How to Work with Lye Safely | Cook's Illustrated (2024)

FAQs

How to Work with Lye Safely | Cook's Illustrated? ›

Order of operations is important: Always add lye to water instead of adding water to lye. (Lye solution in bowl will heat up slightly and will give off some vapors, which are barely noticeable, but it's not advisable to put your face directly over solution.) Rinse whisk well with cool water. Remove scale.

To handle lye, you need to wear plastic or rubber gloves, eye protection such as goggles, clothing that protects your skin from splashes or spills, and closed-toed shoes. The goal is to prevent any contact with your skin or eyes.

(Pretzels are safe to eat because the lye on their surfaces reacts with carbon dioxide when heated, transforming it into harmless carbonate.)

It can cause severe corrosive burns to the throat, oesophagus and stomach with permanent damage if swallowed. Children who have accidentally swallowed lye water have needed urgent medical attention in hospital. By law, lye water must meet strict safety requirements if it is sold for household use.

In a deep bowl, wearing rubber or latex gloves, make a solution of ½ cup lye and 10 cups water (or 1 part lye to 20 parts water); pour lye carefully into water to avoid splashing. Dip each pretzel in solution, turning it over for 10 to 15 seconds, and place back on baking sheet. Sprinkle pretzels with salt.

I do treat those spills with respect—lye is a strong caustic and can cause serious burns and eye injury. But if you handle those spills quickly and correctly, you'll have nothing to worry about.

Sodium hydroxide is a potentially dangerous substance. It can hurt you if it touches your skin, if you drink it or if you breathe it. Eating or drinking sodium hydroxide can cause severe burns and immediate vomiting, nausea, diarrhea or chest and stomach pain, as well as swallowing difficulties.

Due to its low cost and easy availability, it has also been used to dispose of corpses by criminals. Italian serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli used this chemical to turn dead bodies into soap. In Mexico, a man who worked for drug cartels admitted to having disposed of more than 300 bodies with it.

Skin/Eye Contact

Exposure to sodium hydroxide solid or solution can cause skin and eye irritation. Direct contact with the solid or with concentrated solutions causes thermal and chemical burns leading to deep-tissue injuries.

Dipping the dough in a lye solution gives traditional German pretzels their characteristic salinity; chew; and smooth mahogany exterior, but the strong alkali (sodium hydroxide) is corrosive and can burn your skin, so it must be handled with caution.

Are bagels dipped in lye? ›

Well yes, lye can do that but did you also know it is used to make bagels? Some bakers will dip the bagel in a lye solution as it speeds up the process that creates the distinctive bagel crust and taste.

Lye has a pH of around 13 whereas baking soda has a pH of around 8. This extra alkalinity accelerates the Maillard reaction, allowing that caramelization to develop on the exterior of the pretzels. That ultra-deep color and slightly crispy, crunchy exterior crust is only made possible with lye.

I suppose I ought to share what I learned about whether or not Auntie Anne's uses lye with their pretzels. That's kind of the point of this post, after all. Well, the cheery ladies were very clear with me: they do NOT use lye. No sodium hydroxide/poison/caustic soda—none whatsoever—in their pretzels.

Skin contact with solid sodium hydroxide or its concentrated solutions can cause severe burns with deep ulcerations. Burns appear soft and moist and are very painful.

The basic process involves placing a body in a heated, pressurized metal chamber and hastening its decomposition by adding lye (water mixed with a small quantity of potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide) to break down proteins, fats, DNA, etc.

You need to measure your water and lye in two separate containers. Because of that exothermic reaction, we recommend glass, heat-resistant plastic, or stainless steel. Do not use tin or aluminum. It reacts with the sodium hydroxide and produces harmful fumes.