Ann Reardon is great, she debunks so much stuff. I didn't even realise how many fake cooking videos there were out there until I started watching her channel

yeah, she's totally underrated

She has almost five million subscribers. How's that "underrated"?

She should have ten million?

That's hogwash. 8.2 million is where she should land.

What we consider food safe depends on local regulations / individual standards. Some people eat raw salmon.

I'd rather say it depends on the source of the fish. In some parts of the world the salmon has parasites, and needs to be either cooked or frozen before it's considered safe to consume. Salmon from other places can however be consumed raw.

See "Up to the 1990s, raw salmon sushi was not eaten in Japan" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34193748

Some eat raw meat but like drawing motorcycle without helmet it is not safe whatever standards you have

C'mon raw meat is one of the absolute best types of food. Beef tartare is great, although in most places I'd not have it home prepared, yet I'd trust most restaurants willing to put in a menu [or 'cooked' if asked directly in the kitchen]

I agree that it might be tasteful and I hope that's what you mean by "best", but health-wise there is nothing good about it.

https://sentientmedia.org/can-humans-eat-raw-meat/

But warming salmon to a temperature where bacteria grow best, and fastest, and then not heating it enough to kill bacteria, is not the same as raw salmon or cooked salmon.

Bacteria appear when preparing the meal. A salmon, uncut, is internally sorta safe, but once cut open, bacteria is introduced.

This is why you don't see cuts of salmon for sale, at room temp. You see cleaned salmon on ice, or in a fridge.

This is a good point. Do bacteria multiply so fast at the right conditions that this would already have an effect during the time it takes to cook + eat the meal?

Depending on where you are in the world, the salmon you eat raw isn't the same as the salmon you eat cooked. There are extra requirements around sashimi grade salmon such as flash freezing to kill parasites.

The risk profile is not the same as eating undercooked salmon that is not intended for raw consumption.

Also depending on where you are all available salmon could be flash frozen and considered safe without cooking.

Depending on where you are the salmon might be less likely to contain parasites and your government food hygiene institution might not consider raw salmon unsafe.

My point is that the original comment seems like US-defaultism.

Salmon is often eaten raw.

That thought popped into my head as well, but I wonder if the raw salmon you get in sushi is fresher or prepared differently to buying it in a supermarket?

Not really. Farmed salmon and tuna are basically safe, because there are FDA controls around how they have to be frozen before they can be sold, which ensures that parasites die. Other fish are basically down to your risk tolerance.

There's just so much misinformation out there about food safety it's insane. If you understand basic hygiene and aren't immunocompromised, there's really not much need to be so terrified of food.

https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-prepare-raw-fish-at-home-...

FYI the FDA does not require tuna to be frozen. It is one of the exceptions, just like farmed fish and some mollusks.

Yes, the "raw" fish that you eat without cooking it, is actually first left for a long time in a special freezer that brings it to a very low temperature to kill bacteria and parasites.

To my knowledge, this is not the case for salmon. Whereas wild salmon is not safe to eat raw unless it has been frozen, this should not be necessary for farm-raised salmon of the highest quality.

Yeah, the FDA guidline is that all fish except for tuna must go though the freezing process, unless they are farm raised.

It doesn't have to be a long time if it's a special freezer. You can use a regular deep freezer (non-defrosting) for a longer time. I believe the protocol is something like -30F for 1 day, or -5F for 14 days.

You should probably remove your guess or provide a source. If people are seriously dumb enough to “cook” with a dishwasher, someone is probably going to also take your guess at face value.

Maybe you should provide a source for your guess that my statement is a guess, or remove it. Maybe you could Google first?

What you will find is that there are multiple sources with slightly differing times, even from reputable agencies. What I have stated is actually on the conservative side. Here's one source that is on the faster side.

https://scdhec.gov/food-safety-freezing-parasite-destruction

That's what I call a long time, but yes, it's just a matter of personal perspective.

Also, IIRC they use a brine/vinegar solution to help kill bacteria.

We would just get an entire salmon from the market and make cerviche out of it. There is always a risk with raw food, but it always seems like Americans are very scared of parasites and "natural".

For instance the eggs need to be stored in the fridge because they are dipped in checmicals, the rest of the world is fine without doing that. Same with chlorine in the water, it's not necessary.

