Your thoughts on foil?

[zingaro]

Is it really better to bake food with the shiny side in or does it not matter at all?

:tinfoilhat:

[rug]

1. You're trying to start a flamewar, aren't you?

[zingaro]

4. If'n ya can't take the heat?

:rofl:

And no way am I starting anything. I'm just a new chick around here.

O8)

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. Dunno about that, but

I get far better reception if I wrap my head with the shiny side inward. The voices come through loud and clear then!

[zingaro]

5. psssst

Me too.

What did they say to you?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

7. I promised the doctors I wouldn't say.

It's a secret. :evilgrin:

[zingaro]

12. A Secret? Drat.

:pout:

;)

[Nicole]

3. Shiny side out.

It's been years since I've used foil but I'm pretty sure that is how I did it.

[zingaro]

6. You think? Really?

I used to work with a woman who swore up and down that it really made a difference.

[Nicole]

9. That's how I did it.

I don't think it really makes much difference. I watched a cooking show years ago that said the same thing. :shrug:

[Longhorn]

8. First, Outer, Inner, Last.

FOIL -- you DO remember algebra, right? :)

[zingaro]

11. ooooh I do! I loved it.

Almost as much as geometry.

:thumbsup:

[Poiuyt]

10. I like to chew on it

It makes my fillings all tingly.

For what it's worth:

Are you supposed to wrap stuff shiny side in or shiny side out? (We'll pass over the issue of whether you ought to be wrapping spuds with foil in the first place, a practice that many regard as folly.) The official word from the Reynolds aluminum people is as follows: "It makes little difference which side of the Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil you use--both sides do the same fine job of cooking, freezing, and storing food. There is a slight difference in the reflectivity of the two sides, but it is so slight that laboratory instruments are required to measure it."

However, when I first called up Reynolds I got Terry, who was filling in for Joe, the regular foil guru. Terry had the idea you were supposed to wrap food shiny side in. The quote above came later from Mary, by fax. Cecil loves PR people and believes everything they tell him, but when they contradict each other he's suspicious. I resolved to conduct an independent test.

I considered calling my brother-in-law the physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, figuring maybe they could fire up the cyclotron. But I decided that wasn't in keeping with the do-more-with-less tradition of Straight Dope kitchen science. Instead I went out and got two baking potatoes, which I determined were the same size by digital measurement (felt 'em). I also bought two identical meat thermometers and a roll of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil and wrapped the aforementioned vegetables therein, one shiny side in, the other shiny side out. Finally I stuck a meat thermometer an equal distance into each spud, placed them in the Straight Dope Oven of Science, and cranked her up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit (232 Celsius).

Result: the shiny-side-in potato heated up more slowly than the shiny-side-out one and after 40 minutes was less thoroughly cooked.

Having been criticized in the past for generalizing from inadequate data, I repeated the experiment with another pair of potatoes. This time the shiny-side-out potato heated up more slowly. The statisticians out there will no doubt inform me that I should test another 15,000 spuds before drawing any firm conclusions. Given the cutbacks in federal funding for basic research, I wouldn't hold my breath. For now, however, my opinion is as follows: Shiny shminy. Put the foil on any way you want.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_172.html

I don't think it makes any practical difference myself.