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Topic: Is it safe to eat raw halibut meat?  (Read 28109 times)

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SBD

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After a long time eating prepared raw fish I have realized that in the USA we are still leery of many raw things because they have such a short history in our culture.

I don't think this is the case with the NCKA audience.  Many iffy species are fine if prepared by a trained and experienced sushi chef.  We are neither.  I have eaten many species at my fav. sushi place I would never prepare myself.  IMHO if you don't know what you're doing better safe than sorry. 


JohnGuineaPig

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i forget where i heard so but the fish on the west coast of hte us tend to have more parasites. i wonder why that is?


ZeeHokkaido

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Good to hear scwafish, I knew NCKA was a really cool group of people :smt003 :smt003!! I agreew with you, It's true that you should be somewhat educated before you decide to get some sushi or sashimi goin. Mostly because you will instantly understand why sushi is so expensive.. it is NOT EASY to cut and prepare!! And also fish selection. I remember the first time I tried and I'm still apologizing to that fish. :smt010 I butchered the bugger. :smt010 So maybe a class or two on preparation and then sushi time...

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polepole

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When you freeze fish in a conventional freezer, it freezes way to slow to really preserve the meat well.  Here's a trick I've heard about but have yet to try.  Same thing happens when you get tray bait that was frozen too slow, the meat become mushy.  Perhaps if I can get out after the albies next week, I'll try it myself, but if someone gets to it sooner, please let me know.

Take a bucket of water and salt it down really good.  Place the bucket in the freezer for a day until it gets as cold as it possibly can.  If you put enough salt, it will not freeze and will be super cold water.  When it comes time to freeze your fish, drop your packaged fish in it the bucket and place the whole thing in the freezer.  The heat transfer function of the super cool water makes the fish freeze faster.

To help this process out a bit and to reduce the moisture in the fish, wrap the fish in paper towels and put on a rack in a dish in the frigerator and cover it while you are super cooling the water.  Excess moisture will drain from the fish and the fish will also cool down some so you have less to go when you finally do freeze it.  I do this sometimes even when freezing regularly.

One more note on getting good meat.  Avoid washing the meat with fresh water.  It too will deteriorate the meat.  Take extra care when cleaning and wipe down with paper towels if need be.  Or rinse with a slight salt water solution.

-Allen
« Last Edit: September 18, 2006, 06:24:15 PM by polepole »


MolBasser

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If you really want to freeze stuff fast get some dry ice from a dairy and a bunch of grain alcohol.

Put the dry ice in the alcohol to form a bath.  After it stops boiling so hard it is ready to go.  Drop in the fish (preferably vacuum sealed) and it will freeze very fast.

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ZeeHokkaido

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cool technique MB. ( :toothy9: Plus it looks cool :toothy9: )  How much does grain alcohol run? How do you think salt water would do?
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polepole

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Fully saturated salt water (23.3% salt by weight) freezes at -21.1 degress C.
You household freezer gets to maybe about -17.8 degrees C (0 degrees F)
Dry ice is -78.5 degrees C.
Alcohol's freezing point is -117 degrees C.

So salt water and freezer is no where near as cold as what MB's method gets.

However, you also need to take into account the volume of the liquid and the fish being frozen.  I'm not going to go into the therodynamics of it as I don't know it.  Someone with more knowledge in thermodynamics could probably figure out the freeze rate per pound of fish per gallon of prepared liquid.  Google doesn't readily tell me that.   :smt003

-Allen


MolBasser

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If you want to freeze stuff SUPER fast, use liquid propane.  I has a much larger heat capacity.  I used it in grad school to freeze RNA crystals in preparation for x-ray crystallography.  Liquid nitrogen is colder, but has much less heat capacity.  That is why you can pour liquid nitrogen on your arm and it will just flow off, but if you pour liquid propane on your arm you will freeze burn the living heck out of yourelf.

I don't know how much ethanol is for consumers.  It was dirt cheap in the lab, and I would just take it home.

Same with dry ice.

If you want your fish frozen fast, and are a typical guy, the dry ice ethanol bath is the way to go.  When the ethanol is chilled it is very syrupy and thick.


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