Food

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

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 … Read more

Chocolate comes from the cacao tree which has been cultivated since 1100 BC in Mexico, Central and South America. We now know that the Aztecs made chocolate beverages called xocolātl, which means “bitter water” in Nahuatl. Chocolate was used in Maya and Aztec royal and religious rituals, and the oldest known cultivation of cacao was … Read more

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 … Read more

Neither the popcorn nor the peanut is the Jack in Cracker Jack. F. W. Rueckheim was a German immigrant who’d made a name for himself in Chicago as a popcorn vendor. His little shop on Federal Street dealt in popcorn, taffy, marshmallows, peanuts, caramels, and other treats. When he decided to mix various popular ingredients … Read more

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 … Read more

Pork rinds, or pork cracklin’s, are made from pig skin left over from processing pork. They are dropped into a deep fat fryer until they are crispy and crackling. Most of the fat from the pork rind is melted when fried. Pork rinds can also be cooked with beans or used in soups and stews … Read more

Chitterlings, or “chitlins,” are pig intestines. Seen in Southern stores alongside pig snouts and pig feet, either pickled in jars or fresh at the butcher counter, this homey ingredient has recently made its way onto the menus of upscale restaurants in Europe and New York. Like so many soul food dishes, it’s become quite trendy … Read more

They have pommes frites (pronounced “pum fritt”) in France, which are basically what Americans call “French fries.” The American term French Fries reportedly came, it is believed, from Thomas Jefferson. He brought a recipe for fried potato sticks back to the colonies and referred to them as “Potatoes, fried in the French manner.” The phrase … Read more

The orange stuff on Cheetos is a combination of various dyes and seasonings, and it’s the only part of Cheetos that has any cheese whatsoever in it. Like similar products, the main part of these “cheese” coated chip products is not cheese but a cornmeal concoction. The cornmeal, with whey and oil added, is mixed … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

If you must know, Jello is made from the parts of the pig that are left over after producing the traditional cuts of meat, then Spam, and finally scrapple. Hides, bones, and sinew from pigs and cattle are boiled down to make gelatin. Added to the colorless and tasteless result are coloring, flavoring, and sugar. … Read more

Spam isn’t that bad, there’s nothing strange in the meat even though it’s cheap. It’s pork shoulder that’s been chopped, spiced, and formed into loaves. Every meat packer runs into the problem that some parts of an animal are more popular than others. For the George A. Hormel Company in 1937, the unwanted part was … Read more

It takes an average of 548 peanuts to make a 12 ounce jar of peanut butter. The average American will eat an average of 3.3 pounds of peanut butter in a year. Peanut butter is made from ground dry roasted peanuts, and is popular all over the world as a sandwich spread. But the crunchy … Read more

First introduced as Bamum’s Animals in 1902 by the National Biscuit Company, also known as Nabisco, animal cracker cookies have always come in a circus-wagon package. A century ago, the package was made of tin and designed to hang on a Christmas tree, and the animals were just cookie-cutter silhouettes instead of a more detailed … Read more

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 … Read more