While we prefer to start with steak that’s never been frozen for the best texture, if we do have frozen steaks on hand, from now on we’ll cook them straight from the freezer. Freeze steaks, uncovered, overnight on a baking sheet (this dries them out to prevent excess splattering during cooking), then wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, place in a zipper-lock bag, and return to the freezer. To ensure that frozen steaks brown evenly, cook them in a large skillet with ⅛ inch of oil.
The color in meat comes from a muscle protein called myoglobin. When the meat is freshly cut, this protein is deep purple. As the meat sits in its packaging (or in the butcher’s display case), the myoglobin converts to bright red oxymyoglobin on the meat’s exterior, where it is exposed to more oxygen. Inside the meat, where less oxygen can penetrate, it will slowly convert to brown metmyoglobin, creating the color difference between the surface of the meat and the interior, but not affecting the freshness or flavor of the meat.
In general, the red or pink color in meat comes from myoglobin in the muscle cells that store oxygen. Because the areas of the animal that tend to get the most exercise—the legs and thighs—require more oxygen, they contain more myoglobin, which makes them darker in color than the breasts. As turkey (or chicken) roasts in the oven, the oxygen attached to the myoglobin is released, and the meat becomes lighter and browner in color. However, trace amounts of other gases formed in a hot oven or grill may react with the myoglobin to produce a pink color, even if the poultry is fully cooked.
As for pork, selective breeding has made today’s pork much leaner than pork in the past, and if you cook it till all traces of pinkness are gone, the meat will be dry and tough. We think that the leanest cuts are best cooked to 145 degrees. At this point, the meat will still have a tinge of pink in the center.
Here’s the scoop: The juices in a chicken are mostly water; they get their color from myoglobin. When myoglobin is heated, it loses its color. So there’s some good reasoning behind this idea. The problem is that the exact temperature at which this color change occurs varies depending on a number of factors (primarily the conditions under which the chicken was raised and processed). The best way to check for doneness? Use a thermometer, and make sure that both the light meat and dark meat are at the proper temperature before removing the chicken from the heat.
Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration advise against washing poultry. According to their research, while rinsing may remove some bacteria, the only way to ensure that all bacteria are killed is through proper cooking. Moreover, splashing bacteria around in the sink can be dangerous, especially if contaminated water lands on other kitchen surfaces—or on food that is ready to be served.
You should eat oysters only in months whose names contain the letter R. There was a good reason for this rule once upon a time, but it doesn’t apply to modern oysters, so skip the superstition.
When you’re making bread, use hot water to jump-start the yeast. Do this only if you’re feeling particularly murderous toward the yeast…and your chances of a good rise in your dough.
In other words, there are no real advantages to using water that’s above 120 degrees in yeasted doughs—but there is a real risk of ruining them.
If you need to quickly warm whole eggs, place them in a bowl, cover them with hot—but not boiling—tap water, and let them sit for five minutes before using them.
Eggs take in air as they age, creating an air cell inside. An egg that floats has a good-size air cell, indicating that the egg is at least a month or two old. Based on other tests we’ve done on the shelf life of eggs, however, we know that an older egg is not necessarily a spoiled egg. We found minimal performance differences in fresh eggs and eggs that were up to three months old. If an egg smells odd or displays discoloration, however, then it’s definitely time to pitch it.
However, before you turn on the hot tap, you might want to consider what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has to say about cooking with hot tap water. According to the EPA, water hot from the tap can contain much higher levels of lead than cold tap water. Even cold tap water should be run for a while to ensure that any lead deposits are flushed out of the system.
Salt doesn’t just enhance flavors in foods; it also helps mask less agreeable tastes like bitterness. By suppressing bitterness, salt allows more desirable flavors—including sweetness and spices—to come through. In bread baking, salt controls the activity of yeast, strengthens gluten, and accents the bread’s flavor; it should never be omitted. Adding even a small amount of salt to an egg dish keeps the proteins in the eggs from bonding to each other, thereby producing a weaker protein chain and more tender eggs.
Depending on the recipe, you can add an acid (such as vinegar, lemon or lime juice, or canned unsalted tomatoes) or a sweetener (such as sugar, honey, or maple syrup) to counteract the offending saltiness.
To balance sweetness, use an acid or seasonings like fresh herbs or cayenne pepper. For sweet dishes, try a bit of liqueur or espresso powder. If your dish is too spicy or acidic, counteract that with a fat (such as butter, cream, sour cream, cheese, or olive oil) or a sweetener.
As it turned out, there were just 5 milligrams of capsaicin per kilogram of green jalapeño flesh (not enough to really make much impact on the human tongue), 73 milligrams per kilogram of seeds, and an impressive 512 milligrams per kilogram of pith. The reason why the seeds registered more heat than the flesh is simply that they are embedded in the pith; they are essentially guilty—or hot—by reason of association. So from now on, when we want to control the fire in a dish, we’ll do it by means of the pith. The seeds will just be along for the ride.