Note that ceviche is a different class of "raw" than e.g. sushi, in that the lime juice does kill _some_ (but not all) parasites. According to https://honest-food.net/ceviche-recipe-safety-parasites-2/, fresh farmed salmon is ok to eat raw, while pacific salmon is pretty risky, on the basis of it being susceptible to seal worm. The article mentions a long freeze (at -4F) being an acceptable way to kill off those parasites before consumption.

To get sick once I don't mind, Im more afraid of those parasites the live with you without noticing. But most Salmon in Europe is transported frozen from Norway before being sold. Even though farmed Salmon comes with it's own problems.

> To get sick once I don't mind, Im more afraid of those parasites the live with you without noticing

Take Ivermectin or other parasite killer once or a couple times per year.

> For instance the eggs need to be stored in the fridge because they are dipped in chemicals, the rest of the world is fine without doing that.

It's fairly common in parts of Europe to store eggs in the fridge too, not because they have to be stored in the fridge (like American eggs do), but because it makes them stay fresh longer.

Shelf-life on a literal shelf is like a week or two. Shelf-life in the fridge is months for euro eggs.

Eggs keep for a month in my kitchen, Norway. Not at their best after that time but perfectly safe.

Now try doing the same on the Mediterranean shore.

I've personally kept eggs unrefrigerated in the tropics for more than 30 days. You just have to flip them every couple of days to keep the shell from drying out inside and cracking. These were eggs purchased in Panama before a sailing trip. You can't do this with US eggs though, as others have pointed out, because the shells are cleaned up (from chicken poop) and polished, removing the protective surface in the process.

This is not true : eggs in Europe have an expiration date of 28 days (without fridge) and there’s still a fair safety margin.

My lack of organisation gave me several times the opportunity to try eggs stores eggs longer than that - maybe 50days - and never had a problem. The only outdated egg I can remember (they are easy to notice by smell !) was “fresh”, strait from the shop, probably small cracks in the shell…

* * *

This is based on buying the eggs at the production day though. Usually they sit in the store for a good while.

The BB date is printed on every egg and egg carton. Just subtract 28 days to work out how long it’s been in storage/transit.

Yeah, sure. But the stuff once you get it usually lasts like a week or two, which is my point. If you keep it outside of the fridge that is.

Maybe you’re in a more remote area? The eggs I buy usually have at least 3 weeks before their BB date. Sometimes they’re only 2-3 days old if I’m lucky. I usually try to buy the freshest eggs I can find as they poach better.

In the UK and Europe, the “best before” date printed on eggs is 28 days from when it was laid. This assumes room temperature storage. Refrigeration can extend storage life beyond this date.

Grew up in a country town and free range eggs from the farm/house gate keep for a surprisingly long time - at least a month.

Regardless of the source I always crack it in a mug to give it a sniff first because you never know when you'll get a bad one the slipped through the cracks

American eggs are prepared differently before they are taken to the store, they are polished and they remove the protective residue which then requires refrigeration. That’s why Americans do it.

yeah my point is, its weird you guys do that, while rest of the world is fine without doing that.

I don't live in the US so "you guys" is a bit presumptive, but I'm sure there are plenty of things Americans would find odd about other countries as well.

> the eggs need to be stored in the fridge because they are dipped in checmicals, the rest of the world is fine without doing that

Also one of the main reasons for chlorine-washing eggs is to reduce the instance of salmonella. But the salmonella is only there because the US will not pass regulation requiring farmers to vaccinate hens, as Europe does.

Ceviche isn't raw. It is delicious though.

It seems most developed countries disinfect their public water systems, often using chlorine. I believe the WHO have recommendations for it.

Northern Europe often not.

I would guess that's only if it's from a groundwater source. I would also guess that's the exception rather than the rule.

https://waterandhealth.org/newsletter/new/summer-1998/disinf...

Ceviche is not raw. It is “cooked” with acids.

I'd be a bit worried about parasites if not knowing the providence of a piece of fish going into sushi.

I make my own sushi at home. I get individually quick frozen filets and freeze them below -5F for about 2 weeks. This way I know they've been through the process.

provenance*

Thanks, I really should have known better! (not sarcastic, I like corrections of errors like this)

Raw salmon is one story. Salmon stored in a lukewarm dishwasher for 2-3 hours, neither cold enough to prevent the growth of bacteria nor hot enough to kill them, is a different story. Imagine a piece of sushi left on the shelf all afternoon in the summer in Phoenix, AZ!

