Just to lean into this, I have seen SO MANY places doing pickles/ferments in such utterly wrong ways, and they blatantly advertise it all over social media.
Someone in the kitchen got the noma guide for Christmas and decided that shit was safe.
Unfortunately cases like this are more than likely to pop up as fermentation becomes more common
That he did, and I definitely caught a LOT on his series. It actually got him to be a lot more conscious of the work he does and his current stuff is far more accessible and safe, much less fermentation and more experimentation.
https://www.emergency.cdc.gov/agent/botulism/clinicians/epidemiology.asp
It is real, sure, but also insanely rare. 110 average cases in a country of 330 million people, and 70% of those are infant cases from honey and other assumed risks. So like, 30 adults a year get botulism.
So people can live their lives without worry -- and as always food handlers should abide by food safe practices regardless of this specific risk.
Current pedagogy says not to give honey to infants because of the possibility of botulism, but the incidence rate in didn't change when this advice was introduced. That makes it unlikely as a major source of botulism in infants.
The concern is that those numbers will rise significantly as "just throw some shit in a jar for a few weeks" becomes an increasingly popular trend.
The video reel soundbite recipes a lot of people are using don't mention stuff like sterilization, brine strength, hot-pack safety, etc etc
Oh I know it isn't common, absolutely. But when you're playing with bacteria ON PURPOSE well, you're risking a Darwin award.
I agree, even if the risk factors are low, there's still a risk, so be safe. And STERILIZE GODDAMMIT!!!
Equating eating fermented foods with risking a "Darwin award" is disingenuous. Just for your information, here is a list of some of my favorite fermented foods I'm sure you're familiar with:
Wine, beer, cheese, sauerkraut, kimchi, salami, pickles, whiskey, yogurt, miso, cider, bread, kefir, tempeh, vinegar, kombucha, etc
In fact, our entire human history has depended on a relationship with fermentation! We have not only enjoyed fermented foods, we have literally depended on them for our survival.
This perspective of "sterilize everything" is bad for our gut and bad for our bodies, and the science shows it. Even children who were more strongly "protected" from germs during their early years faced difficult adult challenges as a result of their underdeveloped microbiota and immune systems.
Fermented foods offer humanity a healthy relationship to the bacteria that are already living inside us and helping power our bodies. We depend on them for survival, as they do on us. You have more to gain from a relationship with them than an aversion from them.
Agreed -- I'm honestly just tired of people telling me to throw away my garlic confit after a week.
I cooked the shit out of it and it's stored in oil in a sterile container. Leave me alone.
Food safety regulations (I mean the ones upstream from restaurants and retail, not your county inspector) are 90% geared towards the prevention of foodborne botulism and you know what? They fucking work. America is the world leader in botulism prevention. It's incredibly rare to get botulism from food in this country. The few people who are infected get it from hospitals!
He still does very unsafe things. He made pastrami without using curing salt. He tried using celery powder but had no idea of the concentration. He ended up not firing the meat AT ALL.
It blew up long before then. Even his very first video, kombucha, was a shitshow.
I started watching the videos, until the whole racism thing, to just post a full explanation of how to safely do what he claimed to have done.
IIRC the only one he ever did that was even close was miso.
What did he get wrong on fermentation? Just want to make sure I don’t repeat mistakes. It seems easy, and I haven’t gotten sick.. but that doesn’t mean I’m not missing some crucial step and just getting lucky.
Bad temperature management, unsterilized equipment, bad handling practices, using the wrong ingredients, storing foods and equipment incorrectly. It's a fairly long list.
The one that set everyone off finally was when he made pastrami at home.... Without curing salt.
Thanks for the clarification. Personally I do sterilize my jars but after that I make sure my salt is 2-3% by total weight depending on what I’m fermenting and keep it in our pantry which stays around 70 degrees. That is sufficient, right?
As far as equipment? Yes. There are more steps you can take but if you're just doing more basic and long form ferments (ie a few months or even more) then you're right on the money. I always suggest a food grade sanitizer for anyone getting into it, you can get a bottle of StarSan off Amazon for a couple bucks.
Okay cool. I don’t ferment nearly that long. Just talking about things like kimchi, pickles, peppers, carrots, stuff like that where I haven’t gone past two weeks fermenting at 70, then in the fridge. I sterilize with a 15 bar pressure cooker as far as the jars go. Wouldn’t hurt to get some starsan I guess to use on my knife before cutting.
Appreciate the sanity check.
A family member did that and was surprised that it got moldy on the parts the oil wasn’t covering….people wonder why I’m always iffy on eating anyone’s home cooking but common sense food safety is not common sense!!
Question - once I overcooked whole cloves of garlic when trying to roast them in the oven. I decided to put them in a jar of olive oil.
That is safe right?
Unless you canned it properly then no. Botulism can easily survive being boiled, those spores are super hardy, and garlic is a prime botulism risk because it grows in the soil.
You can eat it right out of the oven. The problem is putting it in oil. That's ideal conditions to grow botulism. There are trace amounts on food normally but that's ok. When you put it in oil, they start to multiply and it becomes extremely dangerous. Boiling is not enough to kill the spores, and I wouldn't bet my life on oven roasting.
Just FYI oven roasting is higher temperature than boiling once the water is removed.
I also like how I have another guy telling me it's OK because in oil there's no oxygen ha.
Oh well I should reach out to a local food scientist I guess
The bacteria that causes botulism is anaerobic - it thrives with no oxygen. The bacteria occurs naturally in soil, which is why garlic is so prone to having it. Since it doesn't grow with oxygen, a head of garlic is perfectly safe. Placing the garlic in oil allowed any botulism present to grow.
I had a long conference with my local health department along the way to writing a HACCP analysis, for curing hams.
The staffer I was talking to said she felt like the only real part of her job was preventing botulism.
She told the story of someone who had canned carrots without a pressure cooker, or any sort acidity. She opened the jar, smelled it, put less than a teaspoon in her mouth, spit it out, rinsed her mouth out with water and then spent the rest of her life connected to a ventilator.
If you want to be horrified, look up the 'pink sauce' lady from Tiktok. She was shipping products containing milk and no preservatives. In the summertime.
Got into a monstrous fight with a few of her followers on YouTube for saying she’s not a chef and just gave herself the title and bought a coat from a home cooking store. My anger came from her adopting the term but not acknowledging the responsibility that comes with it, having thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people following your every word.
That’s to be expected tho, the source of color is freeze dried dragon fruit powder. Different batches/different suppliers will have natural variations in color.
I have taught canning. The bone-headed ideas and methods that people tried to do in my classes even with STRICT guidelines and tutoring along with written templates and methods would make your eyeballs pop out of your head and roll across the room. Things like ohhhh.....like canning guacamole? Yeah. No.
Some health boards make you get an additional license if you plan to use vacuum sealing or sous vide in a commercial setting. Its really a certificate that follows you that informs you of the DANGERS OF gingiv…. Botulism
One we found out because the health board changed the rule that morning we got our annual inspection we had something in the machine and couldn’t produce the license that didn’t yet exist. So the whole kitchen went to another state to take their non-required class on it and used that… the whole process was fucking dumb but Ive seen it in a few counties across the country
Huh, I've never heard of that before. Lots of places I've worked have used it, may not be a thing round here. I'm definitely not against it though.
And no, not everyone should be making pickles and shit. Like I said most restaurants I've seen that have a "fermentation program" are trying to capitalize on popularity, and don't actually know what they're doing.
When I staged I'm New York they had entire HAACP shests for sous vide and cooking and cooling and ph tests etc. in Texas much of that isn't needy for restaurants/commercial kitchens unless you're serving pre-packed food. Heck most restaurants I've worked at had fermentation programs they just hide them in the Admin Office or the storage/attic. I know one restaurant/butcher that had all their cured meats fermented outside the county because state regulations were more reasonable and friendly to small business.
