[Sca-cooks] food safe temperature

[Brett McNamara]

A wort chiller, as Adamantius suggested, would seem the best option. 
However, if you don't have one to hand, here's an idea I haven't see
previously mentioned ( sorry if I missed it ).

Simply putting something hot in somewhere very cold doesn't drop the
temperature as much as you'd expect.  Thermal mass combined with a
kind of envelope effect frustrate ideal heat transfer, which is why
the turkey popsicle takes so amazingly long to thaw.

A wort chiller works amazingly fast, if you've never used one.  It's a
just coil of heat conductive material ( copper, usually ) that you
stick in a pot of hot liquid and run cool water through.  It creates a
convection effect and maintains temperature of the coil at a constant,
since the heated water is always being replaced by cool water.

Constantly moving cool water in contact with a hot pot will drop the
temperature far more quickly than just giving it a bath and waiting. 
Knowing this, many ad hoc MacGyver style systems can be rigged up.  A
basic method that should work in most kitchens goes like this:

Stick your hot pot in a sink preferably not covering the drain.  If it
is covering the drain, you'll have to fiddle with it later.  If your
pot just barely fits you're set, if it's lost in your luxuriously
giant sink you'll need another minor step.

The goal here is the have as much water move past the outside of our
pot as possible.  If there's lots of water the sink can hold, it wont
drain very quickly and the water wont change very fast.  Fill the dead
space with other kitchen stuff that could use a bath.  You don't want
anything touching the pot to be cooled, but you do want stuff take up
room that would otherwise be filled with water.

Now fill the sink with cool water.  Once it's up to the rim of the
pot, put the plug so it can start to drain.  The goal is the have the
tap running and the water level remaining constant.  Thats it, now
wait.  You can speed things up a little by having a volunteer stir the
pot.

If you've tried the ice bath, even with salt for extra cold, this
approach should be much more efficient.

Wistan