It defrosts faster if you don’t put it in a sink full of water - I put it (still wrapped, of course) on a plate in the sink and let the faucet run a thin stream of cold water on it. Two chicken breasts frozen in a vacuum bag only take about 20 minutes to thaw this way, and you don’t run the risk of screwing the meat up by “cooking” it a little.
How do you cook chicken in cold water, anyway, whether running water or not?
I understood:
running cold water because it’s a bit warmer than cold water which has been surounding a big lump of frozen chicken for a while
cold water rather than hot water so to avoid cooking the chicken
but that may not necessarily be correct
:eek: I, uh, also worked at Taco Bell one summer.
The summer of my education in observing “gross things that can happen to women with yeast infections.” You chose… poorly.
The way I understand it , it could cook a little bit in a sink full of hot water but not cold water. I don’t know the average tap temperature but I would think that running cold water would be pretty cool - would it be cool enough to keep the meat out of the highest risk zone?
I still figure immediate thawing and then cooking will kill what ever colonies have started springing up, and the 20 minutes or so in the sink at a borderline high risk temperature would foster fewer active cultures than an overnight stint in a fridge at a constant 47f.
If, for example, the running water was also 47f, would the meat thaw quicker or slower than in the fridge? Intuitivley the answer should be yes because the water is constantly being refreshed and, while heat is conducted into the meat it is not conducted out of the water (it is, but then that water goes away and fresher / warmer water arrives) so it is never quite an even exchange as sitting in a sink of water or in a fridge would be.
Does any part of this theory hold water, so to speak?
This is pretty much how Alton Brown (May His Fries Be Ever G, B and D!) explains it. His experiments show that food defrosts more quickly and safely under a trickle of very cold water than in the fridge, on the countertop or sitting in a puddle of warm water, and it’s because of the greater rate of conduction heat lost to moving water, while the temperature is kept below the “danger zone”.
YMMV if you live in a climate warm enough that your tap water isn’t cold, BTW. Florida is probably not the best environment to thaw food anywhere other than the refrigerator.
Ah, but I didn’t know what was going on in their kitchen, and could thus enjoy my tacos in blissful ignorance. Denial is my friend.
This isn’t so bad, really. Years ago I worked at a restaurant of the sort characterized in fiction as “greasy spoons.” Yeah.
Getting to the rest room was a challenge because of the masses of spilled grease (the spoons were okay, though). We did wipe the tables and counters down quite thoroughly and the dishwasher blasted everything with boiling water. But…
When I was in training I noticed that the other waitress would grab the iced-tea glasses, three at a time, with her thumb, index and middle finger, and therefore her fingers were on the inside of the glasses, or, to set it right out plainly, her fingers were in the customers’ water/tea/lemonade/soft drinks. I pointed this out, asking if it was really the done thing and she said, “Inside the glass, outside the glass–what’s the difference? They put their mouth on the outside of the glass, too.”
Well…yeah…I guess…
Hey, I was a college student at the time, when she put it that way it sounded okay to me!
Ah, that reminds me of the restaurant I worked in when I was in high school. I don’t recall the general hygiene of the place being bad – in fact, the owner was more than a bit of a nut on cleanliness – but they used a human dishwasher, this little teensy lady named Millie who had a deep, violent cough. Waaay beyond a 5-pack-a-day smoker’s cough; I’m thinking tubercular. She stood over the sink full of dirty water washing the dishes by hand all day long coughing all over everything.
It was right after working there that I started developing positive initial TB screening tests.
The place is long since gone, but I can still hear Millie’s cough. Not that I cared at the time; damn, that place had good food, and the pies were to die for!
TB Pie, yum! :dubious:
literally?
Most long-term farang (Westerner) residents eventually turn their noses up at the street stands. I sure do these days! Even if you don’t get sick, that stuff’s just not good for you, all that carbon monoxide from the heavy vehicular traffic having settled into it. Yuck! And one time recently, about 1 or 2am, I walked past this one street food stand that’s regularly set up that time of night on the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 19. The big fat slob who’s always making the food there was taking a gigantic piss over underneath Asoke Skytrain Station. And do you think there’s anyplace to wash his hands around there? No street food for me!
Our housemate is an HVAC and refrigeration tech, and he says KFCs are some of the worst national chain places he’s worked in. The floors are so greasy that it adds a new dimension of danger to working on a ladder.
But floor spice makes everything nice! <blargh!>
A couple of years ago I accidentally left a box full of frozen Cornish hens in the back of my Jeep for, uh, a week? In the summer.
My wife made me throw them away. 
I’ve posted this before, but think about this: Those girls you see with the long fancy fingernails; how do they wipe their ass?
Would you like fries with that?
Hmmm. A Jeep of Death? Reminds me of this
Africa makes you unshakable. Did you know you can deep fry cubes of meat and it will last for a week? and that mayo never spoils? and that there is a technique for getting flies out of your beer bottle?
Ooh, I wanna know this! Can you describe it for us?