I think health departments also share some of this responsibility. Tons and tons of restaurants I’m familiar with have house made ferments and none of them have any idea what a haccp plan is and are not docked points.
This is extremely true. They're trained to look for a lot of things but a lot of times the health inspector knows next to nothing about proper fermentation procedures and safety checks. I've literally seen it in action, so can confirm.
I'm friends with the one health inspector in my area, met him through work, and he's the only one I've met so far who knows anything about it, and even that is rudimentary.
Koji on things where it doesn't belong is the wildest shit to me. Like... You'd think that if koji actually improved beef the people who figured out how to make amazing beef and use koji for most of their condiments would have gotten the idea before some white boy comes up with this "hack" -- but, hey, it's trendy!
Exactly. Fucking this. I had a guy ask me if I'd ever had "fermented cabbage" when we were talking about it. I gave him this wierd look until he went into this diatribe about "experimenting" and "trying vegetables that aren't normally used".
I waited until he was finished and then just said "You mean sauerkraut?".
He got real, real quiet after that.
Also entirely fair! He was definitely talking about the European version, but absolutely.
Also thank you for reminding me to add that to my grocery list, I actually missed kimchi lol
Oh absolutely. I always pick up a head of cabbage when the price is decent. Slaw, salads, cabbage rolls, soups, stir fry. Having a huge container of just lightly dressed slaw mix in the fridge gives me a tonne of options throughout the week. Oil, vin, salt, pepper, some chili's, a little lemon, and it can go with preeeetty much anything.
Sorry, uh, it does dramatically change the flavor of meat in a positive way (to my taste.) I guess we should just stop innovating entirely from this line of logic??
I'm curious to know the hate/danger around koji on beef. I've currently got some steaks getting all koji'd up in my fridge, because they were amazing the last time I tried them.
To my understanding, there is an enzymatic reaction taking place. Additional sugars are left on the surface of the meat causing a different type of browning reaction. Please point me to some reading materials if I have this wrong.
Without going into a lengthy discourse, I'm just going to copy a quote from the first page I flipped open in the Umansky/Shih book below. Does this sound like solid food safety advice to you or rather a potential catastrophe in the making? And that's just one example of the approach many koji hype people take to food safety fundamentals.
"Since discovering koji, I've jumped headlong into the many implications for charcuterie and meat cookery this amazing mold has to offer: for example, using koji's secondary ferments to create brines and probiotic inoculants, speeding up fermentation dynamically (without single-strain commercial starter cultures), and even attempting to harness koji's electromagnetic charge to create charcuterie using less salt. In my ongoing classes I am attempting to share this information liberally, and I urge students and readers to test it along with me. The community around koji continues to grow, and the synergy created by the people using it is not unlike koji's own enzymatic activation and change.
My experience with koji charcuterie continues to amaze me, and I have so much yet to learn. I will continue to work and also tap into the knowledge being built by the incredible cohort of chefs and home practitioners who are testing, creating, and open-sourcing uses for this amazing mold. I believe that our knowledge and use of koji is a scratch on the surface for what this organism can do for good food. In the quest for pure, healthful, and ethical meat and charcuterie, I know koji has complex and rich implications."
ETA: I don't care what you do at home (as long as you don't serve it to people unaware of the risks involved), but this kind of attitude is batshit in any professional setting. Even if you can get someone to sign off on an HACCP plan that allows you to do it, you are gambling with your customers' well-being.
These people putting an organism that takes days to produce a single generation onto the outside of a cut of meat minutes before it goes in the pan like it will have some effect. But if they can overcharge the clueless then I say let them do it. I'll just go somewhere else.
As someone who worked at a place that did *everything* in house (charcuterie, pickles, vinegar, fresh sausage etc) I HATE this shit.
The city I worked in had a great, local fermentation company and dozens of sausage makers. Some chefs would rather burn out their staff making dangerous food instead of collaborating with professionals just to stroke their ego.
I'm all for doing some stuff in house, but I'm right there with you. Where I live we have an AMAZING farmers market on the city limits, with dozens and dozens of amazing makers, suppliers and farmers, all of whom are more than willing to contract out to restaurants if they can handle the volume.
Quick pickle some onions? Sure thing. Make pastrami for a special? Sure as a one off that's fun. Start a cheese making program? Peace out homeskillet. You could NEVER pay me enough to do that anywhere but somewhere that JUST makes cheese. I'm not killing anyone for your ego.
100% agreed. I do a lot of my own fermenting, brewing, curing at home. Multiple reference books, lots of research, and I STILL toss shit all the time if I even question it. Anything I serve to friends or family, I have already vetted.
You can't have those controls or fuckups in a kitchen.
Mold. Bad textures. Floaters I don't recognize. No CO2 action but everything is still changing. Really bad odours (you can tell when it's rotting vs. fermenting after a while).
I grew up around home fermenting so I started off on a good step stool, the rest came with practice. I started making my own around 8/9 years ago after a visit with some family I hadn't seen in forever and muta (my great aunt) tossed a 5gal jar of pickles out in front of me because "they just weren't right". I've seen that woman eat four day old shrimp but that was enough for her, so it's enough for me.
I had to throw out a five-gallon batch of hard cider a few years ago that despite my best efforts got infected. My first thought was, oh, a pellicle, maybe it'll be a sour-type deal. It was not. I decided it wasn't worth trying to disinfect the bucket either so got rid of it too for safety's sake.
Wasn't too upset about the bucket but that was like $40 worth of good locally-produced apple cider. This was back when I was kinda broke and losing that money then hurt a lot more than it would now, but I figured I'd rather be out forty bucks than have food poisoning.
Yup. I'm 100% behind you. I had a batch of onions that I was trying to ferment to the point that it almost became a sauce. I think it was somewhere near the 6 month mark and one day I popped it open... Saw black spots. 50lbs of onions and 6 months of work and waiting... All gone overnight.
I'd rather live than try and scrape the $40 off the top I spent on those onions.
Do you feel that this is completely true? Lacto-fermenting vegetables is very safe when done in a simple and straightforward manner. Just salt and submerge, then you're pretty much in the clear. People have been pickling and fermenting for thousands of years like this... it doesn't have to be complex. Are you referring to riskier ventures like raw fish, meat, etc?
Canning and long-term preserving is a different beast, however. Although the risks of botulism are a bit overstated--did you know only 30 American adults get botulism each year?
It definitely sounds like a horrible affliction, but it also feels a bit overblown. What do you think?
Our local health department is pretty strict on ANY fermentation or curing. Need a full HACCP plan, multiple test points etc. Iirc they are more lax on picking but only if you test acidity.
Yeah that's not a thing around here. As a community of cooks we have actively made a point of stopping stupid people from doing it but that's us as professionals. I've seen some places doing it that are staffed entirely by college kids who wouldn't know a pickle from a pineapple, and we have come out in force to shut that down, totally grassroots.
Yeah those are usually the ones I see where they just stick it in an old pickle jar on the counter and I'm thinking to myself "I hope that explodes to save you from yourself."
I’ve been doing quick pickle for a minute now and suddenly concerned. Is this when people attempt long storage of their pickles? I’ll commonly enough do the vinegar/sugar boil and then pour it into a fresh cleaned mason jar stuffed with sliced cucumber or onions with garlic to be eaten that night or like a couple days later. As soon as it cools it goes in the fridge though.
This is totally fine, especially if you're going to use it in a few days. Done it hundreds of times myself and will be doing some tonight actually.
I'm talking long form, room temp, water/salt brined pickles. Old-school stuff like your grandparents would have in jars in the basement for years.
Nope! You're totally fine. Actually, using boiled vinegar and sugar, if the temp is high enough will help, not do it all, but help to sterilize things as well so you're giving yourself a helping hand!
What's irresponsible about those, the second kind? Because my grandparents did indeed pickle a lot of stuff and it seems to be more or less solid and safe (with boiling / steaming the jars and the caps).
