I'm Just Here For The Food: Food + Heat = Cooking Quotes
"The fastest way to get heat into food short of dipping it in hot lava … tastes better, too."
"What searing does not do is 'seal in flavors' or 'seal in juices.'"
"If you feel it necessary to seal in juices you should buy a laminator."
"The average electric cook-top coil tops out at 2000º F. A gas flame—my personal favorite—can reach 3000º F."
"What’s so special about metals? ... their outer electrons are so weakly bound that they just wander around throughout the surface like quantum Flying Dutchmen, which is exactly what makes metals such good conductors."
"Searing is unique in that it is not only used to cook food to doneness, but as an opening act for other cooking methods."
"Any carbon-based life form (and all food used to be alive at some point) will turn black if exposed to enough heat; in other words, it turns to charcoal."
"To cast iron, a pattern is made (a positive image of a pan, pot, or what have you)."
"Welding gloves: Potholders are for sissies and mitts are for baseball."
"Fresh air: Any time you get animal protein around very high heat there’s going to be some smoke."
"When acidic foods are cooked in aluminum, traces of the metal leech into the food."
"Cooking over open coals, a process which, depending on who you ask, is called either broiling, grilling, or roasting, has been around since the first caveman noticed that the rack of mammoth hanging by the fire didn’t turn green and stinky as quickly as the one left by the door."
"Grilling is huge to this day, but don’t think for a minute that this has to do with flavor or getting outdoors or any other culinary concerns."
"If dry cooking methods were the Beatles, roasting would be George Harrison. Quiet, but effective."
"In 1762, an English noble named John Montagu, the fourth earl of Sandwich, was on a gambling spree when he got hungry. He didn’t want to fold his hand, so he instructed a servant to place a piece of roast beef between two slices of bread."
"Roasting is a bit like deep-frying in that it’s about even heating."
"Roasts don’t care about time. They’re not trying to catch a train."
"A good way to make a sandwich sturdy, besides toasting the bread, is to use a layer of spreadable fat like butter or mayo to provide moisture, flavor, and a waterproof shield."
"The greater the surface-to-mass ratio, the quicker the cooking."
"Despite an identical weight, b will take nearly twice as long to cook as a or c because its shape is different."
"Just because it’s a liquid doesn’t mean it’s wet. Mercury’s a liquid."
"Traditional meat thermometers are hard to read, and their spikelike probes are better suited to pitching tents."
"Buy big: small roast—no leftovers; big roast—lots of leftovers."
"Tempering it with a heat-friendly oil will keep the butter in line."
"There is no food that doesn’t contain water and the changes that take place in food during cooking can largely be quantified by what happens to the water in question."
"Considering how oil and water feel about each other, I’d say that Butch and Sundance had a better chance of making it out of that Bolivian bank than that oil has of getting to first base with the pasta."
"It's simply impossible to have moist and tender meat in braising and stewing; tender meat is dry meat."
"The real trick is to capture two other liquids in the meat: melted fat and dissolved gelatin."
"You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, you can have it good. Choose any two."
"If your municipal agua leaves something to be desired, you should either filter it or give up and start from scratch."
"The stuff in those little cells doesn’t necessarily get along, which is one of the reasons they’re in cells to start with."
"Taking the slow and low approach allows for increased conversion of collagen to gelatin and reduces the chance of over-coagulated muscle fibers."
"I’ve seen cooks spend all morning at the farmers’ market, hand picking the finest designer-organic-heirloom vegetables, only to chuck them straight into a pot of tap water that smells like the kiddie pool at the Y."
"The humble chicken egg is arguably the most versatile food on earth."
"The first pressure cooker, called the "ingester," was designed in 1679 by French physicist Denis Papin."
"Today’s pressure cookers are both safe and efficient."
"There are lots of ways to get flavor into food, but brining is the only way I know to season, enhance texture, and add weight to a piece of meat."
"The heat inside a pressure cooker creates steam, which expands, creating 15 pounds per square inch of pressure."
"Like humans, the words 'marinade' and 'brine' evolved from the sea."
"Brines supercharge meats with flavor and moisture."
"SALAD DRESSING‘S SECRET: When you whisk up a vinaigrette, make extra to use as a marinade."
"Eggs are the plastic of the kitchen. There’s very little they can’t do."
"Egg size doesn’t necessarily correlate to egg quality; a grading system serves that purpose."