| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/7/2009 10:07:25 AM | | I never heard of "resting" meat but that's not surprising. Someone told me if I add vinegar to boiling water before adding eggs for hard-boiling, their shells won't crack. Since I've been doing that many less eggs with cracked shells, so guess it wasn't a myth. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 1:49:30 AM | As for that little laundry list of steak houses that rush their steaks right to the customer once they come off the grill I have a couple things to say, having spent two years as lead grill cook at a Keg Steakhouse as well as running grill at loads of other restaurants.
First, the primary reason for getting those steaks plated and to the table as quickly as possible is to cope with volume. On a friday or saturday night when you're knocking out anywhere from 600-1000 covers you don't want ANYthing sitting in the pass, otherwise there will be a major backup and the cooks will get violent and servers will die.
Second, because these restaurants are serving steaks and prime rib(which is kept at a comfortable temperature in hold ovens and sliced to order), the very few minutes from grill to plate to table to cut is generally sufficient rest for those meats.
As for at home, I rest my steaks around 5-7 minutes which is enough time to finish a sauce, saute some asparagus, or do a quick veggie stir fry. That way everything is cooked the way it should be and hits the table at the right temperatures.
Happy grilling!! | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 1:41:58 PM | | salt goes into pasta water its your only chance to season the pasta really, oil never | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 1:43:41 PM | | vinegar doesn't keep the shells from breaking, it keeps the egg from leaking out all over the place if it does break | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 3:45:07 PM | The oil in pasta water is not to "flavor" the pasta, but rather to reduce the chances of boiling over.
The phrase "pouring oil on stormy waters" comes from the practice of ocean going sailors of long ago pouring oil on storm-tossed seas when they were in survival or near-survival conditions to reduce the wave heights and severity. It worked then, and works in boiling kitchen pans now.
A different myth, and it IS a myth, that putting bread in the refridgerator makes it last longer. Bread goes stale from a chemical reaction between the bread ingredients and water, and staling starts the moment the bread comes out of the oven. That staling process is stopped either by eating the bread (yum, fresh bread) or freezing it (ties up the water), or drying it out (removes the water). | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 4:40:28 PM | The phrase "pouring oil on stormy waters" comes from the practice of ocean going sailors of long ago pouring oil on storm-tossed seas when they were in survival or near-survival conditions to reduce the wave heights and severity. It worked then, and works in boiling kitchen pans now.
OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS
Origin of the phrase: The phrase is mentioned by the Venerable Bede in his Ecelesiastical History written in Latin, and completed in 735. Stapleton translated the book in 1565. St. Aidan, it appears, gave his blessing to a young priest who was to set out by land, but return by water, to convoy a young maiden destined for the bride of King Oswin or Oswy. St. Aidan gave the young man a cruse of oil to pour on the sea if the waves became stormy. A storm did arise, and the young priest, pouring oil on the waves, did actually reduce them to a calm. Bede says he had the story from "a most creditable man in Holy Orders."
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Oi/Oil+on+Troubled+Waters.html
Oil will help from your water boiling over but a proper sized pot will take care of this.
For the people that add oil to keep the pasta from sticking, all you need to do with your pasta to keep it from sticking is stir. Mack sure your water is at a full boil and stir frequently during the 1st 2 - 4 minutes of cooking.
Adding oil does do one thing though, it makes your pasta oily and the sauce will not adhere to the pasta as well.
I never heard of "resting" meat but that's not surprising. Someone told me if I add vinegar to boiling water before adding eggs for hard-boiling, their shells won't crack. Since I've been doing that many less eggs with cracked shells, so guess it wasn't a myth.
Does Vinegar Make Peeling Hard-Boiled Eggs Easier?
Adding vinegar softens eggshells, according to Juan Silva, a professor of food and science technology at Mississippi State University. “The eggshell is made of calcium carbonate … and adding vinegar to the water will dissolve some of the calcium carbonate,” Silva says. The result is a softer shell and easier peeling. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 5:37:41 PM |
Adding vinegar softens eggshells, according to Juan Silva, a professor of food and science technology at Mississippi State University. “The eggshell is made of calcium carbonate … and adding vinegar to the water will dissolve some of the calcium carbonate,” Silva says. The result is a softer shell and easier peeling
the good professor is right .... but wrong. Vinegar DOES dissolve the egg shell, BUT it takes far, far, far, far, far longer than the time to boil rock hard boiled eggs. I've not done it, but I believe it takes more than a couple weeks to dissolve the egg shell to nothing but membrane.
