Butcher breaks out of own freezer using black pudding A butcher channelled the power of Ecky-Thump to escape being locked in his freezer when he saved his skin by using black pudding. Seventy-year-old Chris McCabe, of Totnes, Devon, England, found himself stuck when the wind blew the door of his outdoor freezer shut. He then discovered that the internal emergency release button …
They shouldn't freeze - I've had experience in a few walk-in freezers of various sizes.
If you are to get it to freeze you need excessive liquid present that can then freeze in the button - if that happens it's because of poor maintenance or spillages.
The buttons work fine in the standard humidity of the freezers
I suspect he let frost build up around the control which physically prevented the mechanism from moving. It would be near the door of course, and thus subject to frequent bursts of warmer, moist air. Melt, refreeze, repeat for years on end.
Could have been made worse by not shutting the door fully each time he was in...keeping it only slightly ajar wouldn't hurt the temperature inside too much, but would allow moist air from outside to settle around the control
If the seal on the outside of the mechanism is faulty, and the outside air is quite humid, hoar frost can build up to the point of the inner release sticking. This shouldn't happen with modern doors, but I've seen it in more elderly examples (1960s and earlier), as often found "out the back" of small, family run butchers. As noted, a good (ecky) thump will shift it.
"life-threatening design flaw which should have the manufacturer fitting replacement buttons to every freezer in the field, at their own expense, before the freezer owners start a class action suit."
Probably cheaper pudding some of that black stuff in each free-zer. Everyone happy. Job done.
... should probably not order a Sundae in Korea.
That said, whenever I harvest a hog or sheep I make a fair copy of the Stornoway variant, and another version that would feel quite at home in Bury ... although I would probably horrify the locals in those places because I've been experimenting with cooking them in my smokehouse, instead of the more traditional boiling. The results are quite tasty. I'm also working on fully cured and dried versions, in the tradition of Lap Cheong. So far, the results are promising.
Sausage is gawd/ess's gift to those of us who like playing with our food.
I can't beleeeeeive it! No one has linked to the ultimate destination for this story's theme tune.
Viruses and bugs get web sites and logos, but none of them get a theme tune.
Standards are falling ever faster around here. Sad!
As jake pointed out early in this thread, coeliac disease is a nasty thing to have and is fortunately rare. Not rare is digestive upset following consumption of food containing gluten; typically bread. Gluten is a protein responsible for giving bread dough elasticity and trapping the bubbles of "carbon pollution" that give leavened breads their texture.
The period of allowing the yeast to do its work in the dough is called proving. Modern breads use accelerants to reduce proving to its shortest possible duration, two hours or less. Traditional bread makers like Mrs Git allow bread dough to prove for 24 hours. A friend in the USA who makes award-winning pizzas proves his dough for 48 hours. The longer proving improves the digestibility of the baked product.
I suspect that many who think they are sensitive to gluten are reacting to crappy modern bread.
Indeed. The late Mrs Cynic used to make sourdough bread, where all the yeast in it was whatever happened to be floating by ("wild" yeast) and consequently both proving and rising were unusually slow (around a week in total), and it is normal to put a bit of this batch's dough into the mix of the next batch. It tastes sour because of relatively elevated levels of metabolic acids from the yeast.
"It tastes sour because of relatively elevated levels of metabolic acids from the yeast."
Sourdough sometimes tastes sour because of the activity of one variety or another of lactobacillus, which has a symbiotic relationship with the yeast. I say "sometimes" because different strains of yeast & lactobacillus produce different flavo(u)rs in the finished product.
If you think modern (or Chorleywood) process produces bad bread, look at some of the adulterants the mid-Victorians put into the bread:
Chalk (for whitening)
Alum (again for whitening) - some said this caused ricketts as it could prevent the digestive system from pulling nutrients from other foods consumed
Arsenic - by accident made it's way into some loaves. The baker claims he was adding Alum but mixed up the containers
Millers routinely put "rotten" or sour flour into the mix to sell off gone-off stocks with no one noticing
Bone meal (whitening again)
Whatever the brewers had adulterated the yeast with - beer brewing created yeast, which the bakers purchased as there was no such thing as dried yeast at that time. Brewers adulterated beer too, and that made it's way into the yeast.
Potatoes
Plaster of Paris
Sawdust
The light switch is next to the door in walk-in fridges, just like in most unrefrigerated rooms. In fact, many (mine included) have a switch on the inside, and on the outside ... with an indicator light on the outside to show if the interior light is on or off without opening the door.
Strangely enough, walk-in fridges are designed with (temporary) human occupation in mind. Imagine that!
Interesting, a specific gluten free black pudding option.
I keep meaning to try a vegetarian black pudding on the same plate as a regular black pudding to see how they compare and how many people I can drive insane by the simple act. I wonder if GF is also exotic enough to add to the list...
I mean hey, more black pudding.
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