If someone wouldn’t otherwise eat raw lettuce (not everyone should), I’m sure as hell not going to tell them that dipping it in lime juice will cook it and therefore make it safe.
Like I said, you are only nitpicking the reason it’s safe, not the fact that it’s safe.
“Safe” is not binary. And it’s not safe for everyone. And telling someone that lime juice makes it safe is wrong.
‘Safe’ is not a useful word to describe the difference between cooked and cured food. When we talk about foods that are safe to eat we are talking about the difference between mushrooms that won’t make you severely ill or kill you, and the ones that do. We can also talk about safe and unsafe preparation techniques, and because of unsafe preparation both cooked and raw food can be quite dangerous.
Nothing is safe for everyone, or in every circumstance.
Which is why I’m asking people not to spread misinformation about food preparation methods.
I don’t think anyone has made that claim in this thread.
In any case, cooking things with heat doesn’t always make them safe either.
In either situation, it is the preparation and handling that will make it safe, not the specific method of cooking. Leave some ground beef at room temperature for a day or so, then see if cooking it keeps you from getting sick.
Close enough:
Not really.
Especially since @HMS_Irruncible’s next post specifically says
Just as cooking with heat doesn’t kill all bacteria, I don’t see that the claim that you chose to cite making a claim that acid cooking kills all bacteria either, especially given the context of the follow-up post that makes that very clear.
And that is by far the closest anyone has come in this thread to making a claim that “lime juice makes it safe”, much less anything that @Colibri has said.
There is no misinformation being spread about food preparation methods in this thread. Well, except that acid is not a form of cooking. From a culinary standpoint, it absolutely is, but there are different schools of thought on that one, so I’ll let it be.
This is fair enough. Ceviche is as safe as any raw fish and is probably made even safer by acidic curing, but nobody should insist “it’s cooked” if someone expresses the concern “I’m not comfortable eating raw fish.” Or raw onions, or raw anything, for various different reasons.
In some narrow technical aspects it’s fair to say that ceviche is cooked, but not cooked enough that I’d force it upon my (hypothetically) pregnant wife.
You didn’t ask for that. And it doesn’t matter anyway; the post of mine you originally quoted was a response to a poorly-framed non-argument question about lettuce. If you feel any of the statements I’ve made about food safety or citations I’ve provided are incorrect, let us know. If you feel it’s inappropriate or irrelevant to ask people (generally) to not equate acid treatment with cooking wrt pathogens in a conversation about acid treatment and cooking, then I disagree.
Lettuce, if handled improperly, can certainly cause a number of food borne illnesses. Same with any food.
It’s never a terrible idea to think about food safety, but I would generally recommend that you wait until someone actually makes that claim before accusing them of doing so.
Hey, gang, if you argue a point, and you’re still arguing the point thirty posts later, you might want to give it a rest and go do something else.
Even if everyone besides you is wrong…
Anyhow, I was waiting til the People’s Court was over to mention that I, too, love cooked (esp. grilled) onions. And pickled onions would not satisfy me the same way at all.
Now, I like ceviche and pickled veggies, including onions. But those onions are much closer to raw ones than cooked onions.
I keep checking this thread, waiting to hear from Whacky-Mole whether his girlfriend likes them (hint: I wouldn’t bring up the raw/cooked debate, or talk up the chemistry of it… you’re building it into a Big Deal. I’d just say “Hey, I pickled some onions. See if you like 'em”).
She only likes “cooked” onions. I don’t know that she has ever tried pickled onions. She just thinks it is cooked or nothing.
I know she has a fear of eating raw onions or garlic and then she will sweat the next day and smell like onion/garlic. Not really an issue when it has been cooked. I think that is most of it. When I press her on it (a little) she just shrugs. It’s a fear she has and that’s the end of it. Pickled is too close to raw so it doesn’t matter if she likes it. She doesn’t want to sweat onion smell.
I think the flavor chemistry of alliums is too complex (even when actually cooking, you’ll see wide variation based on preparation) to say much for certain here without ample testing. Gorge yourself, for science. And let us know if you pass the sniff test.
You have acid, salt, and enzymatic activity at play, all of which have a time component. I doubt the chemistry going on here will mimic straight up thermal reactions.
Like how it had been resting for two days until you decided to bring it up again?
I wouldn’t mind. I looooove garlic and onions.
My understanding has been that you really do need to eat a lot of it for you to start sweating garlic or onion. And not so much in one sitting as in daily with foods that have a lot of onion and/or garlic. Doubtless there are variations between people but I know I have had very garlic heavy dishes and the next day I do not smell like garlic is wafting out of me.
More reading here:
The chemistry of garlic and onions.
E Block
Scientific American 252 (3), 114, 1985
People have posted PDFs but I suspect not with publisher permission so I haven’t linked.
Doesn’t really answer the question about pickling though.