Summer in phoenix gets to 120°F. In a car could get to 160°…

Yup, alomost but not quite the proper temperature for cooking salmon, which is around 130°F.

I’d rather eat salmon cooked in a 160 degree car than a dishwasher.

Hard frozen first.

Not necessary, it can be eaten as freshly caught with enough lime and salt. However what's offered in [the US] supermarkets is another story.

Unfortunately, salmon can contain parasites that we are not resistant too.

It is much safer to freeze even fresh caught salmon. If you are eating raw salmon at a commercial establishment, like a sushi restaurant, it was frozen.

Not all salmon species are sashimi-grade.

Pacific and various types of river salmon must be properly cooked or hot smoked. The same is true for farmed salmon from fresh water ponds.

Farmed Atlantic salmon can be eaten raw, marinated, or cold smoked, but is best deep frozen. Wild Atlantic salmon must be deep frozen.

Do you have links to back this up?

How The Desperate Norwegian Salmon Industry Created A Sushi Staple

https://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/441530790/how-the-desperate-n...

> Not all salmon species are sashimi-grade.

You should never eat any fish or flesh cooked that you wouldn't eat raw.

That's my rule also. I'm mostly pescetarian, and don't eat freshwater fish neither raw or cooked. Even some salt-water fish is not recommended to eat raw.

But frequently even fishmongers and chefs themselves don't know the exact spicies of the fish they selling or serving. There is so much of mislabeling in that industry, so it's impossible to know without DNA testing.

I encountered even some celebrity chefs preparing raw dishes from freshwater fish.

Some even doing it to save money, knowing that it may cause liver cancer to their customers.

It's not that eating raw freshwater fish will always lead to the health problems, the fish should be from the endemic region, but it's still a lottery.

Most people in most places don’t have access to fish/meat they can eat totally raw (without any cooking, curing, smoking, etc).

This simply isn't true. Some things are perfectly safe cooked but unsafe when raw. Pork is a good example of this: Folks get parasites from undercooked pork. (I'm sure there are others, I just know this with pork). Cooking meat saves live and helps prevent food-born illnesses.

Heck, this isn't even true with vegetables. Kidney beans need to be properly cooked so they aren't toxic. One kidney bean is enough to cause stomach distress. This is the reason you shouldn't cook raw kidney beans in a slow cooker - they need boiled. Other legumes have this toxin, but in lesser amounts so it isn't as important and as such, safe with most cooking methods.

> Pork is a good example of this: Folks get parasites from undercooked pork

I recall reading that that’s extraordinarily rare these days, no pun intended. It’s often okay to cook pork medium rare (or lower).

I think some areas do better than others - you'll still want to cook it well if you don't know the regulations.

You get similar differences with chickens: Not all areas require salmonella vaccines, and areas that don't have more cases.

Do you want to eat those parasites after they are cooked? That is what I'm trying to say: I don't want to eat food that has bacteria, worms and parasites - even if they are killed by cooking. That is disgusting.

I don't know how many times I've heard people say they need to cook their meat well or need the restaurant to cook it well to kill those parasites. Don't buy meat you don't trust the quality of! Don't go to restaurants where you think the meat has parasites!

Instead of repeating things by habit that they've been told, why can't people stop and think about what they are doing?

Good luck with never-bacteria foods. It's impossible. 100% no parasites chicken/pork is also hard but you can live without them.

> Good luck with never-bacteria foods.

Thank you! I take care of what I eat and haven't had any food-related problems in many years. I'd rather skip a meal, buy something else, or go somewhere else, than buy something I think is infested.

As for pork meat, I prefer mine medium rare. There are regions and countries that have effectively exterminated pork-born parasites since decades, there is virtually no risk at all for getting parasites from pork within these regions. If you live in a region or country where this is not the case, you shouldn't buy pork meat at all. The parasites are still there, even if you kill them buy cooking. Do you want to eat that?

It isn't about trusting the quality, but about knowing what sort things are normal in foods and treating food safely. You simply cannot avoid certain things, but you can do things that cut down or eliminate risks.

And one of those things is to simply not eat raw meat. It isn't about 'trust' but reality. You aren't going to know about the parasites, and the risk is mitigated through cooking. A lot of food-born pathogens are like this.

