[HN Gopher] 'Perpetual broths' that simmer for decades
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'Perpetual broths' that simmer for decades
Author : drdee
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-12-18 20:47 UTC (1 days ago)
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| beauzero wrote:
| There is a local rumor that Chris' Hotdogs in Montgomery, AL has
| never changed the hotdog water. https://www.chrishotdogs.com/
| Probably not true.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I don't think there's an emoji to represent my facial
| expression when I read your sentence.
| matthewmcg wrote:
| This is mentioned in passing in the article, but the Solera
| system used for Sherry and other things is similar in concept.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solera
| verdenti wrote:
| Wouldn't having a propane burner on 24 hours a day be very
| expensive?
|
| Also, does it really make that much of a difference? I feel like
| after a couple of hours with a fresh batch you could be right
| back where you started without really missing out on too much.
| acchow wrote:
| Making a good bone broth takes about 24 hours of simmering. If
| you're going to be making 1 or 2 new bone broths every day, it
| won't require more energy to just have a perpetual broth
| instead to which you keep adding bones.
| pitaj wrote:
| It takes a long time to pull flavor and nutrients out of bones.
| kderbyma wrote:
| There is an oft quoted phrase which is usually found online
|
| "The cauldron was rarely emptied except in preparation for the
| meatless weeks of Lent, so that while a hare, hen, or pigeon
| would give it a fine, meaty flavor, the taste of salted pork or
| cabbage would linger for days, even weeks."
|
| it seems like not an article about perpetual goes without those
| words. It gave me deja vu reading it.
| hosh wrote:
| In the recent weeks, monads finally clicked for me, and I was
| introduced to Christopher Alexander's ideas on "unfolding" (and
| thus, generative patterns).
| (https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/whatisanunfolding.h...)
|
| It tickles me to see this in food. The article talks about how
| those flavor profiles change over time.
| madengr wrote:
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| My grandma who is from.South Africa married a Liverpudlian and
| went over to Liverpool, where her husband had come.from.a working
| class background. She threw out their "forever broth" which drew
| the ire of her mother-in-law!
| jedberg wrote:
| My wife is Cantonese and while we don't have any family heirloom
| broths, there are definitely weeks, especially in winter, where
| we just have a constant broth going for a couple of weeks. All
| the leftover veggie bits and bones and such get thrown in there
| as we go. The flavor is always different, usually good, sometimes
| a little odd, but then we just purposely put new food in to
| balance it out (an apple for some sweetness for example).
|
| I gotta say it's nice to always have a pot of soup ready to go
| when it's cold.
| drakonka wrote:
| Does it take a lot of electricity to keep your stove going 24/7
| for weeks? Trying to get an idea of how much impact this could
| have on an electricity bill.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| I was thinking to do this in a non-pressurized Instant Pot.
| Between the cover and the insulation, it might not use much
| power.
| jedberg wrote:
| We do it in the Instant Pot, so it stays pretty hot. When we
| need to turn it off for a while we put it in jars, drop the
| jars into ice, then put them in the fridge. Then we just heat
| one jar a a time and add stuff to that.
|
| So it's actually not all that energy intensive.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| A story in a magazine (when they had such things) of a young lady
| house-sitting, told of the soup on the stove that was 3
| generations old. "Eat all you like; just throw a little something
| in to replace whatever you take!"
|
| She ate some, threw some pasta in, too much. An hour later, the
| pot was a solid block of pasta!
|
| So she threw it out, started over with some Campbells canned
| stuff and never told anybody.
| candyman wrote:
| I also like the "forever bottle" that is common with bourbon
| lovers like me. You take one of your nicer bottles and when
| another one is close to empty you don't finish it but instead
| dump it into a "forever bottle" that keeps evolving with the
| different leftover bourbons you pour into it.
| simonsarris wrote:
| You could call this your solera. Most famously, sherry, port
| wine, madeira, and some vinegars are made with a similar system
| used to blend ages.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solera
| twawaaay wrote:
| Soleras are not perpetual. They just diminish volume over
| time and so are put into smaller casks until they are
| bottled.
| kgwgk wrote:
| "No container is ever completely drained, so some of the
| earlier product always remains in each container."