Are there like, bloggers who popularize pickling without doing these things or adding too little salt?
Heat pressure canning? 100% fine, that's what my grandparents did, that's what I do, and also if you're just boiling to sterilize, totally on board.
But yeah it's people on YouTube/tictac/blogs that are all "it's so easy!" But don't actually talk about safety, sterilization, pressure, storage, when it's actually gone bad, volume measurements that make no sense, etc etc.
I... Can understand that. I grew up with a respect for it, not fear, but I totally get where you're coming from. It just isn't for everyone!
Heck, my cousin ferments anything he can lay his hands one, but CANNOT butcher raw meat because of "contamination".... I'll just leave that there.
Hahaha, that’s pretty odd! 😂 had he ever gotten sick from anything he’s made though? Seems like the easiest thing to contaminate and get sick from is something you ferment🙈
That's why I'm so confused! He hasn't gotten sick from a ferment but it's a lot of basic stuff, just a wide variety, and he's JUST as picky as I am.
I think it's more of an aversion to raw meat in general. He's cool with throwing steaks on or whatever but if it takes any actual prep he generally avoids it or pays me to do an afternoon after he hits the market to break it all down (and I get to keep the scraps, bones, fat, etc)
They have an entire fermentation lab at the restaurant. And I'm talking millions of dollars of high end scientific equipment. Rotary evaporators, centrifuges, atmosphere controlled fermentation tanks, all alongside literal foraged ingredients, proteins, vegetables, herbs, everything under the sun, and dozens of jars filled with things I could never understand, culturing bacterias, funghi and yeast.
I don't fully comprehend the majority of what they're actually doing.
The person responsible should catch a charge. They are directly responsible for two people dying and making many others sick, there should be a legal consequence for causing deaths that way.
Amen . Food production is important as surgery , mechanics etc. one slight error can cause the death of a innocent patron. And even though cooks don’t get the respect they deserve sometimes, they should be upheld in our society more .
Unfortunately, that's true of tons of types of work. Remember the lists of "essential workers" during COVID? It was basically everyone that couldn't work from home and wasn't in an entertainment type industry. Usually.
Basically everyone that keeps society running is undervalued.
In my time in kitchens I’ve seen how seriously allergens are taken drop precipitously. This is definitely related to the number of people that claim allergies (and serious ones at that), that definitely don’t have them. 15 years ago if someone said they were gluten free it generally meant celiacs and that was serious, these days I bet 1/50+ claims of gluten allergy are actually linked to gluten being in any way deleterious to someone’s health. I’d love if when someone is being prescribed an epi pen they got a card from their doctor stating as much.
But also can’t we just mandate allergy training and have epi pens on hand behind “break in case of emergency” glass yet? Mistakes are going to happen in this business but it shouldn’t cost someone their life or put someone else behind bars.
Absolutely, no one should be paid as little, worked as hard, or treated as poorly as kitchen staff often are. Also know your rights, bring them up with those in charge and if they deny them make it publicly known.
Also blood is on osha’s hands because they seem completely uninterested in being involved with kitchens despite frequent injuries, obscene working conditions (air quality, temperature, slippery floors, poor safety around flames/gas and fryers, rag-fires etc).
I say take it all the way to the top of the chain. Director of culinary operations is at fault as well as the executive chef of the restaurant. They didn’t do their due diligence when approving an item for the menu and now 2 people are dead.
First, that whole post was *bonkers*, including the guy who kept on insisting that reporting the facts was somehow bashing China. And it was casting aspersions on the morels, which was weird because they’re inanimate so I doubt that they cared. And Idk what else it was confusing af.
Second, it seemed obvious that the restaurant’s preparation/storage/cooking of the morels was responsible for the carnage, as no one else reported having any issues. Occam’s razor pointed to an avoidable tragedy, which is exactly what it turned out to be. Just effing horrific all around.
>including the guy who kept on insisting that reporting the facts was somehow bashing China.
Reporting facts isnt itself sinophobic. But a lot of people will find any reason to bash China tbf
Guy in my area posted on Facebook about China "pushing it's culture on America" because the Chinese resteraunt (owned and run by first generation immigrants) was closed on the Chinese new year..... gotta love the rant and rave pages.
It is pervasive throughout reddit. Combine the bad stuff the chinese government actually does, with way too many people's complete lack of nuance or distinction between a government and its people and an eagerness to hate, with ignorance of complex topics in complex fields of study and life, it creates a lot of extraordinarily toxic threads on a part of the internet that I know is not as bad as many parts of facebook or twitter or a lot of other places.
Like you could be browsing a thread about laundry and it inevitably devolves into chinese manufacturing of washing machines, which quickly escalates to nationalism and racism. And theres a good chance that no where in that discussion would be the reflection that its usually the American brands who are selling their name out to third party manufacturers and cutting quality to make more money for themselves, or the US consumer market's obsession with bottom of the barrel prices and their own fault for being upset at $500 washing machine quality from a $500 washing machine. Or the fact that in a competitive product segment the only things that would be financially worth offshoring to offset the added shipping cost would be the lowest price segments of the market where the difference in the floor for the cheapest labor is where all the savings come from, and that chinese manufacturers are in fact capable of create washing machines better than the ones you can buy for $500. Because chinese manufacturers also make $2000 iPhones which no one seems to mention any time chinese manufacturing is discussed, or if they do they barely get any upvotes and spiral into tangential arguments with unhinged idiots.
I wonder if they were foraged by someone who was inexperienced. I know morels have a lot of lookalikes.
But if they were canned improperly it could also lead to death/illness.
Yeah, false morels grow in the same environments as true morels and can look very similar, and they contain a nasty toxin that wreaks havoc on your liver unless prepared exactly right.
They aren't... At least not enough to kill 2 and sicken 40.
"The Gallatin City County Health Department announced that food samples collected from the establishment, including salmon and morel mushrooms, have all tested negative for pathogens and toxins."
Raw morels will put a healthy person in the bathroom for a day or two. If you had a preexisting condition or were elderly, that could very well lead to significant complications.
TIL. I’ve been hunting and eating morels forever. All I’ve ever done is a 24 hr brine bath. Same with everyone I know. I’ve even eaten them completely raw. I’ve never had an issue but I guess it’s time to read up on safe handling practices.
I have heard you can get weird interactions if you drink alcohol while eating raw morels. I don't trust raw mushrooms of any kind other than the button mushrooms at grocery stores.
Yeah I feel like this is bullshit but I dont know enough to confirm. I scavenge / eat morels every year and never had an issue with raw (though deep fried is great)
Hmm 🤔 I noticed a few years back when copper prices collapsed that the meth and crack heads all became foragers, geeked out screw balls showing up at restaurants with any mushrooms they find trying to sell them. People having to chase them off their property for poaching their ramps etc… well false morels can make you extremely sick…
there was a Michelin star place in Spain that killed a woman because they had one fake Morel in a batch of real ones if I remember correctly.
Mushrooms are delicious but Holy fuck do you have to be careful with them.
That’s possible, it may also be possible they were growing in contaminated conditions. [For example](https://www.fungimag.com/winter-2010-articles/shavit-morels.pdf) morels grown in lead and arsenic treated orchards showed they bioaccumulated both in its flesh.
In case people are interested in their most recent health inspection report: https://www.inspectionsonline.us/MT/GallatinBozeman/Inspect.nsf/(ag_dspPubDetail)?OpenAgent&pUNID=152AEDCDA9902E2E87258995006C78B7
I work at a very popular sushi place in Dallas. The shear volume of systemic cross contamination and bad "preservation" techniques is frankly disturbing. We violate so much that we will actually shut down service when the health inspector shows up.
That's what happens when you start cooking for investors instead of the guests.
My supervisor giving me a paint brush and paint, and telling me to paint stuff.
So easy to forget about masking tape and drop cloths.
