micro dethaw

i used to pay attn to the admonition that u need thaw out foods, esp meat, well in advance of cooking them. i.e. cooking from a frozen state just doesn't work.

but then i tried these microwave burgers/chicken sandos they have at the local conveni. they are surprisingly good -- better than fresh-cooked ones in some cases. and they go in the micro as is, frozen solid, bun and all.

so i tried freezing a real hamburger and doing likewise, all in the name of science. good god, what a failure. meat came out tougher then molasses -- half-frozen half-overcooked. by the time i'd gotten the "frozen" out, the whole thing tasted like leather.

it reinforced what i USED to think about cooking frozen meat!

so why does THEIRS work when mine won't? do they start out with a higher moisture content? a LOWER moisture content? some weird "catalyst" additive?

are they "flash" frozen in some weird manner than i'm not doing with mine?

btw, before anyone says mine is cooked and theirs are raw, that is not the case. theirs are pre-cooked as well -- if u let one thaw out the old-fashioned way, it's perfectly ready to eat as a (cold) hamburger. no diff, really, than my "real" burger after an hour in the fridge.

which brings up another point -- why aren't theirs OVERCOOKED?! it would seem to me that you'd preferably start out with a raw burger if you wanted it to come out right post-nuke.

 

Take a look at the ingredient list on theirs. 90% of it will be multi-syllabic words you can't pronounce. Yours contained...beef.

 

nah. mine are as phony as theirs. i even tried with a big mac.

frankly, i think it's got to do with "flash" freezing rather than the actual contents. but that's just my mcgut speaking.

 

Frozen microwave burgers are disgusting, period. I don't think I've ate one where the burger wasn't soggy and the bun wasn't hard so if they've overcome this obstacle it's news to me.

Refrigerated pre cooked processed burgers are edible but I don't like them, refrigerated pre cooked processed chicken burgers in buns are pretty good though IMO, sometimes I get them and put lettuce, tomato and mayo on.

Microwaves don't melt ice, they heat water which then melts ice so whichever part of the product heats first will absorb the full power of the microwave while the still frozen icy part doesn't change. From a physics perspective the ideal product would be one where all the ingredients absorb microwave energy at the same rate e.g The bun would have heavy animal proteins added to make it more like meat and the burger would have lots of light cereal and vegetable fats added to make it more like a vegetable.

Then the whole thing will be processed with chemicals to make it taste like it should. Mmmmmm...:-D

 

By the way, "dethaw" means freeze...something for which the microwave would seem impractical.

 

No offense meant, but a proper burger is cooked on a grill. Skillet if for some reason you can't use a grill. You can grill them and reheat them minus buns and they are good. But cooking a burger in the microwave just ain't right. :cool

 

The texture is all wrong in those convenience store burgers. It's like they're not even real meat. Even McD's or the Burger King are better. There are some foods that have no business going into a microwave oven.

 

LOL. that hit me after i clicked "post".

spent a long time trying to figure out how to correct it, but the board doesn't seem to allow editing subject lines. (WHY NOT, might i ask?!)

huh? so if i put an ice cube in the micro sans water, it won't melt?! whatchu talkin' bout, willis?!

in any case, let's get back to flash freezing. anyone have any insight on how the factory might be freezing the burger diff from myself? do I need to go buy liquid nitrogen?

-----
and YES, these burgers are delicious! i dunno if the meat is loaded with LARD or GARLIC or what, but they are great. they come in BOXES and cost a buck even...in EVERY store i've seen them. market basket, shaw's, pricerite, walgreens...diff boxes, diff ingredients (slightly), diff factory addresses, but they ALL TASTE THE SAME!

if it weren't for those *addresses*, i'd be thinking they WERE all the same and just being packaged differently for diff retailers, but i dunno. i guess it's just coincidence.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WABthlGTy74

EDIT If atoms can't move then microwaves can't vibrate or heat them but if one drop melts into water the microwave can then superheat above 100C which quickly eats through the near by ice.

Obviously a totally different process than cooking from the outside in, I picture it as multiple pockets of steam errupting throught the product simultaneously.

 

That's probably the geekiest response I've ever given:-D

Welcome to the lounge rebar haven't seen you here before.

Where's Phantom anyway? He knows what goes on inside a BicMac.

 

I'm right here, LoL! LOL. A lot of those precooked burger cruds are Freeze Dried, meaning most of the H20 is removed via a vacuum chamber. I used to design those things, years ago, lol!

 

well, yeah, i know the basics of how microwaves cook. i think the old "raw egg" test is the best way to demonstrate that. i just meant, it was weird the way you were implying an ice cube wouldn't melt unless it started out sitting in a pool of liquid water.

i like your description of internal steam pockets. but just to be safe, I always drizzle "sacrificial water" atop my food going in. just enuf such that the food is no drier coming out than going in.

and, no, i'm not sure i've posted in the lounge before -- mostly threads in software and hardware so far. thanks for the welcome!

