Eli5: why are some foods not advised to be reheated, or heated more than once? Why do some have to be cooked from frozen and other defrosted
In: Other
Some foods don’t just get warm and cold, the heating process actually triggers a chemical process *or* alters the chemical structure of the food. Bread is a good example, stale bread is feels hard because it’s chemical structure has changed. Heating it returns much of that structure to it’s original form making the stale bread soft and fluffy again, but also removes a lot of water. Now, after it cools, the bread will get hard and nasty again but this time it’s not stale, it’s dried out. Now you *can’t* just reheat it to get it fluffy again because it’s actually lost water.
The other reason is the shoulder times – during defrosting (but prior to cooking) and during cooling (but prior to freezing) are windows where bacteria can thrive and reproduce. One cycle is *probably* safe enough but multiple cycles will just increase the chances of contamination to too high a degree. This is the reason why you should defrost meat in your refrigerator and not on a counter or in the sink. Left out, the surface of the meat warms quickly becoming like a bacterial Jersey Shore where they grow and contaminate and make everything disgusting. On second thought, that’s just like normal Jersey Shore. But the inside is still frozen. At least in the fridge no single part of the meat ever gets into the dangerous temperature range while it defrosts.
Finally, because “Big Food” just likes telling us little people what to do. Like, you’re not the POLICE guys, you’re not the BOSS OF US.
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