When I did my culinary in France, about 10 years ago, it was still taught to students to check sugar with their fingers. Partly as the names of the various stages of "boiled" sugar are based off of how the sugar forms between the fingers, and it helps understanding the names to see how sugar can be soft or brittle with just a few degrees of separation. They literally just tell you to dip your fingers in ice-water for ten seconds before you dip them into the molten sugar. Between the lowered temperature of your fingers and the layer of water on them, you'll never get more than a little "ow" from doing it but it doesn't half make the students shit themselves when you tell them that "today we're dipping our fingers into molten sugar". You'll get dry burns 10 times a day in the kitchen and they will eventually stop bothering you, but a wet burn will always hurt like a bitch. Grabbing a hot handle is one thing, but opening the door of a vapour-oven right into your face is a mistake you only make once.
Same concept that allows people to make clickbait videos putting their hand into molten lead. the water will boil and form an air pocket that protects you from the heat for a time atleast.
I know that technically can be done safely but just thinking about touching molten sugar is like NOPE material to me. I have burned myself with hot glue before cause of how hard it holds on so I can imagine sugar would be much worse without the water.
Im a chemist. Technically yes oil can boil. The oil boiling is dependent on a few things, but for simplicity its pressure of the atmosphere its in and what oil is being heated. In a vacuum it will start boiling at low temps, at higher pressures it will probably break down or react with itself before boiling.
Hey Adam, (med) doctor here : when you get something hot on your skin, fingers or anywhere else, you don't shake your body or your hand to lower the temperature of the burning stuff; it's more of body reflex called the "gate control". The gate control theory of pain asserts that non-painful input closes the nerve "gates" to painful input, which prevents pain sensation from traveling to the central nervous system. When you get burnt or hurt, you shake, scratch, move, pinch, to help your own body stop feeling pain ! Awesome video as always.
I love how he seems incredibly interested by literally everything he talks about I feel like I could watch this man explain the most boring bullshit and I will still be entertained and fully enjoying it just because of how much pure passion and interest he puts into what he talks about also didn’t know you could even do this and b e t seems so much more convenient
Some context for the plumbing handbook, plumbers are usually in a position where they can't easily move away or wipe something off. They also usually work in larger volumes than what your finger comes in contact with (like you said, surface area). Once ~160F sprays you, it's too late, you're burnt. So in practice, it is an instant.
Back in the '30s and 40's my grandfather was a pastry chef at a major hotel here in Chicago. My father apprenticed under him. My father would tell me how my grandfather was well known for his work with molten sugar making flowers etc. He said he worked barehanded with the molten sugar on a marble slab. He did it by working quickly with the sugar and keeping a bowl of iced water handy to dip into when he needed it. I am sure he developed calluses and killed off some nerve endings but I remember photos of some of his work that were simply works of art
ice water and molten sugar are a pretty old combination to allow this form of handling, but it nevertheless requires a lot of care and skill just to avoid the burns, never mind sculpt the sugar.
This technique is similar to how the guy from Lofty Pursuits makes his old-fashioned, hard sugar candies, complete with Victorian candy-making presses and tools. I highly recommend that channel!!
@@naamadossantossilva4736 I've had a dumb mishap while holding a tea spoon with which I've stirred cooled down molten sugar. I had this spoon and something else in my hands, and at some point my motor skills got confused because I wanted to grab something or whatever, this was completely idiotic. Of course, the spoon (with some sugar still on it) completely soaked my finger tip with a soft honey-like texture. I wasn't primed for it and it took me a second to realize the mistake. I was calm though and it wasn't an injury worth of a hospital, but in a nutshell, if it's a sugar and it's still relatively liquid, TREAT IT WITH RESPECT.
PhD chemist here: yes, oil and all other liquids can boil. You have to avoid "side reactions" aka degradation or redox reactions (burning). An inert atmosphere will control the burning, however some chemical compounds still have thermal decomposition pathways. In that case you would have to drop the pressure in addition to (or instead of!) heating.
Yes thankfully someone who fully understands the relationship between boiling point, temperature, and pressure and the fact that all matter in the universe that can exist as a liquid can boil given the correct temperature or pressure. As long as a substance can exist as a liquid and is stable enough to exist in space it can boil. It doesn’t matter how thermally unstable it is. It just means you’d have to pull an insane vacuum.
@@-a13x-75 ehh, kinda. Some compounds might not have the correct point where boiling is possible without decomposition. They might even not exist in a stable enough liquid form to avoid decomposition. Of course, most of these are things that we don't really talk about or use in the day-to-day life, but maybe some of the polymers we use fit in this category.
@@henriquepacheco7473 I understand what you are saying. But thermal decomposition is completely unrelated to boiling point though. One is due to the breaking of intramolecular bonds (covalent, metallic, ionic) while the other is due to the breaking of intermolecular interactions (hydrogen bonds, the different types of dipole interactions, london dispersion forces). Intermolecular forces are much stronger than intramolecular forces. I don’t believe there is molecule, in the classical sense of the term, whose forces that keep the atoms its comprised of is weaker than the forces between molecules. That doesn’t really make sense. I’m not talking about what we are currently capable of doing in labs with our current technological possibilities. I am saying that no laws of physics or thermodynamics prevents it. If something boils at 100C at atmospheric conditions but thermally decomposes at 80C you can still boil it below 80C by decrease the pressure thus increasing the unstable compounds vapor pressure. Although this all started from thermally unstable liquids, a thermally unstable solid can also have the possibility to boil even though it might normally sublimates. Moth balls(naphthalene), dry ice(solid co2), and iodine crystals a examples of commonly sublimating material. This means at atmospheric pressure (could be a range of pressure) the pressure is too high for the liquid to exist and the temperature is too high for the solid to be thermodynamically favorable. All three of those substances have boiling points. Naphthalene from moth balls and carbon dioxide from dry ice are actually excellent examples because both molecules have a temperature at which they thermally decompose into its constituents yet both can boil.
@@-a13x-75 there are molecules of all kinds, including some with pretty damn sturdy intermolecullar interactions. The kind of molecule that wouldn't really ever melt instead of decomposing would fit within this rance of molecules. They would be very large polymers that have plenty of intermollecular interactions, to the point that enough heat to melt them, even in very low pressure conditions, would be enough to break the molecules. And yes, I am aware that thermal decomposition and boiling point are unrelated. If they weren't, either all molecules would boil or all would decompose, given the same pressure conditions.
Alright touché on the polymers but that makes this whole conversation more complex on an entirely different level with what you define a molecule. I guess if a tire was perfectly vulcanized so that every rubber monomer was cross linked that would technically qualify as a molecule and yes it would just burn. How about all substances that can exist as a liquid have a boiling point given a specific temperature and pressure.
I’m almost a Chef in Switzerland (only a month to go on my apprenticeship) and we don’t use our fingers to taste.. we still use them for texture but for taste, we have sets of two metal containers, one filled with clean spoons and one for dirty ones. No licked spoons are allowed back in food
In America it's honestly pretty common to do this. Never multiple times with the same finger and 99% of the time the chef doing this also has the intelligence to go wash their hands afterwards. We also by law have to keep food safe sanitizer on each station so there is was way to quickly clean. Personally I like to keep souffle cups on my station that I can use to test with.
OMG this totally hit home for me. A long time ago in a profession a long way from me... I was working in a pizza place and I had an accident where a pizza fresh out of a 500°+ force air gas powered oven flipped over, upside down on my forearm. My arm was covered with boiling cheese, pepperoni grease and pizza sauce. It immediately damaged my nerves but then an assistant manager shoved my arm under a cold running faucet and my skin immediately bubbled up and peeled off and then it started to hurt. The searing pain was insane. It took 20 years for the scar to settle for only coming out when I get a tan on the inside of my forearm.
I'd say it has a lot to do with fingers\palm skin thickness too. I'd say that you can burn your skin more easily if you accidentally drop something on your arm when compared to just fingers (same temperature same time)
It's also something you get acclimated too, somehow. I've worked as a cook on and off for 20 years. I got used to certain things, grabbing things out of a hot pan, putting my arms in a 600+ degree oven, etc. When I've been out of the industry for a while and come back, I absolutely burn the shit out of myself trying to do those things I used to do all the time. Then eventually it doesn't burn anymore again.
I was a cook for 10 years and now I'm going to welding school. I think it's a combination of having *literally* tougher skin and being acclimated to burn pain. I've grabbed pieces of 1,000 degree steel without gloves entirely too many times and I'm pretty sure the only reason I can still use my fingers is because of all the times I burnt myself cooking. I've also developed the bad habit of just letting slag burn through my sleeves because I'm used to always having little burns on my arms.
I have spent a lot of time around child burn survivors; sometimes the result of kitchen accidents. PSA: Please remember to be very careful when your kids are helping in the kitchen. Just because they see you swipe your finger, it does not mean that they have the same knowledge about when it is safe and when it isn't or how to do it safely. Make sure you talk to them and explain to them how to be safe little chefs!
Absolutely. I was a beaver scout leader and we'd teach our children how to make and extinguish fire, how to deal with kitchen/oil/pan fires (very important when talking about extinguishing) and how to safely work with fire. Obviously the emphasis is to leave it to the adults, but knowing helps them recognise the danger and help out responsibly and out of experience instead of uninformed curiosity.
I would also imagine a kids fingers are a tad more sensative? I mean, even myself since getting my newest job that involves more hard physical work, they've become less sensative to things than before. I don't have callouses yet, but the skin is probably getting thicker as a result. Kiddos wouldn't have very thickened skin. But then I'm only making uneducated guesses.
7:30 Hi Adam, it's my understanding that for many of the large organic molecules like those in cooking oil, the molecules will deteriorate at a temperature far below what their theoretical boiling point would be.
Any way you could maybe dumb that down a little and add a specific or two. You're basically saying that it would blacken and burn away minus the fire? Also you say this for most of the organic molecules. Not to be that guy but what would happen to the rest?
@@shanetaylor761 It will decompose to smaller and smaller molecules, then those will be able to be vaporised. The rest that will stay will propably be solid or liquid inorganic material, like pure carbon or crystals of salt/sodium and maybe someting like compounds of sulfur. But I'm not 100% sure.
@@shanetaylor761 everything can boil. You can boil oil under certain conditions (a vacuum). But there are bonds in oil molecules, "links" between particles, that get destroyed at certain temperatures. So, even if you could theoretically boil it, they break down sooner than that.
@@shanetaylor761 Organic chemistry is a huuuge field, so this is simplyfying a lot but: There are lots of ways for a molecule to break down. Sometimes giving a molecule energy by heating it up will cause it to split into two pieces.Different chemicals can also react with each other, for example water and an organic molecule, producing a different chemical with different properties. So not necessarily turning into some charcoal like material, but cooking is all about causing reactions between different food chemicals, but naturally sometimes you get some reactions you don't want. Not sure how common a chemical molecule breaking into pieces is vs reacting with oxygen/water/other organics is in cooking, as it's not an area I know much about
As for the question about oil boiling, yes! The lowest possible temperature at when oil boils is probably about 300 degrees Celsius (based on numbers from crude oil, so it may be higher or lower by about 50-80 degrees). This is actually how crude oil (from the ground) is distilled into gasoline - it gets heated up until it boils and then gets cooled down until each individual component condenses from the gas mixture!
The plumbing standard accounts for the following scenario: Adult or child with an incapacity to remove oneself from a full-hot shower or bath. The temperatures listed comes from people in those situations who could not remove themselves from the water injuring them. This is much different than a single finger dip.
Yea more for large patches of exposure like a pipe gushing over your entire arm. In a small area the nearby tissue can quickly and easily get cool blood to that area to remove the heat. If your entire arm is heating up the blood cannot get to the middle of the patch while remaining cool enough to remove any more heat.
@@kevinl4837 Naw, more like an 86 year old falling into the tub while the water is running, but a limb bumped the hot faucet to full on. The person cannot get up and out of the tub, even while being continuously scalded by a full-hot stream of water. This is why new hot water heaters are set to about 120 °F, even though they can be set to much higher temps.
@@Kenjiro5775 see also: parent drawing up a warm bath for child, child getting in bath and ending up with severe burns over large parts of their body. Alternate scenarios include kids deciding they're "a big kid" now and can draw up their own/their sibling's bath, and ending up severely burned before an adult can notice what they're doing. I've read enough case reports to have a deeply ingrained reflex to always, ALWAYS check the temperature both for myself and any children I'm temporarily responsible for. This kind of accident is really rare where I live, but it only takes one freak accent and suddenly you have a dead baby and a thoroughly traumatised-for-life parent in your emergency department (my former career trajectory was pretty firmly aimed pediatric emergency medicine).
It should be remembered that when plumbers are talking about hot water, it's probably related to a water-heater, and the way they'd be exposed to said water would likely involve a pipe that is leaking or bursts. So that's a *lot* more surface area exposed, and way more water. Probably coming at them at some kind of pressure. So for them even "instantaneously" is going to cause serious damage.
Good point, and I think it has something to do with skin thickness. I'd say skin on finger is much denser\thicker than at arms. Hence 70*c doesn't make a burn mark on finger but on arm it could.
They're also talking about showers and taps that will pour that temperature of water out continuously. So if the water is turned on at 160F you're going to get effectively instantly burned if your hand is in it. If the homeowner has the heater up that hot, they're going to catch a showerheads worth before they can get away, or a handful in the sink.
