Modernist Cooking Tips That Everyone Should Know

[thoughtforfood]

That article appears to completely ignore the theory and evidence presented in Modernist Cuisine: in fact, its entire rebuttal rests on a casual analysis of a single unreferenced experiment. "This one experiment I read about this one guy on the internet doing didn't properly control for all the variables." Not terribly compelling.

In all fairness I have not read MC and have been mooching off the rest of you. Thanks by the way! The article was also out before MC was published.

He didn't do any worse than the rest of us reading from somewhere that "sealing the juices is a myth". I mean have any of us actually tested this, or do most of us take the advice of the pros as probably factual? He pointed out a flaw in the logic of the original experiment which is what most people who get angry at tv chefs for mispeaking were going off of. Cooks illustrated and Alton brown skipped over the Fat water loss argument completely and did go completely on the final weight. His observation that people just chose to believe strongly in this based on experiments that were far too dumbed down to be scientifically accurate was correct at the time. MC may have changed that. I guess I should anti up and buy the damn books already.

[PedroG]

That article compares apples with pears: pre-seared steaks against non-seared steaks without any Maillard crust instead of post-seared steaks with a crust that is not softened by subsequent cooking on low heat. The author is not even able to spell Justus von Liebig correctly ("Justus von Leibig"). Before I read McGee's On Food and Cooking (1984 edition) debunking Liebig's theory, my steaks cooked on high heat used to come out rather dry and not as tender as I would have liked. Now starting on low heat to reach core temperature (sous vide or indirect heat in the gas grill on low fire) and post-searing in a screaming hot skillet or on the gas grill's maximum flame, my steaks come out with a nice crust, tender and juicy and succulent. Liquid loss happens anyway, even in sous vide cooking, but enzymatic tenderization during slow heating and avoiding collagen shrinking by abrupt heating are the important factors influencing organoleptic outcome.

[Chris Hennes]

I'm not even convinced that the "flaw" that the article purports to identify is really much of a flaw. To be sure, if you want to achieve statistical validity you need to cook hundreds of steaks and carefully control the experimental parameters to ensure that you are comparing like-marbling to like-marbling. But that the article doesn't reference the actual experiment or quote any numbers at all from it: it just postulates a hypothesis that may explain some of the weight loss. However, as PedroG points out, we actually understand the mechanism for the moisture loss quite well, and proper experiments have been conducted to demonstrate it. Considering the condescending tone of the article: "The best they've come up with is some version of the following 'experiment'" and its failure to cite any evidence that this experiment is anything like the "best" "they've" come up with, I'd say that basically eliminates any credibility it might have.

[HowardLi]

I just don't think we should throw away years and years and decades and decades of actual cooking and experimentation by actual chefs just because the science says we should.

I think that is EXACTLY why we should throw such techniques away -- if our facts are wrong, discard them.

Kind of like the "searing meat seals in the juices" statement I hear on Food Network every week. I know it's wrong, you know it's wrong, the celebrity chef in question probably (maybe?) knows it's wrong.

Yet we're stuck with "searing seals in juices" because decades of chefs believed it to be true -- without bothering to pull out a scale and verify it.

A worthwhile read to challenge debunkers on the subject of sealing juices. http://culinaryarts....alinjuices1.htm

What a load of worthless tripe. Worse than even the usual article on about.com.

[nickrey]

I want back the five minutes it took me to read that article and try to work out the logic of what he was saying.

Apparently if you want tasty steaks, you need to sear it rather than cook it in some other way oh and by the way, this is because the juices are sealed in. It's the equivalent of saying that meringue tastes good, therefore you need to whip the eggs in a copper pan. There seem to be a lot of links missing in the logic, most of which would contain the core of the argument.

[Mjx]

Okay: Just to extract the main point, what is the modernist cooking tip we're talking about, here? Because I have to admit the only tip I've extracted is 'avoid About.com', but... I already knew that

[patrickamory]

Mjx, I think the tip is not to attempt to try sealing in the juices, because it's clearly impossible

[Chris Hennes]

OK, so let me give a great modernist cooking tip: sodium citrate is fantastic stuff. I can't remember the last time I made a cheese sauce without it.

(oh, and welcome to eG Forums, thoughtforfood... as you can see, we... um... have some opinions, and like to share them!)

[EnriqueB]

I learnt in a sidebar that the adequate ratio of salt in most recipes is between 0,6% and 1,5% of the total weight. This has changed the way I salt many foods, allowing me to salt precisely earlier, which comes handy for many dishes, instead of the "salt to taste: guess, try, add a bit more..." that most cookbooks recommend (which is ok for the final seasoning adjustment, but not very useful in many circunstances)