Posts by dsr
If other fermented products are acceptable to you: soy sauce, especially tamari Worcestershire sauce fish sauce (nam pla, teuk trey) kombucha lacto-fermented ketchup non-tomato ketchups ch...
There are lots of varieties of potato that cover a large range of starch content, sweetness, flavors and textures. The type of potato used will be a bigger influence on the final dish than the way ...
Consider what you are doing: repeatedly smashing protein structures. That's usually called "tenderizing". The unusual bit is the technique and the length of time prescribed.
As you cook mushrooms, the cellulose cell walls rupture, releasing the cell contents. Most of the weight of a healthy mushroom is water. (Most of the weight of most unprocessed foods is water; mos...
If cooking is chemistry, baking sits on the border with biology. Factors that could be an issue: humidity in your refrigerator humidity in your kitchen the current balance of yeast ...
The taste of rice wines is completely different from the tastes of fruit wines. There is no single US product that will work for all three of these. However, in these days of the Internet, you sho...
If you keep it in an air-tight glass or ceramic container without much headspace (unused space in the container) it will last for at least 2 weeks without flavor loss. If you use a plastic containe...
This is a thermodynamics issue: the heat capacity of steel is about 460 times the heat capacity of an equal mass of air -- and there's not a large mass of air in an oven, and each rack weighs a cou...
Potatoes store carbohydrates in their cells as starches. When you cut a potato with a knife, you cut some of those cell walls, but not a high percentage. When you cut the potato repeatedly -- with ...
If you had visited a French restaurant in Boston, you would see French cooking techniques -- sautes, braises, and long-simmered soups. If you had visited a Cantonese restaurant, you would see Cant...
The flavors provided by fish sauce are saltiness, umami, and funk (from fermentation). You can get saltiness from salt, umami from seaweed or MSG powder, and funk from any fermented vegetable prod...
Have you considered asking T'ang Court? You can email them at tlhkg.tang.court@langhamhotels.com (as per their web page in December 2021).
I believe you will find this article both entertaining and useful: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-vegan-nacho-sauce-as-good-as-the-real-thing-recipe-vegan-experience (the recipe alone i...
You can use a ratio of 1:1 by volume if you minimize evaporation with a lid; 1 couscous to 1.15 or 1.25 water if there will be more evaporation or you prefer it a little mushy; or you can use a gen...
I have a dome-shaped wok lid, made of aluminum with a wooden grab at the top. It was cheap. It is large, lightweight, and works exactly as one would want a wok lid to work. The wok manufacturers...
The Scary Sharp system is, in general, the cheapest reliable method of getting blades sharp. It consists of getting a solid, flat work surface, adhering abrasives (sandpaper, to begin with) to the ...
How do you feel about alcohol? Adding alcohol (ethanol) will reduce the formation of ice crystals, and make the ice cream feel smoother and creamier. As a bonus, there are a lot of flavors out th...
In this particular case, the chef is referring to stopping the cooking process on the noodles by removing them from the boiling pasta water and shocking them in cold water. Vermicelli won't stand ...
If you buy coconut milk without stabilizers (guar gum, locust bean gum are the most common types around me) you will discover that it separates into a high-fat cream and a relatively low-fat coconu...
The most important thing... no. Several things have to be "good enough"; at that point you can select a most important thing. The handle has to be comfortable enough for you to grip. The blade h...
The goal is not so much to limit exposure to air, as to limit humidity loss. Covering your bowl with plastic film or foil is perfectly reasonable, as long as it has enough room for expansion. Remem...
My experience: Coffee + water in container, filter afterwards: good. Coffee in fine-mesh bag in water in container: good, but needs longer brew time or some agitation. Coffee in steel mesh su...
This is entirely a matter of personal preference. The actual determining factors in honing with a steel are consistency of angle and force on both sides of the blade.
For the sake of safety, do not hone towards your body or anyone else's. There is no special benefit to it, and much more risk.
On serrations: Serrated edges are a mixed blessing. They accomplish several purposes: serrations pack more cutting edge length into the same overall blade length. This gives a mechanical advantag...
