The Best Interesting Random Facts
If it isn’t natural, what would it be? Supernatural? My dictionary lists fourteen meanings for the adjective natural, ranging from “not adopted” (for the parent of a child) to “neither sharped nor flatted” (for a musical note). Many consumers appear to believe that natural is a synonym for good or healthful, as opposed to anything […]
The answer may strike you as disappointingly simple: The microwaved food may not have been as hot to begin with. Many factors, such as the type, quantity, and thickness of the food, affect how it will heat in a microwave oven. If, for example, the chosen on-and-off cycle of the magnetron isn’t exactly right for […]
There is no such thing as a nonfat edible oil. Fats are a family of specific chemical compounds, and an oil is just a liquid fat. Nor do the sprays have to contain a substitute for oil, because, are you ready?, they are oil. Those handy little cans, so great for coating baking pans and […]
You’re on vacation at the shore, right? Seafood restaurants abound. Many have raw bars, at which hordes of heedless hedonists are slurping hundreds of luckless mollusks that have been forcibly demoted from bivalve to univalve status. It’s only natural to be squeamish about chomping on a creature so recently relieved of its shielding shells and, […]
A calorie is a much broader concept than just heat; it’s an amount of any kind of energy. We could measure the energy of a speeding Mack truck in calories, if we wanted to. Energy is whatever makes things happen; call it “oomph” if you wish. It comes in many forms: physical motion (think Mack […]
Surimi is fish flesh that has been minced and fabricated into crab-and shrimp-like shapes. Developed in Japan to utilize the waste scraps from filleting and to exploit some of the less desirable fish species caught in the nets, it has gained a foothold in the United States as a low-cost alternative to the real things. […]
Meats, like wines, can be either red or white. Beef is red; fish and shellfish are generally white. Salmon are pink, rosé, if you like, because they eat pink-shelled crustaceans. Flamingos, if you care, are pink for a similar reason. In the kitchen, we soon learn that white fish flesh cooks much more quickly than […]
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, […]
No and yes. No, it’s unlikely that anything serious will happen, but yes, you should be careful. Microwave-heated water that hasn’t yet come to a full, vigorous boil can indeed be a booby trap. Because microwave energy is absorbed only by the outer inch or so of the water in a cup, the resulting heat […]
The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27, Chapter 1, part 7, etc., etc., etc. says that “the terms ‘low alcohol’ or ‘reduced alcohol’ may be used only on malt beverages containing less than 2.5 percent alcohol by volume” and that nonalcoholic beer must contain less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. By volume? Yes, […]
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; […]
Hors d’oeuvrer means “outside of work” in French. In other words, it’s meant to mean a food that’s moonlighting outside the regular main course menu. Appetizers are food items served before the main courses of a meal, and is often easy to eat finger food. Hors d’oeuvres are usually served to sustain guests during the […]
Almost everyone has heard that advice: Throw in some chunks of raw potato, simmer them for a while, and they will absorb some of the extra salt. But as with so many common beliefs, this one, to my knowledge, has never been tested scientifically. I took that as a challenge and set up a controlled […]
Ritzy was what the National Biscuit Company had in mind back in 1934 when the Ritz cracker was invented. The company took a regular cracker recipe, took out the yeast, and added more shortening. When the cracker was finished baking, it was slathered with coconut oil and dashed with salt. Because it looked shinier and […]
Paula Wolfert’s concept was that long, slow cooking can produce tender, juicy, flavorful meats that higher-temperature cooking cannot match. And as usual, she’s right, as the recipes in her book amply demonstrate (although none of them approaches 24 hours of cooking). It has always been an oversimplification to say that cooking time and cooking temperature […]
If you’ll pardon the double negative, cream cheese doesn’t contain no calcium. In the jabberwocky world of food labeling, zero is not the same as none. When you come right down to it, there’s no such thing as a zero amount of anything. All anyone can say is that the amount of something is too […]
