Karen Hill

There are just too many uncontrolled variables when cooking. The cruel fact of life is that when a recipe tells you to cook for “x hours at y degrees,” it’s only a guideline, an educated guess, a ballpark estimate. It’s what worked, most of the time, for the elves who tested the recipe, but there’s … Read more

We speak of oven temperature as the main variable that determines how fast a cake will bake or any food will cook. But although the temperature is of primary importance, it is only one factor. Even at exactly the same oven temperature, the amount of heat energy a food actually receives and absorbs may not … Read more

In a perusal of the acres of cake-mix boxes on the shelves of my supermarket (in space consumption probably second only to breakfast cereals), I found, as expected, a wide variety of baking instructions, specifying a wide variety of baking times and temperatures for different pan sizes, shapes, and materials. And that’s not even considering … Read more

Dough, whether for pizza or for bread, baked on a stone surface such as the floor of a brick oven or one of those flat stoneware oven accessories called pizza stones, really does come out crisper and browner than if it were baked on a metal baking sheet or pan. If the oven walls are … Read more

Of the six basic methods of cooking, broiling is the hardest to control. What are the six basic methods, you ask? They are (1) immersion in hot water or stock (boiling, poaching, stewing); (2) exposure to hot water vapor (steaming); (3) immersion in hot oil (deep-frying); (4) contact with hot metal (pan-frying, sautéing, searing, grilling); … Read more

The only standard that I know of seems to be that high is spelled “hi” and low is spelled “lo.” In between “hi” and “lo,” my gas range has the digits 2 through 9 , but the numbers indicate nothing whatsoever about temperature. The labels “hi” and “lo” and the numbers 2 to 9 refer … Read more

In cooking, we are continually mixing and blending ingredients. But there are several distinct kinds of mixtures. Emulsions are only one of them. A combination of solid particles, such as salted and peppered flour or a blend of dried spices, is a simple physical mixture. But when liquids are involved, a mixture can take on … Read more

The word emulsify is too often misused as a synonym for blend or thicken. It is not. Restaurant menus love to call any thick sauce an emulsion. It is not. Chefs like to say they’re emulsifying a sauce by using a roux . They’re not. Many substances, including flour, cornstarch, gelatin, pectin, okra, egg, and … Read more

There can be no single rule that covers all the foods we consume, an almost infinite number of combinations of thousands of different proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and minerals that make up our omnivorous diet. “Going bad” can refer to the effects of bacteria, molds, and yeasts; heat; oxidation from exposure to air; or enzymes in … Read more

Even if you think you’re doing everything right, you’re not. Well, the worst place to keep butter is in a butter dish, and the worst place to keep the butter dish is in the “butter keeper” of your refrigerator. Butter dishes were invented to facilitate serving, not preserving. Because they’re not airtight, the butter’s surface … Read more

Real vanilla has always been expensive because wresting it from nature is a time and labor-consuming enterprise and because it is grown in faraway lands. And like cacao, cashew nuts, and coffee beans, vanilla is a commodity subject to the vagaries of nature and to the laws of supply and demand. All four of these … Read more

This kind of container, common in France and England but also available in many stores in the United States, is called a salt pig. It is shaped like one of those wide-mouthed air intakes on ships that some people think are foghorns: squat, vertical cylinders bent into a right angle. Salt pigs are made of … Read more

Cloves are probably the strongest of all aromatic spices, containing up to 20 percent of an intense, sweetly pungent essential oil. Originating, appropriately enough, in the Spice Islands, now part of Indonesia, they are the dried flower buds of the tropical evergreen tree Syzygium arornaticurn. Dried clove buds have a stem and a head, a … Read more

The pungent and tear-producing (lachrymatory) compound in the essential oil of grated horseradish is allyl isothiocyanate, commonly known as mustard oil. It’s in black mustard seeds also. It is created when the plant cells are cut apart by the grating, which releases an enzyme called myrosin and a compound called sinigrin. These two chemicals were … Read more

