this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Food Crimes - Offenses against nutrition
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Welcome to Food Crimes! This community is here to collect all and any post about cursed food and generally unusual consumables.
Right now, here’s the rules:
- Posts must include an image or video containing food or drink.
- It must be unusual or cursed in some way. a. For example, something like Doritos Milk would be unusual, but normal milk would not.
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To tag your posts, please prepend or append the tag name inside square brackets. For example,[OC] Foo bar baz or foo bar baz [Meta] would be acceptable. Multiple tags will require separate pairs of brackets, like so: [Edited][OC] foo bar baz
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- Edited - The image was manipulated with editing software.
- OC - You made this cursed food yourself!
- Meta - Relating to the community itself.
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FWIW - this picture has been floating around since the mid 2000's; the person who blogged about it cooked it super wrong. The instructions said to use a bain marie, and they didnt know what a bain marie, but saw you boiled water in it, so they just boiled the can. If you boil a can, water is 100% going to seep into it, and turn it into...what you see here.
Wait are these cans not watertight?
They are in the same way any canned good is. If you boil it, the can is likely to warp slightly and allow water in, also things like plastic liners and other chemicals can leech into your food, you generally aren't supposed to cook food inside the cans they come in.
Canned food is literally pasteurized in said can, while submerged in water at temperatures slightly lower than 100 °C. The whole reason to put food in cans is to create an airtight atmosphere that can be thermally treated with hot water. This kills certain spores (mainly botulinum) which is why canned food has a very long shelf life.
It's still not correct to cook the food that way, but not because of the reason you made up.
Botulinum toxin?
Boiling a can can absolutely open up a can. Pasteurizing happens below boiling point and for much shorter time, not enough time to change the pressure inside the can.
Boiling it for a long time can evaporate liquids and cause the pressure to build up and split a can open or warp it enough to open. It's enough of a concern that condensed milk generally ships with a warning because of it.
Note that it won't generally be the giant pop/explosion of cooking a can directly in flames.
In fact, cans of condensed milk specifically bursting when boiling was a big enough concern a few years ago because of a tiktok trend making caramel that way that there articles and videos of people fuckin it up
https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/style/why-cautious-making-caramel-canned-131502700.html
Hmm, I might backpedal a bit with my comment. Though I believe it's near impossible to get the contents to a flashing point unless the water that is used is in a pressurized environment. Condensed milk is a liquid, meaning it is heated a lot faster than food. Liquids are subjected to convection when heated, meaning they heat up easily. I doubt a hamburger inside a can will ever reach 100 °C in boiling water.
Still, thanks for explaining your reasoning, I work in the beverage industry and know a fair deal about pasteurization, but that all happens somewhere between 60-80 °C and CO2 is the main culprit in terms and peaking cans. I wasn't thinking about water turning into gas, thus increasing internal pressure.
No problem on explaining my point! I do also concede that it is a guess on my part, but also when you consider theres other images you can find of a canned cheeseburger that don't look nearly so wet and soaked, I feel reasonably confident in my guess.
I have a feeling it might have to do with the cheeseburger being trapped in an airtight environment. That way the water can't evaporate, it stays in the can and condenses right back onto the cheeseburger once opened.