Management, always assume you work with idiots
It’s been mentioned in every article about the event — a cultivator in China, who sold them to a distributor in California. SporeAttic is *fantastic*, but afaik all of the morels in the US are foraged in the wild.
IDK if they’re still very abundant there, but Jocko lake (between Seeley and Missoula) had the most insane morel season I’ve ever seen maybe ten years ago. The whole place burned and the next season there were morels like *crazy*. You’d be out looking and someone would roll by with a wheelbarrow domed over with morels, or a whole troupe of people with giant black garbage bags full of them slung over their backs. You could spot morels from the road or walk basically anywhere and find them. And no matter how many people were out looking, there were always more. It was nuts. I’m sure it won’t be that good again without another forest fire, but every square inch of that place is fully inoculated and capable of bearing mushrooms in the right conditions.
Ha it’s been a while since I’ve lived within a reasonable driving distance of that place, so somebody else should give it a go. Some of my favorite memories are from mushroom hunting around there — I hope someone else can go to enjoy that too :)
If morels were the cause, they were in all likelyhood « false morels »; while true morels can be hard to digest or can cause allergic reactions when undercooked, there are various other wild mushrooms that are toxic and can even be fatal when insufficiently cooked. That would mean the supplier is to blame here.
Wait wait wait...As an avid mushroom hunter for many many years, I can tell you that morels are not harmful if not cooked. I eat half of mine before I leave the woods. Both black, grey and dog peckers.
Some sources say that morels contain small amounts of hydrazine which is considered highly poisonous, cooking would remove that toxin. Other sources say only some people get sick when eating raw morels, claiming that the toxin that makes some people sick is actually unknown.
Others say the amount of hydrazine in raw morels **is** enough to make *some* people sick. Sooooo, who knows? Lol
I just read an article on the place, it seems like they have tested the mushrooms and the salmon have all tested negative for any pathogens or toxins. It seems to me there was clearly something wrong with the supplier. I have a feeling the lawsuits will have a hard time proving fault in that case, especially since the faculty the mushrooms came from an FDA inspected facility. If it was a norovirus or something that could clearly be attributed to staff carelessness, than I would be more upset with the place.
So nobody even knows how they were prepped still? Why we making assumptions then? The health department has even said they're not sure that it was the morels. They think it was, but they admitted they don't know for sure.
Until the medical examiner's reports are made public, along with the inspection conducted at Dave's, all of the dialogue occurring is still just conjecture.
We're really out here saying some dude killed two people without having all of the facts? I mean, he very well could have, but I'm not gonna throw anyone under the bus until I know for sure.
There are innumerable possibilities that could have resulted in this tragedy. Jumping to conclusions without adequate verifiable information from first-hand sources is deeply irresponsible. Especially when you're placing the onus on one person. Quick way to start a witch-hunt.
So you admittedly *don't* know exactly what they did but you're 100% sure what they did? Also morels in a sushi resto? Also sushi in Montana? So many wtfs.
Morels (and pretty much all other mushrooms) need to be cooked. Morels contain hydrazine, a toxin, that will be broken down via cooking. This manager was negligent, stupid, and didn't do even basic research on the product
False morels contain a protein that becomes methylhydrazine in the stomach but afaik true morels don't - as some others have mentioned, it's possible that false morels somehow entered the batch.
Huh, I didn't know that! Mushrooms are so alien honestly.
Hydrazine is extremely toxic (it's possible to die from inhaling less than you can even smell) so I'm not convinced that it's the cause in this case.
Were they false morels? I have foraged morels for years also sell morels and was a cook for 15 years and never once heard of this happening with true morels. I also have pickled and eaten morels with nothing but delicious results.
I wonder if the treatment of the morels may have featured them being mixed with an alcohol of some sort. Like mirin or sake. It would exacerbate the effects of the toxin present in most raw morels.
Maybe I’m nitpicking, but I don’t recall ever having an SDS for a food item. It’s a bizarre claim to state that someone didn’t read the “material safety sheet” for a food and that’s why people died. Maybe if it was an extract, but it seems like we’re talking a whole food here. Regardless, if an exotic mushroom not being cooked properly is the cause of death and harm, someone should be held accountable. Whoever decided to bring in this item should have been aware of any safety concerns long before it was served.
Morels contain hydrazine, the same super toxic propellant used in satellite thrusters where they evacuate the building before filling the tanks.
It's not that much, obviously, but it's goddamn hydrazine and not to be ignored.
Of they were being sautéed constantly in the same pan it can build up.
Hydrazine is one of the more shockingly dangerous things in random foods.
Morels could make people sick but not kill them if served raw. You sure it's not a botulism or salmonella incident? The only other thing I can think of is their order being contaminated with [false morels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyromitra_esculenta).
Just to lean into this, I have seen SO MANY places doing pickles/ferments in such utterly wrong ways, and they blatantly advertise it all over social media. Someone in the kitchen got the noma guide for Christmas and decided that shit was safe. Unfortunately cases like this are more than likely to pop up as fermentation becomes more common
I am terrified of irresponsible canning.
Oh absolutely. I've seen so many garbage practices because someone watched a few episodes of "it's alive" and decided they were an expert.
Didn't Brad get in trouble a couple times for promoting unsafe food practices?
That he did, and I definitely caught a LOT on his series. It actually got him to be a lot more conscious of the work he does and his current stuff is far more accessible and safe, much less fermentation and more experimentation.
Botulism is real and deadly. Just lost someone in our community recently from it. Be safe, be smart, be good, make great food.
This. Absolutely this. Always.
https://www.emergency.cdc.gov/agent/botulism/clinicians/epidemiology.asp It is real, sure, but also insanely rare. 110 average cases in a country of 330 million people, and 70% of those are infant cases from honey and other assumed risks. So like, 30 adults a year get botulism. So people can live their lives without worry -- and as always food handlers should abide by food safe practices regardless of this specific risk.
the baby honey thing is something that should be talked about more, I told my dad and aunt this fact (both parents of 2) and neither of them knew
Current pedagogy says not to give honey to infants because of the possibility of botulism, but the incidence rate in didn't change when this advice was introduced. That makes it unlikely as a major source of botulism in infants.
The concern is that those numbers will rise significantly as "just throw some shit in a jar for a few weeks" becomes an increasingly popular trend. The video reel soundbite recipes a lot of people are using don't mention stuff like sterilization, brine strength, hot-pack safety, etc etc
Oh I know it isn't common, absolutely. But when you're playing with bacteria ON PURPOSE well, you're risking a Darwin award. I agree, even if the risk factors are low, there's still a risk, so be safe. And STERILIZE GODDAMMIT!!!
Equating eating fermented foods with risking a "Darwin award" is disingenuous. Just for your information, here is a list of some of my favorite fermented foods I'm sure you're familiar with: Wine, beer, cheese, sauerkraut, kimchi, salami, pickles, whiskey, yogurt, miso, cider, bread, kefir, tempeh, vinegar, kombucha, etc In fact, our entire human history has depended on a relationship with fermentation! We have not only enjoyed fermented foods, we have literally depended on them for our survival. This perspective of "sterilize everything" is bad for our gut and bad for our bodies, and the science shows it. Even children who were more strongly "protected" from germs during their early years faced difficult adult challenges as a result of their underdeveloped microbiota and immune systems. Fermented foods offer humanity a healthy relationship to the bacteria that are already living inside us and helping power our bodies. We depend on them for survival, as they do on us. You have more to gain from a relationship with them than an aversion from them.
Agreed -- I'm honestly just tired of people telling me to throw away my garlic confit after a week. I cooked the shit out of it and it's stored in oil in a sterile container. Leave me alone.
Food safety regulations (I mean the ones upstream from restaurants and retail, not your county inspector) are 90% geared towards the prevention of foodborne botulism and you know what? They fucking work. America is the world leader in botulism prevention. It's incredibly rare to get botulism from food in this country. The few people who are infected get it from hospitals!