"...the way they'd be exposed to said water would likely involve a pipe that is leaking or bursts." That's not what the chart is for. It's for teaching safe setting of water-heater temperatures. A water heater that's only supplying a commercial kitchen can be set hotter than one that's supplying a child's bathtub, for example.
I remember, as a child, dipping my fingers in melted wax after blowing out a candle. I don't know how hot wax typically is, but it GRABS ON. As a result, most of the heat transfer goes into your finger rather than into the air. It's not hot enough to cause actual injury (assuming a short or instantaneous dip), but it's definitely enough to cause pain. Not so much pain to never do it again, but certainly enough to make it into a fun dare with which children can taunt each other, or to show off "wax fingers" to each other. :-)
Some adults use hot wax as a sadism/masochism thing, and yeah, it can definitely hurt. One of the things you're supposed to do is get a candle with wax that has a low melting point (apparently soy is good for this) and hold it very high over the person. The time it takes to drip from the candle to your skin lets it cool down somewhat before it hits you: you can still feel it, but not as much as if you were pouring the same amount of wax from an inch away.
for candles, if you hold your finger in, the wax directly attached to your finger will dry and act as a protective layer from more hot wax causing any further damage
Be careful with the "wax" challenge. Wax is a very broad family with a wide range of melting temperatures even within the same generic name like paraffin. There's also a latent heat so it isn't going to cool as it solidifies.
Me and my friends would dare each other to drip wax on our hands as kids. It felt like very hot bath water and cooled within seconds. After getting used to the mild pain we could cover our whole hands in it.
Chemist here. Love your videos, it's clear they're very well-researched and informative! Regarding the boiling of oil, yes if you reduce the pressure you will get to a point where its boiling point drops below the flash point, allowing it to boil rather than decompose.
@@DuckReconMajor That's right, it would transition from liquid to gas phase. It would still be exposed to air under lower pressure, so I presume you mean if there was a sudden incursion of atmospheric air into the low pressure chamber? In that case, the gaseous oil would rapidly condense back into a liquid. In order to breathe it in, your lungs would need to be at a lower pressure than the gaseous oil - so I don't think that's possible. If you unsealed a low pressure flask of gaseous oil while pressed to your lips it would instead suck the air from your lungs into the flask and the oil would condense back into a liquid.
5:27 i have gotten around that problem by using the same "fingerdipping" technique you advocate, but with a spoon. I dip my clean spoon in the sauce and then pour the excess back into the pot, the rest of the sauce that clings on the spoon will be ready to taste. I will then put the now dirty spoon in the same bowl i put my vegetables in that i used for the sauce.
Fun fact: as you kind of hinted at, our internal "warning system" is calibrated to the same metrics - we can NOT "feel a temperature", we only feel heat-flux (so "transferred heat energy per area per time"). So if you touch the bonnet of your car it feels much colder than a box of styrofoam at the same temperature. In fact, the styrofoam can even feel warm, since it isolates and lowers the outflux of heat below the "status quo" that exists between skin and air. (Thank you BJCMXY for the correction)
"Sends Back" isn't exactly accurate... It simply slows the heat dissipation rate immensely, thereby creating the perception of it being warmer, as the material immediately in contact reach body temperature energy saturation point, and because the skin isn't experiencing the expected heat dissipation, it is perceived as getting warmer, and because the materials are reaching body temperature combined with the fact that the heat transfer is slow enough, the heat flux is now imperceptible as the skin is now being held at a near equilibrium with the output rates, instead of the normal levels of convection and conductive transfer, that it's attuned for. I feel like I said the same thing in several different ways, but I'll leave it as is.
This 'relative' sensation of only sensing heat flux is oft repeated and totally wrong. You absolutely can feel absolute temperature. The sensation of warmth is relative, the sensation of pain from heat is not and is a different mechanism from that of heat/cold. You can easily prove it to yourself by getting something over 60c and try touching it for a short time with both a room temperature finger, a cold finger, and a hot finger. You'll feel pain quickly in all cases.
@@knurlgnar24 the heat transfer equation is Q=mc∆t Q is the heat transfer rate, m is mass, c is specific heat capacity, ∆t is the difference in transfer. Your pain receptors trigger over a certain temperature. Since the heat transfer rate is dependent on the difference in temperatures, the time it takes to burn is indeed dependant on skin temperature. Yes, you will feel it quickly, but the additional cooling of a finger would act as a buffer in your scenario, since you first have to heat up the colder finger to the temperature of the warmer one, then continue further to the temperature at which you feel pain. So, because of how heat transfer works, and because pain receptors have a threshold temperature for going off, a cold finger will definitely feel less pain, as the time at the maximum temperature will be less. As such, you cannot feel absolute temperature.
@@juliaf_ True, the brain is a system that is constantly filtering messages & signals, and will reprioritize things depending of certain parameters. Otherwise there wouldn't be that Frog in the pot scenario. Even the human brain has mechanisms that reset the prevailing allowances to different levels depending on the situation. The idea of eating spicy food & drinking hot tea was on such a method the British Occupiers of India used to generate the perception that the climate wasn't as intolerably hot and humid. Even I have personally experienced this in the opposite direction. I was in a room that was actually far too hot for me, but as a result, I was able to walk outside barefoot on ice, wearing swimming trunks & a t-shirt, and not even feel the cold, despite there being an 80°F temperature difference between the two places. During the exposure period of about a minute, due to the amount of heat my body had contained. My skin temperature barely dropped despite being in direct contact with extreme convective currents & conductivity of melting ice under my feet clearly pulling heat from me...but simply because my body had so much stored heat to expel, I wasn't even aware of it. You can do the same if you warm up your hand for a few minutes under tolerably hot water, then grab an ice cube, you'll actually not feel the cold immediately, because the brain has had to reshuffle the priority of the signals from that area. Same goes for if you've cooled your hand down to a tolerably cold temperature then place it in something hot. It won't immediately register as the brain has to reorganize the signaling frameworks. You will notice heat sooner than cold, simply because heat is more dangerous to the body than cold in the short term. The body can ramp up the metabolism easier than it can down regulate, since humans are capable of complete thermoregulation.. and the natural processes produce the baseline heat necessary to maintain the internal difference between the external, and whenever the amount of energy required to maintain that difference increases it has a correlative increase in consumption, but reducing consumption below the baseline is harder to accomplish within a short period even with sweat and the like. At least that's what I theorize, based on my existing knowledge of biology. 💁🏼♂️
@@knurlgnar24 yea but don't suggest to test at 60c because that is unnecessary torture & cause scalding, just mention a water at 41c to demonstrate that the heat pain is actually fixed/constant sensation at that absolute temperature.
Respect the Syrup! I got a serious second-bordering-on-third degree burn on my lower leg when my dad and I were trying to make Sponge Taffy in too small a pan, I was asked to take the cooling dish out of the freezer, and in response to the taffy boiling over my Dad's expert move was to whip around 180 with the frothing pan with me standing directly in the line of fire. Can confirm, not something for ankles or fingers!
I once cooked persian sohan, which involves a huge amount of molten sugar, and one needs to pour saffron water into it, resulting in a lot of steam and bubbling. It was scary as heck. Respect the syrup!
As he says at 6:41 "Burn injuries are a function of temperature, time and the materials involved." So, yes, do respect the "syrup", but there is a difference between a normal water based sauce and molten sugar :)
Damn, and I thought I just built up a heat resistance from my years as a chef. I'll never forget the time I went to one of those Hot Pot restaurant where you cook your own food in a pot of boiling broth and I grabbed it with my bare hands, the waiter nearly had a heart attack thinking I was gonna seriously burn myself and spill boiling water all over the place. I was laughing and told him how my hands became calloused after a few years of working over a 500 degree grill.
I was as a chef for a couple of years or so when I was younger (several years ago). To be fair, it was mainly ping-cooking (I think that's the term - where you basically microwaving pre-cooked meals). But there was some actual cooking as well - and plenty of stuff to burn yourself on! I always had quite a high tolerance to pain, I think, and this increased that (at least on my hands). I always found it interesting just how little the waiting staff could take sometimes (e.g. finding plates too hot). And I'm not even talking super hot plates, but sometimes they'd find even (what I considered to be) lukewarm plates too hot.
Agreed, I always laugh when wait staff caution me against touching a dish. I've pretty much trained myself out of the *pull your hand back really quickly* reflex from small burns too. Amazing what your body can learn to tolerate and adjust to.
As a pizza baker I felt this. I call them dead hands or chef hands when people ask me about putting my hands in the oven. (Wood stove, lots of wood being thrown in by hand)
I am Adam's father and, for the record, I'm the one who taught him he could pass his finger through and open flame. He learned very well and, yes, he was always very bright.
I have been enjoying so many of your videos since I found you on RUclips. They continue to entertain and inform me. For some reason though, this is my favorite. You really seem into the questions involved and dug for answers. Thanks for not just being a plain cooking show
Having worked around a deep fryer, hot liquids, ovens etc as a chef I can confirm all of this. Also, you get used to it in different ways, you get better at pain management, your hands become more calloused, and the nerves in your fingers transfer less pain as well. I worked in a kitchen where one of my friends was the frycook I can grab hot things all day but this guy could stick his fingers in the deep fryer the same way some stick theirs in boiling water.
The secret ingredient to all of Ragusea's cooking - a smidgeon of Ragusea in the sauce when he dips his fingers in it. It's subtle, but a discerning palate might possibly detect it. And that's why you can follow his recipes, but if you didn't dip Ragusea's fingers in the sauce, you can't replicate it exactly!
The bathwater makes sense, at least, because it's not being held at that scalding temperature - it'll lose heat as it just sits in the bathtub. So Lauren isn't risking scalding herself by sitting in 49°C water, because it'll probably be more like 37°C or lower by the time she gets out of the tub.
I think the flick is also good because it's a single continuous motion - there's no chance of dipping your finger, being distracted and forgetting to pull it out, and then getting reminded when you feel the heat which is probably too late. It reminds me of how I do programming - whenever i change the code I want to make a take a complete step that goes from one working version to another working version, not do something that breaks the system and then have to remember to do another next later that fixes it and makes it better.
when he went over the oil i was very happy because the whole entire time i was thinking of my experience with chemistry different liquids have different specific heat capacities with water having a very high capacity meaning it contains much more energy per degree celsius
I am a chemist with a background in chem engineering: Oil absolutely can boil, and it would have to be under an inert (oxygen-free) atmosphere. The temperatures required under normal atmospheric pressure are very high, probably difficult to reach in a kitchen. Palm oil, for example, has a boiling point reported as being near 570F (300C). It's also possible that the oil molecules could break down or react with themselves at these high temperatures. To prevent that, you would have to get a sealed container and lower the pressure on the oil so that it boils at a lower temperature. (if you look up phase diagrams you can find much further info about this than I can type in a youtube comment). This lowering of pressure + temperature for boiling is how refineries and industrial chemical separations often work.
@@thegoodwitchluzura it wouldnt catch a blaze if no air is precent but it would potentialy undergo the formation of a tarlike liqui/solid if decomposition were to happen before boiling
Just adding to this, Adam is mistaken on two points. - First, oils do have a boiling point. - Second, Adam refers to a flash point, but then describes the auto-ignition point. Some search terms for those interested enough to do some googling (and some simplified definitions): - Boiling point (temperature and pressure at which the bulk liquid starts turning to vapour). - Flash point (temperature and pressure at which the liquid/air boundary of the liquid has sufficient flammable vapour for ignition to occur provided an external ignition source (sauce 🙃)). - Fire point (as above but hot enough for fire to be sustained). - Auto-ignition point (pressure and temperature at which the thing will spontaneously combust without an external ignition source).
My dad had a restaurant for over 20 years (he was the only one who cooked) and he literally burned his fingerprints off from plating hot fried food. I didn't even know that was a thing until I saw Men in Black and then asked my dad about it. I still don't know how he endured that super hot food right out of the deep fryer for so long, but he did it and he did it well.
What. The. Fuck. XD I've seen and experienced dipping hands in the fryer. It's a surprisingly OK thing to do if you handle it right, but if he's burned his fingerprints off I can only assume he's straight frying his hands xD that's some other shit
when organic compounds are heated, excluding combustion, two things generally can happen: decomposition or evaporation. Lighter compounds tend to boil (i.e. low carbon oil fractions like hexanes in gasoline) while heavier compounds tend to break down. They theoretically have boiling points, but they break down sooner than that because some chemical bond within its structure is not stable at that temperature. If you lower atmospheric pressure (vacuum boiler) you can boil basically anything, and that's how heavier compounds are usually distilled.
I would add to that, that some organics with cyclic structures can have decomposition points lower than their boiling point, even if they are on the lighter side.
Finally someone who comprehends that literally all matter that can exist as a liquid can boil no matter what given the right temperature and pressure! It literally doesn’t matter how thermally unstable it is, if it’s stable enough to exist in space and time it’s stable enough to be boiled. Granted you might have to pull one hell of a vacuum.
@Patti DePra That’s actually how you season a cast iron skillet. You want a reactive low smoke point oil so that you can reach the temperature at which it becomes thermally unstable, forms radicals, and can polymerize with itself to form that nice nonstick seasoning layer. People who say to use high smoke point oils don’t know what they’re talking about. You want an unsaturated fatty acid with as many double bonds as you can get to increase reactive sites.
