Whats Wrong With My Honey?

[JJM]

{snip} JJM
Hive temperatures are not room temperature [You cite an average temp. for the hive.]

- raw honey is not liquid at normal room temp, the apiary page suggested "gentle heating" to stay within bounds for preserving active biologicals. I suspect a beekeeper knows her work. Mine does.

I've no such urge to "gentle heating" and stick it in the dish washer and it stays liquid for a couple of months.

Conflating dishwasher temp and hive temp is entirely your own leap.

You wrote about gentle heating and followed it with your preference for the dishwasher. Now that you acknowledge you did not mean to conflate the two, I understand.

BTW, the average temperature for enzyme storage is not as important as the maximum temperature (in terms of preserving its activity). I also wonder what "active biologicals" you refer to. What is their activity, such that one would wish to preserve it? (Or, did you neglect to say that you don't care about that?)

 

[ponderingturtle]

I would not, for my part, try to swim in honey. Viscous and sticky liquids are already used by various carnivorous plants to trap & kill insects. That should tell you much about being able to swim in it, or just to maintain your head at the surface.

Well there was that study that won an ignobel prize a few years ago that had people swimming in a pool of syrup.

 

[ponderingturtle]

So is sand. You can't swim in quicksand.

I guess that if you avoid moving (ie, swimming), you would just slowly sink.

Well float. Most people float in water, and would float well in honey.

 

[ZirconBlue]

like using a chef's knife to cut parchment paper (big no no. My instructors would have had my head if they caught me doing that).

Why?

 

[krazyKemist]

Well float. Most people float in water, and would float well in honey.

mmmm...

I'm not that sure. Even in water, people's floatability depends hugely on the air contents in the lungs, and they need to swim a little to maintain head on the surface. Honey is bound to have more wetting power than water because of the sugar content. If you put it on your skin, it slowly spreads out in a thin coat, compared with water which forms drops. It would help it, along with gravity and body heat (which will contribute to lower viscosity locally), to suck you in.

 

[ponderingturtle]

mmmm...

I'm not that sure. Even in water, people's floatability depends hugely on the air contents in the lungs, and they need to swim a little to maintain head on the surface.

Depends on the subjects density and the density of the water. A fat man in the dead sea, probably needs to do little to float.

Now people could still drown, with things like panicing. Note that the mythbusters did test quicksand and fount that they floated well in it.

Getting out of a pool of honey could be very very difficult, but I don't see how someone would sink in honey.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Why?

Dulls the knife.

 

[tesscaline]

Why?

It dulls the knife, and depending on where you're doing the cutting, can ruin the bevel on the cutting edge as well.

 

[ZirconBlue]

It dulls the knife, and depending on where you're doing the cutting, can ruin the bevel on the cutting edge as well.

Paper with a little bit of silicone dulls a steel knife? More than normal usage?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Paper with a little bit of silicone dulls a steel knife? More than normal usage?

Well paper is much tougher than most things you would cut with a kitchen knife.

Is it meaningful for the home cook? Probably not, but if you were cutting it often enough it would dull the blade faster than cutting meat or vegitables.

 

[krazyKemist]

Well paper is much tougher than most things you would cut with a kitchen knife.

Is it meaningful for the home cook? Probably not, but if you were cutting it often enough it would dull the blade faster than cutting meat or vegitables.

My brother held a job as assistant to a butcher once. He learned proper knife sharpening and care there. These guys sharpen their knives several times a day, and generally don't like even another butcher using their own.

They would go absolutely bonkers if they saw you cut paper or anything else than food with their knives. Uneven scraches on the knife makes it very difficult (or even impossible) to bring it back to its original sharpness (my brother struggled a lot just to learn how to sharpen a well-used knife properly).

 

[BenBurch]

Honey has been like this since I was a child, at least. And I have seen really old recipes that called for Honey in that state to make frosting.

 

[ZirconBlue]

My brother held a job as assistant to a butcher once. He learned proper knife sharpening and care there. These guys sharpen their knives several times a day, and generally don't like even another butcher using their own.

They would go absolutely bonkers if they saw you cut paper or anything else than food with their knives. Uneven scraches on the knife makes it very difficult (or even impossible) to bring it back to its original sharpness (my brother struggled a lot just to learn how to sharpen a well-used knife properly).

I still don't see how paper is more damaging to a knife edge than, say, a wooden cutting board. Or cutting apart chicken pieces.