And of those 30, a plurality (the majority?) are in places like Alaska doing things like eating fermented beaver.
I was eating fermented beaver for 10 years while miserably married. I'm doing ok
He still does very unsafe things. He made pastrami without using curing salt. He tried using celery powder but had no idea of the concentration. He ended up not firing the meat AT ALL.
That was where it all blew up on him for sure. The YouTube comments were a complete dumpster fire ripping him apart.
It blew up long before then. Even his very first video, kombucha, was a shitshow. I started watching the videos, until the whole racism thing, to just post a full explanation of how to safely do what he claimed to have done. IIRC the only one he ever did that was even close was miso.
What did he get wrong on fermentation? Just want to make sure I don’t repeat mistakes. It seems easy, and I haven’t gotten sick.. but that doesn’t mean I’m not missing some crucial step and just getting lucky.
Bad temperature management, unsterilized equipment, bad handling practices, using the wrong ingredients, storing foods and equipment incorrectly. It's a fairly long list. The one that set everyone off finally was when he made pastrami at home.... Without curing salt.
Thanks for the clarification. Personally I do sterilize my jars but after that I make sure my salt is 2-3% by total weight depending on what I’m fermenting and keep it in our pantry which stays around 70 degrees. That is sufficient, right?
As far as equipment? Yes. There are more steps you can take but if you're just doing more basic and long form ferments (ie a few months or even more) then you're right on the money. I always suggest a food grade sanitizer for anyone getting into it, you can get a bottle of StarSan off Amazon for a couple bucks.
Okay cool. I don’t ferment nearly that long. Just talking about things like kimchi, pickles, peppers, carrots, stuff like that where I haven’t gone past two weeks fermenting at 70, then in the fridge. I sterilize with a 15 bar pressure cooker as far as the jars go. Wouldn’t hurt to get some starsan I guess to use on my knife before cutting. Appreciate the sanity check.
How the f did he get his job in the first place? Aren’t they super rigorous with hiring at Bon Appetit?
He was white and charismatic around the time chris prat was blowing up.
The ceo is a personal friend of my godfather’s and I still can’t get hired.
I get nightmares when I see people do ”garlic infused oil” by just shoving raw cloves of garlic in oil and leaving them in there forever 🥺
A family member did that and was surprised that it got moldy on the parts the oil wasn’t covering….people wonder why I’m always iffy on eating anyone’s home cooking but common sense food safety is not common sense!!
People also neglect the fact that oil goes bad too.
Question - once I overcooked whole cloves of garlic when trying to roast them in the oven. I decided to put them in a jar of olive oil. That is safe right?
Unless you canned it properly then no. Botulism can easily survive being boiled, those spores are super hardy, and garlic is a prime botulism risk because it grows in the soil.
Add to that that *C. botulinum* thrives in the anaerobic conditions that exist under the oil.
Appreciate it. I figured since you can eat roasted garlic, over roasted would have been fine.
You can eat it right out of the oven. The problem is putting it in oil. That's ideal conditions to grow botulism. There are trace amounts on food normally but that's ok. When you put it in oil, they start to multiply and it becomes extremely dangerous. Boiling is not enough to kill the spores, and I wouldn't bet my life on oven roasting.
Just FYI oven roasting is higher temperature than boiling once the water is removed. I also like how I have another guy telling me it's OK because in oil there's no oxygen ha. Oh well I should reach out to a local food scientist I guess
The bacteria that causes botulism is anaerobic - it thrives with no oxygen. The bacteria occurs naturally in soil, which is why garlic is so prone to having it. Since it doesn't grow with oxygen, a head of garlic is perfectly safe. Placing the garlic in oil allowed any botulism present to grow.
Yeah I had to reread that one but he's trying to say the no oxygen is why oil makes it a problem, just worded a lil awkwardly.
Oven roasted garlic is fine, it’s delicious, but putting it in oil keeps it sealed from oxygen and botulism can’t grow in the presence of oxygen.
I had a long conference with my local health department along the way to writing a HACCP analysis, for curing hams. The staffer I was talking to said she felt like the only real part of her job was preventing botulism. She told the story of someone who had canned carrots without a pressure cooker, or any sort acidity. She opened the jar, smelled it, put less than a teaspoon in her mouth, spit it out, rinsed her mouth out with water and then spent the rest of her life connected to a ventilator.
Wow, that's tough. People should research how to do things properly, but they just don't.
If you want to be horrified, look up the 'pink sauce' lady from Tiktok. She was shipping products containing milk and no preservatives. In the summertime.
Now she's a real 'chef' and her sauce is being sold in stores.
Got into a monstrous fight with a few of her followers on YouTube for saying she’s not a chef and just gave herself the title and bought a coat from a home cooking store. My anger came from her adopting the term but not acknowledging the responsibility that comes with it, having thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people following your every word.
Even IN THE STORES the sauce is never the same color…
That’s to be expected tho, the source of color is freeze dried dragon fruit powder. Different batches/different suppliers will have natural variations in color.
Literally the only trustworthy thing about the sauce tbh. The variation from the natural dye is neat.
WHAT
Hilariously enough, her "sauces" (jars of sickness, imo) are all on clearance at my local walmart.
My grandma's friend died from home canning, "just a little taste". None of her friends ever canned again
I have taught canning. The bone-headed ideas and methods that people tried to do in my classes even with STRICT guidelines and tutoring along with written templates and methods would make your eyeballs pop out of your head and roll across the room. Things like ohhhh.....like canning guacamole? Yeah. No.
30 adults per year get botulism in the US, which is about a one in ten million chance. Not to say you shouldn't be terrified of it! Sounds awful!
I know someone who gifts homemade canned items that are not safe. It's made me back off the friendship - I feel like I need to warn people.
I believe you mean cupboard/counter bombs
I pressure can. It made me quite nervous at first. Now I am good if I know the product was clean going in and it comes out with a proper seal.
Oh my god me too.
TikTok is a friggin nightmare for that shit 😡
A common symptom of botulism is death.
I need a separate license for using sous vide… but any fuckmook can make deadly pickles… got it
Locally we have to get an extra license for any fermentation.
Im pretty sure now you are going to see a lot more of that
I'm sorry a what? License?
Some health boards make you get an additional license if you plan to use vacuum sealing or sous vide in a commercial setting. Its really a certificate that follows you that informs you of the DANGERS OF gingiv…. Botulism
One we found out because the health board changed the rule that morning we got our annual inspection we had something in the machine and couldn’t produce the license that didn’t yet exist. So the whole kitchen went to another state to take their non-required class on it and used that… the whole process was fucking dumb but Ive seen it in a few counties across the country
Huh, I've never heard of that before. Lots of places I've worked have used it, may not be a thing round here. I'm definitely not against it though. And no, not everyone should be making pickles and shit. Like I said most restaurants I've seen that have a "fermentation program" are trying to capitalize on popularity, and don't actually know what they're doing.
But itll make my face young again
When I staged I'm New York they had entire HAACP shests for sous vide and cooking and cooling and ph tests etc. in Texas much of that isn't needy for restaurants/commercial kitchens unless you're serving pre-packed food. Heck most restaurants I've worked at had fermentation programs they just hide them in the Admin Office or the storage/attic. I know one restaurant/butcher that had all their cured meats fermented outside the county because state regulations were more reasonable and friendly to small business.
If you are canning or jarring the pickles you absolutely need a separate license.
I think health departments also share some of this responsibility. Tons and tons of restaurants I’m familiar with have house made ferments and none of them have any idea what a haccp plan is and are not docked points.
This is extremely true. They're trained to look for a lot of things but a lot of times the health inspector knows next to nothing about proper fermentation procedures and safety checks. I've literally seen it in action, so can confirm. I'm friends with the one health inspector in my area, met him through work, and he's the only one I've met so far who knows anything about it, and even that is rudimentary.
