Tips and Tricks from the Professionals
Science
ALTHOUGH IT MIGHT LOOK SIMPLE, cooking fried rice with a wok is a subtle art and an even subtler science. Rice grains need to be in constant motion, moving up and sideways, flying through the air without leaving the bowl. The Mandarin word is chǎo, where ingredients are tossed in hot oil, cooking but never …
Easy to use, easy to find, and able to assume the flavor and color of whatever liquid it’s dissolved in, gelatin is a versatile thickener for both sweet and savory cooking-it’s the secret to the shimmering glaze of a perfectly reduced pan sauce and the silky mouth-feel of an ethereal panna cotta. Mix gelatin with …
A lot of people have some very strong opinions about the proper way to drink fine whiskey. You’re never supposed to have it with food. You’ve got to sip it nice and slow. It’s best enjoyed while gazing broodily into a roaring fireplace. And you must always, always drink it neat. Well, a lot of …
Why You Should Always Add Water To Your “Neat” Whiskey Read More »
Sometimes, the highest praise you can give a cocktail is, “wow, you can’t even taste the alcohol.” Being able to precisely balance the flavors in a drink so it’s not a booze overload is a mark of a good mixologist — and not necessarily a sign that the drink is low in alcohol. But fancy …
If you’re trying to get the most nutritional bang for your buck, it seems obvious that shopping in the produce section is better than shopping in the frozen aisle. In reality, however, the opposite is often true: frozen and canned produce can have many more nutrients than its fresh counterparts. Fresh From the Can How …
Canned and Frozen Veggies Are More Nutritious than Fresh Ones Read More »
Food doesn’t always come with an ingredients label, but sometimes — when you’ve got an allergy, for instance, or if you’re dying to make a restaurant dish at home — it sure would come in handy. MIT and QCRI researchers are trying to make that a possibility with Pic2Recipe, an artificial intelligence system designed to …
MIT Researchers Designed An AI That Deduces A Food’s Ingredients From Its Photo Read More »
Farmers need to keep tabs on the nutritional content of their crops, which usually requires waiting a week or more for a lab analysis. A new device from a Finnish company now allows them to do the same thing on the spot in just a few seconds. It’s called GrainSense, and while it’s only for …
This Handheld Scanner Analyzes Food’s Nutritional Content On The Spot Read More »
Ahhh, ice water with lemon; the picture of supreme refreshment. Sorry to leave a bad taste in your mouth, but you may want to rethink that notion. While it may quench your thirst, this combo could also leave you sick. When Life Gives You Lemons, Don’t Drink the Water Turns out, the lemons you get …
Think Twice Before Putting Ice and Lemon Wedges in Drinks Read More »
Walk into a grocery store in North America and ask where you can find the milk, and you’ll be directed to the refrigerated section. Ask the same thing in a grocery store in Europe, and you’ll be directed to a regular old room-temperature beverage aisle. Milk is perishable wherever you go, so how can one …
Why Most Of The World Buys Their Milk At Room Temperature Read More »
Crackers can be made out of all sorts of ingredients and flavored with all sorts of spices, but there’s one characteristic they all share: holes. It’s likely that every cracker you’ve ever seen is punched with holes. Why? It’s not decoration or even tradition. Those holes serve a very real purpose. Breathe in, Breathe Out …
Pasta is the universal ingredient, playing the starring role just as perfectly in a quick bowl of bachelor chow as it does in a time-intensive gourmet recipe. Regardless of how you like to serve it, there’s really just one way to boil it — and that’s without any oil. Slip Slidin’ Away When most people …
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Add Oil to Your Pasta Water Read More »
Some like it hot. And some don’t. And whichever camp you fall into, you may have heard of a little thing called the Scoville Heat Scale. Almost every pepper has a massive number attached to it, and the higher the number, the spicier the bite — the spiciest among them boast something like 2.4 million …
What’s the Scoville Heat Scale, and How Does it Rate Peppers? Read More »
A big haul from the grocery store requires some careful triage: you should probably cook the fresh veggies before the frozen ones, eat the fresh fruit before the packaged snacks, and prepare a fish dinner before one that uses the chicken or beef. What is it about seafood that makes it so easy to go …
Eating healthy isn’t easy. Sometimes, you’re inspired to pack a salad for lunch, only to see that your virtuous mason-jar combo of lettuce, veggies, and light vinaigrette has become a soggy, wilted mess by noon. (Next time, the dressing goes in its own container.) What is it about salad dressing that makes lettuce wilt so …
Even if you’re a fan of cold brew, there’s nothing tempting about a cup of hot coffee gone cold. But hectic mornings, unreliable travel mugs, and chilly temperatures can mix to leave your morning cuppa joe tepid and unappetizing. If you drink coffee with cream, you might be tempted to put off adding that cream …
Why Adding Cold Cream To Your Coffee Keeps it Hotter Longer Read More »
You know you shouldn’t put metal in the microwave because it could spark. But metal is in more than just the fork you left in the pasta and the filigree of that old plate you used — it also makes up some of the minerals in the food you eat, like the iron in leafy …
Here’s Why Fruit and Vegetables Spark in the Microwave Read More »
You are what you eat. So the words that describe your food should tell you something about what you’re eating. But that’s not always the case. Linguists have studied the words written about food on menus, restaurant reviews, and food packaging, and as linguist Dan Jurafsky explains in his book “The Language of Food,” what they’ve …
What Words Like “Fresh” Really Tell You About How Fancy Your Food Is Read More »
Australian scientists have developed a nutritious broccoli powder, which could be used to brew up a broccoli latte(Credit: CSIRO) Getting your daily dose of vegetables can be tricky – there are only so many serves one person can scarf down in a day. But now it may be a bit easier to hide broccoli in …
The US Army has developed an algorithm that can optimize your caffeine consumption to maximize alertness when experiencing sleep loss(Credit: belchonock/Depositphotos) How many cups of coffee do you have a day? It’s not a stretch to say that caffeine is the world’s most popular drug. A recent study found that 85 percent of American adults consume …
US Army algorithm determines ideal caffeine dosage patterns Read More »
Archaeologists and chefs used chemical analysis—and their taste buds—to solve a culinary puzzle from China. Childs took a few liberties with the reimagined Siwa recipe, adding apricots, carrots, and other ingredients. JESSICA HESTER/ATLAS OBSCURA AT A RECENT TASTING IN New York City, diners could sample food spanning continents and millennia. There was Babylonian lamb-and-beet stew, …
How to Reconstruct an Ancient Meal From Dirty Dishes Alone Read More »