I've only got a couple of good knives, and I try to take good care of them, so I'm always interested in learning about such things.

 

[tesscaline]

I still don't see how paper is more damaging to a knife edge than, say, a wooden cutting board. Or cutting apart chicken pieces.

I've only got a couple of good knives, and I try to take good care of them, so I'm always interested in learning about such things.

First, I have to say this: You shouldn't be using a wooden cutting board due to sanitation concerns. Plastic cutting boards can be soaked in bleach, wooden ones cannot. If you do use a wooden cutting board, you should never EVER use it for meat or chicken as it is porous, and will absorb any contaminated juices and transfer them to other foods.

Now, on to the real subject of your post. Paper, due to the condensed fibrous nature of it, will dull --any-- blade (even scissors) faster than most other materials. It causes uneven scratches in the blade (as opposed to other food substances that cause even wear) that can be almost impossible to re-hone out of the metal. The other thing is that the thinness of the paper, combined with the pressure needed to cut through it, causes the edge of the blade to curl over ruining the bevel of the cutting edge, and requiring extensive re-honing. Believe it or not, cellulose is an extremely tough material, and the way it is compacted and compressed into a piece of paper makes it even more tough. Unprocessed wood is much much softer than paper is.

This is not a phenomena that is isolated to the culinary world. Quilters don't use the same pair of scissors to cut paper as they do for fabric for the very same reasons a chef won't use his chef's knife to cut paper -- paper ruins the edge, and makes the blade less effective on softer items (which require a sharper blade, by the way, to be cut well).

You can do simple experiments at home to verify what's been said here. For example: take a stack of paper equal in thickness to a food item, and try to cut through it with a knife (don't use an expensive knife!). Using a different knife (you'll have pretty much ruined the other one), cut through the food item. Note the difference in difficulty.

For a more in depth study, you'll want a magnifying glass or microscope. Take two knives, sharpened equally, and examine the blades under the microscope (make special note of the bevel). Use one to cut paper, use the other to cut food. Look at the blades again under the microscope and note the differences in decay of the bevel (curvature, blunting, irregular indentation, etc.).

 

[ponderingturtle]

My brother held a job as assistant to a butcher once. He learned proper knife sharpening and care there. These guys sharpen their knives several times a day, and generally don't like even another butcher using their own.

They would go absolutely bonkers if they saw you cut paper or anything else than food with their knives. Uneven scraches on the knife makes it very difficult (or even impossible) to bring it back to its original sharpness (my brother struggled a lot just to learn how to sharpen a well-used knife properly).

Define Sharpen. They probably used a steel or a strop to true the edge. This makes it cut better because it aligns the edge and removes any curl over. This is not sharpening. That is done not by rebending the edge like stroping or useing a butchers steel, but by using some sort of abrasive like a sharpening stone.

The uneven scratches sounds like needing to reset a bevel

 

[EHocking]

First, I have to say this: You shouldn't be using a wooden cutting board due to sanitation concerns. Plastic cutting boards can be soaked in bleach, wooden ones cannot. If you do use a wooden cutting board, you should never EVER use it for meat or chicken as it is porous, and will absorb any contaminated juices and transfer them to other foods.

Odd. This is the exact opposite to "what I have heard"(TM). I had heard that something in wood actually works as an antibacterial which kills bacteria if the board is left out. Unlike plastic and glass that keeps the bacteria wet and active. In fact, by observation in a butcher's shop, I would have thought that if this were true they would not have any wooden chopping boards. Which they, in the majority, do.

A quick Google to check my memory finds a study by Wisconsin's Food Research Institute (unfortunately the institue itself isn't carrying paper's this far back, so I only have 2nd or 3rd hand cites):

Researchers at the Institute intentionally contaminated both wooden cutting boards and plastic ones with all types of bacteria that cause food poisoning. They then tested the boards regularly, without washing or touching them, to see what happened to the bacteria. Surprisingly, all of the bacteria on the wooden board dried off within three minutes. On the plastic board, the bacteria not only remained alive but actually multiplied overnight.

The explanation for the dramatic results is that wood has a natural bacteria-killing property, which plastic does not. Because of the capillary action of dry wood, germs quickly disappear beneath the surface of the board, where they die quickly. The exposed area on top of the board is free from microbes. In contrast, bacteria just sit on the hard surface of a plastic cutting board, ready to attack whatever food is placed on the board next.