@Patti DePra High vacuum doesn’t mean anything. You can always go higher with even the best vacuum pumps in the world. And yes, just because you are at a high vacuum doesn’t mean that you will have to boil. That’s why I said temperature and pressure. Dry ice (solid co2) sublimates into carbon dioxide in atmospheric conditions but it still has a temperature and pressure at which it will boil. Iodine sublimates into purple iodine fumes throughout a large range of pressures but it still has a temperature and pressure at which it will boil. Moth balls (naphthalene) also sublimates but has a boiling point. Phase transitions are relative to the frame of reference. I’m not trying to discredit your experience but I think you’re relying off your experience and the physical limitations of the equipment to explain physics/chemistry at all temperatures and pressure. You can’t say a substance that sublimates doesn’t have a temperature and pressure at which it will boil because that simply doesn’t make sense. Sublimation occurs when you reach a pressure too high for a liquid to exist and a temperature too high for the solid phase to be thermodynamically favorable. Just because we currently might not have pumps that can remove more atoms or molecules than can leak inside the chamber or off gas from the container material into the empty space doesn’t mean it’s not possible. If it is stable enough to exist in time and space as a liquid there will be a temperature and a pressure at which you can make it boil. Thermal decomposition is also relative and is completely unrelated to the boiling point. Boiling deals with intermolecular forces and thermal decomposition deals with intramolecular forces. They’re completely unrelated to one another. They’re also magnitudes apart in terms of their energies or strengths. If there existed a substance whose intermolecular bonds would be stronger than the intramolecular bonds it would’ve be exactly stable if even physically possible.
@Patti DePra You we’re literally talking about the oil reacting with each other to forming bigger molecules and even polymers. That’s literally the definition of polymerization and that is also precisely what the process of seasoning a cast iron is doing. You put a coating of low smoke point oil onto a pan and heat the pan in the over or on the stove which allows the oil to dry or polymerize the oil onto the surface. Some people say high smoke point oils are better for seasoning cast iron but that is incorrect and most likely caused by confusion due to that fact that high smoke point oils are safer to cook with at high temperature because they don’t thermally decompose and potentially form carcinogenic molecules. If you are seasoning a pan low smoke point is the best and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand the chemical process of seasoning which is just polymerization of oil. If you are cooking at high temperatures a high smoke point oil is better because it’s healthier due to it having a lower potential of forming weird thermal decomposition side products. I don’t understand how that’s completely different from what you said. I never mentioned anything other than seasoning with low smoke point oils. I said nothing about frying. In that case yes you’d have to be stupid to fry with a low smoke point oil.
Yeah I was dumb and did this with orange chicken sauce once. The sauce stuck to my finger and burned really bad. Don't touch simmering sugar, folks. Also my husband, who literally works in a fry kitchen, didn't know oil didn't boil. Before he and I got married he almost set his kitchen on fire waiting for it to start boiling.....
A tip for tasting sauces with a spoon is to dip the spoon in vertically, then pull it out while rotating your wrist so that the back of the spoon is facing up. This will cost the back of the spoon, then you can lick it. It has the added benefit that almost all sauces will be too thin if they don't stick to the back of the spoon. This is an excellent way to test viscosity, as the more the sauce sticks, the more viscous it is. Don't forget to take into account that the sauce will thicken as it cools. Bonus tip: If you want to test the heat of a surface like a pan or skillet, if you lick your finger first (or dip it in water, though water isn't as thick and doesn't stick to your finger as well) and then quickly wipe it across the surface, if the saliva immediately sizzles away, you know that it's hot. You can also do this when checking the doneness of steaks or other meats which may be extremely hot on top, such as anything coming out of the salamander/broiler. And to add to what was said in the video, be very careful with sugary and/or fatty, very thick sauces, it's possible that if you dunk your finger up to the first or second joint instead of swiping across the top limiting the sauce to your fingerprint, it is very possible for you to still burn yourself. Think syrup or gravy.
....I just add a drop or three of water to the skillet to hear the temperature, not saliva... Then again I usually cook for other people and that's an extremely rude thing to do in such contexts even though nothing alive in the saliva will survive a hot skillet.
pretty easy to burn yourself with very syrupy sauces regardless. If you want to finger your syrupy sauce, you probably should get your finger into an icebath as prep for that lmao
Adam, your videos are worth watching on their own merit, but I find the text in your example Square Space ads to be truly the highlight of the entire experience.
When I did my culinary training we used the term “develop asbestos fingers” which basically meant working in the kitchen you’ll be able to handle hotter things for longer the more you do it
Another reason the "flick" into hot liquids works better: by introducing a pressure wave into the liquid, it recedes from your finger as you dip, thus reducing time of contact further.
Glad you touched on (no pun intended) the sugary sauces there at the end! A sugar burn is legitimately one of the most painful things I’ve experienced in the kitchen!
You get all the same benefits of using a finger and none of the risk if you use a simple chopstick =) a tiny bit of sauce to taste, high surface area to air ratio to cool quickly, no risk of burning, and after you lick off the sauce, you can place the chopstick on the counter without making a mess (thinking of the kind of chopsticks that are square-shaped at the hand-holding end and round with a smaller diameter at the food end)
Just discovered your channel through the vinegar video…. I remember years ago when I was working kitchen, there was a Bangladeshi guy who would pick up things from the fryer bare hand, he would try to give me boiling hot soup bowls for fun… I have deep respect for this guy, I still believe he’s a super man… =)
I've watched my brother (trained) grab globs of soft crack candy syrup out of a pot. Seemed crazy to me, but he practically froze his fingers in a bowl of ice water first. And then of course threw that candy back in the ice. He was fine.
Rock (crack?) candy is risky because of how sticky melted sugar is, but as long as the ice water stops it from sticking to your fingers then it should be fine. I used to do a trick where I'd dip my hand in tempura batter and deep fry my fingers (takes a couple seconds for the heat to travel through the batter)
@@Stop_Gooning "Soft crack" refers to the stage of sugar (i.e. its temperature), not rock candy. The stages are: thread, soft ball, firm ball, hard ball, soft crack, hard crack. Soft crack means the sugar is around 280°F.
@@klieu90210 Thanks. I used the wrong terminology, but I think what I said was mostly correct. Melted sugar gives you extra bad burns because it retains a lot of heat and because it is so sticky, but a coating of cold water on your fingers could stop it from sticking.
Cooking oil's boiling points are not usually listed; instead you can find the boiling points of the individual components, such as oleic acid, linoleic acid, palmitic acid. To see them boil at 1-atmosphere, you'd want to pull a vacuum briefly to remove what little dissolved oxygen is present in the oil, and then fill the chamber with 1 atmosphere of an inert gas, such as argon. Some oils may contain longer chains that, particularly in the presence of various catalysts, may "crack" instead of boil, resulting in smaller molecules, but I mostly know how that relates to crude oil refining; I've never needed to crack food oils.
As for your question about oil boiling: yes, it can vaporize rather than smoke given a vacuum above freezing. What comes closest to that which I know of are the industrial pressure fryers in places like KFC. I believe it retains moisture but makes it less crispy.
As a professional cook of many years, we always had to have a pan of tasting spoons with our mis. Finger dipping was heavily frowned upon in any kitchen I worked in.
You'd have to wash your hands every time, or you'd be violating health codes to lick a finger and touch foods. Better to just carry some teaspoons and toss them in with your used dishes as you dirty them tasting.
@@TheZachary86 ope you didn't want to collect unemployment then, because ontop of getting a pink-slip, you don't get unemployment if you were dismissed for reckless violation of health and safety laws.
Experience helps. When you've burned your fingers and hands enough times, you're not as scared of being burned, so it actually doesn't feel as bad, your skin actually grows thicker, and you've quite literally fried your nerve endings so they don't send as many danger signals to your brain anymore. It's what every professional that works with hot stuff goes through. I've seen blacksmiths who hold the red hot piece of metal they're working on with their bare hands only inches away from the red zone. Firefighters you could probably light on fire and they'd just stand there asking you what time it is until their clothes have burned off.
I mean pretty much this. You get used to pulling dishes out of the industry dishwasher that rinses at 190 degree water, rolls and other things coming out of a 350+ oven, serving food like baked potatoes with gloved hands on a steam line with your hands sometimes. Like yea, its hot, but when you do it every day for over a decade vs someone who doesn't? Then my 'hot' and your 'hot' are very different.
Notice how he has a cooking spoon in all of his sauces? Lift the spoon, wait a second, "dip" your finger into the residue sauce there. That's infinitely safer and more pleasant. You can even wave the spoon around for a sec to cool it down.
Yes, exactly. I watched a cooking show once where the chef would drip sauce or whatever food off the spoon onto their hand & then taste & that's what I've done since. No fingers in the food & no pile of dirty sauce tasting spoons.
Hey Adam, loved how as you moved through the video I would want you to discuss a point, and everytime you did! Great job covering all the important factors, while staying nice an understandable.
Another reason is that cooks and chefs are handling hot food all day, and our hands develop calluses over time. At one place i used to work at we would occasionally have contests to see if people could grab fries floating on top of the oil without burning themselves (and some of the cooks could actually do it! )
I remember my mom telling me to be careful around a fruit syrup we were making when I was little and completely disregarding her warning to find out for myself. Boiling sugar being way hotter than boiling water was probably the “why” I needed to receive a lesson instead of a challenge
as a son of a chef, I have always been surprised about how little my father respected any hot things in the kitchen. I remember when I was smaller he would take things out of the oven without any cloves/protection. he always joked about how the nerves in his hands were long gone. Crazy man
Adam added a new catch phrase to his ever growing and already extensive repertoire: "Why i season my board, not my steak", "upside down bear", "squarespace", "putting my filthy fingers in your food without you knowing it" just kidding man we love your work!
Spoons: cheap, made of metal, easy to clean, hygienic. Finger: made of meat, irreplaceable, questionable hygiene if cooking for strangers. Adam: I’ll just stick my finger in this
Also spoon: Let's you get a reasonable portion of the sauce you're going to eat for a better sense of how flavorful it is. Finger: Barely gets any of the sauce into your mouth, becomes cooled so quickly that it won't be at an enjoyable temperature, gets flavored by the taste of your own skin.
@@DeathnoteBB A person normally has 10 fingers. You can use all of them. No need to wash your hands after every single time you taste the food. It really shows that you guys have never worked in a kitchen.
@@Sashashka Yeesh, weird thing to base an assumption on. I wouldn’t say I have worked in a kitchen, but I also would hope people you know, don’t get their germs on everything they touch _when they can just use a spoon_
In my engineering class I have burnt myself an extreme amount of time by just tapping hot glue on accident, however once I was t looking while gluing something and touched the tip and poured hot glue all over it and got a second degree burn
7:30 "what if you heated oil in a zero oxygen atmosphere, would it boil?" Yes, this is what's happening in those towers at oil refineries. They are boiling oil to distill it into different fractions (paint thinner, gasoline, diesel, heating oil, asphalt)
That is crude oil not cooking oils. Crude is a mixture of small and long chain hydrocarbons. Cooking oils are triglycerides molecules of 3 fatty acids esterified to a glycol. The head group is polar and gives the oil a much higher boiling point than the equivalent crude fractions. When heated they breakdown in ways that say icsoane can’t and won’t without catalysts present (cracking).
@@davidwright7193 thanks, didn't know the glycerol heads made a big contribution to the boiling point. But I didn't think I was so far off because even coconut oil gets fractionated for commercial purposes ;)
@@davidwright7193 What are you even saying? Many if not most molecules have different functional groups that contribute differently to the boiling point. If it can exist in space and time as a liquid, it can boil. Doesn’t matter how thermally unstable it is as long as it’s stable to exist as a liquid you can decrease the pressure enough to make it boil
@@-a13x-75 I think the real question is what are YOU saying? What you are saying is completely true, but he simply said that cooking oils have a "much higher boiling point" than crude oil, and that when heated (under standard atmospheric pressures) they will breakdown prior to reaching their boiling point, not that cooking oils "cannot boil."
@@sheep4483 Crude oil in zero oxygen will boil. If you take Adam’s exact setup and just perform it under an oxygen free atmosphere it will not boil unless you start to decrease the pressure the atmosphere is pushing down on the liquid. So you’d need a container and pull a vacuum.
When I bring a thicker sauce to a rolling boil I only tastes from the bubbles peaks because as the bubbles rise, and thin out. It creates surface area, and that section of the the sauce is going to be the most reasonable. This is for things like reduction, or flavor concentration. Like a balsamic reduction. Classic French trained.
3:23 "Instantaneously" definitely made me raise an eyebrow. Barista here, 160 degrees is our standard temp for steaming milk. I have had 200 degree espresso and water splash on me, I have had pitchers of steamed milk spilled on me, and I have suffered no burns. But if I made a batch of liquid sugar and it spilled on my hand, I'd be a bit more alarmed.
I think those standards were based on exposure from a source that is continuously spraying water, like a shower, you should probably look it up since I'm only repeating what was said in another comment. But I do think the difference is probably because they tested a different kind of exposure
It's insane how work can condition your body like that, my dad's an engineer/instrument tech and his hands are so heat resistant from working with hot metals that when he's cooking he often just grabs stuff and flips it with his fingers like it's nothing, sometimes even reaching into the oven while broiling stuff like bacon to rotate it. I have zero clue how he does it without hurting himself, I call him a cyclops 😂
Her nerves are just permanently damaged, same thing happens to line cooks - they call it asbestos hands. But the heat will still damage the cells, meaning you can be quite badly burned before noticing if you allow this to happen.