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Solera
| jollyllama wrote:
| Tangentially related would be Navy coffee, which sailors say is
| made in pots that are never cleaned and develop a "varnish" of
| sorts.
| nerdponx wrote:
| People say the same about Bialetti-style "moka pot" coffee
| makers. The reality is that any "varnish" is just old rancid
| coffee oil.
| Cpoll wrote:
| I agree. People: clean your moka pots! If you believe the
| patina improves your coffee, test your theory: Brew a batch
| with just water, and give it a taste.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I think a pretty big component of it is protein? Mine only
| comes off with the special cleaner, or powdered detergent
| (not the liquid kind which is missing some anti enzyme
| cleaners) (or lots of scrubbing)
| b3morales wrote:
| Polymerized oil seems more likely, similar to the
| impossible-to-clean gunk that forms on kitchen surfaces
| from cooking fats.
| munificent wrote:
| If it gets hot enough to polymerize, then it's probably
| essentially the same as a seasoned cast iron pan.
| Groxx wrote:
| Given that 1) the coffee stays on top, away from the
| heat, 2) you boil water in them, which restricts the
| maximum temperature, and 3) they have rubber seals:
| unless you're disassembling them and popping them into
| the oven frequently, I very much expect the answer is no.
| Just rancid.
|
| I will caveat this with "I am not a fan of moka pot
| coffee" though. I think it's usually awful. Better than,
| like, diner coffee, but still.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Indeed, for me moka pot is just one tiny step above
| percolator coffee.
| salawat wrote:
| Navy cooks will bust the bubble promptly. They clean the pots
| religiously, the difference is that each cook treats the brew
| differently. If a cook left a vessel or had a mate make the
| coffee, sailors'll notice the change in treatment.
|
| Also, you have to keep in mind, Navy coffee is a mythic
| thing. Taking on a spiritual character from being a source of
| constancy and solace in an otherwise stressful/hostile
| environment. It's a morale thing.
| ezekg wrote:
| I call this an "infinity bottle." I mix both bourbon and
| scotch, too. Typically the last ounce or 2 of a bottle.
| Sometimes it ends up pretty meh, but other times it's
| fantastic. If I don't like the flavor, I'll come back to it in
| a month and see if it has mellowed out at all. I also keep list
| of what's in there taped to the bottle.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just a note that I've found infinity bottles of Scotch don't
| work nearly as well as American whiskeys do; Scotches don't
| all play nice with each other (and I don't drink a lot of
| phenolic Islay stuff; I'm saying, like, a bottle full of
| random Speysides gets funky quickly.)
| ezekg wrote:
| It will definitely depend on the scotch. I mixed an Ardbeg
| Uigeadail into the bottle and it changed it considerably,
| but not in a terribly bad way especially after it sat for a
| couple weeks. But I think that's part of the journey. Right
| now, it's pretty heavy on the Islay (peated) scotch so it
| is definitely a bit weird at times, but it'll change over
| time with my palette, and I like that.
|
| For example, right now I'm really into blended whiskies
| like Wolves [0], and as such the infinity bottle is
| starting to change from that characteristic Islay
| peat/smoke flavor profile to a more American whiskey
| profile.
|
| I've found that writing tasting notes help me enjoy a weird
| whiskey a bit more, which includes the infinity bottle.
|
| (But I will admit -- I have wanted to dump the bottle
| before! In that case, I just topped with bourbon and
| considered it a soft restart.)
|
| [0]: https://wolveswhiskeyca.com
| andrewstuart wrote:
| What does food science say about the safety of this?
|
| Sound disgusting to me and a good way to get salmonella.
|
| Imagine the goop stuck up the sides of the pot.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| It seems like it's common sense, but the article points it out
| anyway: Keep the broth on simmer and put it in the fridge or
| freezer when not in use.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://kaijutegu.tumblr.com/post/188783528423/heres-what-a-...
