[Sca-cooks] salt cod

[Mark.S Harris]

Alban replied to me with:
> >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.

Yes, I thought of this. But unless you have a frost-free freezer
the ice does build up. The moisture to create this ice has to
come from somewhere. I imagine mostly from when the door is opened.
In which case the moisture in the newly intoduced air precipitates
out as it cools. And settles on the items in the freezer like the
salted cod. But yes, I guess that can be eliminated by wrapping
the food in paper. Plastic too, but then there will be some
initial condensation that gets trapped in the bag.

If you do have a frost-free freezer, do the periodic heating
cycles affect the frozen food such as this salted, dried cod?

Is "freezer burn" mostly caused by the freezer drying out the food?

Even if there isn't a problem with the freezer rehydrating the fish,
this doesn't explain why you would want to keep it there. Does the
salted, dried cod only keep a short time? And storing it in the
freezer helps extend this time?

> 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>

Well, it doesn't get below freezing here for very long. And the
winter can in general be more humid than the summer. I don't live
in Houston (Stargate) where it is humid all the time. :-)

> (Seriously: chest freezers are cold and dry.)

Ok. Is there a differance in this between the upright and the
chest freezers and the ones that are part of the refrigerator?

Stefan
(who will be buying a new refrigerator this week, since the
current one, probably as old as his 1981 house, is making
funny sounds and has a worn out door gasket and an intermittant
ice maker, anyway)