Most Americans who order sushi in a Japanese restaurant will recognize the condiments on the platter. One is a tangle of thin slices of pickled ginger, intended for palate-cleansing between bites, and the other is a glob of fiery green “wasabi.” Genuine ginger, yes, but real wasabi, probably not. Most people outside of Japan have … Read more

While its name may be a bit nutty, liquid smoke is a legitimate and useful product. It adds a smoky flavor to foods without our having to go out and chop wood and build a fire and do all the rest of it. Smoking is one of several ancient methods of curing or preserving foods, … Read more

It’s just another case of biologically different strokes. Differences among animal species can be enormous. There’s no reason to expect pests to behave like humans just because humans sometimes behave like pests. The “heat” of cayenne and other hot peppers comes from chemicals called capsaicinoids. In humans and other mammals they irritate the mucous membranes … Read more

While there is no reliable average shelf life, checking them annually should serve your purpose. Bottled herbs and spices are thoroughly dried, and most spoilage bacteria can’t live without water, so if the containers are tightly closed the herbs and spices should last indefinitely without actually spoiling. Also, things that are completely dry can’t freeze; … Read more

Unfortunately, there can be no dependable rule of thumb because herbs differ so much from one to another. But the following considerations may give you a few clues. Remember that it’s not the amounts of fresh or dried vegetable matter that count in flavoring, but the amounts of essential oils they contain, because that’s where … Read more

The amount of flavor contributed by a spice or herb depends on the amount of essential oil it contains, not on the total amount or weight of the whole substance. Spice or herb that are powdered or ground give up their oils readily in the heat of cooking because their huge surface areas allow their … Read more

We must be careful to distinguish between garlic oil, the intrinsic essential oil of the garlic plant, Allium sativum, and garlic-infused oil, an edible vegetable oil (usually olive oil) that has been flavored with garlic. Pure garlic oil is indeed nasty stuff that is never ingested per se. One of its major ingredients is allyl … Read more

We share your love of garlic. When my foodie wife and I first met for a blind coffee date, she didn’t ask about my religion, politics, or income. Practically her first question was “What do you think of garlic?” Without hesitation I replied, “Garlic is the closest thing we have to proof of the existence … Read more

When the cells of a garlic clove are broken open by slicing, crushing, or chewing, an enzyme (alliinase) in the cell vacuoles spills out and reacts with a precursor compound (alliin) in another part of the cell to form diallylthiosulfinate (allicin) and other thiosulfinates, which are the main odoriferous and flavor compounds. Until relatively recently-1993, … Read more

French onion soup tastes nothing like raw or fried onions. It’s all in the different chemical reactions that take place at room temperature, at the wet temperature of boiling water, and at the high and dry temperature of frying. Raw garlic and onions have little or no aroma until cutting or chewing breaks open their … Read more

The different sensory effects in hot and spicy food are caused by several different chemical compounds. It would be much neater if we had individual descriptive words for each of these sensations, because they are indeed all different. Instead, we apply the words hot, peppery, spicy, pungent, piquant, biting, zingy, and sharp almost indiscriminately to … Read more

Spices enhance the variety of food around the world. They can both be described as plant-derived food ingredients that yield large amounts of flavor from small amounts of substance. That operational non-distinction is really good enough in most situations, because knowing the characteristic flavors and uses of a spice or herb is far more important … Read more

When we burn wood and, in effect, eat their smoke, we have a few observations. The Big Green Egg is one brand of kamado, a word derived from the traditional Japanese steamed rice cooker, the mushikamado, which in Japanese means, well, steamed rice cooker. A mushikamado is a hollow, egg-shaped, fired-clay urn, used by building … Read more

I try not to get into politics or controversy, but this issue is so critical, and the two candidates so contrasting, that I cannot resist asserting my position on this, the most contentiously debated concern of our time: “Which is better, charcoal or gas?” I hereby express my wholehearted endorsement of charcoal. Caution: The opinions … Read more