|
| also, pope water!
| [deleted]
| dbspin wrote:
| British comedians Lee & Herring brilliantly satirised this in
| their sketch show in the 90's -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbhFA7JY_I
| anfractuosity wrote:
| It does mention sherry, but don't think it mentioned the process
| they use for that is called solera -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solera
|
| It's also done with sour beer, but with a single vessel,
| http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Solera has an interesting
| explanation 'to continuously make sour beer'
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The details here are intriguing. It's also a kind of classic
| differential equation problem. I.e. take a desert lake fed by a
| small stream carrying dissolved minerals, which loses half its
| water by evaporation (removing no mineral) and half by an
| outflowing stream - what's the concentration of minerals in the
| lake relative to the feeder streams?
|
| First, how long should you wait before adding fresh bones,
| vegetables, etc to the soup before serving it, if it's always
| simmering at 200F (94C)?
|
| Second, what percentage of the soup is consumed per day? Taking
| one bowl out a 100-bowl pot of soup per day is vastly different
| from serving 90 bowls per day, then restarting with only 10 bowls
| left in the 100-bowl pot. This allows asking the question, "what
| percentage of the food added a week ago is still in the pot".
|
| Also if you're adding bones I imagine the whole pot is strained
| from time to time to remove such solids.
| netsharc wrote:
| Also in Thailand (there seems to be many videos with different
| years of how old the soup is):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29RxjfH0H1k
|
| Some podcasters talking about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX2lUssXJpc&t=889s
| aaron695 wrote:
| pugworthy wrote:
| This reminds me of Tim Power's historical/fantasy book "The
| Drawing of The Dark". It centers on a constantly used, very large
| beer brewing barrel where a magical dark beer accumulates at the
| very bottom over time. And it's only to be drank every 700 years.
| damn_trolls wrote:
| > "I became an expert at hiding food from customs officials."
|
| and
|
| > "Of course not. Americans can be so naive about cuisine. They
| would refuse to eat it. So I tell them after," she admits with a
| laugh.
|
| One wonders if the tone of this article (and the discussion here)
| would be so complimentary if the protagonist were an Asian or
| brown person...
| kbutler wrote:
| Another one read the examples that included China, Bangkok, and
| Tokyo and the comments talking about mole.
| madrox wrote:
| I'm reminded of ramen restaurants I've visited that tell stories
| about their broth and its origins, mentioning that it's been
| simmering for decades. Some of the more famous ramen places I've
| visited have gone so far as to point out that the broth is made
| offsite in case anyone was thinking about attempting to tamper
| with it. Maybe some of that is for dramatic effect, but I imagine
| if you're a competitive restaurant and your success is dependent
| on something decades old, then you need to protect it.
| supernova87a wrote:
| "170-180 years"! https://youtu.be/fpjFQoTWNUY?t=374
| colpabar wrote:
| I have nothing to add except for my somewhat amusing personal
| anecdote that this post was right above the post about "forever
| chemicals" when I clicked it. "Perpetual broths" would make a
| funny satire of "organic" packaging for "forever chemicals".
| acchow wrote:
| We do something like this at home. Not quite a perpetual broth,
| but a week-long broth. Re-boil it twice a day.
| mr3martinis wrote:
| Anyone intrigued by the idea of meals and flavors evolving over
| time from leftovers should read An Everlasting Meal, which
| describes similar techniques.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Everlasting-Meal-Cooking-Economy-Grac...
| stevenfoster wrote:
| In Mexico, there are some people who do this with Mole
|
| Most famously now is Enrique Olvera of Pujol fame from Season two
| of Chefs table on Netflix.
|
| I like many, grew up with some kind of stove top medley that'd be
| going for a while.
| sayrer wrote:
| This one is excellent. I've eaten Wattana Panich, Ekkamai
| (wathnaaphaanich-kwyetiiywenuue`) as well. Pujol might be my
| favorite restaurant. It's not that hard to get a taco omakase
| seat at the bar.