Put in another light: We pasteurize milk. Despite our best practices, raw milk will always pose a risk of severe food-born illness. The prudent answer isn't to 'find milk you trust' - it is all like this. The prudent answer is to drink pasteurized milk.

Same with meat. Properly cook your meat. Don't eat wild salmon raw if it hasn't been frozen. And so on. You can apply the same stuff to all food - none of it is 100% safe, and you simply won't be able to verify where it all came from. You won't be able to tell by looking or how much you trust the farmer that grew it.

"Not all salmon species are sashimi-grade."

Do you mean the parasite destructor process doesn't work on all species? If so, do you have some info on that?

Some populations have more parasites than other. Sashimi is cut in fine translucent lames in part for easing to spot the parasites (or more precisely to verify the absence of parasites).

But if you're using the freezing method, the parasites will still be there but be dead. Using modern methods, it seems any species of salmon is safe to use for sashimi. Some are just more palatable than others.

If the parasites are visible my understanding is that is not sashimi grade meat and would be smoked or processed in several ways instead. I assume that Japanese would assure to remove any undesirable aspect in the meat before to make the fish and serve it just because would ruin aesthetics. I could be wrong.

Just for aesthetics, maybe in Japan. In the US, there's no standard for sashimi grade fish. So there's no real difference between most fish marked sashimi grade vs most IQF.

At least in the US, sushi grade salmon has to be flash frozen to be considered safe.

Not if it's farm raised. There's a specific FDA exception for farm raised fish.

>Salmon is often eaten raw.

Is cold smoked salmon considered raw or cooked?

Thank you. I have trouble believing I would eat food prepared in a dishwasher, especially with the suggestion that you could do so while also washing dishes.

There are other stories in this discussion that are similarly fun but should not necessarily be taken as good advice on how to prepare food. Of course, the devil is in the details and maybe it works for one person because they know how to make it work but without explaining a lot more than is mentioned here, you can't necessarily know if it was really safe.

Please don't go off half-cocked and risk your health because of people sharing fun stories here.

My dad once cooked in the engine of the car driving to a lake. Wrapped in foil. Was a veggie burger. They got cooked, haha but they had a very strong cartaste, I kept it with one bite.

there was a whole book of recipies for fookeing on your engine--the title was "Manifold Destiny". I have a copy somewhere, but have never tried it.

> and she worked out that cooking salmon in a dishwasher does not bring it up to a food safe temperature.

That video was great! Although I notice she cooks it in a large jar of water. I suspect that it would take a long time to heat up all that water, hence it never reaches 62°C. Whereas if you just wrapped it in foil, it might transfer that heat to the fish much quicker.

Yeah, I think the key take away would be, if you do cook salmon in a dishwasher, in foil or in a jar, the first time you do it use a heat probe and graph to confirm it goes into the bacteria killing hot-zone for the correct amount of time. She also mentions heat resistant spores, so it should be eaten as soon as it comes out of your dishwasher. Once you’ve done one run and confirmed it’s ok, I expect you don’t need to do the temperature probe the next time.

The second key takeaway is that you probably don’t want to cook your fish in the dishwasher at all.

You do not need to cook salmon to any temperature. They don’t inherently have food-borne pathogens. People eat it raw. Most salmon-related illnesses come from processed salmon (like smoked) where cross contamination introduces listeria.

Also, most bacteria actually begin to die at around 130F, which her chart I think shows it gets well above. (It looks like it gets into the low 60s, which is well above that.)

Also I’m pretty sure the only food-borne pathogen that forms spores is clostridium botulinum, and that’s not found in fish.

Also, its very important to run your sink to full hot temp prior to starting the washer. (in 99% of dishwashers, they pull from the hotwater supply to the kitchen sink. Dishwashers will do a ~15 minute pre-spray (without soap) initial rinse. If you dont pre-warm the sink line, then the dishwasher will start with a cold pre-wash, thus will not put dishes to temp as quickly in the cycle.

That is probably regional. Here cold they are most commonly connected to the cold water line.

Yup, pretty sure all UK/European dishwashers pull from the cold tap.

Modern energy efficient dishwashers only reach 50 °C. And they also take three or four hours, which makes this idea even less appetizing.

Y'all with your fancy 220v electricity can get it hot a lot faster. In America where your dishwasher can only pull 1,800 w you have to hook it up to hot water.

I believe most modern dishwashers simply sense the incoming water temp though and basically just pump the water through until they get to hot water.