I have made preserved eggs, but peeled them rather than wait and wait and wait and wait for the vinegar to dissolve the shells. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 6:02:31 PM | 
All I know is ever since I started adding a little vinegar to the boiling water, MY eggs crack less often, I don't boil them longer or shorter, I used to get 1-3 cracked eggs, now I usually only get 1. I usually only boil 6 eggs at one time. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/12/2009 7:05:27 PM | The bit about not cutting into a piece of meat right away isn't about losing juice, it's about the juices redistributing themselves. Things change internally when it's taken out of the heat and letting it sit for a period of time affects the texture.
Magee's On Food And Cooking is an excellent resource about kitchen chemistry. Check it out of the library some time. Joy Of Cooking has some pretty good information, too. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/13/2009 1:46:32 AM | Then why wouold it matter if juices redistrubute...If Im eating a 1 inch chop, what do I care if the juice is on top of the chop or on the bottom...
no one has proven that the texture between t steaks is so radically different between resting and not resting that on is far more superior to the other.
chef are just in the habit of saying let your meat reat...but dont say...for 3 min, 10 min, 1/2 hour...do it keep it in a warming drawer, or in the oven ar where?
Granted, there might be occasions, like a big thick rare beef roast...that it may help to rest the meat becausr the jusices will all run out is carved to soom...but it cant be said as a blanket statemen...for all meats, in all occasions.
then it becomes non-sense | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/13/2009 4:26:27 PM |
All I know is ever since I started adding a little vinegar to the boiling water, MY eggs crack less often,
Yes,i heard that a while back about adding vinegar too and if to add to the myths I heard one if you take a pin and pnrick the raw egg it won'y crack also.
And when I do boil eggs now I first put them in cold water, bring to a boil , cover and shut off the heat and wait 5 min and presto every time for soft and 10 min for hard.
Just like good old sex! lol | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/13/2009 4:34:09 PM | Sex? What's that?
I "somehow" ran across a YouTube video last night on "how to hard boil eggs" which was very informative but made me wonder about all these people making YouTube videos in their own homes, showing how they do all kinds of things... unbelievable the things you can learn there, you feel like you're in their home with them and they're talking only to you. If I recall he added a little salt to help prevent cracking and a little vinegar to prevent the whites from running all over the place in case they do crack.
Waiting to hear about some other myths besides resting meat!
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/13/2009 5:26:02 PM | | Here is one of my favorite myths. Sushi is raw fish. Sushi is actually the vinegared rice mixed with the other ingredients whether it is cooked fish or raw fish. Sashimi is actually raw fish without the rice. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/13/2009 8:26:16 PM | Here is no myth. The US FDA requires restaurants which serve "raw" tuna to cool it to minus 40 F for eight hours before serving, or minus 30 F for twenty-four hours, or zero F for seven days, to kill any parasites. Most home freezers operate at about minus 10 F.
To our cousins to the north who aren't quite sure what F degrees are, minus 10 F is about minus 23 C.
As a matter of course, the "salmon bits" my supermarket sells I automatically freeze for a week or more before I make them up into some sashimi style dish. (Salmon bits, here, are about 1/3 the price of salmon to be cut up into sashimi size pieces and are already cut up into sashimi sized pieces.) | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/13/2009 10:38:52 PM | Wayward:
It's a real shame that organizations such as your FDA, the CFIA here in Canada, and other wrong thinkers force us to treat great food so poorly. When I've done sashimi for friends in the past, I go for the most screamingly fresh tuna I can lay my hands on, pack it in ice, and serve it as soon as I get in the door. When I lived in Japan, I used to hang out at a tiny family run sushi joint... two tables for 8 max, and five chairs along the bar. Often, the old man and his son would go off fishing for a day or two and the evening they got back, their catch would be served up practically still spitting as it hit the plate.
The same goes for pink pork, unpasteurized cheeses, and all sorts of other incredible treats that official red-tapers would deny us "for our own good" | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/14/2009 5:27:48 AM | The "screamingly fresh" tuna you bought in Japan was frozen solid shortly after being caught at sea, if it was caught by a commercial fishing boat. All tuna is, otherwise it would be completely spoiled well before the boat made port.
The FDA requires uncooked tuna served in restaurants to be frozen solid at specified temps and for specified times for food safety reasons.