| gumby wrote:
| My father grew up (1930s and 40s) with a batch of soup always on
| the back of the stove. He moved away to university and then
| married my mum, a physician, who found the idea of that
| horrifyingly unhygienic.
|
| He told me about this at some point when I was a kid, and
| observed that he was basically never sick after he grew up and
| moved out.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This is similar to the solera method
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solera)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| TWO profiled broths were destroyed by bombs in war. Apparently a
| leading cause of broth destruction.
|
| > an even older pot, in Perpignan [France], had been bubbling
| since the 1400s until it finally met its demise in 1945 during
| World War II bombing raids.
|
| > The broth [in Tokyo's historic Asakusa quarter] would be going
| on 100 today, but the previous batch was lost in 1945 during
| World War II bombing.
|
| 1945 was not a good year for ancient broth, among other things.
| n1b0m wrote:
| Oh, the humanity. Everyone please ramen calm
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| True, it's best not to stew on the past.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Participating in a pun thread on HN is souper risky.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Sometimes we're serious, sometimes we noodle around
| khuey wrote:
| I would expect a lot of long-running things are lost to wars or
| big natural disasters.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| It actually makes me really sad to think that bombs destroyed
| the broth from 1400 AD.
|
| I do realize this isn't much of a start on what WWII
| destroyed.
| codalan wrote:
| Reminds me of a place in Memphis called Dyer's Burgers. They've
| continually refreshed 100+ year old grease and reuse it for
| frying their food: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/44635
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I'm not sure if the math holds up on this. Diluted over and over
| I doubt there is any of the previous remaining (enough to taste)
| and soup is boiling I assume so there's no bacteria you are
| keeping going like with mole or sourdough.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Yeah, I remember watching a YouTube video of a Japanese
| restaurant owner, who does the same thing: every day, he
| refills his broth pot to full, puts more bones in, and leaves
| simmering. He said that he only had to restart a decade or so
| because of tsunami induced flood.
|
| Sounds cool, but then if you do the math, and assume that every
| day he uses half of the broth, then after only 10 days, there
| is only around a teaspoon of the original broth in it, after 20
| days there is only around a single drop, and after one month,
| you only get a thousandth part of a single drop.
| asplake wrote:
| If my maths is correct, in the limit, after renewing half
| each day, the whole is on average a day old.
| spike021 wrote:
| >Sounds cool, but then if you do the math, and assume that
| every day he uses half of the broth, then after only 10 days,
| there is only around a teaspoon of the original broth in it,
| after 20 days there is only around a single drop, and after
| one month, you only get a thousandth part of a single drop.
|
| Shouldn't whatever is remaining still have some influence on
| the fresh ingredients being added?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The answer depends on whether you believe in homeopathy.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I think the fact that there's no bacteria remaining is the
| point, since food preservation was a real issue then.
|
| Aren't there autocatalytic oxidation reactions? There might be
| flavor effects from always having a pool of those ready to
| oxidize new ingredients.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Also the perceptual flavor effects of the associated story on
| the broth being old.
| notfromhere wrote:
| at least for soups, it always tastes better on the second
| day.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| From a surviving poverty approach it really makes a ton of sense.
| You just throw whatever you have in the pot and that's breakfast
| and dinner. It sort of averages out nutritional content between
| when you have more money or less. More money and meat goes in,
| less money and just vegetables go in.
| jpitz wrote:
| Reminds me of the Stone Soup story from the original creators of
| Fractint.
| easybake wrote:
| Fractint is new to me (cool! this would be fun to build in
| javascript...) but I was thinking of the same story.
|
| Fractint Mandelbrot Generator V17.3 -
| https://archive.org/details/MEDLEY_SE230215
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
| peterclary wrote:
| Reminiscent of Rincewind's roll-up cigarettes made from fragments
| of old roll-ups: "The implacable law of averages therefore
| dictated that some of that tobacco had been smoked almost
| continuously for many years now."