After testing both methods (a damp cloth versus a quick rinse in a colander under running water), we found no difference in the texture of the finished dishes. Our rule of thumb? Wash mushrooms right before cooking; if you let rinsed mushrooms sit around for longer than 10 or 15 minutes, the texture will indeed begin to suffer.
The takeaway: There’s no need to discard old mushrooms. In fact, their imperfections may even improve the flavor of your dish. Do not, however, use mushrooms that smell fermented or feel slimy.
The key to mushrooms’ resiliency lies in their cell walls, which are made of a polymer called chitin. Unlike the proteins in meat or the pectin in vegetables, chitin is very heat-stable. This unique structure allows us to sauté mushrooms for just a few minutes or roast them for the better part of an hour, all the while achieving well-browned, perfectly tender specimens.
The best way to ripen bananas is to enclose them in a paper bag for a few days. Fruit produces ethylene gas, which hastens ripening; the bag traps the gas while still allowing some moisture to escape. Since fully ripe fruit emits the most ethylene, placing a ripe banana or other ripe fruit in the bag with the unripe fruit will speed the process by a day or two.
Our preferred method for identifying a ripe avocado is to try to flick the small stem off the fruit. If it comes off easily and you can see green underneath it, the avocado is ripe. If it does not come off or you see brown underneath, the avocado is not yet ripe, or it’s overripe and therefore unusable. If you do end up with an unripe avocado, we recommend storing it in the fridge for a few days. It will ripen a little more slowly than on the counter, but the ripening will be more even—and once completely ripe, a refrigerated avocado will last longer (about five full days).
You can avoid crying while slicing onions by lighting a candle near your cutting board.
Rinsing grapes before storing them makes them spoil more quickly.
A mysterious phenomenon sometimes occurs when people eat pine nuts on their own or in a dish such as pesto: Their sense of taste is temporarily altered, causing most food and drink (including water) to taste bitter or metallic. The nuts themselves taste fine; the condition emerges hours or even days after ingestion and can linger for as long as two weeks. Doctors have labeled this condition “pine mouth,” and while it is clearly linked to the consumption of pine nuts, its underlying explanation remains a mystery.
until the true source of pine mouth is understood, we recommend purchasing the more expensive Middle Eastern or European pine nuts and refrigerating or freezing them in a well-sealed container to stave off rancidity.
Beer in dark-colored glass bottles tastes better than beer in clear glass bottles.
Red wines—especially young, undeveloped ones—often benefit from a “breathing” period after opening so that oxygen can break down the tannins and sulfur compounds, which helps soften any harsh flavors. But merely uncorking a bottle and letting it sit for a bit is insufficient. In order to truly aerate wine, you must expose as much of its surface area as possible to oxygen.
While specialized wine-aerating gadgets can speed things along, immediate decanting can also be done with just two pitchers. We opened several recent-vintage bottles of Cabernet and Sangiovese (both known for their punchy, highly tannic flavors) and held a blind taste test of samples poured straight from the bottle and samples that had been poured back and forth from one pitcher to another 15 times.
Why does a colder, more diluted cocktail exhibit a broader spectrum of flavors and aromas? First, chilling makes the harsh-tasting ethanol less volatile and assertive, allowing more pleasant, subtle flavors to come through. Second, the ethanol in gin (and other spirits like whiskey) dissolves some of the water-insoluble aroma compounds.
If you’re a fan of stiffer drinks that taste more of ethanol, by all means, stir for only 30 seconds. But if you’d like a martini that’s more aromatic in flavor, be patient and keep stirring for a minute or two.
It turns out that as the beans roast, they lose water and also puff up slightly—and the longer the roast time, the more pronounced these effects. Dark roast beans will thus weigh less (and be slightly larger) than light roast beans.
To help an emulsion stay stable for longer, you can include an ingredient that acts as an emulsifier, such as egg yolk or mustard. Emulsifiers work by forming a shield around the dispersed droplets in an emulsion, keeping them from recombining and separating out. This is why we often include a little mustard in our vinaigrette recipes—it might not be enough to noticeably affect the flavor of the dressing, but it can have a serious impact on the chemistry of the mixture.
The “best by” date printed on canned foods is not a hard-and-fast “expiration” date: It refers strictly to the manufacturer’s recommendation for peak quality, not safety concerns. In theory, as long as cans are in good shape and have been stored under the right conditions (in a dry place between 40 and 70 degrees), their contents should remain safe to use indefinitely.
Dates aside, cans with a compromised seal (punctured, rusted through, or deeply dented along any seam) should never be used. And discard immediately any cans that are bulging or that spurt liquid when opened: These are warning signs of the presence of the rare but dangerous botulism bacteria, Clostridium botulinum.
As it turns out, food scientists dismiss the notion that baking soda has deodorizing power in the fridge.
But don’t rule out baking soda altogether. When this alkaline powder comes into direct contact with smells, it can in fact make a difference. We recently tested different approaches to removing garlic and onion smells from a cutting board and found that scrubbing with a paste of 1 tablespoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon water was the most effective option.