 

vacuum chamber? where the hell am i gonna find a vacuum chamber?!

hard enuf finding liquid nitrogen this time of night!

 

In a vacuum chamber the ice would sublimate to gas or skipping the liquid stage, that's what's happening to the Co2 'dry ice' at atmospheric pressure, I don't know if anything would happen if you then microwaved it.

That's quite interesting, would the product even get warm? What if you gradually raised the pressure inside the chamber so smaller water molecules could form gradually:-D

You can borrow my vacuum pump, just finished building my two stage beauty and I took pictures of it which is pretty weird:-D

http://s20.photobucket.com/user/Rikky_/media/DSCF2676_zps758d9ad7.jpg.html?sort=3&o=3

http://s20.photobucket.com/user/Rikky_/media/DSCF2677_zps47f84973.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

Goes down to 29.5 inches of murcury.

 

LoL! They're so you, Rikky!:major

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyVGgS6IEkg

Still defrosted before microwaving though.

Your flash freezing theory Rebar looks very true too.

White Castle doesn't put pickles in their microwavable burgers, not found any solid information of the differences between a frozen and regular burger, this could mean the most important aspect is how it's frozen at not the ingredients.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI14ACqrU4M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQLVa0CLO70

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q-SQtpjuYM

:-D

 

before we go any further, are u guys (esp phantom) using "freeze dried" to mean "flash frozen"?

i don't believe they're the same thing.

 

I think it's a case of crossed wires, Phantom was talking about freeze drying I was talking about cooking a product from frozen in vacuum, under freeze drying the product isn't heated it's just released due to low pressure, the water vapour is then frozen.

In Rikkys physics cooker:-D Le Big mac is cooked via microwaves while in a vacuum, fun to pontificate about but doesn't really answer why you observe such a difference between frozen and DIY frozen burgers.

One place to look though is here-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_food

No I don't have any Carboxymethylcellulose :-D

Don't overlook the packaging either-

If said tasty microwave burger has a special tray for microwave cooking you could try to put a BigMac in it I guess? The end product will be a combination of different techniques I guess, people have been freezing food for 100+ years but they only made an edible freezable burger last Thursday:-D so it would be a stretch if it were possible in a domestic kitchen.

 

no special tray. i get those w frozen pizzas occasionally, but i never bother using them. they don't seem to make the difference they claim (crusting up bottom), and they just increase the mess.

and the wrapping the burger comes in is nothing special. not even an airtight bag as for chips (crisps) -- just a superflimsy plastic wrapper comparable to the one around cigarette packs. and then a cardboard box.

DIY flash freezing sites claim that the key is to "blanche" the veggies and stick in the freezer warm. is this true? should i half-cook my burger and put it in hot? or for the case of the (already cooked) big mac, should i at least reheat beforehand?

aside from melting everything else AROUND it, i am puzzled by the sheer logic of this. but it does fit the term "flash", i suppose.

 

Well it's a fact that hot water freezes faster than cold water, totally counter intuitive and it's not a complete theory, when people decribe the theory they use a lot of Could, maybe, one way type explanations. If flash freezing is the over riding factor in the final quality and you can cause the water in the product to freeze faster in your kitchen then I guess it's plausible it could show improvement :confused But the time frame is totally different to flash freezing, the whole product will be frozen in seconds whereas hot water only freezes marginally faster than cold water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

You could say you've hit the wall of knowledge in thermodynamics.

 

I think I'd call implausible on that one after further reading. In Nikola Brekovics paper on that page he describes convection as one of the most important things to effect the speed water freezes, since water can't move inside a product I would assume convection plays only a small role.

http://www.rsc.org/images/nikola-bregovic-entry_tcm18-225169.pdf

Unless convection happens on a microscopic level:confused

 

On a quasi-note:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHxRwQqWFo .LOL

 

Phantom, that is why I grill my own burgers, and rarely eat fries. :-D

Now, if you slice up a potato, toss on some seasonings, and yes, a bit of butter, bake that up, and you got home 'fries'. Good stuff.

 

yes, there is no greater joy than a fresh cooked burger piled high w kimchi...or swimming in green curry....

grrrr. this "premade" is starting to annoy me! :mad

 

Flaming grill, burgers and summer. Well, now I know what I am cooking this weekend. :-D

 

No vegetables will touch my grill! :-D

 

WTH is going on with those fries?

I think this experiment is a little confusing though, the products are not breaking down in acid as they do in digestion. They've basically cultivated mould, yeast, fungus spores so whatever is in the product has an environment to grow. The fries have been sterilised in hot fat which kills all germ spores ect.

I'm wondering though is it the genetically modified spud or the hydrogenated vegitable fat which stops micro organisms growing :confused Or a chemical added afterwards.

Anyway KFC have changed their fries and they're better than Mcdonalds now.:-D And at least you know it's chicken...

 

Maybe it is all the salt Rikky. Salt cured meat was popular back before the fridge. Agree with you on the experiment, even a home cooked burger is going to mold if just left in a jar.