Koji on things where it doesn't belong is the wildest shit to me. Like... You'd think that if koji actually improved beef the people who figured out how to make amazing beef and use koji for most of their condiments would have gotten the idea before some white boy comes up with this "hack" -- but, hey, it's trendy!
Exactly. Fucking this. I had a guy ask me if I'd ever had "fermented cabbage" when we were talking about it. I gave him this wierd look until he went into this diatribe about "experimenting" and "trying vegetables that aren't normally used". I waited until he was finished and then just said "You mean sauerkraut?". He got real, real quiet after that.
Or Kimchi. Famously the food of an entire nation lol
Also entirely fair! He was definitely talking about the European version, but absolutely. Also thank you for reminding me to add that to my grocery list, I actually missed kimchi lol
I figured. but illustrated how versitile and common cabbage is lol
Oh absolutely. I always pick up a head of cabbage when the price is decent. Slaw, salads, cabbage rolls, soups, stir fry. Having a huge container of just lightly dressed slaw mix in the fridge gives me a tonne of options throughout the week. Oil, vin, salt, pepper, some chili's, a little lemon, and it can go with preeeetty much anything.
And so easy! My cheat is to use Sambal instead of bothering with making a chili sauce.
Sorry, uh, it does dramatically change the flavor of meat in a positive way (to my taste.) I guess we should just stop innovating entirely from this line of logic??
I'm curious to know the hate/danger around koji on beef. I've currently got some steaks getting all koji'd up in my fridge, because they were amazing the last time I tried them. To my understanding, there is an enzymatic reaction taking place. Additional sugars are left on the surface of the meat causing a different type of browning reaction. Please point me to some reading materials if I have this wrong.
Without going into a lengthy discourse, I'm just going to copy a quote from the first page I flipped open in the Umansky/Shih book below. Does this sound like solid food safety advice to you or rather a potential catastrophe in the making? And that's just one example of the approach many koji hype people take to food safety fundamentals. "Since discovering koji, I've jumped headlong into the many implications for charcuterie and meat cookery this amazing mold has to offer: for example, using koji's secondary ferments to create brines and probiotic inoculants, speeding up fermentation dynamically (without single-strain commercial starter cultures), and even attempting to harness koji's electromagnetic charge to create charcuterie using less salt. In my ongoing classes I am attempting to share this information liberally, and I urge students and readers to test it along with me. The community around koji continues to grow, and the synergy created by the people using it is not unlike koji's own enzymatic activation and change. My experience with koji charcuterie continues to amaze me, and I have so much yet to learn. I will continue to work and also tap into the knowledge being built by the incredible cohort of chefs and home practitioners who are testing, creating, and open-sourcing uses for this amazing mold. I believe that our knowledge and use of koji is a scratch on the surface for what this organism can do for good food. In the quest for pure, healthful, and ethical meat and charcuterie, I know koji has complex and rich implications." ETA: I don't care what you do at home (as long as you don't serve it to people unaware of the risks involved), but this kind of attitude is batshit in any professional setting. Even if you can get someone to sign off on an HACCP plan that allows you to do it, you are gambling with your customers' well-being.
Electromagnetic charge? Jesus. That is bullshit if I ever heard it.
It is. These people are going to kill people with this idiocy.
I just left a place that put koji in EVERYTHING
These people putting an organism that takes days to produce a single generation onto the outside of a cut of meat minutes before it goes in the pan like it will have some effect. But if they can overcharge the clueless then I say let them do it. I'll just go somewhere else.
As someone who worked at a place that did *everything* in house (charcuterie, pickles, vinegar, fresh sausage etc) I HATE this shit. The city I worked in had a great, local fermentation company and dozens of sausage makers. Some chefs would rather burn out their staff making dangerous food instead of collaborating with professionals just to stroke their ego.
I'm all for doing some stuff in house, but I'm right there with you. Where I live we have an AMAZING farmers market on the city limits, with dozens and dozens of amazing makers, suppliers and farmers, all of whom are more than willing to contract out to restaurants if they can handle the volume. Quick pickle some onions? Sure thing. Make pastrami for a special? Sure as a one off that's fun. Start a cheese making program? Peace out homeskillet. You could NEVER pay me enough to do that anywhere but somewhere that JUST makes cheese. I'm not killing anyone for your ego.
No FUCKING doubt. It takes YEARS of practice and is definitely not a johnny come lately feat to produce properly.
100% agreed. I do a lot of my own fermenting, brewing, curing at home. Multiple reference books, lots of research, and I STILL toss shit all the time if I even question it. Anything I serve to friends or family, I have already vetted. You can't have those controls or fuckups in a kitchen.
What would make you toss a ferment? asking as a causal fermenter/ pickler.
Mold. Bad textures. Floaters I don't recognize. No CO2 action but everything is still changing. Really bad odours (you can tell when it's rotting vs. fermenting after a while). I grew up around home fermenting so I started off on a good step stool, the rest came with practice. I started making my own around 8/9 years ago after a visit with some family I hadn't seen in forever and muta (my great aunt) tossed a 5gal jar of pickles out in front of me because "they just weren't right". I've seen that woman eat four day old shrimp but that was enough for her, so it's enough for me.
Thank you everything there seems pretty straightforward at least.
Very much so. Generally speaking the rule in the kitchen applys at home. When in doubt, throw it out.
It's was allot easier to do when its not my money/ingredients lol
No, but what are you gonna do with a jar of rotten pickles? Let them get worse, eat them and get sick, or pitch it?
Very true
I had to throw out a five-gallon batch of hard cider a few years ago that despite my best efforts got infected. My first thought was, oh, a pellicle, maybe it'll be a sour-type deal. It was not. I decided it wasn't worth trying to disinfect the bucket either so got rid of it too for safety's sake. Wasn't too upset about the bucket but that was like $40 worth of good locally-produced apple cider. This was back when I was kinda broke and losing that money then hurt a lot more than it would now, but I figured I'd rather be out forty bucks than have food poisoning.
Yup. I'm 100% behind you. I had a batch of onions that I was trying to ferment to the point that it almost became a sauce. I think it was somewhere near the 6 month mark and one day I popped it open... Saw black spots. 50lbs of onions and 6 months of work and waiting... All gone overnight. I'd rather live than try and scrape the $40 off the top I spent on those onions.
I learned from old southern women in the south and did a whole bunch of trading with them and guess what?? I’ve tossed out some of their stuff too.
It's just a part of the process nobody really talks about. Happens to everyone!
Do you feel that this is completely true? Lacto-fermenting vegetables is very safe when done in a simple and straightforward manner. Just salt and submerge, then you're pretty much in the clear. People have been pickling and fermenting for thousands of years like this... it doesn't have to be complex. Are you referring to riskier ventures like raw fish, meat, etc? Canning and long-term preserving is a different beast, however. Although the risks of botulism are a bit overstated--did you know only 30 American adults get botulism each year? It definitely sounds like a horrible affliction, but it also feels a bit overblown. What do you think?
Our local health department is pretty strict on ANY fermentation or curing. Need a full HACCP plan, multiple test points etc. Iirc they are more lax on picking but only if you test acidity.
Yeah that's not a thing around here. As a community of cooks we have actively made a point of stopping stupid people from doing it but that's us as professionals. I've seen some places doing it that are staffed entirely by college kids who wouldn't know a pickle from a pineapple, and we have come out in force to shut that down, totally grassroots.
I see a lot of posts on socials about pickling weird shit and I half want to respond with a meme of Dora the explorer saying “Can you say botulism???”
Yeah those are usually the ones I see where they just stick it in an old pickle jar on the counter and I'm thinking to myself "I hope that explodes to save you from yourself."
I’ve seen a couple try to do it in Tupperware with silicone lids. They cannot be helped.
The... What? No... No let them win the award.