This reminds me of the Mythbusters episode where they momentarily dipped their hand into molten lead, granted the first made sure to get their hand wet so its an entirely different thing that protected them, but it still made me think of that
Without even watching the video, I can tell you how. You build up a resistance. When I worked in kitchens, I could snatching things floating in the fryer without a problem with my fingers. Just small things floating on top. But if I tried that now, when I've not been working in a professional Kitching for over a decade, it would hurt and probably blister if I did.
When I worked in a restaurant, we couldn't just put our fingers in stuff since our boss didn't want clients to see that. So we dipped spoons in the sauce and run a finger on the back of the spoon to taste it and not burn our mouth or waste time blowing on it to cool it down
Shaking your finger is also to activate other nerves that "dull" the pain signal sent to your brain. You also instinctively shake your finger after closing a door on it for example. But yes, it also cools the liquid down as a side effect :).
When I was a cook in steak houses ~35 years ago I was taught to tell how done the steaks were by touching it with light pressure with my finger. As the steak cooks the meat gets firmer, it's surprisingly accurate. I don't know if that would be legal now but no one likes to get a steak with a half dozen cuts already in it from the cook checking doneness. It still pisses me off but I guess that's how they have to do it now. 🤓🍻
At my work (upscale oyster bar/ steakhouse) we are required and told to only use timers since we standardize the thickness and weight of every steak. However the only time you are going to see us not still test it with a finger is if the owners are in the building, and even then its more of a slap on the wrist unless they see you do it multiple times in a row.
It’s legal as long as the person doing it washed their hands. I always think it’s hilarious when people get freaked out after they realize that chefs/cooks don’t wear gloves lmao.
Probe thermometers exist, and you can use the same probe hole over and over to check done-ness better than a cut. Or is using a probe thermometer just not a thing in the US? I mean, there's literally a pocket on most chef coats for one on the left arm. You're highly encouraged to carry a probe thermo in Canada, Mexico and most of europe as a cook and to use it often for checking done-ness and other critical temps without destroying food by cutting it up.
Not only cooling this liquid helps. Pain information is sent thru the same nerves as “move” information. So when you flick you are taking some of this bandwidth from pain. That’s why when you hit something moving helps.
I think my biggest step forward in cooking and understanding cookware came when I started understanding how hot a piece of cookware was by touching it. I only do this with things like cast iron and enameled cookware, because they take longer to conduct heat into my hand, but I generally do it with my fingernail, and wait to see how long it is before I can feel the heat under my fingernail
I got pretty good at grabbing hot food with my hands (in gloves) straight out of the oven when I worked in a kitchen. You can go way faster than using tongs if you learn how to not burn yourself.
I cook chicken patties a lot and I always pick them up with my fingers to put them on the bun. It's much quicker and I have an extremely high tolerance for pain.
Yep, I worked in the kitchen for 3 years and I can still touch/move stuff straight from the grill or oven. A big part of it isn't just how tough your hands are, but also knowing how quickly to touch it
@@joemichigan4945 and have the muscle memory to do it properly. Knowing how much time you have doesn't mean anything if you'll clumsily flail your meat and make a disaster off of your meal.
You should do a video on different types of cleaning products you use and the perfect mix of chemicals to use for cleaning dishes in a home and in a restaurant environment. I am always so curious about it. Especially the effectiveness and safety aspect about it.🍶🍗👉🏽
this habit can lead to a pretty interesting skill; like with most things, safe and repeated exposure in a controlled setting (like a well-metered kitchen or coffee bar) can serve as training to pretty accurately feel temp. I’ve seen lots of people pick this up after initial hesitation to even approach.
I learned the hard way just how hot an innocuous looking dark roux really is, I was whipping at it over high heat because I am not a patient fellow and a tiny drop splashed out and splattered on my bare foot and instantly blistered. I should've know what was up when the veggies started audibly frying when the roux was poured over them.
Working with coffee, I've learned to quickly fill a cup with cool water and soak my hand in it to take the heat out of the burn. You could continuously run it under water, but then you end up glued to the sink (if it's a really bad one), and you probably have to go home at some point. The only time I remember putting ice on a burn is when I accidentally dispensed somewhat recently brewed drip coffee onto my hand, and after rinsing and soaking for a while it was time to go home. I couldn't figure out a way to keep my hand submerged in water while walking home, so I grabbed ice to keep the feeling of warmness from coming back. When I got home dunked my hand in a cool cup of water and felt the water pulling the heat away (ice melted, and a cold compress isn't the best way to pull heat out of a burn). I can see why they don't recommend ice, cool water helps so much and apparently ice can inhibit healing (ice might be better than nothing, but I'm not an expert).
@@nicolescats2 Are you saying that the ice water is healing the burn by the time you get home? Not trying to sass you but once the burn has happened the heat has dispersed pretty quickly and any warmth still in your hand at that point is made by your own body reacting to the injury.
@@nahnope8581 I'm saying it helps me deal with it without needing pain meds. It doesn't matter what is causing it to heat up again, having the burn site warm up again hurts. Sure the initial cool rinse is to cool down my hand to make it stop burning, the rest is pain management. Also keeps what was probably a 2nd degree burn from making contact with irritating surfaces, or lotions that might cause further irritation (some ointments are approved for first aid, my moisturizing scented hand lotion might make things worse). Also, having it heat up again too much could cause more problems for healing than over cooling the area would. The ice was an extreme measure that allowed me to walk home in the summer heat. I might have needed ice anyway, getting burned (even one that isn't blistering yet/at all) is hard on your body, so is hot weather, meaning ice on your neck (or your burned hand) might be really helpful. You don't want to use ice unless it is the only thing available to cool it down, and don't use it for too long to avoid causing frostbite, but I don't think I was risking that considering how fast my plastic bag of ice melted.
I’ve been cooking since I was 5. Literally standing on a chair to reach the stovetop. I’ve had plenty of burns and now I can just grab hot patties or hotdogs straight off the grill with no burn
My uncle is a career chef. I've seen him literally grab a hot pan of garlic bread out of the oven bare handed and he just didn't feel it. Chefs have crazy pain tolerance.
Put your finger in cold water and then you can pretty much dip it into anything as long as you do it quick enough. The water will boil and make a film around your finger that will last for like half a second. You can find videos of people sticking their hand in molten metal for a split second using this. Although I don't recommend doing it with something that can stick to your finger like the sugar, but people say it usually works
Idea: Maybe you have already suffered some minor amount of burn damage on your finger as a result of the dipping which makes it not terribly uncomfortable. Enough nerve damage that 'pain don't hurt' but not so much that it noticeably affects your life enough that you think it's a medical issue. Did it hurt when you started cooking then over time diminished or did it never hurt?
As an amateur home cook it really just doesn’t hurt the only time I’ve felt it is when I’ve touched the bottom of the pan and even then if you’re smart you take your finger out asap
7:30 At very high temperatures the superheated oil would probably decompose before it evaporated. Same reason sugar doesn't have a boiling point; it decomposes (a.k.a. burns) first.
Isn't, in fact, the flash point the same temperature that causes the oil to decompose? And then the products of that process combust in contact with atmospheric oxygen due to the high temperature, causing the spark?
Weed resin or dab or hash whatever you call it is like syrup I’m the sense that it instantly scalds you up then solidifies burning you more while you try to get it off. Saying this for a friend ofc I’d never weed in my life
Just wanted to say that the temperature at which the oil would 'burst into flames' as you say, is in fact called the 'autoignition temperature' - around 400 degrees celcius (750F). Flash point just means the vapours above the liquid would become ignitable on direct exposure to a spark or open flame. The flash point is lower than the autoignition temperature but it wouldn't be guaranteed to go on fire at just the flashpoint.
Hi Adam, fire protection engineer here. With regards to your question about the oil: in short, yes, it would evaporate and boil away. The reason is that when you burn oil, you don't burn the liquid- you burn the layer of gaseous oil that had evaporated just above your fuel pool. A flash point is often measured in an open or closed cup test - where you either control the accumulation of vapors or allow for natural dissipation, like the Cleavland Open Cup test or the Pensky Martens test. While flashpoint is a measurement of the temperature that the liquid had to be raised to create enough vapors above the surface for ignition, the same experiment also helps to obtain the liquid's Low Flammability Limit (LFL), which is a measurement of the minimum concentration of fuel/air to sustain combustion. Now, the test is usually stopped once you determine the flashpoint (we stop the incoming flow of fuel and oxygen/inert gases) so I can't say I've ever converted oil from liquid to gas in quantities nearing anywhere what one uses for cooking; but, this vaporization process - also called pyrolysis - is crucial for the combustion of oils (and indeed to the combustion of any fuel that is not already in gaseous form). So my fundamentals tell me that yes if you heated oil on a pan in an oxygen-depleted environment (with an electric heater), it would boil away. [I can go dig around my textbooks to try and see if/when a dedicated experiment like that was conducted, if you wish]
Hey Adam - great video as always. One point though, about the air cooling. Most of the temperature loss is from evaporative cooling(it takes energy to change phase), not just the air absorbing the energy from being in contact - that's also a thing obviously, but not as much as the evaporative cooling.
RE: Oil boiling Yes, there is such a temperature for oil. In fact some oils evaporate off all the time. Paraffin for example predominantly ignites as a gas. That's why it's actually quite hard to get heavier fuels to ignite, you need to evaporate them first which requires a decent bit of heat. Matter exists in liquid or solid states because there is a mutual attraction between atoms or molecules that causes them to stick together. Consequently, there must be an amount of energy that you could put in that would cause them to fly apart. That being said, I do wonder if something as chemically complex as, for example, olive oil would stop being olive oil before it evaporated. Long chain carbohydrates can break up into shorter ones and olive oil also isn't only one chemical but a mix. I suspect it would start to break down and different constituents would start to react with each other.
When I did my culinary in France, about 10 years ago, it was still taught to students to check sugar with their fingers. Partly as the names of the various stages of "boiled" sugar are based off of how the sugar forms between the fingers, and it helps understanding the names to see how sugar can be soft or brittle with just a few degrees of separation.
They literally just tell you to dip your fingers in ice-water for ten seconds before you dip them into the molten sugar. Between the lowered temperature of your fingers and the layer of water on them, you'll never get more than a little "ow" from doing it but it doesn't half make the students shit themselves when you tell them that "today we're dipping our fingers into molten sugar".
You'll get dry burns 10 times a day in the kitchen and they will eventually stop bothering you, but a wet burn will always hurt like a bitch. Grabbing a hot handle is one thing, but opening the door of a vapour-oven right into your face is a mistake you only make once.
Same concept that allows people to make clickbait videos putting their hand into molten lead. the water will boil and form an air pocket that protects you from the heat for a time atleast.
I know that technically can be done safely but just thinking about touching molten sugar is like NOPE material to me. I have burned myself with hot glue before cause of how hard it holds on so I can imagine sugar would be much worse without the water.
the worst is sugar and fat burns tho, i dont think you ever get used to those
Finally someone in the comments who knows what they are talking about and of course did culinary in france too.
Wow culinary school in France? Must've been cool, or scary.
Im a chemist. Technically yes oil can boil.
The oil boiling is dependent on a few things, but for simplicity its pressure of the atmosphere its in and what oil is being heated. In a vacuum it will start boiling at low temps, at higher pressures it will probably break down or react with itself before boiling.
oops forgot to mention the atmosphere will alter the flashpoint/reaction temps and thus prevent boiling
Exactly. I mean, oil refineries exist, so….
@Fila Rhasti things I trust more than that link:
1-ply toilet paper
Gas station sushi
Recycled condoms
Michael J Fox performing my vasectomy
@@nonfungiblemushroom you have sushi in gas station?
I was thinking about a nitrogen atmosphere. Would it turn into some kind of polymer similar to how we season cast iron?
Hey Adam, (med) doctor here : when you get something hot on your skin, fingers or anywhere else, you don't shake your body or your hand to lower the temperature of the burning stuff; it's more of body reflex called the "gate control". The gate control theory of pain asserts that non-painful input closes the nerve "gates" to painful input, which prevents pain sensation from traveling to the central nervous system. When you get burnt or hurt, you shake, scratch, move, pinch, to help your own body stop feeling pain !
Awesome video as always.
thanks for interesting information!
Always noticed this but never knew the reason why. That’s cool.
So interesting!
Is that the same as when you swear from getting hurt because it focuses your mind on cussing? It always feels better when I swear
@@draconian_dragons6588 nope but funny to think about it this way :D
I love how he seems incredibly interested by literally everything he talks about I feel like I could watch this man explain the most boring bullshit and I will still be entertained and fully enjoying it just because of how much pure passion and interest he puts into what he talks about also didn’t know you could even do this and b e t seems so much more convenient
Some context for the plumbing handbook, plumbers are usually in a position where they can't easily move away or wipe something off. They also usually work in larger volumes than what your finger comes in contact with (like you said, surface area). Once ~160F sprays you, it's too late, you're burnt. So in practice, it is an instant.
this makes sense thank you
Back in the '30s and 40's my grandfather was a pastry chef at a major hotel here in Chicago. My father apprenticed under him. My father would tell me how my grandfather was well known for his work with molten sugar making flowers etc. He said he worked barehanded with the molten sugar on a marble slab. He did it by working quickly with the sugar and keeping a bowl of iced water handy to dip into when he needed it. I am sure he developed calluses and killed off some nerve endings but I remember photos of some of his work that were simply works of art
ice water and molten sugar are a pretty old combination to allow this form of handling, but it nevertheless requires a lot of care and skill just to avoid the burns, never mind sculpt the sugar.