 

Could be a combination, I'm thinking potted meat though, potted meat in sealed with a a layer of oil, the oil is vegetable so it will break down eventually but it's slow.

The oil absorbed in the outside of the fry stops all air getting to the potato underneath, the larger fried or what we'd call chips in the UK have half an inch of potato underneath which micro organisms could hide or grow.

I'm not sure but I think all MD potatoes are extremely processed before frying, this I would guess is to protect the delivery of fries to the store, much cheaper to deliver one large shipment of fries every couple of months rather than fresh every day or week. That would be an interesting number to me, how large is the MD storage fridge, how often do they take delivery of food? How long are fries stored as pototo's before being chopped into fries? Spuds don't last long in open air, they will last for years though if you don't dig them up.

No doubt the fries are held in a large warehouse for a few months before shipping too, even chip shops in the UK speculate on potato prices. Early in the season when the new crop of potatoes comes 'new potato's' before they are fully grown they're more expensive so your bag of chips would go up 5-10p due to the shipping costs or the cost of growing small pototo's, if you have large warehouse of unspoiled potato's from when potato's were cheap you can make more money until they run out.

Putting chemicals in food to make 5-10p more on a purchase isn't something I see going away any time soon and it's not limited to MD.

 

Hard to underestimate how much research goes into the MD potato, they have universities and government agencies competing to produce the Universal Soldier of potato's:-D By the researchers account the genetics of the potato are the most important factor in how long the fries can be stored for, notice genetically modified is not mentioned at all in that article to either confirm or deny which means they are using genetically modified potato's.

 

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...fied-fries-20130618_1_fries-mcdonald-potatoes

It sounds like they're doing everything up until modifying the actual genetic code manually, selective breeding has come along way and they can now target which genes they want in a new potato and simulate what properties a spud will have after they've bred it with other potatoes for 100 or 1000 generations then fast breed them in the lab.

I have no doubt the genetics of every candidate potato are mapped, stored and tested experimentally in computer simulations.

EDIT Sorry Rebar, bit off track.

 

nah, that's ok. it just reminds of how spam -- which i love -- comes packed in this disgusting grease which can only be described as "condom lube"...whereas the dutch knockoff tulip comes packed in a diff kind of grease which magically TURNS INTO HOME FRIES when u cook it!!

dutch haven't done MUCH in 500 years, but i gotta give them credit for INJECTING FRENCH FRIES into our MEAT!! someone over there deserves the nobel. :-D

 

Knowing Rikky, the pictures were taken in a crawlspace. :-D


Just joking Rikky.

 

Spam? The first thing that comes to your mind when reading my post's is spam roflmao I have no idea what product your talking about? Fries in meat? Sounds like NASA food.

My friends said I'd made my own sound proof torture chamber because I spent so much time converting the loft without using it for anything, whatever you think of American friends, British friends suck worse.:-D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl5fM24mfRk

Buffalo Bills night vision goggles suck...I got a £50 set from LIDL that's better.

PM sent Kes

 

Drop a pat of butter in your corn and wrap that cob in foil and it won't.

 

I hate corn. Except popcorn. :-D

 

"tulip", like i said. it's a dutch (maybe danish) spam clone. for those times when u don't wanna break out your good spam.

but really, u fry that up, it develops this SPECTACULAR "hash-brown" crust.

u fry the REAL one up, u need to call a hazmat team afterwards for THAT grease....

 

I am thinking Tulip is a UK company.

http://www.tulipltd.co.uk/

:-D

 

think as u will, but it's danish. from your own link: http://www.tulipltd.co.uk/index.php/about-us/our-history

plus they say denmark/danish ON THE CANS. i'm not sure if the UK division is doing anything more than distribution.

btw, i'd forgotten about TREET! for those times that TULIP is too dang chichi....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treet

apparently there's a few more in the running:

http://www.virgeweb.com/rage2/spam/spam01.jpg

the question, tho, is how many of them use "condom lube" and how many of them use "potato starch"...??

 

Condom lube? :confused Just dropping that there, will leave it alone.

 

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: http://homepage1.nifty.com/amijakan/105s/pork01.jpg

CLASH OF THE TITANS: http://tastyislandhawaii.com/2007/12/07/tulip-vs-treet-vs-spam-musubi-showdown

food porn of the highest order.

now i need a cigarette.

 

uke

You need more better food pron... :-D

MMM... http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...n1UaHIO9Pi4APPtoDYAw&ved=0CF8Q9QEwDw&dur=1196

 

not even CLOSE.

 

To each his own. :-D

 

i like a good steak every once in a while, but u can't seriously compare that to SPAM and KIMCHI, can u...?!

C'MON!

:major

 

You can compare anything. I find the SPAM lacking when it comes to nice cuts of beet. :-D Cuts of beef even...

 

i don't think the beef spam sells too well in the US. like beef hotdogs and beef gyoza, it is pretty much geared toward those areas (kosher/halal) where pork is a no-no.

i have tried it and find it strangely offputting. whoda thunk a type of SPAM could taste bad?!

rolleyes