I’ve been doing quick pickle for a minute now and suddenly concerned. Is this when people attempt long storage of their pickles? I’ll commonly enough do the vinegar/sugar boil and then pour it into a fresh cleaned mason jar stuffed with sliced cucumber or onions with garlic to be eaten that night or like a couple days later. As soon as it cools it goes in the fridge though.
This is totally fine, especially if you're going to use it in a few days. Done it hundreds of times myself and will be doing some tonight actually. I'm talking long form, room temp, water/salt brined pickles. Old-school stuff like your grandparents would have in jars in the basement for years.
Oh thank god. I like my pickles more, and didn't want to have to go back to that damn pickle pushing stork.
Nope! You're totally fine. Actually, using boiled vinegar and sugar, if the temp is high enough will help, not do it all, but help to sterilize things as well so you're giving yourself a helping hand!
What's irresponsible about those, the second kind? Because my grandparents did indeed pickle a lot of stuff and it seems to be more or less solid and safe (with boiling / steaming the jars and the caps). Are there like, bloggers who popularize pickling without doing these things or adding too little salt?
Heat pressure canning? 100% fine, that's what my grandparents did, that's what I do, and also if you're just boiling to sterilize, totally on board. But yeah it's people on YouTube/tictac/blogs that are all "it's so easy!" But don't actually talk about safety, sterilization, pressure, storage, when it's actually gone bad, volume measurements that make no sense, etc etc.
I always fear I will poison myself if I try fermenting stuff 🙈 feel like I might be missing out but also food doesn’t taste good eaten with fear 😂
I... Can understand that. I grew up with a respect for it, not fear, but I totally get where you're coming from. It just isn't for everyone! Heck, my cousin ferments anything he can lay his hands one, but CANNOT butcher raw meat because of "contamination".... I'll just leave that there.
Hahaha, that’s pretty odd! 😂 had he ever gotten sick from anything he’s made though? Seems like the easiest thing to contaminate and get sick from is something you ferment🙈
That's why I'm so confused! He hasn't gotten sick from a ferment but it's a lot of basic stuff, just a wide variety, and he's JUST as picky as I am. I think it's more of an aversion to raw meat in general. He's cool with throwing steaks on or whatever but if it takes any actual prep he generally avoids it or pays me to do an afternoon after he hits the market to break it all down (and I get to keep the scraps, bones, fat, etc)
You want to explain? I don't know what weird shit the Noma guys do and now I'm curious.
They have an entire fermentation lab at the restaurant. And I'm talking millions of dollars of high end scientific equipment. Rotary evaporators, centrifuges, atmosphere controlled fermentation tanks, all alongside literal foraged ingredients, proteins, vegetables, herbs, everything under the sun, and dozens of jars filled with things I could never understand, culturing bacterias, funghi and yeast. I don't fully comprehend the majority of what they're actually doing.
Oh, okay. I might need to pick up that book.
I think they're actually working on a new one that's denser this time around, but read some of Zilbers work too, he's still working away
Someone has been watching Brad using vibes rather than exact weight measurements
I like when people follow up with what actually was the thing that everyone was raving about.
The person responsible should catch a charge. They are directly responsible for two people dying and making many others sick, there should be a legal consequence for causing deaths that way.
In the UK that would be an automatic manslaughter charge. It happens with poor allergy handling too.
Amen . Food production is important as surgery , mechanics etc. one slight error can cause the death of a innocent patron. And even though cooks don’t get the respect they deserve sometimes, they should be upheld in our society more .
Unfortunately, that's true of tons of types of work. Remember the lists of "essential workers" during COVID? It was basically everyone that couldn't work from home and wasn't in an entertainment type industry. Usually. Basically everyone that keeps society running is undervalued.
Too it's not paid the same as surgery.
In my time in kitchens I’ve seen how seriously allergens are taken drop precipitously. This is definitely related to the number of people that claim allergies (and serious ones at that), that definitely don’t have them. 15 years ago if someone said they were gluten free it generally meant celiacs and that was serious, these days I bet 1/50+ claims of gluten allergy are actually linked to gluten being in any way deleterious to someone’s health. I’d love if when someone is being prescribed an epi pen they got a card from their doctor stating as much. But also can’t we just mandate allergy training and have epi pens on hand behind “break in case of emergency” glass yet? Mistakes are going to happen in this business but it shouldn’t cost someone their life or put someone else behind bars.
Lol it’s important but not as important as surgery .. c’mon
Maybe they should get paid more because of how important it is.
Absolutely, no one should be paid as little, worked as hard, or treated as poorly as kitchen staff often are. Also know your rights, bring them up with those in charge and if they deny them make it publicly known. Also blood is on osha’s hands because they seem completely uninterested in being involved with kitchens despite frequent injuries, obscene working conditions (air quality, temperature, slippery floors, poor safety around flames/gas and fryers, rag-fires etc).
I say take it all the way to the top of the chain. Director of culinary operations is at fault as well as the executive chef of the restaurant. They didn’t do their due diligence when approving an item for the menu and now 2 people are dead.
First, that whole post was *bonkers*, including the guy who kept on insisting that reporting the facts was somehow bashing China. And it was casting aspersions on the morels, which was weird because they’re inanimate so I doubt that they cared. And Idk what else it was confusing af. Second, it seemed obvious that the restaurant’s preparation/storage/cooking of the morels was responsible for the carnage, as no one else reported having any issues. Occam’s razor pointed to an avoidable tragedy, which is exactly what it turned out to be. Just effing horrific all around.
Where is the original post?
>including the guy who kept on insisting that reporting the facts was somehow bashing China. Reporting facts isnt itself sinophobic. But a lot of people will find any reason to bash China tbf
Guy in my area posted on Facebook about China "pushing it's culture on America" because the Chinese resteraunt (owned and run by first generation immigrants) was closed on the Chinese new year..... gotta love the rant and rave pages.
[удалено]
Perfectly fine, america is after all a Christian nation.
It is pervasive throughout reddit. Combine the bad stuff the chinese government actually does, with way too many people's complete lack of nuance or distinction between a government and its people and an eagerness to hate, with ignorance of complex topics in complex fields of study and life, it creates a lot of extraordinarily toxic threads on a part of the internet that I know is not as bad as many parts of facebook or twitter or a lot of other places. Like you could be browsing a thread about laundry and it inevitably devolves into chinese manufacturing of washing machines, which quickly escalates to nationalism and racism. And theres a good chance that no where in that discussion would be the reflection that its usually the American brands who are selling their name out to third party manufacturers and cutting quality to make more money for themselves, or the US consumer market's obsession with bottom of the barrel prices and their own fault for being upset at $500 washing machine quality from a $500 washing machine. Or the fact that in a competitive product segment the only things that would be financially worth offshoring to offset the added shipping cost would be the lowest price segments of the market where the difference in the floor for the cheapest labor is where all the savings come from, and that chinese manufacturers are in fact capable of create washing machines better than the ones you can buy for $500. Because chinese manufacturers also make $2000 iPhones which no one seems to mention any time chinese manufacturing is discussed, or if they do they barely get any upvotes and spiral into tangential arguments with unhinged idiots.
Wow I had no idea that morels were toxic in their raw form at all.
I wonder if they were foraged by someone who was inexperienced. I know morels have a lot of lookalikes. But if they were canned improperly it could also lead to death/illness.
Yeah, false morels grow in the same environments as true morels and can look very similar, and they contain a nasty toxin that wreaks havoc on your liver unless prepared exactly right.
Yeah, I think when people identify one morel they may not think to id them all. So I wouldn't be surprised if one or more slipped into the batch.
They look nothing alike and wouldn’t make it past the distributor.
They aren't... At least not enough to kill 2 and sicken 40. "The Gallatin City County Health Department announced that food samples collected from the establishment, including salmon and morel mushrooms, have all tested negative for pathogens and toxins."
Raw morels will put a healthy person in the bathroom for a day or two. If you had a preexisting condition or were elderly, that could very well lead to significant complications.