Chefs I’ve spoken with accept this idea as quite reasonable, and indeed it does seem to make sense on the surface of it, because many substances do indeed dissolve in alcohol but not in water. Nevertheless, the statement is false. The real reason we use wine in cooking is simply that a good wine contributes … Read more

Bones are a combination of two kinds of substances: soft, organic cells and proteins, which are partly extracted into the water during the simmering of a stock, and a hard, inorganic mineral that doesn’t dissolve appreciably or contribute any flavor. This mineral material in both bones and teeth is primarily a calcium phosphate compound called … Read more

Not all bacteria are killed at 212°F (100°C ). Some of them can survive by protecting themselves within virtually invulnerable coatings. They’re then called spores. Most species of bacteria reproduce by binary fission, each organism splitting into two whole new organisms. That’s why they can grow at exponential rates. Once they get started, bacteria can … Read more

A pot is truly simmering when you can see only an occasional bubble breaking the surface. Bubbles are little pockets of water vapor, created at the bottom of the pot where the temperature is highest. They then rise, but most of them revert to liquid and collapse as they cool down on the way up, … Read more

Just see how flavorful a stock you’d get by soaking the ingredients for hours in cold water, without ever simmering them. Or try making a cup of tea with cold water, in a respectable amount of time, that is. On second thought, don’t. You’ve heard of “natural,” “environmentally friendly” sun tea? It’s made by placing … Read more

When we brown our steaks in a skillet or on the grill, why aren’t we “greening” or “redding” them? First, let’s remember that the color brown is simply an intense yellow. Thus, we’re actually “intensely yellowing” our foods, that is, using heat to create high concentrations of yellow chemical compounds. Okay, now why yellow? A … Read more

Much confusion exists between Maillard browning and sugar browning or caramelization. Both a sugar molecule’s carbonyl group and a protein molecule’s amino group must be present if Maillard browning, also known as sugar-amine browning, is to take place. Heat accelerates the Maillard browning reactions, but they can take place at temperatures as low as 122°F … Read more

Braising is a great vehicle for understanding both wet and dry cooking. Meat, poultry, shellfish, and vegetables are all grist for the braising mill, but I’ll limit this discussion to meats. I like to define braising as a two-step process: browning the meat to enhance its flavor, then simmering it for tenderness. The result can … Read more

There are a number of vacuum gadgets on the market that purport to speed up marinating. Even some commercial meat processors use them. But they’re pure deception. You’re supposed to put your meat into a sealed container and pump most of the air out with a small hand-operated or electric pump. The idea is that … Read more

There are a number of vacuum gadgets on the market that purport to speed up marinating. Even some commercial meat processors use them. But they’re pure deception. You’re supposed to put your meat into a sealed container and pump most of the air out with a small hand-operated or electric pump. The idea is that … Read more

Marinating, from the Latin mare, meaning sea, is the soaking of meat, poultry, or fish in a liquid concoction prior to cooking it, in an effort to improve either its flavor or its tenderness. But for a number of reasons, there can be no set rules for marinating. The amount of soaking time depends on … Read more

Nitrites accomplish their meat-curing magic by first being themselves transformed into (reduced to) nitric oxide (NO), a process that takes place only slowly by the action of natural antioxidants (also known as reducing agents) in the meat. The nitric oxide then bonds to myoglobin, the main pigment in red meat, to form nitric oxide myoglobin, … Read more

Curing meat means treating it to keep it from spoiling, thereby preserving it for future use. Interesting that the “cure” prevents, rather than treats, the problem. Ancient methods of curing meat include smoking, drying, and salting. When refrigeration and mechanical packaging came along, these flavor-intensive methods became unnecessary and experimentation with chemical curing began. Meats … Read more

There’s nothing better than a New York, style, kosher, thin-sliced, fat-laden corned beef sandwich on rye. But the diet pendulum has a habit of swinging back and forth, so depending on whether it’s fat or carbohydrates that happens to be in the doghouse when you read this, there will be those who advise you to … Read more

