Apartment Therapy: Food Science

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Posts tagged “Food Science”

Food Science: Salting to Taste

Salt to taste. Such a simple and innocent instruction! We've read those words a million times over the years without thinking anything of it. But lately we started wondering what this really means. ...

Food Science: How Does Brining Work?

We've talked about how much we love brining lean cuts of meat to infuse extra moisture and flavor before cooking. This technique is widely used in traditional Scandinavian cuisine and has definitely...

Food Science: Why Chocolate Seizes

We were melting chocolate a while back for some mousse and ran into one of our of our kitchen nightmares. One minute, the melted chocolate was so smooth and velvety that it was hard to resist drinki...

Food Science: What is Sourdough?

For anyone who began a sourdough starter from our recipe last week, we hope your starter is bubbling happily right now! If the surface is frothy and you get a sharp whiff of vinegar when you peek unde...

Word of Mouth: Oven Spring

Oven Spring noun: In bread baking, the final burst of rising just after a loaf is put in the oven and before the crust hardens. When the dough hits the hot oven, it can puff up to as much as a third ...

Searing Meat Before Cooking: Worth the Extra Effort?

At a recent dinner party, we were asked whether it was really necessary to sear meat before cooking it, especially if it was just getting slow-cooked in a braise or a stew. Our friend logically poin...

Food Science: Resting Meat

When we're cooking large pieces of meat like roasts or turkey, we've always been told to let the meat rest before cutting into it. This has seemed like an odd step to us, especially since it's been in...

Are Bananas Going Extinct?

Whether we slice them over cereal or put them in our backpacks for an afternoon snack, we certainly do love our bananas. But lately we've been hearing more and more news that our beloved banana may be...

Quick Tip: How to Fix a Broken Sauce

Sometimes a sauce will break no matter how attentive you are to its whims and needs. (See our post here with the most common reasons why emulsified sauces break.) It's frustrating and discouraging, es...

Food Science: Why Did My Sauce Break?

It's your average weekend morning. You're making some hollandaise, whisking away and looking forward to a delicious velvety sauce to serve with your brunch. And then it happens. You look down and some...

France Says "Non!" to Genetically Modified Food

Genetically modified food is quite common in the United States, but Europeans have long been suspicious of it, particularly in France....

Food Science: What Is an Emulsion?

There's no doubt about it--emulsions are tricky. They're confusing to understand and they're confusing to make. Sometimes even the most seasoned chef can have trouble getting their sauces to emulsify!...

Good Question: Why Is My Yeast Dough Hard to Roll Out?

A yeast question, from Liz: I've been trying to conquer my fear of working with yeast — so far, so good. But one thing I've noticed is that when I punch down the dough after the initial rise, it ...

Food Science: Healing with Honey

It's Bathroom Month over at our sister sites! For most of us, the bathroom is where where we keep all the various band aids, wraps, ointments, and goops that soothe the little nicks we seem to collect...

Pantry Basics: How to Make Cake Flour Substitute

Ever feel inspired to whip up a home-made cake, only to find yourself out of cake flour? Or maybe it seems a bit excessive to buy an entire bag of cake flour when you're only planning on making one ca...

Kitchen Science: Demystifying Gluten

Ah, gluten. Bread bakers love it and pastry chefs keep it at a respectful distance. So what's the deal with gluten and what can we oh-so-humble home cooks do about it? All flour contains a certain pe...

Kitchen Science: In Pursuit of the Perfect Cookie

Whether it's crisp and flat, big and chewy, full of nuts or simply with toasted oats, we all know exactly what makes our bellies rumble and our hands itch for a frosty glass of milk. Yup, it's the Per...

The Slice: The (Raw) Milk Itself

You'd probably think otherwise, but raw milk doesn't taste too different from pasteurized milk. In its liquid form it actually shouldn't. Good raw milk should be as clean as - or, arguably, cleaner th...

Food Science: Why Tougher Meats Make Good Braises

We've often wondered why so many recipes for beef braises call for lean cuts of meat like bottom round or chuck and whether a more tender cut might work just as well or better. Since lean cuts also ...

Baking Lab: Why Did Our Cake Fall Flat?

Last week we shared a recipe for Coffee Cake with Coffee Glaze - a moist, fluffy cake flavored with coffee and just a hint of cocoa. The recipe that we posted was not, however, our first attempt. ...

Tip: How to Choose Decaf Coffee

Do you drink decaf coffee? It's really a necessary evil in the evenings and for those of us trying to watch our caffeine. The process of decaffeinating creates imbalances of taste and sometimes flat...

Coffee Terroir: Indonesia and the Pacific

The third major coffee-producing region includes Indonesia, parts of southeast Asia, and certain Pacific islands. Like the other two major coffee regions, beans from this part of the world have a di...

Coffee Methods: The Vacuum Brewer

The headlining piece of last week's New York Times dining section brought new awareness to an old method of making coffee: the vacuum, or siphon brewer. (They are sometimes also called glass brewers...

Coffee Terroir: Africa and Arabia

Africa is the birthplace of coffee and it's been cultivated and brewed here far longer than anywhere else in the world. It's fitting, then, that African coffees have a depth and wine-like sophisticati...

Green to Dark: Grades of Coffee Roasting

From the green bean to the darkest roast, here's a scale of coffee roasting and a guide to those different roasts you see marked on your coffee beans: ...