Temperature is one thing, but doesn't it become full of dishwasher detergent chemicals?

Probably, and the fish would leak oils. The dishwasher would smell like fish for some time also and your meat would smell like detergent. This is some "Q-mamon grade" advice, only to be taken seriously by the very dumb or very naive.

> she worked out that cooking salmon in a dishwasher does not bring it up to a food safe temperature.

She should do the experiment with a dishwasher on higher temperatures

I added a safety section. YouTube generally isn't considered a reliable source for Wikipedia but I think they make exceptions sometimes. If not, hopefully someone will complain and add info from a more reliable source.

PS: I can't wait to check back tomorrow and see how being at the top of HN impacted the page views. Interesting that it had a small bump in views on Tuesday (probably posted/mentioned somehwere popular) and now a few days later showing up on the top of HN.

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&plat...

Well it looks like the salmon needs to be above 63C for 15 seconds to kill the bacteria, and eaten soon after cooking to mitigate bacteria spores that may grow days after. That's what she says in the video anyway, but I can't find a source for that, might be worth adding to wikipida? Hey if it stops a few people getting ill then it's worth it.

> it looks like the salmon needs to be above 63C for 15 seconds to kill the bacteria

I guess if you like overcooked salmon.

Food safe temperatures aren't a hard line. Bacteria die off at much lower temperatures than 65ºC (from around 54ºC). What does change with temperature is the rate at which bacteria die. The usual safety goal is to get a 6.5 log10 reduction in bacteria.

The reason that 65ºC is usually chosen as a safe temperature is because once you reach that temperature the time to reach that reduction is very short (about 1.5minutes), at 70ºC it's instantaneous.

At lower temperatures, you have to keep the food at that temperature for a longer amount of time (there are reference charts to be found online[1]). For this to be safe you have to be able to measure and/or control the temperature reliably. This is obviously more difficult to do than just cooking to a specific temperature. In many commercial applications it's just easier to cook to a high enough temperature to not have to worry about it.

There are also other ways to kill the bacteria. I usually cure salmon overnight in the fridge (2:1 ratio brown sugar and salt) before smoking it to 54ºC. The temperature doesn't kill the bacteria but the curing does.

[1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/202...

Yeah it's tricky isn't it, I guess if you're cooking with a new kitchen tool, in this case a dishwasher, I think it's reasonable to say it may take little while to figure out that exact combo of safe and perfectly cooked. I think my recommendation to you would be when you're cooking in the dishwasher err on the side of safety. The maybe experiment from there, perhaps a lemon dishwasher tablet would add a zing.

Thanks for the detailed answer; it's important to understand temperature vs time. I presume you sometimes sous vide fish?

Ann Reardon's channel definitely has lessons for the HN startup crowd - definitely a case of "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade".

Her channel was originally a high quality baking channel, but then she did a video titled "Is So Yummy the worst channel on YouTube?" or something like that. It basically highlighted how all these "hands and pans" content farms just have these sped up, interesting to look at videos, but their actual "recipes" were total nonsense. Most importantly, she highlighted how these channels were basically killing the view counts of real baker's on YouTube. I'm sure she saw that these debunking videos were here most popular ones (nothing addicts like outrage) and she leaned hard into it.

The sad corollary is that her original premise was so right - so many video algorithms end up just promoting these flashy, "bright colors and good music" type of videos. People always say "TikTok is so addictive", but I find it addictive the way a room full of cotton candy is addictive to a 3 year old. I can hardly stand modern content sites (of lots of different variants) because it's the mental equivalent of empty carbs.

It's bizarre to me how shallow it stays and how do much of the content just tries to trick the consumer. On Instagram I constantly see travel photos and clips with no indication of where the location is. Videos of weird stuff happening sand if you read comments, you learn it's fake or important context that makes it interesting kiss omitted. How does anyone consume this without getting annoyed about these unanswered, basic questions and keep consuming it after you learn it's all fake?

My theory is a huge portion of those watching are age 5-12.

You are correct, Youtube is raising a non-trivial percentage of children.

I disagree with her conclusion. Raw salmon has no inherent pathogens of interest. People eat salmon raw at sushi bars. I’d be pretty unconcerned about the food safety issue. (Like any food there’s some risk of cross contamination, but that’s so rare.)