Just because souse and scrapple have funny names and come in refrigerated rectangular blocks doesn’t mean they’re related, except for their porcine parentage. Scrapple, often called Philadelphia Scrapple, is a Pennsylvania Dutch concoction of cooked pork scraps and trimmings (no gruntz) called puddin’, mixed with cornmeal mush, a.k.a. polenta, and spices. Refrigerated, it forms a … Read more

The brown-meat syndrome has been a concern of consumers ever since the neighborhood butcher, who ground the meat before our very eyes, went the way of his sawdust-covered floors. In today’s supermarkets, the meat is ground somewhere “in the back,” or even at another location, and then packed into plastic trays and covered with plastic … Read more

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the USDA won’t let anyone sell mechanically separated meat. It’s a reaction to “mad cow” disease. Mechanically separated meat is meat that has been separated from the bone by a machine, rather than by knife-brandishing humans. The first time I saw the words mechanically separated beef on … Read more

Forty-six billion pounds of beef, veal, lamb, and pork, plus 36 billion pounds of poultry, are consumed each year in the United States. According to USDA statistics for the year 2001 , the average American consumed pounds of beef; 51.6 pounds of pork; 1.8 pounds of veal, lamb, and mutton; 77.8 pounds of chicken; and … Read more

Shrimp Scampi sounds like a way of preparing shrimp, and in a way it is. But in a way it isn’t. Scampi is the Italian name for a species of large prawns known also as Dublin Bay prawns. And what is a prawn? Strictly speaking, it’s a crustacean more closely related to a lobster than to … Read more

They’re just different species. Some shrimp are pinker and some are grayer, even when they’re still gamboling about on the ocean floor. But all of their shells turn bright pink when cooked. That color is in the shells all along, but it is masked by darker colors that break down when heated. At least in … Read more

A scallop is a lump of white seafood shaped like a marshmallow, right? Wrong. We might as well say that a cow is a steak. “Scallop” is the name of a remarkable critter that we almost never see whole. Fishermen shuck most of them at sea as soon as they’re dredged from the bottom, throwing … Read more

Razor clams are quite good to eat, breaded and fried, or made into fritters. They’re harder to find here in the States than in many European countries. They didn’t get their name because their shells are sharp (which they are), but because the shells are shaped like an old-fashioned, curved-handled straight razor: two long, curved … Read more

“Wild” mussels have grit in them, which is probably sand, and the “strings” are remnants of their beards, which are routinely removed from the “domesticated” (tame?) ones before they reach the market. Mussels don’t burrow in the sand as clams do, cement their shells to each other as oysters do, or swim freely as scallops … Read more

Virtually every mention of ceviche (seh-VEE-che; I’ll use the Spanish spelling) by a food writer is accompanied by a gratuitous statement to the effect that lime juice does to protein what heat does to protein, and therefore the fish is essentially “cooked” by the lime juice. Well, does “cooked” mean cooked, or doesn’t it? And … Read more

Bottarga is dried, salted roe from either the Mediterranean tuna (tonno in Italian) or the gray mullet (mugine). Bottarga di tonno (also known as uovo di tonno, or tuna eggs) and bottarga di mugine are local specialties of Sicily and Sardinia. Italy’s two large Mediterranean islands, and are valued as delicacies in the rest of … Read more

We can’t say that it’s never been done, but we doubt that it has been done very often. And surely few of us would continue to patronize a fishmonger or restaurateur who had been found to try such a trick. At one time, skate was a low-priced fish caught accidentally (in the “bycatch”) by fishermen … Read more

Carbon monoxide is lethal. But not in the case of monoxide-treated tuna. First, for the uninitiated, yellowfin tuna, which may be listed on the menu as maguro, the generic Japanese word for tuna, is not to be confused with yellowtail, a kind of amberjack, or with toro, the prized fatty belly of the bluefin tuna. … Read more

