I really enjoy Alton Brown from the Food Network. His show “Good Eats“, has really taught me a lot about preparing foods over the last few years. I also own his book, “I Am Only Here For The Food”, which is an excellent read and gets into all the reasons why things work the way they do in the kitchen. It’s exactly the way I like to learn–why does it work that way–not just that it does.

Dinner is winding down and we are finishing our plates and Alton’s show is on the T.V. The episode is called, “What’s up duck” A good portion of this show is about thermodynamics–now don’t go changing the channel now, it not what you are thinking. Basically Alton is describing, with examples, the different methods to thaw frozen food, yes in this case duck. The opening question is, “Which method thaws frozen food the fastest (and safest?)?”
a. The refrigerator
b. On the counter top
c. Under cool running water
d. In a 200 degree oven

Well go ahead guess, you’ll get your answer soon enough.

On the show some actor has just made four or five small frozen ducks, and he is quite proud of them. Alton suggests that one goes into the refrigerator, on in sixty degree water, another on the counter, and the last in a two-hundred degree oven. While we watch Alton and this actor play this out my son asked what they are doing or what are they showing us, “How to melt ducks?”

At this point I really couldn’t contain myself and was rolling on the floor laughing. Needless to say after that and having to clean up dinner I didn’t get to see the rest of the show. It doesn’t really matter it will be on again. Most importantly my five-year old son delighted me with his keen observations of the world around him. It may not seem like much through this writing, but it was, you just needed to be there I guess.

Oh yeah the question. The fastest way to thaw the duck is using cool running water. I guess warm or hot water would be even faster, but everyone will be sick from your bacteria laden foul.