This technique is similar to how the guy from Lofty Pursuits makes his old-fashioned, hard sugar candies, complete with Victorian candy-making presses and tools.
I highly recommend that channel!!
That is impressive.I wouldn't touch molten sugar without at least 2 heatproof gloves.
I once tried dipping my finger in molten sugar to taste it.
Once.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 I've had a dumb mishap while holding a tea spoon with which I've stirred cooled down molten sugar. I had this spoon and something else in my hands, and at some point my motor skills got confused because I wanted to grab something or whatever, this was completely idiotic. Of course, the spoon (with some sugar still on it) completely soaked my finger tip with a soft honey-like texture. I wasn't primed for it and it took me a second to realize the mistake. I was calm though and it wasn't an injury worth of a hospital, but in a nutshell, if it's a sugar and it's still relatively liquid, TREAT IT WITH RESPECT.
PhD chemist here: yes, oil and all other liquids can boil. You have to avoid "side reactions" aka degradation or redox reactions (burning). An inert atmosphere will control the burning, however some chemical compounds still have thermal decomposition pathways. In that case you would have to drop the pressure in addition to (or instead of!) heating.
Yes thankfully someone who fully understands the relationship between boiling point, temperature, and pressure and the fact that all matter in the universe that can exist as a liquid can boil given the correct temperature or pressure. As long as a substance can exist as a liquid and is stable enough to exist in space it can boil. It doesn’t matter how thermally unstable it is. It just means you’d have to pull an insane vacuum.
@@-a13x-75 ehh, kinda. Some compounds might not have the correct point where boiling is possible without decomposition. They might even not exist in a stable enough liquid form to avoid decomposition. Of course, most of these are things that we don't really talk about or use in the day-to-day life, but maybe some of the polymers we use fit in this category.
@@henriquepacheco7473 I understand what you are saying. But thermal decomposition is completely unrelated to boiling point though. One is due to the breaking of intramolecular bonds (covalent, metallic, ionic) while the other is due to the breaking of intermolecular interactions (hydrogen bonds, the different types of dipole interactions, london dispersion forces). Intermolecular forces are much stronger than intramolecular forces. I don’t believe there is molecule, in the classical sense of the term, whose forces that keep the atoms its comprised of is weaker than the forces between molecules. That doesn’t really make sense. I’m not talking about what we are currently capable of doing in labs with our current technological possibilities. I am saying that no laws of physics or thermodynamics prevents it. If something boils at 100C at atmospheric conditions but thermally decomposes at 80C you can still boil it below 80C by decrease the pressure thus increasing the unstable compounds vapor pressure. Although this all started from thermally unstable liquids, a thermally unstable solid can also have the possibility to boil even though it might normally sublimates. Moth balls(naphthalene), dry ice(solid co2), and iodine crystals a examples of commonly sublimating material. This means at atmospheric pressure (could be a range of pressure) the pressure is too high for the liquid to exist and the temperature is too high for the solid to be thermodynamically favorable. All three of those substances have boiling points. Naphthalene from moth balls and carbon dioxide from dry ice are actually excellent examples because both molecules have a temperature at which they thermally decompose into its constituents yet both can boil.
@@-a13x-75 there are molecules of all kinds, including some with pretty damn sturdy intermolecullar interactions. The kind of molecule that wouldn't really ever melt instead of decomposing would fit within this rance of molecules. They would be very large polymers that have plenty of intermollecular interactions, to the point that enough heat to melt them, even in very low pressure conditions, would be enough to break the molecules.
And yes, I am aware that thermal decomposition and boiling point are unrelated. If they weren't, either all molecules would boil or all would decompose, given the same pressure conditions.
Alright touché on the polymers but that makes this whole conversation more complex on an entirely different level with what you define a molecule. I guess if a tire was perfectly vulcanized so that every rubber monomer was cross linked that would technically qualify as a molecule and yes it would just burn. How about all substances that can exist as a liquid have a boiling point given a specific temperature and pressure.
I’m almost a Chef in Switzerland (only a month to go on my apprenticeship) and we don’t use our fingers to taste.. we still use them for texture but for taste, we have sets of two metal containers, one filled with clean spoons and one for dirty ones. No licked spoons are allowed back in food
Same in France this would be unacceptable in a restaurant
That's the best case, yes
Europeans are babies
One spoon for sauce, second for first
In America it's honestly pretty common to do this. Never multiple times with the same finger and 99% of the time the chef doing this also has the intelligence to go wash their hands afterwards. We also by law have to keep food safe sanitizer on each station so there is was way to quickly clean.
Personally I like to keep souffle cups on my station that I can use to test with.
OMG this totally hit home for me. A long time ago in a profession a long way from me... I was working in a pizza place and I had an accident where a pizza fresh out of a 500°+ force air gas powered oven flipped over, upside down on my forearm. My arm was covered with boiling cheese, pepperoni grease and pizza sauce. It immediately damaged my nerves but then an assistant manager shoved my arm under a cold running faucet and my skin immediately bubbled up and peeled off and then it started to hurt. The searing pain was insane. It took 20 years for the scar to settle for only coming out when I get a tan on the inside of my forearm.
I'd say it has a lot to do with fingers\palm skin thickness too. I'd say that you can burn your skin more easily if you accidentally drop something on your arm when compared to just fingers (same temperature same time)
Skin is also a very poor conductor of heat. Minimize time of contact. That's also the secret of walking on coals.
Asbestos hands!
It's also something you get acclimated too, somehow. I've worked as a cook on and off for 20 years. I got used to certain things, grabbing things out of a hot pan, putting my arms in a 600+ degree oven, etc. When I've been out of the industry for a while and come back, I absolutely burn the shit out of myself trying to do those things I used to do all the time. Then eventually it doesn't burn anymore again.
@@NonEuclideanTacoCannon Kind of like getting callouses from breaking in a new pair of shoes
I was a cook for 10 years and now I'm going to welding school. I think it's a combination of having *literally* tougher skin and being acclimated to burn pain. I've grabbed pieces of 1,000 degree steel without gloves entirely too many times and I'm pretty sure the only reason I can still use my fingers is because of all the times I burnt myself cooking.
I've also developed the bad habit of just letting slag burn through my sleeves because I'm used to always having little burns on my arms.
I have spent a lot of time around child burn survivors; sometimes the result of kitchen accidents. PSA: Please remember to be very careful when your kids are helping in the kitchen. Just because they see you swipe your finger, it does not mean that they have the same knowledge about when it is safe and when it isn't or how to do it safely. Make sure you talk to them and explain to them how to be safe little chefs!
Absolutely. I was a beaver scout leader and we'd teach our children how to make and extinguish fire, how to deal with kitchen/oil/pan fires (very important when talking about extinguishing) and how to safely work with fire. Obviously the emphasis is to leave it to the adults, but knowing helps them recognise the danger and help out responsibly and out of experience instead of uninformed curiosity.
I would also imagine a kids fingers are a tad more sensative? I mean, even myself since getting my newest job that involves more hard physical work, they've become less sensative to things than before. I don't have callouses yet, but the skin is probably getting thicker as a result. Kiddos wouldn't have very thickened skin.
But then I'm only making uneducated guesses.
This, so much, just pick up a spoon.... severe water/liquid burns are very painful, dangerous, and sadly common (and not only on kids)
@@kerielwatson3197 yes they are. Burns are a lot more dangerous for kids and especially young kids as their skin is a lot more susceptible to burns
As a child I stuck my finger in the flame of a gas stove lol
7:30 Hi Adam, it's my understanding that for many of the large organic molecules like those in cooking oil, the molecules will deteriorate at a temperature far below what their theoretical boiling point would be.
Any way you could maybe dumb that down a little and add a specific or two. You're basically saying that it would blacken and burn away minus the fire? Also you say this for most of the organic molecules. Not to be that guy but what would happen to the rest?
I believe also that many large organic molecules contain oxygen, so as they decompose they'll create an atmosphere allowing for combustion
@@shanetaylor761 It will decompose to smaller and smaller molecules, then those will be able to be vaporised. The rest that will stay will propably be solid or liquid inorganic material, like pure carbon or crystals of salt/sodium and maybe someting like compounds of sulfur. But I'm not 100% sure.
@@shanetaylor761 everything can boil. You can boil oil under certain conditions (a vacuum). But there are bonds in oil molecules, "links" between particles, that get destroyed at certain temperatures. So, even if you could theoretically boil it, they break down sooner than that.
@@shanetaylor761 Organic chemistry is a huuuge field, so this is simplyfying a lot but: There are lots of ways for a molecule to break down. Sometimes giving a molecule energy by heating it up will cause it to split into two pieces.Different chemicals can also react with each other, for example water and an organic molecule, producing a different chemical with different properties. So not necessarily turning into some charcoal like material, but cooking is all about causing reactions between different food chemicals, but naturally sometimes you get some reactions you don't want.
Not sure how common a chemical molecule breaking into pieces is vs reacting with oxygen/water/other organics is in cooking, as it's not an area I know much about
As for the question about oil boiling, yes! The lowest possible temperature at when oil boils is probably about 300 degrees Celsius (based on numbers from crude oil, so it may be higher or lower by about 50-80 degrees). This is actually how crude oil (from the ground) is distilled into gasoline - it gets heated up until it boils and then gets cooled down until each individual component condenses from the gas mixture!
It's amazing how long can you make this video without feeling like you are artificially dragging it. Good job.
Hope this is sarcasm 😂
The plumbing standard accounts for the following scenario: Adult or child with an incapacity to remove oneself from a full-hot shower or bath. The temperatures listed comes from people in those situations who could not remove themselves from the water injuring them. This is much different than a single finger dip.
@Fila Rhasti BE GONE PORN BOT
Yea more for large patches of exposure like a pipe gushing over your entire arm. In a small area the nearby tissue can quickly and easily get cool blood to that area to remove the heat. If your entire arm is heating up the blood cannot get to the middle of the patch while remaining cool enough to remove any more heat.
When you said "incapacity to remove oneself from a full-hot shower or bath" I thought it was the "aw I don't want to leave" shower lmao
@@kevinl4837 Naw, more like an 86 year old falling into the tub while the water is running, but a limb bumped the hot faucet to full on. The person cannot get up and out of the tub, even while being continuously scalded by a full-hot stream of water. This is why new hot water heaters are set to about 120 °F, even though they can be set to much higher temps.
@@Kenjiro5775 see also: parent drawing up a warm bath for child, child getting in bath and ending up with severe burns over large parts of their body. Alternate scenarios include kids deciding they're "a big kid" now and can draw up their own/their sibling's bath, and ending up severely burned before an adult can notice what they're doing.
I've read enough case reports to have a deeply ingrained reflex to always, ALWAYS check the temperature both for myself and any children I'm temporarily responsible for. This kind of accident is really rare where I live, but it only takes one freak accent and suddenly you have a dead baby and a thoroughly traumatised-for-life parent in your emergency department (my former career trajectory was pretty firmly aimed pediatric emergency medicine).
It should be remembered that when plumbers are talking about hot water, it's probably related to a water-heater, and the way they'd be exposed to said water would likely involve a pipe that is leaking or bursts. So that's a *lot* more surface area exposed, and way more water. Probably coming at them at some kind of pressure. So for them even "instantaneously" is going to cause serious damage.
Good point, and I think it has something to do with skin thickness. I'd say skin on finger is much denser\thicker than at arms. Hence 70*c doesn't make a burn mark on finger but on arm it could.
They're also talking about showers and taps that will pour that temperature of water out continuously. So if the water is turned on at 160F you're going to get effectively instantly burned if your hand is in it. If the homeowner has the heater up that hot, they're going to catch a showerheads worth before they can get away, or a handful in the sink.
"...the way they'd be exposed to said water would likely involve a pipe that is leaking or bursts."
That's not what the chart is for. It's for teaching safe setting of water-heater temperatures. A water heater that's only supplying a commercial kitchen can be set hotter than one that's supplying a child's bathtub, for example.
Yeah! Remember when someone is talking about something in reference.
Don't forget there talking about something reference.
It should be remembered that when journalists talk about hot water, it's probably related to the phrase hot water.
I remember, as a child, dipping my fingers in melted wax after blowing out a candle. I don't know how hot wax typically is, but it GRABS ON. As a result, most of the heat transfer goes into your finger rather than into the air. It's not hot enough to cause actual injury (assuming a short or instantaneous dip), but it's definitely enough to cause pain. Not so much pain to never do it again, but certainly enough to make it into a fun dare with which children can taunt each other, or to show off "wax fingers" to each other. :-)
Some adults use hot wax as a sadism/masochism thing, and yeah, it can definitely hurt. One of the things you're supposed to do is get a candle with wax that has a low melting point (apparently soy is good for this) and hold it very high over the person. The time it takes to drip from the candle to your skin lets it cool down somewhat before it hits you: you can still feel it, but not as much as if you were pouring the same amount of wax from an inch away.
for candles, if you hold your finger in, the wax directly attached to your finger will dry and act as a protective layer from more hot wax causing any further damage
Be careful with the "wax" challenge. Wax is a very broad family with a wide range of melting temperatures even within the same generic name like paraffin. There's also a latent heat so it isn't going to cool as it solidifies.
