Brown - Im just here for the food: food + heat = cooking

Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.

Lets get one thing straight right up front. I still am not a chef. I dont have much interest in creating tantalizing new dishes, which is a good thing because I dont have the talent for it. What I am interested in is making food make sense. And food that makes sense (if that makes any sense). I want to understand what makes food tick and how to control the process known as cooking. In that regard Im more a mechanic than a cook.

In the bigger scheme Im a student, which is ironic since I spent seventeen years as one of the worst students in the history of public education. The reason I barely made it out of high school and wasted the better part of a decade in college is that most of the classesbiology, math, history, and chemistryjust didnt mean anything to me. I couldnt relate to the garble of formulas, equations, dates, and stuff. Now, through the miracle of modern food tinkering, things are starting to make sense to me. After all, food is about nothing if not chemistry, physics, math, biology, botany, history, geography, and anthropologywith a little epidemiology thrown in for good measure. Yes, there are still formulas and equations and even a symbol or twobut now I think theyre kind of cool. And the best part is that it all leads to dinner.

Of course the more I learn, the more I realize I need to know. At some point, I hope to learn enough to realize that I know nothing at all. Then maybe Ill be able to snatch a pebble from Julia Childs hand.

LEONARD RUBENSTEIN

Followers of Horace Fletcher (18491919), American businessman and mastication promoter who believed that the secret to health lay in chewing each bite of food until no discernable mass remained. Fletcher himself claimed to chew every bite thirty-two times.

Nineteenth-century foodie/philosopher whose 1822 The Spirit of Cookery kicks the pants off anything Brillat you-are-what-you-eat Savarin ever wrote.

Rock is a very slow conductor but it does get the job done. Several years ago, I was doing a poolside grilling demo at a nice home in Atlanta. I looked around for a place to fire up my chimney starter and settled on the middle of a wide gravel path that ran around the yard. So confident was I in the wisdom of my placement that I was quite shocked to return half an hour later to find that the heat radiated through 4 feet of gravel, melted a sprinkler line and set a railroad tie on fire. While I stood there marveling at the sight of thermodynamics at work, the soles of my sneakers melted.

With a grain of salt.Pliny the Elder

The life expectancy of the average Japanese female is eighty-three years; male, seventy-seven.

Since the handles on cast-iron pans get almost as hot as the rest of the vessel, I strongly suggest turning the handle away from the edge of the stove, especially if children are about. (Ive burned myself on the handle of a cast-iron pan half an hour after it came off the heat.) The density of iron at 293k = 7.86 g/mc3.

Almost 85 percent of American families own a grill.

If wood actually burned, there wouldnt be anything left after combustionwhich there is.

Im not trying to imply that chimney starters are dangerous, but I think that anytime youre holding, moving, and pouring something thats glowing red, theres a potential for trouble.

Grate temp doesnt matter very much with a wire-style grate like those that come standard with Weber kettles. But I already knew that dense, heavy iron grates did a much better job of searing the meat, so I use an iron grate.

I also took the opportunity to try another experiment at the same time. I had always thought that a thin sheen of oil on the meat was necessary for a good char and to ensure a stick-free grilling experience. But I was suspicious: If meat proteins brown so well, why not rely on them alone? By heavily salting the meat several minutes before cooking, water-soluble proteins had a chance to gather at the surface of the steak. As it turned out, they were all I needed to produce great color, nice grill marks, and no sticking. I wont be oiling my steaks anymore.

When a fully lit charcoal fire develops wisps of transparent flame, its hotreally hot.

Industry word for the little plastic boxes that berries are often packaged in for sale in the produce department.

These nuggets were indeed broiling but since the chicken fat was acting as the heat conduit, the end product was more fried than anything else.

The only problem Ive encountered is that my oven (like most) has an automatic door lock that wont let me in while the ovens in this mode even if I turn the oven off. So since my ovens usually a mess anyway I add the bricks and run the shortest clean cycle possible, three hours. When the lock disengages, the bricks are still as hot as a space shuttle belly during reentry.

I dont quite trust my oven, so when it beeps at me to say that its heated, I always give it at least 5 minutes more.

Yes, holding chicken in the zone can promote bacterial growth, but if you cook the chicken properly youll nuke every one of the little nasties. This doesnt mean its okay to leave raw meat lying around the house, but it does mean you can take the time to do whats right for the food, as long as you keep it isolated from any work surfaces and/or other raw or cooked foods.

Whenever I work with poultry, I keep a latex glove on one hand for handling the bird and a clean hand free for messing with salt and the like.

Since the cooking fat is added to the pan immediately before the food, the issue here isnt the smoke point as much as flavor. Flavor-rich oils like extra-virgin olive oil and walnut oil lose most of their flavor when they reach high temperatures, so to use them for sauting is a waste of money. I usually saut in canola oil because its flavor is neutral. However, if you want to get some of the health benefits of olive oil, do your sauting with pure olive oil rather than with extra virgin.

As long as the butters foaming you know that it still has water in it, and as long as it has water in it it cant get hotter than 212 F.

Why off the heat? Because if the pan is hot enough, when the water-based vinegar hits the pan a good bit of it is going to vaporize and exit the pan, taking microscopic droplets of the fat with it. If youre cooking over a gas flame, some of these droplets will ignite. Then, for a few seconds the whole pan will seem to be on fire. Such a sight can be exciting when viewed at ones favorite restaurant, but it can be a bit disconcerting when witnessed at home.

Typically, when these foods are added directly to boiling water the temperature immediately drops, giving the food time to catch up, temperature-wise. In steaming, the food rarely touches the boiling water below, so no reduction of heat occurs. For starchy foods such a thermal onslaught would immediately gelatinize the outer layer of the food, rendering it hopelessly gummy. Also, starchy foods need water to wash away excess starchsomething steam just cant do.

The way I see it, if the liquid is thickened by solids or stock, its a sauce. If its thickened by starch, its gravy.

Chili powder usually includes oregano, coriander, cloves, dried chiles, garlic powder, and cumin. Chile powder contains nothing but dried ground chiles. The two are not interchangeable so always check that final vowel.

Chipotles are nothing more than smoked jalapeos. Pound for pound, they bring more flavor to the party than any other chiles. Adobo is like Mexican barbecue sauce: herbs and ground chiles with vinegar.

As noted in Searing, zillions of recipes include this step. Why? Because browning via caramelization and the Mailliard reaction produces myriad flavors. So, if its so darned good why doesnt someone simply manufacture this stuff and bottle it so we can pour it on everything? Darned good question. But personally, Im glad theres still something you cant buy.