. "Just chuck it on the counter" advice is pretty bad either way is the idea.

I only leave butter in the fridge when it's still boxed/wrapped.. once open, it goes in the cupboard and lasts 4-EVA

storing open butter in the fridge makes it taste nasty, how can anyone do that

Butter is not a potentially hazardous food (phf). Spreadability is dependent on things but is a nonstarter
Xpost

Right, that was an example of put it on the counter for 30 minutes being pointless rather than risky.

Well this thread strayed from its remit faster than Roger Bannister.

Anyway, here's one I thought was curious:

Cooking pasta by putting it in room temp tap water and then bringing it to the boil is not only fine, its faster than bringing water to the boil and then cooking it?!

So sez Sorted Food anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw_fzNM90a8
(from 5:52 if that URL wont jump to the right spot)

that one is really silly bc the result is you have to ignore the cooking time on your box/bag of pasta and i guess just keep checking it?

re: the pastrami advice that technique is often recommended for reheating roast turkey left over from thanksgiving dinner except maybe using gravy instead of water as the liquid medium....ime it yields acceptable but unspectacular results and there's really no way to recapture the texture of a freshly roasted bird. the best use for leftover turkey is in sandwiches and the best temp for it is.....room :)

With a fatty self-basting meat like brisket, a few seconds in the microwave works for taking the chill off without toughening.