We found that a small amount of dish soap is not enough to interfere with the polymerized bonds that make up the protective layer on the surface of a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet. Don’t scrub the pan with abrasives like steel wool or use harsh cleansers like Comet, and don’t soak the pan, but it’s OK to use a few drops of regular dish soap if you need to clean up a particularly greasy pan, or even if that just makes you feel more comfortable. Just rinse the pan clean and wipe it dry when you’re finished.
So, while an acidic sauce can enjoy a brief stay in a cast-iron pan with no dire consequences, you have to be careful. First, make sure your pan is well seasoned, as seasoning keeps the acid from interacting with the iron—to a point. You should also remove acidic dishes from the warm skillet soon after they finish cooking.
So, while both plastic and wooden boards can hold on to bacteria for long periods of time and can thus allow for transference of bacteria to foods, we found that scrubbing with hot, soapy water was an effective (though not perfect) way of cleaning both kinds of boards. The USDA also recommends the regular application of a solution of 1 teaspoon of bleach per quart of water to all types of cutting boards.
So in recipes where anchovies are used to add background flavor, feel free to substitute ½ teaspoon of fish sauce per anchovy fillet. To our surprise, finely chopped canned tuna was nearly indistinguishable from the anchovy in both the sauce and dressing. For a more all- purpose anchovy replacement, use 1 tablespoon of minced water-packed tuna per teaspoon of minced anchovy (about 2 fillets).
Several variables affect how different types of salmon behave in a recipe. We prefer wild salmon in every application.
All-purpose flour is 10 to 12 percent protein. Bread flour has the highest protein, 12 to 14 percent. Then there is pastry flour, at 8 to 10 percent, and cake flour, at 6 to 8 percent. The names suggest the types of recipes each protein content is most useful for—lower protein means less structure and a softer crumb, which is ideal for a cake, while higher protein content generates height and chew, just what you need in a loaf of bread.
While the germ layer gives whole-wheat flour more protein than all-purpose flour, it also inhibits the formation of gluten. Gluten provides lift and structure to baked goods, so less of it results in a denser crumb. Additionally, the germ and bran particles in whole-wheat flour contribute to greater chewiness. Thus, if you simply replace all the all-purpose flour in a recipe with whole-wheat flour without making other modifications, you’ll end up with dense, tough, chewy baked goods.
Sifting not only removes lumps but also aerates flour so it can be incorporated more easily into batters. Additionally, sifted flour weighs 20 to 25 percent less per cup than unsifted flour. We’ve found that just one additional ounce of flour can cause a normally moist and level cake to bake up drier and with a domed top, so if you use unsifted flour, you might be dooming your cake to failure before it even goes into the oven.
Generally speaking, the shorter the grain, the stickier the rice.
The stickiness of rice, referred to as “waxiness” in the rice industry, is related to its relative amount of amylose, a starch that does not gelatinize during cooking. The less amylose, the stickier the rice.
Any produce billed as heirloom is simply an older variety that is not associated with large-scale commercial production. The smaller yields often mean that more care is taken in growing, harvesting, and packaging—and you pay more for that.
Black quinoa seeds, the smallest of the three, have the thickest seed coat. They were notably crunchy in our recipe and retained their shape the most during cooking, but many tasters disliked their slightly sandy texture. Based on these results, you should feel free to use white and red quinoa interchangeably, but you’re better off reserving black quinoa for recipes specifically tailored to its distinctive texture and flavor.
Active dry yeast is dried at higher temperatures, which kills more of the exterior yeast cells (so this yeast requires an initial activation in warm water), whereas instant yeast is dried at more gentle temperatures (so it can be added directly to the dry ingredients in a recipe).
If you have only active dry yeast on hand and a recipe calls for instant, there’s an easy fix: To compensate for the greater quantity of inactive yeast cells in the active dry yeast, simply use 25 percent more of it. (Conversely, use about 25 percent less instant yeast in a recipe that calls for active dry.)
Both baking soda and baking powder are chemical leaveners. Baking soda causes baked goods to brown more and contributes deeper flavor, thanks to the Maillard reaction. However, to do its work, baking soda, which is alkaline, relies on acid in a recipe, provided by ingredients such as buttermilk, yogurt, or molasses. Baking powder, on the other hand, is baking soda mixed with a dry acid, such as cream of tartar, and double-dried cornstarch. The cornstarch keeps the baking soda and dry acid apart during storage, preventing premature production of carbon dioxide. When baking powder becomes wet, the dry acid comes into contact with the baking soda, producing the gas. Cooks use baking powder rather than baking soda when there is no natural acidity in the batter or to provide more sustained leavening (since it’s activated by higher temperatures later in the baking process). You cannot substitute baking powder for baking soda.
Chocolate chips do tend to contain less cocoa butter than bar chocolate, however, and this lower fat content means that they might take a bit longer to melt than chopped bar chocolate; they may also contain stabilizers designed to help them hold their shape when baked into cookies. As a result, we don’t recommend using them in chocolate sauces or puddings where a perfectly smooth texture is necessary.
Buttermilk is a misleading word. Many assume the product is infused with butter and thus high in fat, when the truth is quite the opposite. The name refers to the watery end product of butter making—the “milk” left behind after the solid fat has been removed through the process of churning cream into butter.