Suggestions for nosh when you ai'nt got a fridge.

Re: Suggestions for nosh when you ai\'nt got a fridge.

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I'm having a look here to see what I can find out..... it may be a chance to get rid of unwanted crew! /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&...mp;aq=f&oq=

seems to be dependant upon the pressure/time /temperature to kill Botulism and toxins??

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Well, the problem is these aren't living organisms, they are chemicals produced by living organisms. So, although some can be broken down by heat, some can't. The other problem is knowing they've been broken down! Maybe feed some to the mutinous crew first? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Re: Suggestions for nosh when you ai\'nt got a fridge.

And of course you will not be near 'civilisation' if you do suddenly go down with something, or you could just buy fresh food.
I also suspect we have lost our childhood resistance to a few things?
Why take unnecessary risks?
 
Re: Suggestions for nosh when you ai\'nt got a fridge.

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And of course you will not be near 'civilisation' if you do suddenly go down with something, or you could just buy fresh food.
I also suspect we have lost our childhood resistance to a few things?
Why take unnecessary risks?

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What I'm talking about are not infectious organisms, but poisons created by bugs, which are tougher to destroy than bugs are (few bugs can survive heating above about 70 degrees C; certainly not a few minutes boiling). The classic example is botulism, but that isn't the only one by a long chalk. Childhood resistance is irrelevant; you don't get childhood resistance to poisons. Even previous survival of a poisoning probably won't help.
 
Re: Suggestions for nosh when you ai\'nt got a fridge.

AntarcticPilot, I think you underestimate the performance of most domestic pressure cookers.

In the years before Elf 'n Safety ran amock, we used an ordinary Prestige pressure cooker to sterilize small quantities of culture media for use in a diagnostic microbiology laboratory. Twenty minutes boiling at 15psi over atmospheric (122 degrees Celsius at sea level) is more than enough to kill clostridial spores.

The well known advertisement "Kills 99% of all known germs" is actually a corruption of a common method of reporting test results for disinfectants: 2 log reduction in numbers = 99%, 3 log = 99.9%, etc. Much higher kill rates are used by the canning industry, for obvious reasons, but generally a 12 log reduction is considered adequate (99.999999999%). For Clostridium botulinum, that is achieved in just under 3 minutes in steam* at 122 degrees Celsius. "Sterility" for operating theatre instruments can be achieved in steam autoclaves operating at 121 degrees for 15 minutes, or 132 degrees for 3 minutes.

* The important proviso is that the atmosphere in the autoclave or pressure cooker must be pure steam. This is achieved by letting the cooker boil with the lid on at atmospheric pressure until a continuous jet of steam emerges from the top before applying the pressure device.

If properly used, domestic pressure cookers will deliver you a sterile stew after 20 minutes cooking. Once you open the cooker, of course, the stew is liable to contamination from airborne spores (mostly fungi, which cause obvious spoilage rather than any important health risks) or contact with contaminated fingers and utensils. So use a clean stainless steel ladle and replace the lid. I have never heard of any cases of botulism from pressure-cooked food kept for a day or two before reheating. More important would be conventional food poisoning germs (like salmonella from raw chicken or staphylococcus from the cook) introduced into the warm food as it cools, kept warm for some hours, and not adequately reheated before consumption.

I'm not sure where the story of heat resistance in botulinum toxin comes from. In the extremely unlikely event that you were to introduce botulinum spores into your stew after pressure cooking, any toxin formed would be destroyed by ordinary boiling for 10 minutes.

Edit: I think the main reason pressure cookers have fallen out of favour is gastronomic. Pressure cooking spoils some of the finer flavours.
 
Re: Suggestions for nosh when you ai\'nt got a fridge.

But the point is that I'm not talking about living organisms; I have no doubt whatsoever that pressure cooking will readily sterilize a stew or whatever. I'm talking about bacterial exotoxins; which are, if you like, the excrement of bacteria and in some cases shockingly poisonous. And, although heating to 120 degrees C will destroy some such exotoxins, it won't necessarily destroy all such toxins. What I am concerned about is a stew cooling to a convenient temperature to grow bacteria, bacteria producing such toxins (e.g. botulin) and reheating the stew being insufficient to destroy the toxins. As these toxins tend to be rather nasty poisons with no antidote, I'd personally rather not take the chance.
 
Re: Suggestions for nosh when you ai\'nt got a fridge.

'30 all' /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif oops, apologies wrong sport, or is it profession these days?.... In my case it's probably an 'active hobby'.

many thanks for your input and apologies also for somewhat hijacking the thread of the original posting.
I realise I'm out of my depth a bit here, but from a laymans point of view, , if the bugs are dailly given a 'cooking' at pressure then surely the risk of any build up of poisons is minute, especially if the cookpot were kept going for only a few days at a time? Wouldn't the body be ale to cope with that anyway? It is even more confusing when I talk to my elderly relatives how they ever survived, or is the poison from todays more powerful bugs, even stronger.
 
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