Electrostimulation/tenderising or fad?

[amsci99]

This apparent new technique for cooking steak purportedly pioneered by the Orange Group in Taiwan (owners of the Valentia Steakhouse and Cafe-Onion Restaurant) has been getting a lot of press on various food/lifestyle shows on Asian cable TV lately. Whilst these shows never explain the science behind the technique but credit it as stemming from molecular gastronomy, the technique is reported to involve passing a low frequency high voltage current into meat as it cures in a negatively charged freezer? (http://www.neofreeze.com/series4.html) which supposedly locks in 70% of the moisture and tenderises it. During the cooking process, electric current is introduced into the frying pan (crocodile clips in the pic) or into the oven (rail like protrusions in the convection oven from the video)which is claim to distribute heat, decreasing cooking time.

Now, I've of electrosimulation or electro-tenderising used immediately following slaughter but this so called molecular gastronomy technique sounds like a lot of BS to me.

[gfweb]

My bullshit detector is beeping.

[dcarch]

Anyone with a high school physics can tell you that there is no electricity passing thru the steak in the first photo.

I have done this when I was a kid (Warning, don't you try this, you can be killed!!!):

Stick a nail in each end of a hot dog, wire up the nails and plug into an outlet. The hot dog will be cooked in no time.

dcarch

[rotuts]

VooDoo.

re those electric dogs: there was a gizmo for cooking dogs just as you tried with current:

there was a pastic tray that had a lid opento it and each dogs was skewered end to end on fixed copper points so that current passed through the dog. did about 8 I think. this was about 1957. very space age stuff!

my friend's mother had one and I was very envious. very.

Edited November 28, 2011 by rotuts (log)

[Mark Donnelly]

My inner caveman says something which I'm far too polite to repeat.

[qrn]

boy,maybe I can hang my steaks from my ham radio antenna and turn the amplifier up to a full kilowatt(joke)

Jeeze, hope nobody is buy'in that drivel....

Bud