As someone who has dealt with food safety (both as a hobbyist and professionally) a lot I can tell you most of what you read is based on government recommendations, which are designed to keep the dumbest and unhealthiest people from hurting themselves. The government doesn’t get thanked when you eat delicious, not-overcooked food but they do get blamed when people get sick, so their incentive is to tell you to overcook everything. There’s no reason you need to get that thanksgiving turkey to 165 or whatever the hell they recommend, but they do it because they know a lot of people will measure the turkey in the wrong spot so if they told you the actual 145 a lot of people would be eating breasts that never got close to 130.

I don’t know why you’d want to cook your salmon in the dishwasher, but the time/temp is absolutely fine for anyone not immunocompromised.

So I would say that her video showed that it doesn’t bring it up to the temperature recommended by (I assume) the FDA, but not that it is unsafe, as those are two very different things.

Raw salmon is host to a variety of parasites that can hurt humans.

Raw meaning uncooked. Almost all the salmon you buy was previously frozen, but it’s still raw. Besides, her temperature chart showed it well above the point where parasites die.

I was contrasting it to things like smoked salmon which have had listeria issues due to poor processing.

The "raw" salmon at sushi bars has previously been frozen.

So has the raw salmon at the grocery store. You’d have a hard time buying fish that hasn’t been previously frozen, you just don’t know it because grocery stores thaw it before it goes into the display case.

Nope. Raw salmon is fresh when sold (unless sold smoked and spiced yet in a package).

You can't re-freeze a frozen fish. Sushi bars store the products in a special refrigerator, ultrafrozen. They are obliged by law to do this.

Farmed salmon can be sold never frozen for sushi. Wild can’t. It is one of the few fish that can be purchased that way because it has very low incidence of parasites.

But still her own graph showed it was well above 140C (the temperature at which parasites are all dead) and she was talking entirely about microbes.

So even if you purchased Never frozen farmed salmon and cooked it this way, you’d be very safe. Even if you didn’t cook it at all you’d be very safe, as evidenced by the fact that the government allows it.

Say what you want about our government’s food regulations, they are not at all risk tolerant.

I wouldn’t want to cook salmon in a dishwasher, but I wouldn’t hesitate to eat it for food safety reasons, and her video made me less concerned, not more.

Also I don’t think sushi restaurants typically have any special freezers for this. You can reach the required level in a regular commercial freezer. -4F for one week. Any commercial freezer gets that cold, and that step is taken by the wholesalers anyway for any sushi that requires it.

> Most of this fishes are domestic.

Completely wrong, Spain relies on imports from Norway and Sweden for farmed salmon and the US for wild pacific salmon. Domestic production is negligible: https://www.tridge.com/data-insights/market-price-atlantic-s...

> Sushi bars store the products in a special ultrafreeze storage,for some time. They are obliged by law to do this.

Maybe in Spain, this is not required by the restaurant in the US, some jurisdictions require recordkeeping to prove their suppliers froze this for them (NYC) and most source from a parasite-free supplier but the restaurant itself only needs to maintain safe storage temperature. The FDA guidelines are enforced by local health jurisdictions in the US and may not be in complete alignment. More on it: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/sushi-fresh-from...

> Spain relies on imports from Norway and Sweden

With domestic I mean a domestic animal, one breed in captivity, not one from Spain. I should probably used "domesticated" instead.

Sushi freezers are colder than regular freezers. This is real galaxy brain stuff.

Ha. I don’t think it’s even true. I mean it wouldn’t surprise me if some sushi restaurant somewhere had such things, but restaurant supply companies don’t sell extra cold freezers. Seafood wholesalers might have such things but I’d wager the vast majority of sushi restaurants are using regular freezers.

Correct, however they do exist and some higher-end restaurants use them. Places usually advertise them as 'super freezers' that operate at -60C, some of the michelin star type restaurants go deeper with medical cryocoolers. It's becoming more common now that places like NYC have a regulation requiring freezing (where before a restaurant could just source from a parasite-free supplier).

* * *

Sushi in the us has to be held at -20C for 7 days, or -35C for 15 hours. They absolutely sell extra cold freezers that go to that temperature. Your home freezer won't.

> I’d wager the vast majority of sushi restaurants are using regular freezers.

After the 7 days at -20 the fish can just be transferred to a regular freezer. So you're right, most places probably don't have the special freezer in house.

No, it’s -4 for 7 days. Any commercial freezer gets that cold. Mine is a cheapo Avantco and goes to -8.

