25 scientific culinary life hacks

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

There are not many culinary life hacks. After all, cooking is a kind of science and every time you cook you can find a new application to your knowledge of chemistry and physics. Books are even dedicated to this approach to cooking. For example, J. Kenji López-Alt wrote his The Food Lab, and Robert Wolke wrote "". We have selected the most interesting life hacks from these books.

Butter

If you can't pan without oil, but want to use as little of this ingredient as possible, do this: Put a small amount of oil in a spray bottle and apply the oil to the pan that way. This will be enough to prevent the food from sticking to the surface.

By the way, if you spray oil on a salad or ready-made dish in this way, it will look much more appetizing.

A spray bottle for oil is available from specialized stores. Or you can buy the most common container with such a nozzle.

Spices and herbs

Chefs advise using only fresh herbs and spices. In general, they are right: the aroma of fresh spices is much more intense and richer. But not all of them. There are herbs whose smell does not diminish after drying. The aromatic components in such spices are resistant to high temperatures and tolerate the drying process calmly.

Spices that are best used fresh: parsley, basil, cilantro, mint, green onions, dill, sorrel, tarragon.

Spices that can be used dry: oregano, rosemary, marjoram, bay leaf, thyme, sage.

Pancakes

To keep the pancakes fluffy, many advise adding a little soda to the dough. However, there is another way to make them airy. When making the dough, separate the whites from the yolks and beat them. First, to soft peaks. Sugar and vanilla can be added at this stage. And then beat the mass again, already until firm peaks. Gently add the whipped egg whites to the dough and stir gently. Your dough will be saturated with small air bubbles, almost invisible to the human eye. This is what will make the pancakes lush.

Eggs

It is believed that fresh eggs are poorly cleaned after boiling. If you do not take into account the fact that it is best to use only fresh food for food, then we can safely say: how well eggs are cleaned after boiling depends only on how you cooked them. For example, Nabokov wrote:

Boil water in a saucepan (bubbles mean it is boiling!). Remove two eggs (per person) from the refrigerator. Soak them under hot tap water to prepare them for what awaits them. Place each in a saucepan, one by one, and let them slide silently into (boiling) water. Note the time on the clock. After 200 seconds, or 240 (considering interruptions), start to spoon out the eggs.

We can say with confidence: the great writer, after boiling, peeled eggs from the shell with ease. Indeed, in order for the egg to be easily cleaned, it must be placed in hot water. If you put an egg in cold water and heat it slowly, the white will gradually stick to the shell from the inside.

• To clean the eggs immediately after boiling, of course, they need to be placed under cold water. It is better to start cleaning from the blunt end - there is usually an air pocket. Why peel eggs while they are hot? At high temperatures, the protein sticks to the shell less. If you wait until the egg has cooled down, it will be worse to clean.
• To make the perfect poached egg, use the following life hack. Do not break the egg directly into the water. Break it gently into a fine mesh sieve. Wait for the protein to seep slightly through the sieve. Dip the sieve into boiling water just enough so that the protein droplets at the bottom begin to weld. Now gently turn the sieve over and let the egg slide into the water. Then the poached egg will be perfectly shaped, and the rags of protein will not float in the water.
• Poached poultry can be prepared in advance and reheated later. An already boiled egg must be placed in hot (about 60 degrees) water. Then the yolk will remain liquid and warm well.
• When to salt an omelette? It turns out that salt has a pretty strong effect on the texture of the finished dish. When eggs are cooked, the proteins in them are attracted to each other more and more densely. At some point, they will begin to displace the liquid, and the omelet will look like pale dry curd floating in a suspicious liquid. If you add salt to the beaten eggs just before cooking, this unpleasant effect can be avoided. To do this, beat the eggs, add salt and leave this mixture for 15 minutes. Then the omelet will turn out to be tender, airy and the water will not stand out from it.

Vegetables and fruits

There are many life hacks on how to get the most juice out of a lemon or lime. It is advised to warm the fruit in the microwave or roll it on the table. The best solution would be to do both. Press the lemon firmly onto the table and roll it over. This will destroy the lemon vacuole. Then put the fruit in the microwave. By warming it up a little, you will soften the fruit and be able to squeeze out the maximum amount of juice.

All this should be done only if you crush the juice with your hands. If you use a citrus juicer, all these manipulations are pointless - you will get the most of the juice anyway.