Researchers also discovered that hand scrubbing with hot water and soap will remove microbes from the surface of wooden and plastic cutting boards, new or used, but plastic boards that have been scarred by knife blades are resistant to decontamination by hand washing. But as long as a plastic board is washed with antibacterial soap or cleaner, it is probably safe.

Another researcher backs this up with, "Although the bacteria that have disappeared from the wood surfaces are found alive inside the wood for some time after application, they evidently do not multiply, and they gradually die. They can be detected only by splitting or gouging the wood or by forcing water completely through from one surface to the other. If a sharp knife is used to cut into the work surfaces after used plastic or wood has been contaminated with bacteria and cleaned manually, more bacteria are recovered from a used plastic surface than from a used wood surface."

Note that the above is not addressing cross contamination, such as chopping other foods immediately after chopping raw chicken on the same board.

 

[tesscaline]

Odd. This is the exact opposite to "what I have heard"(TM). I had heard that something in wood actually works as an antibacterial which kills bacteria if the board is left out. Unlike plastic and glass that keeps the bacteria wet and active. In fact, by observation in a butcher's shop, I would have thought that if this were true they would not have any wooden chopping boards. Which they, in the majority, do.

<snipped article>

Note that the above is not addressing cross contamination, such as chopping other foods immediately after chopping raw chicken on the same board.

And what I posted in mine does have to do with cross contamination, as well as other variables that that study ignored completely (I've read it in the past, by the way).

First rules in food safety: 1) Have one cutting board for raw meats/poultry only. Preferably have separate boards for different types of meats, but that's not really practical in a home kitchen. 2) Always disinfect cutting boards with bleach and scalding hot water. If you don't want to use bleach, throw them in the dishwasher instead of hand washing because the temperatures get higher than a person can generally stand on their hands.

You cannot bleach wooden cutting boards, nor put them in a dishwasher (without severely damaging them -- the wood splits) therefore they are not advised. Using wooden cutting boards also risks winding up with splinters in food (I've seen it happen). Yes, wood has natural anti-bacterial properties, but wood also does not react well to water, steam, or bleach. If you want to be able to keep using a cutting board repeatedly (without having to replace it every few weeks), for foods at risk for food borne illnesses, then you want a plastic one. If all you are doing is chopping carrots, then wood is just fine.

Now. Butcher's have very different needs in regards to cutting surfaces. Butchers require a butcher's block which can stand up to a lot of pounding and heavy cleaver use, and won't move because of that kind of abuse. Plastic doesn't work well for that. It's lighter than wood, so slides easily, and is a bit softer than wood, so would warp and break put under that kind of strain. Butchers also have less of a concern regarding cross contamination as they work pretty much exclusively with raw meats. They do also (well, the most sanitation minded of them anyway) use different cutting surfaces for different types of meats; i.e. they won't cut chicken on the same board as they cut beef.

I will also point out that plastic cutting boards put less wear and tear on a knife blade than a wood cutting board does, so they increase the life of kitchen knives (which, in a professional setting, can be several hundred dollars apiece).

 

[EHocking]

While not wishing to appear to be virulently disagreeing with you. My personal experience, using wooden boards for 30 odd years, is that the warnings and the extreme cleansing suggestions border on unwarranted hysteria.

I've prepared a number of meals with mixed meats and veg etc (including the apparent deadliest of dishes, carbonara) and never, ever caused myself or others any type of food poisoning.

Nod to your cautions though, I (probably) always rinse down a board if I've chopped raw chicken on it. Current wooden chopping board is probably 15 years old and has never thrown a splinter into food even when using a chopper.
ETA: It's an edge grain board.

I have to admit, I can't find anything definitive on whether wood or plastic is better for knives' edges. I'd be interested purely for my own curiosity, if there is any evidence for plastics being better - all plastics not being the same, of course.
ETA: Googling gives the impression that edge grain wooden boards are better. YVMV - I'm not attempting to start a war on this!

 

[tesscaline]

While not wishing to appear to be virulently disagreeing with you. My personal experience, using wooden boards for 30 odd years, is that the warnings and the extreme cleansing suggestions border on unwarranted hysteria.

I've prepared a number of meals with mixed meats and veg etc (including the apparent deadliest of dishes, carbonara) and never, ever caused myself or others any type of food poisoning.