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Kind of related to this is the concept of "Brunswick Stew." Look
| it up if you want a more accurate description, but as I recall,
| the idea from Colonial times in America is that there'd be a
| tavern/inn with a fire, constantly running, and a big cauldron of
| stew always topped off and ready for weary travelers. The idea is
| that they never "finished" a batch. They just perpetually added
| leftovers and foods that were at risk of spoiling.
|
| It's like a Soup of Theseus... it's always the same stew, but it
| so gradually evolves, the flavour changes, the ingredients
| change, but there it is.
|
| The concept feels incredibly cozy to me, both in practical and
| conceptual terms.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Cozy is the perfect word and I find myself noting often that
| the things I naturally find to be cozy are related somehow to
| finding small portals of comfort to make surviving in a harsh
| world a little easier, developed by people over the millenia.
| sklargh wrote:
| Came here to make a Ship-of-Theseus dad joke, beaten throughly
| to the punch.
| jghn wrote:
| Same. "Soup of Theseus" is an amazing term.
| sasattack wrote:
| bitwize wrote:
| My dad would tell me of roadside chili houses in the
| southwestern USA (Texas, California, etc.) that always had a
| pot of chili going that they would ladle out to hungry
| travelers. The meat in the chili supposedly varied according to
| what was available: usually beef, pork, or roadkill.
| pishpash wrote:
| Sounds disgusting and unhealthy. May as well drink stomach
| acid. There is something about freshness of food not just
| sterility.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I worked, as a teenager, in a Michelin starred hotel in the
| U.K. - they had, in the kitchen, an enormous stockpot, as tall
| as a man, which must have held 500 litres or more of stock,
| perpetually simmering. There was a stepladder to get up to
| chuck stuff (bones, vegetable scraps, you name it) in, and it
| had a tap at the bottom to fill smaller cauldrons from. It was
| explained to me that it had been going since the 50's. Not
| quite ancient, but pretty elderly.
|
| Long shift on a cold winter night, nothing beat a mug or two of
| that stock.
| pontifier wrote:
| Interesting idea. Really fast food because it's so slow.
| blahedo wrote:
| Huh. I am a relatively recent (11 years) transplant to Virginia
| and had never heard of Brunswick Stew until I moved here, where
| lots of people make it (it's "traditional") but I have always
| found it to be thin, bland, and insipid, so I'll take the
| minimum amount to be polite at an event but otherwise avoid it.
|
| But of course they're all making it fresh from a recipe. I
| wonder if the reason I'm finding it bland is that the true
| traditional version includes a range of flavours from all the
| previous leftovers? That seems very plausible to me.
| shagmin wrote:
| My wife hates it because growing up in North Carolina she
| associated it with hunters throwing in bits of meat from
| whatever their most recent kill was - rabbit, squirrel, maybe
| venison. Never know what you're eating.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Traditionally, the first step is making stock from a bowling-
| ball.
| twiddling wrote:
| Stirring with the number 7 pin of course
| mbg721 wrote:
| My parents were too well-off for Brunswick Stew, so we
| had Titleist Bisque instead.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It is just bland. I grew in southern Virginia and it was a
| fixture of wintertime and often sold by churches and fire
| departments. At best, it's tomatoey and doesn't have too many
| lima beans, but is always a bit gluey and the meat just sort
| of turns into little string of muscle fiber. Honestly it
| makes me a little queasy just thinking about it. Most of the
| time it seems to have been cooled for 2-3 days prior to sale,
| for what that's worth.
| scandox wrote:
| We had a salad like that for a while but I think it was in
| danger of becoming a serious health risk after a week or so.
| krisroadruck wrote:
| also known as hunters pot / stew. Essentially the same thing as
| thing as the broth, but in stew form:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew
|
| I've actually done this myself in a crock pot for up to a few
| weeks at a time. The order you add stuff makes a difference.
| You don't want to toss in fish or anything with real strong
| flavors too early in your run or it funks things up for a few
| days. Much as the concept is fun, soup/stew every day gets
| weary pretty fast. Fun for short bursts in the winter though.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I just had my first cup of Brunswick Stew the other day.
