

The Myth of the Immortal Hamburger - jacoblyles
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html

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mechanical_fish
I'm upvoting this partly because it's by J. Kenji (Lopez-)Alt, whom I have
regarded as a sort of culinary god ever since I first encountered his awesome
piecrust recipe in _Cooks Illustrated_ a few years ago.

(The piecrust is made by substituting vodka for much of the water, which
allows the dough to be rolled out without encouraging too much gluten
formation and thereby making the crust tough. It is perhaps a shade too much
on the crumbly side but makes up for that by being _outstandingly_ tasty, it
has now utterly spoiled my taste for the majority of store-bought pies, and it
has convinced my friends that I, in turn, am some sort of culinary god, even
though this piecrust recipe is _idiotically simple_ , actually simpler than
regular piecrust, if such a thing is possible. The lesson here is: Subscribe
to _Cooks Illustrated_ and make your loved ones' lives better.)

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rbranson
Not to mention his reverse engineering of the animal style In-N-Out burger.
The Burger Lab has changed my entire perspective on the perfect burger.

[http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/07/the-burger-
lab-h...](http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/07/the-burger-lab-how-to-
make-an-in-n-out-double-double-animal-style.html)

~~~
patio11
Dang it all, I may have to start cooking now.

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spatulon
You don't cook? I'm surprised tptacek doesn't bug you every day about
starting.

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tptacek
Why am I the one bugging him? mechanical_fish is the one making pie crusts
with vodka.

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spatulon
The frequent posters on this site end up being boiled down to bullet-point
caricatures based on what I remember from their posts.

I guess yours would be:

* Knows lots of technical details about security and cryptosystems.

* Voice of reason to balance out the usual internet opinion of "the sky is falling and its Microsoft's/Google's/Apple's/the government's fault".

* Likes cooking, especially whole pigs and sous vide, although not necessarily together.

* Friends with Patrick.

I hadn't noticed mechanical_fish's name before, but I will now remember him as
the guy who makes pie crusts with vodka.

~~~
khafra
My stereotype as well, although I'd add

* Eternal foil for cpercival on the advisability of designing encryption systems

I think I've learned more during their dialogues about cryptology than I have
from years of reading Bruce Schneier's blog.

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geuis
I love examples where people use the actual scientific method to test
conventional wisdom. This is a good experiment. I would love to see it
replicated by other groups (.e.g Mythbusters) to confirm or deny the results.

There is also a similar myth for McDonald's french fries. It would be nice to
see those tested as well.

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sliverstorm
Why WOULD McD's fries rot? They are saturated in oil, and oil does not rot.

~~~
geuis
Good point, but lets back it up with a controlled decay study. In keeping with
the theme of the topic. =)

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sp4rki
French fries are made by expelling moisture, and are then saturated in oil at
which point a crust forms on it. I don't think this warrants and experiment as
the results are pretty obvious :)

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sorbus
Congratulations, you've just failed at science. Saying that a result is
obvious and therefor the experiment is not worth performing is ... well, I'm
having trouble coming up with how to describe it without insulting you. It's
certainly not scientific, though.

Just because results are a forgone conclusion doesn't mean that it's not worth
testing them. Just because you think that your hypothesis is very strong does
not mean that you can skip testing it.

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sp4rki
No I haven't, it's been done and tested a gazillion times and been explained
by people more adept to science than you and me. I don't need to dip my foot
in the water to figure out I'm going to get wet.

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latch
half way through and having a hard time not running to the local McDonalds to
buy a burger (to eat!!).

~~~
kilomanamolik
fatass.

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jemfinch
For those interested in a related Wikipedia odyssey, check out Water Activity
<[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity>](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity>),
then hit the "shelf stable" link and move on from there.

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Charuru
Come on guys, this belongs on reddit. Stop screwing up the S/N ratio.

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CamperBob
I stopped eating McDonald's burgers years ago, when I accidentally dropped one
on the floor at home while taking it out of the bag. I tossed it out the
window for the birds to deal with.

A week later, it was still untouched. Even the goddamn _crows_ wouldn't eat
it.

That's when I realized that the critics were pretty much right about
McDonald's. Whatever those guys are selling, be it harmful or benign, it
doesn't qualify as "food."

