The Best Interesting Random Facts
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 […]
Clarifying butter gets rid of everything but that delicious, artery-clogging, highly saturated butterfat. But when we use it in sautéing instead of whole butter, we avoid eating the browned proteins, which could also be unhealthful because of possible carcinogens. Name your poison. Some people think of butter as a block of fat surrounded by guilt. […]
Light bounces off mirrors; microwaves bounce off metal. Radar is a kind of microwave that bounces off your speeding car and cooks your goose. If what you put in the oven reflects too many microwaves back instead of absorbing them, the magnetron tube can be damaged. There must always be something in the oven to […]
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, […]
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 […]
Americans seem to have discovered only a few years ago that “chocolate” doesn’t have to mean Hershey bars and Whitman Samplers; they learned that serious chocolate bars, as distinguished from candy bars, could open a whole new world of flavors. There are now dozens of dark chocolate bars on the market from both American and […]
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 […]
The donut wasn’t always called a nut, and when it was first called a nut, the name actually made sense. First of all, let’s dismiss one spurious but widespread legend reported by otherwise reputable sources: that the name was invented during World War I because the fighting “doughboys” went “nuts” over the doughnuts and coffee […]
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 […]
My first reaction was no, not if there isn’t a slow leak somewhere in the bottle’s seal. But after extensive research, which consisted of dialing the 800 Consumer Information number on a Coca-Cola label, I find that it is not only possible, it’s quite common. After prompting the nice woman who answered the phone to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
You come home after a hard day’s work. You don’t feel like cooking, and you can’t face the hassle of going to a restaurant. Where do you turn? To the freezer, of course. And like a crowd of football fans, a little voice in your head begins to chant, “DEE-frost! DEE-frost!” Scanning your frozen assets, […]
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 are two types of so-called instant-read thermometers: the dial-type and the digital readout type. But do they really give you the temperature reading in an instant? Don’t you wish! These reputed speed demons can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds to climb up to their highest readings, which are, of course, the numbers […]
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 […]
Shiny copper is beautiful, and there are some wonderfully effective polishes on the market. But are you a cook or a decorator? The great virtue of copper or copper-clad cookware is that it conducts heat superbly and evenly. For that it deserves to be cherished, not polished. If you try to keep your copper cookware […]
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. […]
It sounds silly, but there’s a reason. A quarter-pound stick of typical salted butter may contain 1½ to 3 grams, or up to half a teaspoon, of salt. Different brands and regional products may contain very different amounts. When you’re following a carefully formulated recipe, especially one that uses a lot of butter, you can’t […]
It’s hard to design a microwave oven in which the intensity of the microwaves is completely uniform throughout the entire volume of the box so that food in all locations will be subjected to the same heating power. Moreover, any food in the oven is sucking up microwaves and upsetting whatever uniformity there might otherwise […]
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 […]
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 […]
Microwave-heated water isn’t as hot as kettle-heated water, even though it may look as if it’s boiling. Water for tea must be boiling hot in order to extract all the color and flavor. Caffeine, for example, won’t dissolve in water that’s much cooler than 175°F. That’s why the teapot, or if you’re a bag-at-a-time brewer, […]
You’re not expected to sniff it for evidence of moldiness. That’s rare in this day and age. Moreover, when a small amount of the wine is poured for monsieur or madame’s approval, a couple of swirls and sniffs will tell all that one needs to know. If the wine smells and tastes fine, who cares […]
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 […]
It depends. (You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?) A direct comparison is complicated by the fact that there is no such thing as “regular coffee.” We have all had everything from vending-machine dishwater to truck-stop battery acid. Even at home, there are so many ways of brewing coffee that no generalizations […]
It’s not green because it’s unripe; potatoes are ready to eat at any stage of growth. And they’re not flaunting the green because they’re a traditionally Irish food. The green color is Mother Nature’s Mr. Yuk sticker, warning us of poison. Potato plants contain solanine, a bitter-tasting member of the notorious alkaloid family, a group […]
Sodium aluminum sulfate and several other aluminum compounds are listed by the FDA as GRAS: Generally Regarded as Safe. About twenty years ago, one study found increased levels of aluminum in the brains of deceased Alzheimer’s victims. Ever since then, suspicions have been circulating that aluminum, whether in food or water or dissolved from aluminum […]
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 […]
Most people can last for nearly a month without food. However, 10 days without being allowed to sleep would kill most humans. Sleep deprivation adversely affects the brain and cognitive function, and may result in hallucinations and memory lapses or loss. Recent studies have suggested that sleep deprivation may be linked to heart disease and […]
White chocolate is simply the fat from the cacao bean (the cocoa butter) mixed with milk solids and sugar. It contains none of those wonderful, though inauspiciously brown, cocoa-bean solids that give chocolate its unique character and rich flavor. If you choose a white-chocolate-topped dessert to avoid chocolate’s caffeine, bear in mind that cocoa butter […]
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 […]
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); […]
Relax. Don’t sue. There was no metal in your vegetables. I’ll bet it was mainly the carrots that got charred, right? Here’s what probably happened. Frozen foods usually contain ice crystals. But as I pointed out earlier, solid ice doesn’t absorb microwaves nearly as well as liquid water does. The defrost setting on microwave ovens […]
The answer to that question is an unequivocal “It depends.” You can make burned-on-the-outside, raw-on-the-inside chicken equally well over charcoal or a gas flame. As in all cooking, what matters is how much heat the food ultimately absorbs; that’s what determines its done-ness. Grilling infuses the necessary amount of heat by subjecting the food to […]