Me and my friends would dare each other to drip wax on our hands as kids.
It felt like very hot bath water and cooled within seconds.
After getting used to the mild pain we could cover our whole hands in it.
I always did that with the candles at church when my mom would make me go
Chemist here. Love your videos, it's clear they're very well-researched and informative! Regarding the boiling of oil, yes if you reduce the pressure you will get to a point where its boiling point drops below the flash point, allowing it to boil rather than decompose.
so you would have oil in the gas state just floating around? what if it quickly got exposed to air? What if you breathed it?
@@DuckReconMajor That's right, it would transition from liquid to gas phase. It would still be exposed to air under lower pressure, so I presume you mean if there was a sudden incursion of atmospheric air into the low pressure chamber? In that case, the gaseous oil would rapidly condense back into a liquid. In order to breathe it in, your lungs would need to be at a lower pressure than the gaseous oil - so I don't think that's possible. If you unsealed a low pressure flask of gaseous oil while pressed to your lips it would instead suck the air from your lungs into the flask and the oil would condense back into a liquid.
@@elnod thank you for the explanation!
5:27 i have gotten around that problem by using the same "fingerdipping" technique you advocate, but with a spoon. I dip my clean spoon in the sauce and then pour the excess back into the pot, the rest of the sauce that clings on the spoon will be ready to taste. I will then put the now dirty spoon in the same bowl i put my vegetables in that i used for the sauce.
Fun fact: as you kind of hinted at, our internal "warning system" is calibrated to the same metrics - we can NOT "feel a temperature", we only feel heat-flux (so "transferred heat energy per area per time"). So if you touch the bonnet of your car it feels much colder than a box of styrofoam at the same temperature. In fact, the styrofoam can even feel warm, since it isolates and lowers the outflux of heat below the "status quo" that exists between skin and air. (Thank you BJCMXY for the correction)
"Sends Back" isn't exactly accurate... It simply slows the heat dissipation rate immensely, thereby creating the perception of it being warmer, as the material immediately in contact reach body temperature energy saturation point, and because the skin isn't experiencing the expected heat dissipation, it is perceived as getting warmer, and because the materials are reaching body temperature combined with the fact that the heat transfer is slow enough, the heat flux is now imperceptible as the skin is now being held at a near equilibrium with the output rates, instead of the normal levels of convection and conductive transfer, that it's attuned for.
I feel like I said the same thing in several different ways, but I'll leave it as is.
This 'relative' sensation of only sensing heat flux is oft repeated and totally wrong. You absolutely can feel absolute temperature. The sensation of warmth is relative, the sensation of pain from heat is not and is a different mechanism from that of heat/cold. You can easily prove it to yourself by getting something over 60c and try touching it for a short time with both a room temperature finger, a cold finger, and a hot finger. You'll feel pain quickly in all cases.
@@knurlgnar24 the heat transfer equation is Q=mc∆t
Q is the heat transfer rate, m is mass, c is specific heat capacity, ∆t is the difference in transfer.
Your pain receptors trigger over a certain temperature. Since the heat transfer rate is dependent on the difference in temperatures, the time it takes to burn is indeed dependant on skin temperature.
Yes, you will feel it quickly, but the additional cooling of a finger would act as a buffer in your scenario, since you first have to heat up the colder finger to the temperature of the warmer one, then continue further to the temperature at which you feel pain.
So, because of how heat transfer works, and because pain receptors have a threshold temperature for going off, a cold finger will definitely feel less pain, as the time at the maximum temperature will be less. As such, you cannot feel absolute temperature.
@@juliaf_ True, the brain is a system that is constantly filtering messages & signals, and will reprioritize things depending of certain parameters.
Otherwise there wouldn't be that Frog in the pot scenario.
Even the human brain has mechanisms that reset the prevailing allowances to different levels depending on the situation.
The idea of eating spicy food & drinking hot tea was on such a method the British Occupiers of India used to generate the perception that the climate wasn't as intolerably hot and humid.
Even I have personally experienced this in the opposite direction.
I was in a room that was actually far too hot for me, but as a result, I was able to walk outside barefoot on ice, wearing swimming trunks & a t-shirt, and not even feel the cold, despite there being an 80°F temperature difference between the two places.
During the exposure period of about a minute, due to the amount of heat my body had contained. My skin temperature barely dropped despite being in direct contact with extreme convective currents & conductivity of melting ice under my feet clearly pulling heat from me...but simply because my body had so much stored heat to expel, I wasn't even aware of it.
You can do the same if you warm up your hand for a few minutes under tolerably hot water, then grab an ice cube, you'll actually not feel the cold immediately, because the brain has had to reshuffle the priority of the signals from that area.
Same goes for if you've cooled your hand down to a tolerably cold temperature then place it in something hot. It won't immediately register as the brain has to reorganize the signaling frameworks.
You will notice heat sooner than cold, simply because heat is more dangerous to the body than cold in the short term.
The body can ramp up the metabolism easier than it can down regulate, since humans are capable of complete thermoregulation.. and the natural processes produce the baseline heat necessary to maintain the internal difference between the external, and whenever the amount of energy required to maintain that difference increases it has a correlative increase in consumption, but reducing consumption below the baseline is harder to accomplish within a short period even with sweat and the like.
At least that's what I theorize, based on my existing knowledge of biology. 💁🏼♂️
@@knurlgnar24 yea but don't suggest to test at 60c because that is unnecessary torture & cause scalding, just mention a water at 41c to demonstrate that the heat pain is actually fixed/constant sensation at that absolute temperature.
Respect the Syrup! I got a serious second-bordering-on-third degree burn on my lower leg when my dad and I were trying to make Sponge Taffy in too small a pan, I was asked to take the cooling dish out of the freezer, and in response to the taffy boiling over my Dad's expert move was to whip around 180 with the frothing pan with me standing directly in the line of fire. Can confirm, not something for ankles or fingers!
I once cooked persian sohan, which involves a huge amount of molten sugar, and one needs to pour saffron water into it, resulting in a lot of steam and bubbling. It was scary as heck.
Respect the syrup!
my stupid self was making lollipops in the microwave and i touched the syrup on the spoon i used to stir with... had a big blister there for a while_
As he says at 6:41 "Burn injuries are a function of temperature, time and the materials involved." So, yes, do respect the "syrup", but there is a difference between a normal water based sauce and molten sugar :)
Oh god yeah my friend had something similar happen and she still has the leg scars
Damn, and I thought I just built up a heat resistance from my years as a chef. I'll never forget the time I went to one of those Hot Pot restaurant where you cook your own food in a pot of boiling broth and I grabbed it with my bare hands, the waiter nearly had a heart attack thinking I was gonna seriously burn myself and spill boiling water all over the place. I was laughing and told him how my hands became calloused after a few years of working over a 500 degree grill.
I was as a chef for a couple of years or so when I was younger (several years ago). To be fair, it was mainly ping-cooking (I think that's the term - where you basically microwaving pre-cooked meals). But there was some actual cooking as well - and plenty of stuff to burn yourself on! I always had quite a high tolerance to pain, I think, and this increased that (at least on my hands).
I always found it interesting just how little the waiting staff could take sometimes (e.g. finding plates too hot). And I'm not even talking super hot plates, but sometimes they'd find even (what I considered to be) lukewarm plates too hot.
Agreed, I always laugh when wait staff caution me against touching a dish. I've pretty much trained myself out of the *pull your hand back really quickly* reflex from small burns too. Amazing what your body can learn to tolerate and adjust to.
As a pizza baker I felt this. I call them dead hands or chef hands when people ask me about putting my hands in the oven. (Wood stove, lots of wood being thrown in by hand)
I am Adam's father and, for the record, I'm the one who taught him he could pass his finger through and open flame. He learned very well and, yes, he was always very bright.
Is this seriously you?
@@ok1025 yes that is his real dad
The hero off the scene!
@@ok1025 Yes.
@@Ragusea1 👍
I have been enjoying so many of your videos since I found you on RUclips. They continue to entertain and inform me. For some reason though, this is my favorite. You really seem into the questions involved and dug for answers. Thanks for not just being a plain cooking show
Having worked around a deep fryer, hot liquids, ovens etc as a chef I can confirm all of this. Also, you get used to it in different ways, you get better at pain management, your hands become more calloused, and the nerves in your fingers transfer less pain as well.
I worked in a kitchen where one of my friends was the frycook I can grab hot things all day but this guy could stick his fingers in the deep fryer the same way some stick theirs in boiling water.
The secret ingredient to all of Ragusea's cooking - a smidgeon of Ragusea in the sauce when he dips his fingers in it. It's subtle, but a discerning palate might possibly detect it. And that's why you can follow his recipes, but if you didn't dip Ragusea's fingers in the sauce, you can't replicate it exactly!
I agree. My family and I, partly jokingly and partly serious, say that skin cells add flavor. Same recipe, different cook, still different flavor.
@@mlck24 well i mean technically?
10:53 The YTP crowd will love this one.
The bathwater makes sense, at least, because it's not being held at that scalding temperature - it'll lose heat as it just sits in the bathtub. So Lauren isn't risking scalding herself by sitting in 49°C water, because it'll probably be more like 37°C or lower by the time she gets out of the tub.
The chart is made for baths and showers, so....
@@krankarvolund7771 it's made for a running tap
@@krankarvolund7771 Its made for shit from a butt
@@nahnope8581 It’s made for pools.
It's made for us fools.
I think the flick is also good because it's a single continuous motion - there's no chance of dipping your finger, being distracted and forgetting to pull it out, and then getting reminded when you feel the heat which is probably too late.
It reminds me of how I do programming - whenever i change the code I want to make a take a complete step that goes from one working version to another working version, not do something that breaks the system and then have to remember to do another next later that fixes it and makes it better.
when he went over the oil i was very happy because the whole entire time i was thinking of my experience with chemistry different liquids have different specific heat capacities with water having a very high capacity meaning it contains much more energy per degree celsius
I am a chemist with a background in chem engineering: Oil absolutely can boil, and it would have to be under an inert (oxygen-free) atmosphere. The temperatures required under normal atmospheric pressure are very high, probably difficult to reach in a kitchen. Palm oil, for example, has a boiling point reported as being near 570F (300C).
It's also possible that the oil molecules could break down or react with themselves at these high temperatures. To prevent that, you would have to get a sealed container and lower the pressure on the oil so that it boils at a lower temperature. (if you look up phase diagrams you can find much further info about this than I can type in a youtube comment). This lowering of pressure + temperature for boiling is how refineries and industrial chemical separations often work.
Which is why oil refinery is a hella specialised thing most domestic settings cannot pull off, I suppose.
So it can burn, just not in normal circumstances?
@@thegoodwitchluzura it wouldnt catch a blaze if no air is precent but it would potentialy undergo the formation of a tarlike liqui/solid if decomposition were to happen before boiling
Just adding to this, Adam is mistaken on two points.
- First, oils do have a boiling point.
- Second, Adam refers to a flash point, but then describes the auto-ignition point.
Some search terms for those interested enough to do some googling (and some simplified definitions):
- Boiling point (temperature and pressure at which the bulk liquid starts turning to vapour).
- Flash point (temperature and pressure at which the liquid/air boundary of the liquid has sufficient flammable vapour for ignition to occur provided an external ignition source (sauce 🙃)).
- Fire point (as above but hot enough for fire to be sustained).
- Auto-ignition point (pressure and temperature at which the thing will spontaneously combust without an external ignition source).
@@WoodenSocks everything has a boiling point it might be impossible to reach but it have a boiling point thats just basic thermodynamics
My dad had a restaurant for over 20 years (he was the only one who cooked) and he literally burned his fingerprints off from plating hot fried food. I didn't even know that was a thing until I saw Men in Black and then asked my dad about it. I still don't know how he endured that super hot food right out of the deep fryer for so long, but he did it and he did it well.
I guess he can get away with crimes now
What. The. Fuck. XD I've seen and experienced dipping hands in the fryer. It's a surprisingly OK thing to do if you handle it right, but if he's burned his fingerprints off I can only assume he's straight frying his hands xD that's some other shit
when organic compounds are heated, excluding combustion, two things generally can happen: decomposition or evaporation. Lighter compounds tend to boil (i.e. low carbon oil fractions like hexanes in gasoline) while heavier compounds tend to break down. They theoretically have boiling points, but they break down sooner than that because some chemical bond within its structure is not stable at that temperature. If you lower atmospheric pressure (vacuum boiler) you can boil basically anything, and that's how heavier compounds are usually distilled.
I would add to that, that some organics with cyclic structures can have decomposition points lower than their boiling point, even if they are on the lighter side.
Finally someone who comprehends that literally all matter that can exist as a liquid can boil no matter what given the right temperature and pressure! It literally doesn’t matter how thermally unstable it is, if it’s stable enough to exist in space and time it’s stable enough to be boiled. Granted you might have to pull one hell of a vacuum.
@Patti DePra That’s actually how you season a cast iron skillet. You want a reactive low smoke point oil so that you can reach the temperature at which it becomes thermally unstable, forms radicals, and can polymerize with itself to form that nice nonstick seasoning layer. People who say to use high smoke point oils don’t know what they’re talking about. You want an unsaturated fatty acid with as many double bonds as you can get to increase reactive sites.