Nod to your cautions though, I (probably) always rinse down a board if I've chopped raw chicken on it. Current wooden chopping board is probably 15 years old and has never thrown a splinter into food even when using a chopper.
ETA: It's an edge grain board.

I have to admit, I can't find anything definitive on whether wood or plastic is better for knives' edges. I'd be interested purely for my own curiosity, if there is any evidence for plastics being better - all plastics not being the same, of course.
ETA: Googling gives the impression that edge grain wooden boards are better. YVMV - I'm not attempting to start a war on this!

Eh, I'm not interested in starting a war either.

Thing is, all these "which is better" questions are highly dependent up on the situation.

For your average home cook, it really doesn't matter if your cutting board is wood or plastic as you're not using it enough to be affected by the small advantages to either (yes, each has their own advantages). The home cook's liabilities are also lower, as the average home cook doesn't cook for 500 people a day.

However, in an industrial setting, those small differences can have a huge impact both to sanitation and cost concerns.

I approach the matter from an industrial point of view, as I was trained that way. And in an industrial setting, "extreme decontamination procedures" are rather necessary.

Basically, we're both right.

In-re your ETA: Yes, end grain wooden boards are better than plank wood. End grain is easier on knives than plank. Plank wood also has a tendency to warp and splinter if treated improperly (note the "treated improperly" part -- a well cared for board will last for decades, but one thrown in the dishwasher repeatedly will only last for months, if that), and most people do treat them improperly, which is one reason why I advocate plastic boards instead (not the paper thin bendable kind mind you, the 1/2-3/4" thick white ones) -- you can mistreat them and they'll still last for years being thrown in a dishwasher

 

[ZirconBlue]

First, I have to say this: You shouldn't be using a wooden cutting board due to sanitation concerns. Plastic cutting boards can be soaked in bleach, wooden ones cannot. If you do use a wooden cutting board, you should never EVER use it for meat or chicken as it is porous, and will absorb any contaminated juices and transfer them to other foods.

I was just using that as an example. I use plastic boards for most applications. I have separate boards for meat and poultry. I have a wood board that I use for slicing bread or other "dry" foods on, and I just got a small bamboo board that I plan to use as a "bar" board, for slicing the occasional lime for cocktails, etc.

Now, on to the real subject of your post. Paper, due to the condensed fibrous nature of it, will dull --any-- blade (even scissors) faster than most other materials. It causes uneven scratches in the blade (as opposed to other food substances that cause even wear) that can be almost impossible to re-hone out of the metal. The other thing is that the thinness of the paper, combined with the pressure needed to cut through it, causes the edge of the blade to curl over ruining the bevel of the cutting edge, and requiring extensive re-honing.

What pressure? If you cut it from the edge, you can do it two-fingered. Isn't the common test for whether your knife is sharp enough performed by slicing a sheet of paper in just such a manner?

Believe it or not, cellulose is an extremely tough material, and the way it is compacted and compressed into a piece of paper makes it even more tough. Unprocessed wood is much much softer than paper is.

This is not a phenomena that is isolated to the culinary world. Quilters don't use the same pair of scissors to cut paper as they do for fabric for the very same reasons a chef won't use his chef's knife to cut paper -- paper ruins the edge, and makes the blade less effective on softer items (which require a sharper blade, by the way, to be cut well).

You can do simple experiments at home to verify what's been said here. For example: take a stack of paper equal in thickness to a food item, and try to cut through it with a knife (don't use an expensive knife!). Using a different knife (you'll have pretty much ruined the other one), cut through the food item. Note the difference in difficulty.

While the paper may be much tougher, you're not cutting through a stack; you cut through a wafer-thin sheet.

For a more in depth study, you'll want a magnifying glass or microscope. Take two knives, sharpened equally, and examine the blades under the microscope (make special note of the bevel). Use one to cut paper, use the other to cut food. Look at the blades again under the microscope and note the differences in decay of the bevel (curvature, blunting, irregular indentation, etc.).

I guess that's where my skepticism comes into play: If I used my knife for cutting parchment (which I don't--there's a cutter on the box, and scissors are much easier), it would be once or twice a month at most. By comparison, I probably make thousands of cuts through food items in that same period. I know that argument from personal incredulity is a logical falacy, but I'd need serious evidence to be convinced that those occasional swipes through paper are doing more damage to my knife than the thousands of strokes through meat and produce in the same period.