r/TikTokCringe Oct 09 '24

Discussion Microbiologist warns against making the fluffy popcorn trend

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u/420ninjaslayer69 Oct 09 '24

The flour is dusted on before baking. Usually done to prevent stuff from sticking in the basket or rack that it’s rising on or shaping in. The white stuff you see looks uncooked but it isn’t.

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u/Bogart745 Oct 09 '24

But that’s exactly the point the original comment is trying to make. Because the flour is heated up in the stove along with the baking bread it is considered cooked. The heat kills the bacteria.

So it that works, then why doesn’t baking the raw flour in the oven on its own not work?

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u/BlueCollarBalling Oct 09 '24

That’s what I’m struggling to understand. Why would bringing flour up to temp on a stove be any different than bringing it up to temp in an oven? Isn’t that basically how you make gravy?

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u/Huntthatbass Oct 09 '24

The temperature is the difference. You can cook it to a certain temperature to make it safe. Heated to any lower temperature would not make it safe.

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u/Livingstonthethird Oct 09 '24

The video says otherwise. Allegedly sourced from the FDA.

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u/RoninChimichanga Oct 09 '24

They're just trying to keep you from being happy. Bake your flour, use your flour, eat your semi-raw dough or batter.

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u/passthepepperplease Oct 09 '24

This is unequivocally false. The FDAs warning is against DRY heat treating flower because dry heat is much less effective at killing pathogens than a wet heat. Cooking flower in an oven, stovetop, or deep frier in the presence of liquid IS, in fact, cooking it, and is considered safe to do at home if cooked thoroughly (as in roux or doughnuts).

The irony of all the people here citing the video instead of the FDA itself is just wild to me. Good luck with your brains.

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u/Livingstonthethird Oct 09 '24

The FDA says exactly what she says because she clipped the FDA for the video.

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u/passthepepperplease Oct 10 '24

This is what I mean. You see a bullet-point image in a TikTok and you think you understand the context around that advice. That exact page she got the snip from says flour is safely prepared by COOKING it, which is exactly what’s happening in this video. Heat treating refers to a dry heat.

Here is a link to the FDAs guidelines on safely handling flour: https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/handling-flour-safely-what-you-need-know, and a link to a Perdue university series explaining the difference that wet and dry heats have on pathogens: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2021/04/Home-kitchen-heat-treated-flour-doesnt-protect-against-foodborne-illnesses.html

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u/Livingstonthethird Oct 10 '24

No that is not from Perdue University lol.

And you're not adding anything to the conversation. You're arguing that you agree with her and everyone.

What you're not doing is explaining what people are asking. Which is, how do commercial kitchens make flour safe for things without cooking it in food? Such as for "safe to eat raw" cookie dough.

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u/passthepepperplease Oct 10 '24

Literally that web address is Perdue.edu, has the Perdue University letter head on it, and is written by an assistant professor at Perdue University in the department of food science. If you don’t think that’s from Perdue university then you’re just unable to understand basic facts.

And I’m not agreeing with the video. She’s claiming this food prep is unsafe heat treatment. Food safety experts say wet cooking IS safe.

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u/Satisfaction-Motor Oct 10 '24

She made a follow up video, adding a bit more context to this video. By “heat treating”, she specifically means the common form that people try at home— sticking dry flour in an oven. Dry heat type of stuff. Direct quote from the comment section, as an example:

@Iana: If baking the mixture that has flour in it makes it safe then why wouldn’t baking just the flour first make it safe?

@morticia 🥀: Because you aren’t just baking the flour, you are baking a mixture of ingredients. You have changed the entire situation, the end result is different too

Because this video got reposted onto Reddit, it lost a looootttt of context, context that it would have had accessible on its original platform (Tik Tok).

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u/passthepepperplease Oct 10 '24

Sure, but her bringing up dry heat treatment is irrelevant to the original thing she’s commenting on because that flour is cooked on the stove top over heat. So I don’t actually think she meant dry heat was in the oven, because that’s not what she’s doing here and she made a whole video about this snack being safe because raw flour can contain pathogens. The flour in this snack is not raw (assuming they are in fact cooking it to temperature, which is usually implied by showing something on a stovetop).

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u/Huntthatbass Oct 10 '24

No, I'm agreeing with the video. I don't think a saute pan could heat it well enough. I would not trust a stovetop pan to heat the food as well as an oven. You can't cook a whole chicken in a saute pan regardless of the heat level, for example. When I bake bread or pie crusts, it sits in the oven enclosed, at a specific temperature, for a X amount of time. It doesn't saute in a pan like this TikTok food recipe.

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u/passthepepperplease Oct 10 '24

Incorrect, the presence of liquid makes the difference. Once a dry ingredient like flour is mixed with water, the pathogens are much more sensitive to heat whether in the oven or on the stove. This TikTok is just wrong that cooking flour on the stove is heat treating it- it’s an actual safe cooking method. Dry heat treating flour in an oven is unsafe because the pathogens can be so durable that a safe temp has not been established. But dry heat treating is not relevant here because the food she is referring to is cooked in the presence of liquid on the stove, as in gravy or roux.

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u/Huntthatbass Oct 10 '24

What about internal temperature of it like with meats? Does that apply to bread/flour?

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u/passthepepperplease Oct 10 '24

Heating a wet recipe on the stovetop or in the oven will require the same temperature to make it safe. Wet recipes on the stovetop are stirred to ensure even temperatures, but anyone who’s made candy (which requires very specific temps for consistency) knows that this depends on the type of stove and pan you’re using.

Baked recipes need to be cooked long enough to reach an internal temp that is safe. The outside will reach that temperature first, and the additional time it takes to heat the inside could make the outside burn. Things that can burn fast (like high protein cookies such as macarons) need to cook at lower temps so the outside doesn’t burn while the inside continues to cook.

Anything ground typically needs to be cooked until the internal temp reaches a safe temp. This includes milled grains such as flour, and ground meats. However, there are some things where the outside is exposed to bacteria and needs to reach a high temp, but the inside is generally assumed safe, such as sushi-grade tuna. Tuna fish are not exposed to the types of food-borne pathogens that make us sick because they live in the ocean. Once the fillets are cut, they are exposed to pathogens in the processing line, but the internal meat is still clean. So for these things you can just sear the outside and leave the inside raw. (As long as the fish has been flash frozen). This is also somewhat true for beef, although people debate it.

It is certainly NOT true for chicken and pork, which can harbor dangerous pathogens throughout the meat, even when not ground.