@Patti DePra High vacuum doesn’t mean anything. You can always go higher with even the best vacuum pumps in the world. And yes, just because you are at a high vacuum doesn’t mean that you will have to boil. That’s why I said temperature and pressure. Dry ice (solid co2) sublimates into carbon dioxide in atmospheric conditions but it still has a temperature and pressure at which it will boil. Iodine sublimates into purple iodine fumes throughout a large range of pressures but it still has a temperature and pressure at which it will boil. Moth balls (naphthalene) also sublimates but has a boiling point. Phase transitions are relative to the frame of reference. I’m not trying to discredit your experience but I think you’re relying off your experience and the physical limitations of the equipment to explain physics/chemistry at all temperatures and pressure. You can’t say a substance that sublimates doesn’t have a temperature and pressure at which it will boil because that simply doesn’t make sense. Sublimation occurs when you reach a pressure too high for a liquid to exist and a temperature too high for the solid phase to be thermodynamically favorable. Just because we currently might not have pumps that can remove more atoms or molecules than can leak inside the chamber or off gas from the container material into the empty space doesn’t mean it’s not possible. If it is stable enough to exist in time and space as a liquid there will be a temperature and a pressure at which you can make it boil. Thermal decomposition is also relative and is completely unrelated to the boiling point. Boiling deals with intermolecular forces and thermal decomposition deals with intramolecular forces. They’re completely unrelated to one another. They’re also magnitudes apart in terms of their energies or strengths. If there existed a substance whose intermolecular bonds would be stronger than the intramolecular bonds it would’ve be exactly stable if even physically possible.
@Patti DePra You we’re literally talking about the oil reacting with each other to forming bigger molecules and even polymers. That’s literally the definition of polymerization and that is also precisely what the process of seasoning a cast iron is doing. You put a coating of low smoke point oil onto a pan and heat the pan in the over or on the stove which allows the oil to dry or polymerize the oil onto the surface. Some people say high smoke point oils are better for seasoning cast iron but that is incorrect and most likely caused by confusion due to that fact that high smoke point oils are safer to cook with at high temperature because they don’t thermally decompose and potentially form carcinogenic molecules. If you are seasoning a pan low smoke point is the best and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand the chemical process of seasoning which is just polymerization of oil. If you are cooking at high temperatures a high smoke point oil is better because it’s healthier due to it having a lower potential of forming weird thermal decomposition side products. I don’t understand how that’s completely different from what you said. I never mentioned anything other than seasoning with low smoke point oils. I said nothing about frying. In that case yes you’d have to be stupid to fry with a low smoke point oil.
wow i really needed a 14 minute video to find out about this very minute and uncomplicated topic
Yeah I was dumb and did this with orange chicken sauce once. The sauce stuck to my finger and burned really bad. Don't touch simmering sugar, folks.
Also my husband, who literally works in a fry kitchen, didn't know oil didn't boil. Before he and I got married he almost set his kitchen on fire waiting for it to start boiling.....
A tip for tasting sauces with a spoon is to dip the spoon in vertically, then pull it out while rotating your wrist so that the back of the spoon is facing up. This will cost the back of the spoon, then you can lick it. It has the added benefit that almost all sauces will be too thin if they don't stick to the back of the spoon. This is an excellent way to test viscosity, as the more the sauce sticks, the more viscous it is. Don't forget to take into account that the sauce will thicken as it cools.
Bonus tip: If you want to test the heat of a surface like a pan or skillet, if you lick your finger first (or dip it in water, though water isn't as thick and doesn't stick to your finger as well) and then quickly wipe it across the surface, if the saliva immediately sizzles away, you know that it's hot. You can also do this when checking the doneness of steaks or other meats which may be extremely hot on top, such as anything coming out of the salamander/broiler.
And to add to what was said in the video, be very careful with sugary and/or fatty, very thick sauces, it's possible that if you dunk your finger up to the first or second joint instead of swiping across the top limiting the sauce to your fingerprint, it is very possible for you to still burn yourself. Think syrup or gravy.
....I just add a drop or three of water to the skillet to hear the temperature, not saliva... Then again I usually cook for other people and that's an extremely rude thing to do in such contexts even though nothing alive in the saliva will survive a hot skillet.
pretty easy to burn yourself with very syrupy sauces regardless. If you want to finger your syrupy sauce, you probably should get your finger into an icebath as prep for that lmao
@@henriquepacheco7473 Maybe some aloe ready to go after too.
@@Call-me-Al me too! Run my fingers under the tap for a second then flick a few drops into the pan
Bonus tip: Spit in the pan multiple times and watch it sizzle away. Invite the people you're cooking for to watch, it's a cool party trick. 😎👌
“Why I sauce my finger, not my food”
Delicious fingers
"If I could cover my entire body in this stuff, I would"
YTPers are going to have a field day with that one.
Adam, your videos are worth watching on their own merit, but I find the text in your example Square Space ads to be truly the highlight of the entire experience.
When I did my culinary training we used the term “develop asbestos fingers” which basically meant working in the kitchen you’ll be able to handle hotter things for longer the more you do it
Another reason the "flick" into hot liquids works better: by introducing a pressure wave into the liquid, it recedes from your finger as you dip, thus reducing time of contact further.
Glad you touched on (no pun intended) the sugary sauces there at the end! A sugar burn is legitimately one of the most painful things I’ve experienced in the kitchen!
You get all the same benefits of using a finger and none of the risk if you use a simple chopstick =) a tiny bit of sauce to taste, high surface area to air ratio to cool quickly, no risk of burning, and after you lick off the sauce, you can place the chopstick on the counter without making a mess (thinking of the kind of chopsticks that are square-shaped at the hand-holding end and round with a smaller diameter at the food end)
My brother in Christ, turn the spoon upside down! = no pool
Love your videos!
Just discovered your channel through the vinegar video…. I remember years ago when I was working kitchen, there was a Bangladeshi guy who would pick up things from the fryer bare hand, he would try to give me boiling hot soup bowls for fun… I have deep respect for this guy, I still believe he’s a super man… =)
I've watched my brother (trained) grab globs of soft crack candy syrup out of a pot. Seemed crazy to me, but he practically froze his fingers in a bowl of ice water first. And then of course threw that candy back in the ice. He was fine.
Rock (crack?) candy is risky because of how sticky melted sugar is, but as long as the ice water stops it from sticking to your fingers then it should be fine.
I used to do a trick where I'd dip my hand in tempura batter and deep fry my fingers (takes a couple seconds for the heat to travel through the batter)
@@Stop_Gooning "Soft crack" refers to the stage of sugar (i.e. its temperature), not rock candy. The stages are: thread, soft ball, firm ball, hard ball, soft crack, hard crack. Soft crack means the sugar is around 280°F.
@@klieu90210 Thanks. I used the wrong terminology, but I think what I said was mostly correct. Melted sugar gives you extra bad burns because it retains a lot of heat and because it is so sticky, but a coating of cold water on your fingers could stop it from sticking.
Every mom's secret to making her look like a heroine. 😂
Cooking oil's boiling points are not usually listed; instead you can find the boiling points of the individual components, such as oleic acid, linoleic acid, palmitic acid. To see them boil at 1-atmosphere, you'd want to pull a vacuum briefly to remove what little dissolved oxygen is present in the oil, and then fill the chamber with 1 atmosphere of an inert gas, such as argon. Some oils may contain longer chains that, particularly in the presence of various catalysts, may "crack" instead of boil, resulting in smaller molecules, but I mostly know how that relates to crude oil refining; I've never needed to crack food oils.
As for your question about oil boiling: yes, it can vaporize rather than smoke given a vacuum above freezing. What comes closest to that which I know of are the industrial pressure fryers in places like KFC. I believe it retains moisture but makes it less crispy.
As a professional cook of many years, we always had to have a pan of tasting spoons with our mis. Finger dipping was heavily frowned upon in any kitchen I worked in.
You'd have to wash your hands every time, or you'd be violating health codes to lick a finger and touch foods. Better to just carry some teaspoons and toss them in with your used dishes as you dirty them tasting.
@@kauske coughs into hand, then dips into sauce 😋
@@TheZachary86 ope you didn't want to collect unemployment then, because ontop of getting a pink-slip, you don't get unemployment if you were dismissed for reckless violation of health and safety laws.
The comment i was searching for. Thank you. No good Chef dips their finger in food.
Experience helps. When you've burned your fingers and hands enough times, you're not as scared of being burned, so it actually doesn't feel as bad, your skin actually grows thicker, and you've quite literally fried your nerve endings so they don't send as many danger signals to your brain anymore.
It's what every professional that works with hot stuff goes through. I've seen blacksmiths who hold the red hot piece of metal they're working on with their bare hands only inches away from the red zone. Firefighters you could probably light on fire and they'd just stand there asking you what time it is until their clothes have burned off.
I mean pretty much this. You get used to pulling dishes out of the industry dishwasher that rinses at 190 degree water, rolls and other things coming out of a 350+ oven, serving food like baked potatoes with gloved hands on a steam line with your hands sometimes. Like yea, its hot, but when you do it every day for over a decade vs someone who doesn't? Then my 'hot' and your 'hot' are very different.
My mom often cooks without tasting food at all, she even cooks flawless food when she's fasting. She's a superhero.
She must have a good sense of smell, as if you've got a good enough sense of smell, you can even detect salt levels.
Least that's my own experience.🤔
@@BJCMXY This is me. I never taste my food while cooking but I can smell the saltiness. It's how I've always cooked. I'm also a mom to 3.
Notice how he has a cooking spoon in all of his sauces?
Lift the spoon, wait a second, "dip" your finger into the residue sauce there.
That's infinitely safer and more pleasant. You can even wave the spoon around for a sec to cool it down.
Yes, exactly. I watched a cooking show once where the chef would drip sauce or whatever food off the spoon onto their hand & then taste & that's what I've done since. No fingers in the food & no pile of dirty sauce tasting spoons.
Hey Adam, loved how as you moved through the video I would want you to discuss a point, and everytime you did! Great job covering all the important factors, while staying nice an understandable.
Another reason is that cooks and chefs are handling hot food all day, and our hands develop calluses over time. At one place i used to work at we would occasionally have contests to see if people could grab fries floating on top of the oil without burning themselves (and some of the cooks could actually do it! )
I remember Julia Child saying, "every good chef no longer has feeling in the tips of their fingers." Perhaps this is one reason why.
And pulling stuff out of an oven with just fingertips (no glove)
@@harrisonzachar pre heated plates too
I really appreciate the fact you translated all temperatures to celsius
I remember my mom telling me to be careful around a fruit syrup we were making when I was little and completely disregarding her warning to find out for myself. Boiling sugar being way hotter than boiling water was probably the “why” I needed to receive a lesson instead of a challenge
... b-but were you okay? what happened?
@@pamelaguerra3768 haha yep! Just a gentle mouth burn. You know what they say about curiosity and satisfaction
Ghosts typing comments
11:11 Ive known about emulsions breaking, but Ive never actually SEEN it happen. Now I do! Thank you!
I’m more amazed at how mesmerized and in awe I was watching this video
as a son of a chef, I have always been surprised about how little my father respected any hot things in the kitchen. I remember when I was smaller he would take things out of the oven without any cloves/protection. he always joked about how the nerves in his hands were long gone. Crazy man
Adam added a new catch phrase to his ever growing and already extensive repertoire: "Why i season my board, not my steak", "upside down bear", "squarespace", "putting my filthy fingers in your food without you knowing it"
just kidding man we love your work!
No vinegar leg is on the right or "NNNOOOOOOO!!!!"?
@@TheNatureFreak1 "i'll use some white whine"
@@TheNatureFreak1 20 eggs yes 20
Spoons: cheap, made of metal, easy to clean, hygienic.
Finger: made of meat, irreplaceable, questionable hygiene if cooking for strangers.
Adam: I’ll just stick my finger in this
Also spoon: Let's you get a reasonable portion of the sauce you're going to eat for a better sense of how flavorful it is.
Finger: Barely gets any of the sauce into your mouth, becomes cooled so quickly that it won't be at an enjoyable temperature, gets flavored by the taste of your own skin.
Fingers can heal. Also, did you ever hear of soap?
@@Sashashka You gonna wash your finger every time you do that? If so you might as well use a spoon
@@DeathnoteBB A person normally has 10 fingers. You can use all of them. No need to wash your hands after every single time you taste the food. It really shows that you guys have never worked in a kitchen.
@@Sashashka Yeesh, weird thing to base an assumption on. I wouldn’t say I have worked in a kitchen, but I also would hope people you know, don’t get their germs on everything they touch _when they can just use a spoon_
Absolutely thrilled at the unexpected yet triumphant return of the signature Ragusea NO!!!!
In my engineering class I have burnt myself an extreme amount of time by just tapping hot glue on accident, however once I was t looking while gluing something and touched the tip and poured hot glue all over it and got a second degree burn
Happens.
Damn hot glue doesn't stay where you put it or doesn't stick, no middle point.
7:30 "what if you heated oil in a zero oxygen atmosphere, would it boil?"
Yes, this is what's happening in those towers at oil refineries. They are boiling oil to distill it into different fractions (paint thinner, gasoline, diesel, heating oil, asphalt)
That is crude oil not cooking oils. Crude is a mixture of small and long chain hydrocarbons. Cooking oils are triglycerides molecules of 3 fatty acids esterified to a glycol. The head group is polar and gives the oil a much higher boiling point than the equivalent crude fractions. When heated they breakdown in ways that say icsoane can’t and won’t without catalysts present (cracking).
