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For the Hindu festival of Dashain, we strip the hair from a sacrificed goat with hot water.

I was told that the water should be constantly heated. If it is allowed to cool before reheating, it becomes useless and it can't be used to strip the skin.

Is this true?

Oddthinking
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Four Seasons
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    Could you link to an example of this claim so we can understand it better? – Sklivvz Oct 03 '14 at 09:56
  • Not to question your customs, but _"we strip the hair from a sacrificed goat with hot water"_ What on earth for? If that is supposed to DO something, I suspect that could be made into a skeptical claim as well! – JasonR Oct 03 '14 at 13:44
  • A lot of this depends on whether you're looking for a) a religious interpretation, in which case the claim probably doesn't belong here, or b) a physics/biology interpretation, in which case we might be able to address it, but it might be better addressed in a more specialized forum with leatherworkers, possibly the Outdoors SE. – Sean Duggan Oct 03 '14 at 14:47
  • @user19555 Apparently [Americans do that (strip hair from skin) to pigs](http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/livestock-forums/pigs/375759-how-do-you-scald-hog.html): so that they can eat the skin. Sometimes by using fire, sometimes by using scalding water. – ChrisW Oct 03 '14 at 15:03
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    I am not an expert on the subject, but my impulse is that reheated water will generally be no different. Possible counterpoint, boiling is probably going to leech out oils and fats which might congeal when cooling, creating localized areas of gunk. That said, I'm not certain I can think of how that might affect removing the hair. – Sean Duggan Oct 03 '14 at 15:03
  • @user19555 [According to Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashain#Day_8:_Maha_Asthami), the meat is eventually eaten, so ChrisW is likely correct. Animal hair is rarely good eats. Also, in the US I have seen disposable razors used for shaving pigs. – ESultanik Oct 03 '14 at 16:49
  • Ah, I guess I got hung up on the "Sacrificed goat" part. Is sacrificing the goat supposed to accomplish something (good luck, atone for misdeeds, etc.)? – JasonR Oct 03 '14 at 17:36
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    How is heating up water, letting it cool, and heating it up again any different than starting with cool water and then heating it up once? Pretty much all water on the planet has been cold at some point. – KChaloux Oct 07 '14 at 15:18
  • @user19555 wiki says " This is the day when the most demonic of Goddess Durga’s manifestations, the blood-thirsty Kali, is appeased through the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of buffaloes, goats, pigeons and ducks in temples throughout the nation. Blood, symbolic for its fertility, is offered to the Goddesses. " – Adam Phelps Mar 22 '15 at 02:09
  • @JasonR https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/2117/how-is-animal-or-human-sacrifice-justified – Dudey Apr 14 '16 at 18:41
  • "*I was told that …*" is not a notable claim. A quotation from a textbook, scripture, etc. is required to make this question meet the requirements of this site. – Ray Butterworth Jul 03 '23 at 14:01

1 Answers1

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Dehairing water is hot, but not end-all-life hot, thus, once used it is inadvisable to reuse it.

Dehairing is a process used in meat processing while the carcass is still intact, the goal being to decrease the amount of surface that possible disease vectors are present on.

The needed temperature of the water is 60C, a few minutes of immersion in that water will loosen the follicles. Higher temperatures lead to less effective dehairing, although near-boiling water would be preferable because that would be good against bacteria in the water, which are possibly transferred to later-scalded carcasses in 60C water. There is a technologically more challenging technique using steam condensing on the carcass (the challenge being regulating the steam temperature so the condensate on the skin has the right temperature) that avoids dipping several carcasses in the same water. Contamination of the meat from without is the largest contamination source (alternative being bacteria already present in the meat).

Here is one possible root of the belief that reheating the water is somehow not as good as 'freshly' heating the water (ignoring that it is impossible to not reheat water on earth, as all water boiled at least once throughout the Hadean): Reheating water that has already been used as scalding water means reheating to unsafe temperatures a soup of hair, blood and feces that had already not been safe from the inception.

There is no indication that reheating waters has any effect on the efficiency of that water in dehairing. Recycling water is only discussed in the context of hygiene.

bukwyrm
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