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2009/08/10
This headline caught my eye: Cook loses both hands trying out recipe with liquid nitrogen. The story is short on details, but either way it's a good reminder that these things we do can go horribly wrong.
Sure, we cut ourselves all the time, and sometimes even get minor burns. Occasionally, we might even spill hot grease and get more serious burns. But these are all calculated risks. We know that the grease is hot. If we splatter it onto our hand, it's going to burn us. And we know that, sooner or later, we're gonna splatter it onto our hand.
Some of this shit people are trying now can have consequences that are far less predictable from the standpoint of traditional cooking experience. Read up before you play with some new chemical or process, then use your intuition. Think it through first.
Posted by Barzelay on 2009/08/10 @ 19:06 | Comments (2) | Food Politics and Culture
Comments
From the description in the article ..."he had been trying to empty a canister of liquid nitrogen in the bathroom." it sounds like he did one of the major DON'Ts with liquid Nitrogen - pour it down the drain. This is a great way to at a minimum distroy the drain pipes and potentially cause a very large pipe bomb to go off (as it did in this case).
The sequence is:
1) The liquid nitrogen goes down the drain
2) some liquid nitrogen gets past the trap
3) water remaining in the trap freezes into a solid block 4) water lower down (and in other branches) in the pipe freezes into a solid block
5) liquid nitrogen is now trapped in the drain pipe between the ice blocks
6) the liquid nitrogen turns into gas, presurizing the pipe
7) the pipe is one very large pipe bomb and will explode as soon as the pressure inside rises high enough.
Posted by: Ed in NH at September 13, 2009 6:52 PM
Ed, thanks for the explanation. With so many cooks using liquid nitrogen these days, I suppose it can be easy to forget that it can't be treated like other kitchen ingredients or equipment.
Posted by: Barzelay at September 13, 2009 8:22 PM