You’re not going to drag me into the battle among salmon farmers, wild-salmon fishermen, and environmentalists. However, to muddle a few metaphors, I will walk a tightrope through the minefield and drop what pearls I can. From decades-long experience, we consumers have expected our salmon to be a nice, orange-pink color. The muscle tissue of … Read more

Most of us think of white sugar from sugar cane and sugar beets as somehow less natural than honey. Perhaps because they are not produced by hairy insects? But chemically, there is quite a difference. Sugar cane and sugar beets are loaded with sucrose, whereas honey’s sugars are primarily fructose (39 percent), glucose, (31 percent), … Read more

The fact that everybody likes sugar certainly has a lot to do with its presence in so many processed foods. Some breakfast cereals, for example, will surprise you with their content of sugar, if you figure it out. To check your cereals (or other manufactured foods) for sugar content, look at the Nurtrition Facts table … Read more

Limestone, seashells, coral, chalk, marble, eggshells, pearls, stalactites, and stalagmites all consist mainly of a remarkably versatile and plentiful chemical compound called calcium carbonate (CaCO3 ). It constitutes about 7 percent of our planet’s crust, the 20-mile-or-so-thick top layer. When heated to 1520 to 1650°F (825 to 900°C), calcium carbonate decomposes into carbon dioxide gas (CO2) … Read more

Flour tortillas should be called wheat flour tortillas, because there are many other kinds of flour made from a wide variety of grains, including barley, rye, and rice. But you’ll rarely find flour tortillas south of the border. In Mexico tortillas are made from corn. Flour tortillas are a Tex-Mex invention. The word flour evolved … Read more

Cornmeal, Cornstarch, Corn Flour, they’re all made from that incredibly versatile and internationally esteemed New World grain called corn in the United States and maize, from the Caribbean Taino Indian word rnahiz, almost everywhere else. A kernel of corn is a seed with essentially three parts. The tough, outer hull (the pericarp) is made mostly … Read more

Dietary fiber is indeed completely or almost completely indigestible. That’s how it is defined: those parts of our foods that provide us with no vitamins, minerals, or even calories. Chemically, the fiber compounds in plants are complex carbohydrates. They are therefore included in the total amounts of carbohydrates listed on the labels. Sometimes the chart … Read more

No matter how thoroughly pureed fruit is, the fiber is still effective. In the dietary context, the word fiber is misleading because it conjures up images of eating coconut husks and mattress stuffing. But dietary fiber doesn’t refer to a physical texture. It’s a catchall term for the components of vegetable foods that humans don’t … Read more

For one thing, the almost limitless variety of pasta shapes provides both fun for the eye and differing sensations in the mouth. But there are also real differences in their compatibility with different sauces. It’s not a matter of the pasta absorbing sauce through its surface; pasta isn’t that absorbent and sauces aren’t that liquid. … Read more

Buckwheat isn’t wheat at all, and even if it were, its flour couldn’t make bread. Buckwheat groats, known as kasha in eastern Europe and sayraisin in France, are the seeds of the plant Fagopyrurn esculenturn , which is not related to wheat or any other grassy cereal plant. The generic word groats refers to hulled … Read more

Wheat flour is naturally slightly yellowish because it contains carotenoid pigments, natural yellow and orange compounds found in many fruits, vegetables, and grains. Carrots’ famous orange color, carotene, is the mother of them all. But most people are less color tolerant than you and don’t like their flour to be yellow. The major exception is … Read more

Parboiling is boiling a food just enough to cook it partially but not completely. Quixotically, the word comes from the Latin per bullire, meaning to boil thoroughly, but in Middle English per became par and was confused with part or partial. Thus, “thorough boiling” came to mean its opposite, “partial boiling.” When you’re cooking a … Read more

Remove the chopsticks from their paper wrapper through one end, leaving the wrapper intact. Flatten the wrapper and then roll it up until it resembles a miniature roll of paper towels. Hold the sticks parallel to each other, and insert the paper roll crosswise between them, about an inch or so from their top ends. … Read more