@@davidwright7193 thanks, didn't know the glycerol heads made a big contribution to the boiling point. But I didn't think I was so far off because even coconut oil gets fractionated for commercial purposes ;)
@@davidwright7193 What are you even saying? Many if not most molecules have different functional groups that contribute differently to the boiling point. If it can exist in space and time as a liquid, it can boil. Doesn’t matter how thermally unstable it is as long as it’s stable to exist as a liquid you can decrease the pressure enough to make it boil
@@-a13x-75 I think the real question is what are YOU saying? What you are saying is completely true, but he simply said that cooking oils have a "much higher boiling point" than crude oil, and that when heated (under standard atmospheric pressures) they will breakdown prior to reaching their boiling point, not that cooking oils "cannot boil."
@@sheep4483 Crude oil in zero oxygen will boil. If you take Adam’s exact setup and just perform it under an oxygen free atmosphere it will not boil unless you start to decrease the pressure the atmosphere is pushing down on the liquid. So you’d need a container and pull a vacuum.
i always just use a single chopstick, has all the advantages of the finger but with none of the risk of burning!
Yooo that's genius! Ima try that. Thanks!
When I bring a thicker sauce to a rolling boil I only tastes from the bubbles peaks because as the bubbles rise, and thin out. It creates surface area, and that section of the the sauce is going to be the most reasonable. This is for things like reduction, or flavor concentration. Like a balsamic reduction. Classic French trained.
First time watching your channel and I can already safely say Your going to be one of my 3am binge channels
9:00 fun fact, the heat capacity of water is the highest of basically any common material.
3:23 "Instantaneously" definitely made me raise an eyebrow. Barista here, 160 degrees is our standard temp for steaming milk. I have had 200 degree espresso and water splash on me, I have had pitchers of steamed milk spilled on me, and I have suffered no burns. But if I made a batch of liquid sugar and it spilled on my hand, I'd be a bit more alarmed.
Splashing is different than direct contact. As droplets travel through the air, they quickly cool to room temperature.
@Aidan Collins wouldn't being splashed be worse than a shower, since the water would have traveled farther
I think steam is probably your highest burn risk, water drops cool off pretty quickly once they're on you.
@@peganin442 A splash happens once, a shower keeps happening.
I think those standards were based on exposure from a source that is continuously spraying water, like a shower, you should probably look it up since I'm only repeating what was said in another comment. But I do think the difference is probably because they tested a different kind of exposure
My mom was once a chemist in the lab. Her hands are basically immune to hot things now
It's insane how work can condition your body like that, my dad's an engineer/instrument tech and his hands are so heat resistant from working with hot metals that when he's cooking he often just grabs stuff and flips it with his fingers like it's nothing, sometimes even reaching into the oven while broiling stuff like bacon to rotate it. I have zero clue how he does it without hurting himself, I call him a cyclops 😂
Her nerves are just permanently damaged, same thing happens to line cooks - they call it asbestos hands.
But the heat will still damage the cells, meaning you can be quite badly burned before noticing if you allow this to happen.
This reminds me of the Mythbusters episode where they momentarily dipped their hand into molten lead, granted the first made sure to get their hand wet so its an entirely different thing that protected them, but it still made me think of that
That was the leidenfrost effect hard at work there and I think here as well to a certain degree.
Thanks for this lesson in the art of "swipe and taste" John Wick, youve definitely earned a subscriber.
Without even watching the video, I can tell you how. You build up a resistance. When I worked in kitchens, I could snatching things floating in the fryer without a problem with my fingers. Just small things floating on top. But if I tried that now, when I've not been working in a professional Kitching for over a decade, it would hurt and probably blister if I did.
When I worked in a restaurant, we couldn't just put our fingers in stuff since our boss didn't want clients to see that. So we dipped spoons in the sauce and run a finger on the back of the spoon to taste it and not burn our mouth or waste time blowing on it to cool it down
Shaking your finger is also to activate other nerves that "dull" the pain signal sent to your brain. You also instinctively shake your finger after closing a door on it for example. But yes, it also cools the liquid down as a side effect :).
When I was a cook in steak houses ~35 years ago I was taught to tell how done the steaks were by touching it with light pressure with my finger. As the steak cooks the meat gets firmer, it's surprisingly accurate. I don't know if that would be legal now but no one likes to get a steak with a half dozen cuts already in it from the cook checking doneness. It still pisses me off but I guess that's how they have to do it now. 🤓🍻
At my work (upscale oyster bar/ steakhouse) we are required and told to only use timers since we standardize the thickness and weight of every steak. However the only time you are going to see us not still test it with a finger is if the owners are in the building, and even then its more of a slap on the wrist unless they see you do it multiple times in a row.
It’s legal as long as the person doing it washed their hands. I always think it’s hilarious when people get freaked out after they realize that chefs/cooks don’t wear gloves lmao.
@@Sashashka lol exactly. Like do y’all wear gloves to cook at home?
Probe thermometers exist, and you can use the same probe hole over and over to check done-ness better than a cut. Or is using a probe thermometer just not a thing in the US? I mean, there's literally a pocket on most chef coats for one on the left arm. You're highly encouraged to carry a probe thermo in Canada, Mexico and most of europe as a cook and to use it often for checking done-ness and other critical temps without destroying food by cutting it up.
Very interesting video
Cheers from San Diego California
Not only cooling this liquid helps. Pain information is sent thru the same nerves as “move” information. So when you flick you are taking some of this bandwidth from pain. That’s why when you hit something moving helps.
I think my biggest step forward in cooking and understanding cookware came when I started understanding how hot a piece of cookware was by touching it. I only do this with things like cast iron and enameled cookware, because they take longer to conduct heat into my hand, but I generally do it with my fingernail, and wait to see how long it is before I can feel the heat under my fingernail
I got pretty good at grabbing hot food with my hands (in gloves) straight out of the oven when I worked in a kitchen. You can go way faster than using tongs if you learn how to not burn yourself.
I cook chicken patties a lot and I always pick them up with my fingers to put them on the bun. It's much quicker and I have an extremely high tolerance for pain.
i flip crepes with my bare hands all the time)
Yep, I worked in the kitchen for 3 years and I can still touch/move stuff straight from the grill or oven. A big part of it isn't just how tough your hands are, but also knowing how quickly to touch it
@@joemichigan4945 and have the muscle memory to do it properly. Knowing how much time you have doesn't mean anything if you'll clumsily flail your meat and make a disaster off of your meal.
You should do a video on different types of cleaning products you use and the perfect mix of chemicals to use for cleaning dishes in a home and in a restaurant environment. I am always so curious about it. Especially the effectiveness and safety aspect about it.🍶🍗👉🏽
Its really pleasing to watch this clever guy explaining at the end of a day dealing with complete idiots
this habit can lead to a pretty interesting skill; like with most things, safe and repeated exposure in a controlled setting (like a well-metered kitchen or coffee bar) can serve as training to pretty accurately feel temp. I’ve seen lots of people pick this up after initial hesitation to even approach.
I learned the hard way just how hot an innocuous looking dark roux really is, I was whipping at it over high heat because I am not a patient fellow and a tiny drop splashed out and splattered on my bare foot and instantly blistered. I should've know what was up when the veggies started audibly frying when the roux was poured over them.
Working with coffee, I've learned to quickly fill a cup with cool water and soak my hand in it to take the heat out of the burn. You could continuously run it under water, but then you end up glued to the sink (if it's a really bad one), and you probably have to go home at some point. The only time I remember putting ice on a burn is when I accidentally dispensed somewhat recently brewed drip coffee onto my hand, and after rinsing and soaking for a while it was time to go home. I couldn't figure out a way to keep my hand submerged in water while walking home, so I grabbed ice to keep the feeling of warmness from coming back. When I got home dunked my hand in a cool cup of water and felt the water pulling the heat away (ice melted, and a cold compress isn't the best way to pull heat out of a burn). I can see why they don't recommend ice, cool water helps so much and apparently ice can inhibit healing (ice might be better than nothing, but I'm not an expert).
@@nicolescats2 Are you saying that the ice water is healing the burn by the time you get home? Not trying to sass you but once the burn has happened the heat has dispersed pretty quickly and any warmth still in your hand at that point is made by your own body reacting to the injury.
@@nahnope8581 I'm saying it helps me deal with it without needing pain meds. It doesn't matter what is causing it to heat up again, having the burn site warm up again hurts. Sure the initial cool rinse is to cool down my hand to make it stop burning, the rest is pain management. Also keeps what was probably a 2nd degree burn from making contact with irritating surfaces, or lotions that might cause further irritation (some ointments are approved for first aid, my moisturizing scented hand lotion might make things worse).
Also, having it heat up again too much could cause more problems for healing than over cooling the area would. The ice was an extreme measure that allowed me to walk home in the summer heat. I might have needed ice anyway, getting burned (even one that isn't blistering yet/at all) is hard on your body, so is hot weather, meaning ice on your neck (or your burned hand) might be really helpful. You don't want to use ice unless it is the only thing available to cool it down, and don't use it for too long to avoid causing frostbite, but I don't think I was risking that considering how fast my plastic bag of ice melted.
I’ve been cooking since I was 5. Literally standing on a chair to reach the stovetop. I’ve had plenty of burns and now I can just grab hot patties or hotdogs straight off the grill with no burn
My uncle is a career chef. I've seen him literally grab a hot pan of garlic bread out of the oven bare handed and he just didn't feel it. Chefs have crazy pain tolerance.
Put your finger in cold water and then you can pretty much dip it into anything as long as you do it quick enough. The water will boil and make a film around your finger that will last for like half a second. You can find videos of people sticking their hand in molten metal for a split second using this. Although I don't recommend doing it with something that can stick to your finger like the sugar, but people say it usually works
a genuinely really interesting explanation to a question I never even knew I had.
Idea: Maybe you have already suffered some minor amount of burn damage on your finger as a result of the dipping which makes it not terribly uncomfortable. Enough nerve damage that 'pain don't hurt' but not so much that it noticeably affects your life enough that you think it's a medical issue.
Did it hurt when you started cooking then over time diminished or did it never hurt?
As an amateur home cook it really just doesn’t hurt the only time I’ve felt it is when I’ve touched the bottom of the pan and even then if you’re smart you take your finger out asap
7:30 At very high temperatures the superheated oil would probably decompose before it evaporated. Same reason sugar doesn't have a boiling point; it decomposes (a.k.a. burns) first.
Isn't, in fact, the flash point the same temperature that causes the oil to decompose? And then the products of that process combust in contact with atmospheric oxygen due to the high temperature, causing the spark?
@@henriquepacheco7473 seems totally plausible
Weed resin or dab or hash whatever you call it is like syrup I’m the sense that it instantly scalds you up then solidifies burning you more while you try to get it off. Saying this for a friend ofc I’d never weed in my life
Just wanted to say that the temperature at which the oil would 'burst into flames' as you say, is in fact called the 'autoignition temperature' - around 400 degrees celcius (750F). Flash point just means the vapours above the liquid would become ignitable on direct exposure to a spark or open flame. The flash point is lower than the autoignition temperature but it wouldn't be guaranteed to go on fire at just the flashpoint.
Hi Adam, fire protection engineer here. With regards to your question about the oil: in short, yes, it would evaporate and boil away.
The reason is that when you burn oil, you don't burn the liquid- you burn the layer of gaseous oil that had evaporated just above your fuel pool. A flash point is often measured in an open or closed cup test - where you either control the accumulation of vapors or allow for natural dissipation, like the Cleavland Open Cup test or the Pensky Martens test. While flashpoint is a measurement of the temperature that the liquid had to be raised to create enough vapors above the surface for ignition, the same experiment also helps to obtain the liquid's Low Flammability Limit (LFL), which is a measurement of the minimum concentration of fuel/air to sustain combustion.
Now, the test is usually stopped once you determine the flashpoint (we stop the incoming flow of fuel and oxygen/inert gases) so I can't say I've ever converted oil from liquid to gas in quantities nearing anywhere what one uses for cooking; but, this vaporization process - also called pyrolysis - is crucial for the combustion of oils (and indeed to the combustion of any fuel that is not already in gaseous form). So my fundamentals tell me that yes if you heated oil on a pan in an oxygen-depleted environment (with an electric heater), it would boil away.
[I can go dig around my textbooks to try and see if/when a dedicated experiment like that was conducted, if you wish]
Hey Adam - great video as always.
One point though, about the air cooling.
Most of the temperature loss is from evaporative cooling(it takes energy to change phase), not just the air absorbing the energy from being in contact - that's also a thing obviously, but not as much as the evaporative cooling.
1:20 No it me who freaked my overly protective parents out by doing that :)
2:15 up for sale? 👀
RE: Oil boiling
Yes, there is such a temperature for oil. In fact some oils evaporate off all the time. Paraffin for example predominantly ignites as a gas. That's why it's actually quite hard to get heavier fuels to ignite, you need to evaporate them first which requires a decent bit of heat.
Matter exists in liquid or solid states because there is a mutual attraction between atoms or molecules that causes them to stick together. Consequently, there must be an amount of energy that you could put in that would cause them to fly apart.
That being said, I do wonder if something as chemically complex as, for example, olive oil would stop being olive oil before it evaporated. Long chain carbohydrates can break up into shorter ones and olive oil also isn't only one chemical but a mix. I suspect it would start to break down and different constituents would start to react with each other.
despite not being a big fan of cooking, this video caught my eye, good job