| Extremely delicious and was as cozy as you said.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Perhaps i'm geeking this out too much, but I guess it depends
| on ingress-vs-egress and drawdown....but...doesn't including
| nearly spoiling food risk the whole stew going bad in a few
| days? Or do the constant simmer prevent that?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't know. I'm not sure the historians fully know. This
| concept might even be apocryphal to an extent. What I have
| learned is that the concept evolved (like so much cooking
| does) from what I described into a "it's actually now a
| recipe that people prepare once."
|
| Something else I learned is that back in the day, people had
| different expectations for food quality. We would regularly
| eat rancid meat (many BBQ sauces were specifically built to
| hide/safen up rancid meat). And maybe while the concept was
| "it's always going", there were practical things we like to
| exclude from oral/written tradition, such as "well...
| actually we purge it once a week otherwise it goes completely
| bad." Who knows!
| inetknght wrote:
| > _well... actually we purge it once a week otherwise it
| goes completely bad_
|
| I know that when I cook stews I often end up with a lot of
| food bits stuck and eventually burned at the bottom and
| sides of the pot. I can imagine keeping it going by pouring
| the stew contents to another pot so that I could clean the
| first pot though. Without doing that... those stuck &
| burned bits will certainly add "flavor" to the stew.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> ...those stuck & burned bits will certainly add
| "flavor" to the stew._
|
| Cooking fuel from wood was expensive to procure, so if I
| were making such a stew I'd cook it low and slow to
| conserve precious wood, so maybe they "cooked" over coals
| back then.
|
| If I were to do this today, I'd top off with lots of
| water before bedtime so there won't be burnt bits in the
| morning. Maybe try to seal the lid edge with dough that
| can be used as bread in the morning to sop up the stew
| (might need to do 2-3 batches of such bread to make the
| supply of it last through the day).
|
| I'd also likely use a rocket stove, a pot heat exchanger
| [1], and hot water pipes on the inside and outside of the
| rocket stove exhaust port to extract out as much working
| heat as possible.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1j1RI3D7Zk
| dekhn wrote:
| This stuff is known as "fond" and it's commonly used to
| make flavorful liquids (stock/broth).
| robbie-c wrote:
| > This concept might even be apocryphal to an extent.
|
| I've been to a pub in rural Cambridgeshire that had this on
| the menu. I made them laugh by asking what was in it and
| was it vegetarian.
|
| I don't know if they were legally allowed to have it, but
| they did have it.
| SatvikBeri wrote:
| Almost all dangerous bacteria develops in temperatures
| between 40 and 140 degrees, so as long as you keep the stew
| hot enough it's likely to be fine:
| https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-
| and...
| malfist wrote:
| To add to this, the ones that survive outside that range
| are typically anaerobic and can't survive being exposed to
| air, so that makes it even less likely to be a vector for
| food poisoning
| zarzavat wrote:
| Food goes bad when either there are microbes growing in it
| (you get sick from infection), or there _have been_ microbes
| growing and those microbes have left behind toxins (you get
| poisoned).
|
| Nothing can remain alive in a boiling pot of stew, the few
| things that can survive have very specialized habitats. So
| the only things you have to worry about are non-living
| poisons: toxins and prions. Since these by definition cannot
| reproduce, it's only a problem if the food was spoiled before
| it went in the stew.
|
| The chance of encountering a toxin goes to 100% as more and
| more food is added, but it will be dilute, no different to
| consuming food just before it goes bad.
| [deleted]
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Spores will survive boiling, that's why autoclaves
| (pressure cookers) are used in medical research
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave.
|
| But spores are in a state of dormancy, so if you never stop
| boiling the broth, then spores never grow into anything.
| The most dangerous thing would probably be to boil the
| broth in stops in starts
| mgc_mgc wrote:
| Depending on the circumstances, boiling in stops and
| starts may not be too bad:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndallization
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| That is amazing! So basically you trick the bacteria into
| exiting their spore/dormant phase before you hit them
| again with another boil.