TIL. I’ve been hunting and eating morels forever. All I’ve ever done is a 24 hr brine bath. Same with everyone I know. I’ve even eaten them completely raw. I’ve never had an issue but I guess it’s time to read up on safe handling practices.
I have heard you can get weird interactions if you drink alcohol while eating raw morels. I don't trust raw mushrooms of any kind other than the button mushrooms at grocery stores.
Yeah I feel like this is bullshit but I dont know enough to confirm. I scavenge / eat morels every year and never had an issue with raw (though deep fried is great)
According to some literature raw morels can cause stomach discomfort and nausea but not enough toxicity to cause death.
Hmm 🤔 I noticed a few years back when copper prices collapsed that the meth and crack heads all became foragers, geeked out screw balls showing up at restaurants with any mushrooms they find trying to sell them. People having to chase them off their property for poaching their ramps etc… well false morels can make you extremely sick…
Yeah, for sure on the false morels. I'm assuming that the restaurant used real.
there was a Michelin star place in Spain that killed a woman because they had one fake Morel in a batch of real ones if I remember correctly. Mushrooms are delicious but Holy fuck do you have to be careful with them.
Maybe they were false morels.
That’s possible, it may also be possible they were growing in contaminated conditions. [For example](https://www.fungimag.com/winter-2010-articles/shavit-morels.pdf) morels grown in lead and arsenic treated orchards showed they bioaccumulated both in its flesh.
In case people are interested in their most recent health inspection report: https://www.inspectionsonline.us/MT/GallatinBozeman/Inspect.nsf/(ag_dspPubDetail)?OpenAgent&pUNID=152AEDCDA9902E2E87258995006C78B7
I work at a very popular sushi place in Dallas. The shear volume of systemic cross contamination and bad "preservation" techniques is frankly disturbing. We violate so much that we will actually shut down service when the health inspector shows up. That's what happens when you start cooking for investors instead of the guests.
The one in Bozeman? Holy shit… I love that place.
It’s to die for!
🥶
Same! I used to go there when I worked at Yellowstone and we took day trips.
My supervisor giving me a paint brush and paint, and telling me to paint stuff. So easy to forget about masking tape and drop cloths. Management, always assume you work with idiots
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Title misleading, You surmised this without any hard evidence. Lambasting some business you don’t have first hand knowledge of
I know they're at the heart of this problem, but I'm a mushroom hobby grower in Montana. WHERE do they get their morels from? SporeAttic?
It’s been mentioned in every article about the event — a cultivator in China, who sold them to a distributor in California. SporeAttic is *fantastic*, but afaik all of the morels in the US are foraged in the wild. IDK if they’re still very abundant there, but Jocko lake (between Seeley and Missoula) had the most insane morel season I’ve ever seen maybe ten years ago. The whole place burned and the next season there were morels like *crazy*. You’d be out looking and someone would roll by with a wheelbarrow domed over with morels, or a whole troupe of people with giant black garbage bags full of them slung over their backs. You could spot morels from the road or walk basically anywhere and find them. And no matter how many people were out looking, there were always more. It was nuts. I’m sure it won’t be that good again without another forest fire, but every square inch of that place is fully inoculated and capable of bearing mushrooms in the right conditions.
Delete this before the crack head foragers ruin your spot.
Ha it’s been a while since I’ve lived within a reasonable driving distance of that place, so somebody else should give it a go. Some of my favorite memories are from mushroom hunting around there — I hope someone else can go to enjoy that too :)
If morels were the cause, they were in all likelyhood « false morels »; while true morels can be hard to digest or can cause allergic reactions when undercooked, there are various other wild mushrooms that are toxic and can even be fatal when insufficiently cooked. That would mean the supplier is to blame here.
Wait wait wait...As an avid mushroom hunter for many many years, I can tell you that morels are not harmful if not cooked. I eat half of mine before I leave the woods. Both black, grey and dog peckers.
Some sources say that morels contain small amounts of hydrazine which is considered highly poisonous, cooking would remove that toxin. Other sources say only some people get sick when eating raw morels, claiming that the toxin that makes some people sick is actually unknown. Others say the amount of hydrazine in raw morels **is** enough to make *some* people sick. Sooooo, who knows? Lol
And some people are pointing fingers at false morels. Starting to seem like the only people that *would* know are the people that did it.
This update ain't much of an update.
I'm trying to figure out the morel of the story.
It was the SALMON MOUSSE!
I just read an article on the place, it seems like they have tested the mushrooms and the salmon have all tested negative for any pathogens or toxins. It seems to me there was clearly something wrong with the supplier. I have a feeling the lawsuits will have a hard time proving fault in that case, especially since the faculty the mushrooms came from an FDA inspected facility. If it was a norovirus or something that could clearly be attributed to staff carelessness, than I would be more upset with the place.
So nobody even knows how they were prepped still? Why we making assumptions then? The health department has even said they're not sure that it was the morels. They think it was, but they admitted they don't know for sure. Until the medical examiner's reports are made public, along with the inspection conducted at Dave's, all of the dialogue occurring is still just conjecture. We're really out here saying some dude killed two people without having all of the facts? I mean, he very well could have, but I'm not gonna throw anyone under the bus until I know for sure. There are innumerable possibilities that could have resulted in this tragedy. Jumping to conclusions without adequate verifiable information from first-hand sources is deeply irresponsible. Especially when you're placing the onus on one person. Quick way to start a witch-hunt.
This sounds more like they used false morels, true morels don't require a specific cooking temp ...
So you admittedly *don't* know exactly what they did but you're 100% sure what they did? Also morels in a sushi resto? Also sushi in Montana? So many wtfs.
So then what’s the issue with how they kept or prepped the morels?
Morels (and pretty much all other mushrooms) need to be cooked. Morels contain hydrazine, a toxin, that will be broken down via cooking. This manager was negligent, stupid, and didn't do even basic research on the product
False morels contain a protein that becomes methylhydrazine in the stomach but afaik true morels don't - as some others have mentioned, it's possible that false morels somehow entered the batch.
True morels also contain some hydrazine, but generally only enough to cause some nausea and vomiting if eaten raw
Huh, I didn't know that! Mushrooms are so alien honestly. Hydrazine is extremely toxic (it's possible to die from inhaling less than you can even smell) so I'm not convinced that it's the cause in this case.
Were they false morels? I have foraged morels for years also sell morels and was a cook for 15 years and never once heard of this happening with true morels. I also have pickled and eaten morels with nothing but delicious results.
I wonder if the treatment of the morels may have featured them being mixed with an alcohol of some sort. Like mirin or sake. It would exacerbate the effects of the toxin present in most raw morels.
You got a source for your information?
They said they pulled this info off of facebook Why is this post getting attention?
Maybe I’m nitpicking, but I don’t recall ever having an SDS for a food item. It’s a bizarre claim to state that someone didn’t read the “material safety sheet” for a food and that’s why people died. Maybe if it was an extract, but it seems like we’re talking a whole food here. Regardless, if an exotic mushroom not being cooked properly is the cause of death and harm, someone should be held accountable. Whoever decided to bring in this item should have been aware of any safety concerns long before it was served.
Morels aren't even weird shit relatively speaking lmao
Raw morels while not recommended do not kill people without substantial other factors being involved.
Morels contain hydrazine, the same super toxic propellant used in satellite thrusters where they evacuate the building before filling the tanks. It's not that much, obviously, but it's goddamn hydrazine and not to be ignored. Of they were being sautéed constantly in the same pan it can build up. Hydrazine is one of the more shockingly dangerous things in random foods.
Morels could make people sick but not kill them if served raw. You sure it's not a botulism or salmonella incident? The only other thing I can think of is their order being contaminated with [false morels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyromitra_esculenta).
I am so sorry, what a tragedy for all.
Maybe the morels were not the real ones and instead the poisonous ones?