The term curry originates from the Tamil word kari, meaning sauce. Today, curry can describe a number of spicy sauces for meats and vegetables usually eaten with rice. Many spices are dried, roasted and blended together in different combinations to make curry. Curry powder is a special blend of spices used to create the unique […]
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 […]
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 […]
The hot-water-freezes-faster paradox has been debated since at least the 17th century when Sir Francis Bacon wrote about it. Even today, Canadians claim that a bucket of hot water left outdoors in cold weather will freeze faster than a bucket of cold water. Scientists, however, have been unable to explain why Canadians leave buckets of […]
I asked the same question on a trip to Portugal and western Spain, where more than half of the world’s cork is grown, but I was unable to get a satisfactory answer. It was like asking a silkworm about polyester. Back home, I learned why many wineries are switching to plastic stoppers. Yes, they’re more […]
Vanilla extract is around 35 percent ethyl alcohol, which has a harsh, biting flavor. Whiskeys and other distilled beverages contain even more alcohol, of course (usually 40 percent), but they are lovingly produced by time-honored flavoring and aging processes that soften the harshness. “Pure vanilla extract,” in order to be labeled as such, must be […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In principle, the answer is simple: Containers whose molecules aren’t dipoles and will not absorb microwaves. Such molecules will not be jerked around by the microwaves and will not get hot. But in practice, the answer isn’t quite so simple. Surprisingly, in what many people perceive as our overregulated society, there appears to be no […]
Apples are fruits that grow on small, deciduous trees. The cultivated apple species, also known as Malus pumila or the ‘sweet’ apple, originated in the Tien Shan mountain range in Asia. The fruit can still be found in the region and has been a favorite snack for brown bears for thousands of years. The apple […]
I’m the kind of person who upon being handed a menu in a restaurant scans it for spelling errors before beginning to think about the food. But even though the other day I actually saw “tuna tar tar” on a menu (honest!), this section won’t be about spelling. Anybody can slipp up on that once […]
The name “water filter” is misleading. The word filtered literally means only that the water has passed through a medium containing tiny holes or fine passageways that screen out suspended particles. When traveling in a country whose water supply is suspect and you ask a waiter whether the water is filtered, an affirmative reply may […]
We call them all shells because they are worn on the outside, but when we talk about “shellfish,” we’re including two totally different classes of animals: crustaceans and mollusks. Among the crustaceans are crabs, lobsters, shrimps, and prawns. Their shells are horny, flexible plates of hinged “armor.” The top covering of a crab or lobster […]
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 […]
I never use them myself because I don’t view the 15 calories in a teaspoonful of sugar as a serious threat to my existence. But artificial sweeteners are a boon to diabetics and others who want to limit their intake of real sugar. Artificial sweeteners, also called sugar substitutes, must be approved by the FDA […]
The elevation at La Paz runs from 10,650 to 13,250 feet above sea level, depending on which part of town you’re in. And as you are aware, water boils at lower temperatures at higher elevations. That’s because in order to escape from the liquid and boil off into the air, water molecules have to fight […]
Evaporating water sounds like the simplest thing in the world. Why, just leave a puddle of water standing around and it evaporates all by itself. But that takes time, because the necessary calories won’t flow into the water very fast from the room’s relatively cool air. Even on the stove, where you’re feeding lots of […]
Food irradiation is the practice of producers’ subjecting their food products to intense fields of gamma rays, X rays, or high-energy electrons before shipping them to market. Why would they want to do this? Irradiation kills harmful bacteria, including E. coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and Listeria, among others, thereby reducing the danger of food-borne illness. Irradiation […]
Chemically speaking, absolutely nothing. They’re plain old salt: sodium chloride. But physically speaking, they’re either finer-grained or coarser-grained than ordinary table salt. And that’s all. The number of specialty salts on the wholesale market is astounding. Cargill Salt, Inc., one of the world’s largest salt producers, makes about sixty kinds of food-grade salt for food […]