|
| It seems risky because if you ever let the spores divide
| at all then you introduce further variation and a
| selection process into the mix, which could be
| disastrous.
|
| But that reminds me of the "shock and kill" strategy used
| to get HIV out of its latent state before killing the
| virions: https://clinicalinfo.hiv.gov/en/glossary/shock-
| and-kill-stra...
|
| And I guess this effect is also why chemotherapy drugs
| work best on fast-growing tumors.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Before refrigeration people were a lot less picky about what
| was considered spoiled food. One of my grandmothers would
| never look at the dates, but just trusted her eyes, nose and
| tongue as to whether something was fit for consumption or
| not, regardless of how much it was past the 'best before'
| date.
| bitdivision wrote:
| Best before not bad after
| ben_w wrote:
| The labels include "best before", "sell by", and "use
| by", and they don't mean the same thing.
| abyssin wrote:
| Back in my dumpster diving days, I discovered how useful
| the sense of smell can be. Surprisingly, using it to detect
| bad food also changed the way I enjoyed good food. It
| became very pleasurable to eat fresh food!
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I haven't had it personally, but one of my SO's tried a famous
| "perpetual stew" when in France and we talked about it at one
| point. Her description kinda matched what I'd expect from
| braises that I've let go to long: you end up with bland mush.
|
| I think there's a reason very few restaurants serve this style
| of dish, and it's not because of health codes. We live in an
| era of insane abundance compared to the medeivil and colonial
| eras. A lot of historic dishes from those times just don't
| stand up to the expectations of a modern pallet.
| curiousllama wrote:
| I've always thought of it more as a way to conserve the
| calories that food represent, rather than a delicious dish in
| its own right
| notfromhere wrote:
| It's a romantic notion but if you simmer anything for too
| long it'll just be generic food water at some point
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > I think there's a reason very few restaurants serve this
| style of dish
|
| It is in fact quite common in some parts of China, as the OP
| mentions. But it's just a stock, used in other dishes, not a
| dish of it's own.
|
| > more specifically in the cuisines of Canton and Fujian,
| where there's a rich tradition of making lou mei, or master
| stock, which is used to braise and poach meats.
|
| I had read about this before, I recall an article about maybe
| a US restaurant where the chef had brought the lou mei over
| from China, and the sous chefs who were tasked with keeping
| it going. I can't seem to track down the article now. But my
| understanding is that in fact very many restuarants in China
| do this, it's standard.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Not sure about China, but I've encountered local
| restaurants boasting broth that has continuously been
| cooked for decades in both Thailand and in Philippines.
| basseed wrote:
| thanks for your comment,
|
| just a small correction, it's "medieval" and "palate"
| paxys wrote:
| Not quite the same as Ship of Theseus because the soup will
| never be fully replaced. The will always be some bits of the
| original - no matter how small - hanging around forever.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| the dilution level is presumably not the same, so I'm
| nitpicking, but technically it could be like with omeopathy
| [1], where the initial substance can be so diluted it is
| guaranteed that there is no trace of it at the molecular
| level in the final preparation.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_and_efficacy_of_
| hom...
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think the coziness of this recipe might be tempered somewhat
| by the fun food-borne illnesses that would have to spring up
| doing this.
| unixhero wrote:
| I think if it is brought to a boil every hour it should be
| safe-ish
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| As others have said throughout these comments, as long as you
| keep the temperature high constantly, it won't be an issue.
|
| Bacteria won't survive in simmering water, so time alone will
| not cause it to go bad. The toxins that bacteria produce can
| survive, which means tainted ingredients being added might
| spoil it, but as always, the poison is in the dose. With a
| large enough pot, a couple pieces of spoiled food likely
| won't cause illness.
| twelve40 wrote:
| how do they manage to avoid that in the article? they list at
| least three different restaurants that serve these long-
| running soups, surely they don't poison their customers?
| x13 wrote:
| The article mentions keeping it at or above 200 degrees.
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