[Sca-cooks] salt cod and freezer burn

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Ted Eisenstein wrote:

>
> >Okay, if it is dried, salted cod, why are you keeping it in the
> >freezer?
> >
> >Doesn't the moisture in the freezer tend to rehydrate the cod?
>
> Errr, no. Freezing tends to dehydrate, not rehydrate: a local book
> restorer (who's also a quadruple peer. . . ) recommends that, for old
> books that smell of mildew, you put them into an open baggie,
> sprinkle some baking powder into the baggie, and then shove
> the whole thang into a chest freezer. It all gets very cold, drives
> the moisture out of the book and into the baking powder.
>
> I was about to say, "Think, Stefan. Isn't it always a lot drier when
> it goes below freezing than it is during high summer?" - but you
> live down in Texas, where there is no difference in temperature.
> <grin>
>
> (Seriously: chest freezers are cold and dry.)
>
> Alban

Yes, although those frost-free ones that you get attached to refrigerators
are actually drier, since they blow cold air across the contents to keep
the insides frost-free. My chest freezer has a small buildup of frost, the
frost-free freezer attached to my fridge does not.

Freezer burn is nothing more than dehydration caused by long exposure to
cold without adequate protection against that dehydration.

Oh, and Alban--you can have humidity below freezing, up until it's too
cold to snow. It can also be too cold for salt to work, and so cold that
the car exhaust freezes on the roads and creates black ice. In Minnesota,
during the winter, you can use your porch as an auxiliary freezer. I have
bought ice cream on the way to work and left it in the back of the truck
all day and it was frozen harder than when it was in the freezer at the
store. -30F will do that to you. ;-)

Margaret, doin' the happy snow dance--am I the only one in the state happy
about the snow?