As a rule, in order to get rid of the characteristic smell of onions, this vegetable is soaked in water or scalded with boiling water. But in the first case, the bitterness may remain, and in the second, the onion may change its structure. It is best to place the chopped onion under running warm water and thereby speed up all chemical reactions in the product. Forty-five seconds at water temperatures up to 60-70 degrees is enough to get rid of the bitterness and pungent odor

We all try to choose the freshest vegetables possible. But there is one product that is best purchased frozen. These are green peas. Peas in pods usually make their way to supermarket shelves a few days after they are removed from the bush. Therefore, it will be less sweet and aromatic and more harsh. But frozen peas in their properties practically do not differ from fresh ones, but it is more convenient to store and use them

Almost all vegetables can be cooked in the microwave. Just before placing chopped and prepared vegetables in the oven, cover them with a triple layer of damp paper towels. Cooking time usually takes 2 to 6 minutes. In fact, this method is very similar to the process of steaming vegetables

• To make a delicious Brussels sprouts, you need to wash and peel them of the outer leaves, and then cut them in half. You need to cook for 3 minutes on each side. If overexposed, it will taste bitter and unpleasant. It is best to cook Brussels sprouts with animal fat such as bacon.
• How to choose an eggplant with a small amount of seeds? This eggplant will be light in weight. On the other hand, it will be more difficult to cook: the pulp will take up a lot of oil. To get the most out of the eggplant, cook it over very high heat for golden, aromatic, and tasty flesh.

Broths and soups

• Common life hack: if you add too much salt to the soup, put potatoes in it. Say, she will absorb excess salt. However, the reality is that the only thing that's going to happen is that the potato becomes salty too. The only way to fix over-salted soup is to add more water or broth to it.
• Puree soup will be perfect if you have a clear idea of how to give it the maximum taste and aroma. First, decide on the main ingredient - it can be baked or boiled. Second, find vegetables that will flavor the soup. Products with a strong smell and taste work best. They can be simmered in a skillet before adding to the soup to destroy the cell walls and release as much odor as possible. This method works well with onions, garlic, or roots. Also, "auxiliary" vegetables can be caramelized - then they will become a little sweet. Beat the puree soup in a blender: start at low speeds and gradually move on to high speeds. You need to supplement the soup with spices, which will give a bright final chord of taste.

Paste

The slightly cloudy water left over from cooking the pasta contains granules of starch, an ingredient that is added to the sauce to make it thicker. If you add this water to the sauce, it will be light and smooth. This sauce will saturate the pasta better, and it will also not stick together.

Frozen products

To defrost food as quickly as possible, they usually use two methods: they leave it on a plate in the kitchen or put it in warm water. But the most effective method is to put the frozen food in a thick-walled metal dish. True, this will only work if your apartment is warm. Then the metal will transfer heat from the air to the frozen product faster.

This method works especially well for defrosting "flat" foods - steaks, meat or fish medallions - because the area of contact with metal dishes will be larger.

Meat and fish

• If you're having trouble frying your burger patty evenly, try the following life hack. Form a ball of minced meat, gently press it against the board with your hand. Get a cutlet. Now press it lightly in the center with your fingers, making a dent. Such a cutlet will be fried evenly both along the edges and in the center, regardless of thickness.
• You need to add salt to the minced meat just before cooking. If you add salt earlier, it will destroy the protein structure and make the meat tough.
• To make the meat a little softer, you can take advantage of the fact that some fruits are rich in enzymes (accelerators of chemical reactions). Therefore, such fruits should be added to the marinade. To make the meat more tender, add pineapple, figs or papaya to the marinade. Fruit can be mashed or cut into small pieces. They will soften the top layer of meat, giving it sweetness and aroma.
• To reheat the steak and keep it cooked to its original state, do not put the meat back in the pan or put it in the microwave. Pack it in a special bag with a fastener and put it in hot water (60-70 degrees). This temperature will be enough for the meat to warm up, but too low for the steak to cook further.
• If you are baking whole poultry (such as chicken) and want the crust to be especially crispy, here's what you need to do. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and seasoning and spread the spices evenly over the skin. Then lift the skin off the bottom of the breast and use two fingers to separate it from the carcass. There is no need to remove the skin. The task is to separate the skin from the meat as much as possible so that the maximum amount of fat is released from it during cooking. The skin will dry out and this will make it incredibly crispy. While peeling off the skin, apply salt and pepper underneath, rubbing the spices evenly over the meat.

Drinks and cocktails

• It is customary to decorate the edge of the glass for the classic Margarita cocktail with salt. In order for the drink to look more attractive, and the taste to unfold brighter, you need to moisten the edge of the glass not in water, but in lime juice. Then the salt crystals will stick more tightly to the glass and, sipping from the glass, you will grab exactly as much salt as is needed to reveal the taste of the cocktail.
• If you are going to make a sauce with wine, add this ingredient from the very beginning. If you add wine to a semi-finished sauce, it will not evaporate enough and your dish will be a little "drunk." Water molecules become a kind of magnets for ethanol molecules, attracting them and interfering with the evaporation process. Therefore, it would be more correct to add the wine first, let it evaporate and only then add other ingredients and water.

The most important life hack

The water in the pot will never boil if you stare at it. Turn away for a couple of minutes and go about your business.:)