-4F is -20C.

Ha oh yeah. Missed the units.

Well yeah every freezer does that.

I looked into this awhile back. While you're correct about previous freezing this is about mitigating microbe risk, not parasite destruction. The FDA has a specification that the fish must be frozen down to in order to ensure destruction of parasites. (I couldn't find a direct link to the FDA's guideline, here's one from MN that's the same: https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/food/... )

Ahi Tuna and most farmed Atlantic salmon (Norway is especially safe: https://web.archive.org/web/20200426100625/https://nifes.hi.... ) have low to no parasite risk. However, I would not buy and eat wild salmon sashimi without at least freezing for a week first. Even retailers as big as Costco don't have freezers meeting the guideline.

I think any fish requiring such freezing likely would have been frozen to spec before it got to Costco or any restaurants. I’ve never asked any of the seafood purveyors I know about it, but I do know you can buy the stuff from them and use it immediately. I don’t trust the government for much but when it comes to being overly regulatory on food safety they’re pretty tough to beat. If it’s being sold ready to use I’m sure it was processed before, and there’s a HACCP plan in place to ensure it.

> People eat salmon raw at sushi bars. I’d be pretty unconcerned about the food safety issue.

That's because other people have prepared the fish for you. [0]

> Sushi-grade fish must be frozen before being consumed, to further prevent any of those food-borne illnesses, and this is usually done via flash freezing, sometimes immediately after sushi-grade salmon, for example, is caught.

[0] https://aksalmonco.com/blogs/learn/sushi-grade-fish

The freezing is only because of parasites, not microbes. It doesn’t kill microbes. Practically all of the fish you purchase is actually sushi grade, having been flash frozen on the boat, it is a meaningless term. If you go to a restaurant, supply store, or a fish wholesaler, you will have a hard time finding any fish that is commonly consumed as sushi that isn’t labeled sushi grade. It’s like how nearly everything that doesn’t have wheat in it is labeled gluten-free, it isn’t because they did something special.

Her temperature charts show it getting well above 140°F, which is the temperature at which all of the parasites die, and they do not form spores or come back later. So it is completely safe in that regard also.

And jelly beans have a giant Fat Free boast on the packaging. Healthy choices!

Ha! I’m surprised they don’t put fat and gluten free on bags of sugar!

Almost everyone misunderstands the recommendations. 165 F is only meant to be held for 1 second. To achieve the same level of pathogen reduction, you can trade temperature for time.

No, nobody misunderstands them. The recommendations leave out time entirely. People aren’t misunderstanding them, they’re just overly simplified. That’s why they’re bad. You are correct that you can do lower temperatures for longer, but FDA guidelines don’t mention this.

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2011/05/25/cooking-meat-chec....

“The safe cooking temperature for all poultry products, including ground chicken and turkey, stays the same at 165 ºF.”

These are the same guidelines you encounter in the restaurant world, however in packaged food production you submit your recipes to process authorities who actually do consult time/temperature charts. But for restaurant and home guidelines they assume (not incorrectly) that it is basically impossible to ensure the restaurant or home chef cooked the chicken until the coolest part was at 145 for 2 minutes or whatever TF time/temp is needed to get the required salmonella reduction.

I didn't mean to say that recommendations give explicit alternatives. A temperature recommendation without explicit time is implicitly instantaneous, and without explicit location is implicitly at the coldest spot. From that, you can infer that the recommendation might be overkill, but not by how much.

I didn't know that they officially reduced the temperature and added a rest time, despite the article announcing the changes being over a decade old, so thank you for the link. I'm curious if it was in response to something like so many people ignoring the recommendation that they were getting sick, or if the baked ham industry advocated for it.

> As someone who has dealt with food safety (both as a hobbyist and professionally)

I can't help but wonder why someone would mention their hobby experience alongside their professional experience and list their hobby experience before their professional experience.

> Side note - in a different video she also did debunking on other food hacks and ended up investigating Russian bot networks who uploads both food hacks for hits and then slips in propaganda.

This reminds me of a food video I haven't been able to find for years; a dude was doing the Gordon Ramsey recipe for scrambled eggs, he then slipped in a 2 minute rant about money being worthless and the need to buy gold.

He had a replacement for Creme Fraiche, which was useful as Creme Fraiche didn't exist where I lived at the time, but I thought the interlude was so bizarre that I never bookmarked it.