Posted on 07/28/2022 1:04:02 PM PDT by Red Badger
If you have a hankering for a hamburger, math may have some timesaving cooking tips for you.
Increasing the number of times a burger is flipped from one side to the other reduces its cook time by up to nearly a third, theoretical calculations suggest. But cooks at home probably won’t see much benefit out of more than three to four flips, mathematician Jean-Luc Thiffeault reports June 17 in Physica D.
Thiffeault used math to model how heat moves through an “infinite” slab of meat, which cooks continuously on only the bottom side and cools on the top until the meat is flipped. Flipping heated the meat evenly, speeding up cooking, the analysis showed. And more flips led to a faster cook. For example, flipping this theoretical 1-centimeter-thick patty just once gave it a cook time of 80 seconds, while flipping it 10 times at intervals ranging from six to 11 seconds resulted in a cook time of 69 seconds. Continuing to flip the burger led to a maximum decrease of 29 percent in cooking time.
But the timesaving benefit seemed to diminish as the number of flips increased beyond a certain threshold, says Thiffeault, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “After three or four flips, the gain in time is negligible.”
Thiffeault’s findings align with what chef and food writer J. Kenji López-Alt has observed in the kitchen. In a 2019 article for the food and drink website Serious Eats, Kenji López-Alt compared how long it took for a burger’s internal temperature to reach about 52° Celsius, or 125° Fahrenheit, based on cooking method. Flipping a burger every 15 seconds — as opposed to flipping the patty just once — shortened cooking time by nearly a third.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
-PJ
“flipping this theoretical 1-centimeter-thick patty”
A one centimeter thick patty?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I also don’t cook 1 centimeter thick burgers in 80 seconds.
100% agree. One....Flip....Only!
Here’s what I’ve been doing lately:
No Flip Smoked Burgers
https://cookinpellets.com/recipes/no-flip-smoked-burgers/
My burgers are ready in 0 seconds ! My butcher grinds chuck/sirloin while I wait and I eat it raw. Yummmmmm.
When I do cook it I hand shape my patties, taking care not to crush the meat together too hard. This tends to keep the juices in the burger. I find that doing a reverse sear, which involves initially cooking the burger over very high heat till you get a nice char and then finishing it off under lower heat works best for me. When done on the grill, let the burger rest for ten minutes or so. The outside will be loaded with that good old grill flavor and the interior will be pink and juicy.
It is a semi-infinite slab. Bounded on one end.
I never yet met a mathematician who could cook worth a damn.
Sorry for the late answer, we’ve been out.
When they are basically done, I put them on the upper rack and put cheese on them for a minute or two, with the lid closed.
Done.😛
My Father-in-law used to cook breakfast on his Weber kettle using oak wood.
Bacon and eggs never tasted better.
His model has the following assumptions:
...an “infinite” slab of meat.. (that is only .394 of an inch thick!)
..cooks continuously on only the bottom side..
..cools on the top until the meat is flipped..
In other words, every single one of his model's assumptions has no resemblance to reality - so his results are completely worthless.
I'll bet he worked on global warming models before he did this.
“A one centimeter thick patty?”
I noticed that too.
This seems to me to be a very inadequate model. Depending on the grilling conditions, the temperature of the air above the top could be significantly higher than ambient and might not necessarily cool the meat the whole time after the flip, particularly if the grill is covered.
Remember the old adage: "All models are inaccurate, though some are useful." I'm not so sure this one is useful.
I usually throw pistachio shells on the fire when grilling. Really adds a nice flavor.
Sweet!
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