You've been eating frozen tuna for years. I have eaten tuna caught offshore that was swimming just twenty minutes prior, and it does taste a little different. However, there was/is a health risk from parasites in doing so. BTW, freshly caught tuna stored in the refrigerator on a recreational boat gets to be a bit ripe by the third day.
Another myth busted: brown sugar is NOT less refined. At least in the United States it is illegal (for food safety reasons) to sell at retail any sugar that has not be completely refined. "Brown" sugar is fully refined white sugar with molasses added for color and flavor. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/14/2009 7:07:11 AM | Obviously brown sugar/white sugar is different than brown rice/white rice, as we DO know whole grain is unrefined (or less refined than the white variety).
Would you agree all sugar HAS to be refined in order to extract it and crystallize it from the sugarcane?
I have organic cane sugar and it says this on the container:
... organic cane sugar is harvested and milled the same day, right on our Florida farm. We use a special single crystallization process that preserves the original flavor of sun-sweetened sugarcane without the use of additives, preservatives, or animal by-products.
Our process presses fresh sugarcane to produce a cane juice that is washed and filtered. The cane juice is then heated with steam to evaporate the water, concentrating it into a golden syrup that is crystallized and dried ... | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/14/2009 9:39:49 AM | dear waywardwyne, i think you are mistaken if you think all tuna has to is/ or has to be frozen for sushi
yes there is lots of tuna that is frozen, and yes commercial boats do freeze them, but really good bluefin is caught one off, packed in ice, and hits tsukiji within 24 hours, usually less | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/14/2009 9:45:01 AM | | if heston bluementhal and ferran adria say you should let your meat rest before serving it, i would bet my house its not "just a myth" | |
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Posted: 11/14/2009 2:01:21 PM | true on a really low temp freeze, but once it starts to hit more standard temperature freezers it starts to degrade in quality over time, as yourself i've not seen a huge difference in the quality though between the two types
i'm really not sure i buy into the whole parasite thing though, i've been eating sushi for almost 40 years now, some frozen, some fresh and never had any kind of bug, think this might be more of a "worst case scenario" protection
anyways, i'm hungry now and going out for some sushi | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/14/2009 4:12:57 PM | This got me wondering about some other myths so I found this very interesting, question is, who's the true authority on these things? I've always heard if you cook with alcohol the alcohol burns off while cooking, this says False but then concedes it's "less than" originally but not totally non-alcoholic. Just one example from:
http://www.pgacon.com/KitchenMyths.htm
I was surprised about the baking soda though, I always thought it really did help with odors, or humidity, or something. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/14/2009 4:52:25 PM |
if heston bluementhal and ferran adria say you should let your meat rest before serving it, i would bet my house its not "just a myth"
True that.
In Search of Perfection was a great show.
Who would have thunk that the Penthouse Executive Club has some of the best steaks.
Those boys know how to treat the beef. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/15/2009 6:09:13 AM | | When I was younger we were always taught that alcohol was cooked off. When I was first teaching the health and sanitation instructor was teaching a class I sat in on and he said this myth was false. The class did an experiment and we were able to test the amount of alcohol left in the sauce after different periods of cooking. Quite eye opening. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/15/2009 7:02:30 AM | On 28 February 2009, Blumenthal closed The Fat Duck after a number of customers claimed to be unwell after having dined there.[8] Later reports put the number of affected customers at over 400.[9] The restaurant was eventually given the all-clear by the Thames Valley Health Protection Agency to reopen on Thursday 12 March 2009, two weeks after it was closed. However environmental health officers had still not discovered the cause for the diners' symptoms.[10] On 20 March it was announced that the cause was probably an outbreak of the norovirus for which three staff and five customers have tested positive, an infection causing diarrhea and vomiting, passed through contact and food and most likely to affect people with type O blood.
Someone should have told Blumenthal its not a myth to wash his hands. | |
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| Cooking Myths
Posted: 11/15/2009 8:06:26 AM |
I was surprised about the baking soda though, I always thought it really did help with odors, or humidity, or something.
I sure someone will chime in on that one Hallie if it really works.
And now to add to the myths I put a few lumps of charcoal in the frig[in alumiun foil so Idon't scare away anybody thinking I eat coal!]lol
Also put in in litter boxes,[no foil] it really knocks the odors down.
Ad if your really bad,a few in your xmas stocking! lol | |
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