Tip: How to Cook the Sweetest Sweet Potatoes
Getting the sweetest sweet potatoes isn't about picking out the ripest or most promising potatoes in the bunch. Nope! Rather, a little culinary magic trick will transform your toughest tubers into del...
Posts tagged “Food Science”
What's the Deal with Xanthan Gum?
Unless you do a lot of gluten-free baking, you might not have come across xanthan gum before - at least not in a recipe. Flip over a jar of salad dressing or a carton of ice cream to read the ingredie...
Baker's Challenge: How to Bake at High Altitudes
Reach a certain elevation, and suddenly cakes turn out dry, cookies won't set, and quick breads won't rise. Home bakers who live in the mountains should start their own support group! We have a few ti...
The Science Behind Bruising Your Herbs
By now, most of us are pretty proficient when it comes to using fresh herbs in the kitchen. They're hands down one of the best ways to impart fresh, clean flavors into your food, but did you know s...
Why Milk Boils Over...And How to Stop It!
It's happened to all of us at least once. We're heating milk for a sauce, or oatmeal, or any number of things, but there are just a few bubbles around the edge. We turn away for just a minute to do so...
Food Science: Why Cooked Vegetables Turn Bright Green
Like Elizabeth, we like something green on our dinner plate, both to round out a full meal and for that bright pop of color. In fact, the transformation of vegetables like spinach and broccoli from da...
Perfectly Sweet: How to Get a Crunchy Top on Brownies
We love the glossy wafer-thin top crust that sometimes appears on brownies almost as much as we love the fudgy layer underneath. We always thought this was phenomenon was random or particular to speci...
True or False: Which Cooking Myths Can You Believe?
True or false: A potato can save a salty soup, boiled veggies lose all their nutrients, and mushrooms should never be cleaned with water. Think you know the answers? ...
Baking Sticky Toffee Cakelets
Anatomy of a Recipe
Sara Kate's delicious Sticky Toffee Cakelets are impossible to resist. Don't you want to run a finger through that toffee sauce and take a lick?! Besides being delicious, these miniature cakes come in...
What's the Difference? Gelatin Powder, Gelatin Sheets, and Leaf Gelatin
We've been having a bit of a debate at Kitchn Central stemming from a comment left on our post about Spanish Desserts for Fall. Reader MSN asked about substituting gelatin leaf (called for in one of t...
Food Science: How Butter is Made
A few years back, we were whipping up a bowl of cream and got distracted. When we turned back to the mixer, the whipped cream had gone past the point of fluffy peaks and was now a grainy, watery mess....
Canning Across America and Swallowing Swords
Splendid Table with Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Curious about canning? Why not get some friends together and host a canning party?! Kim O'Donnel of "Canning Across America" tells us how. Plus, the art of sword swallowing, how cooking played a role ...
The Musical Fruit: Why Beans Make Us Gassy
We love beans. We love them on their own, we love them in soups, we love them mashed into dips. But we definitely don't love some of their less fun digestive consequences. Apologies for the rather ind...
How To Make Your Own Vinegar
Do you see it? That slimy red substance at the top of this ceramic jar is called a mother of vinegar, or vinegar mother. It's basically a combination of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that forms...
Kitchen Science: Why Toast Nuts Before Baking?
Taking the extra step to toast nuts on their own when they'll just be going back into the oven again as an ingredient in a baked dish can feel like just that - an extra step. As we toasted nuts for a ...
How Color Affects Your Perception Of Food
Did you know that the color of your food, dishes, table linens and wall color can all have an affect on your appetite? Some colors can excite your senses and entice you to eat more, while others can...
The Real Truth About Skunked Beer
Beer Sessions
Skunked beer is the bogey man of the beer world. New beer drinkers are told to never ever let refrigerated beer get warm - and definitely don't cool it again! - or suffer off-putting and skunky flavor...
Julia Child Makes Primordial Soup
Vintage Video
"I'm boiling up some primordial soup. There's a primordial soup machine!"...
From the Herb Garden: Marjoram
Do you like marjoram? It seems to us like a sleeper herb - the one that gets picked up just to round out your herb collection but then WHAM! The next thing you know, you're using it in everything! At ...
Food Science: What Makes Apples Mealy
There is almost nothing worse than biting into an apple that looks delicious and crispy on the outside only to get a big mouthful of grainy, tasteless sawdust. It's one of the only times we actually s...
How Can I Double A Batch of Cookies?
Good Questions
Q: Any tips on doubling cookie recipe batches? Do I need to add more eggs? I made snickerdoodles and doubled the recipe, but they came out flat and chewy, not puffy. Sent by Joyce...
Egg Substitutes in Baking? Try Flax Seed!
Have you ever tried replacing eggs with ground flax seed in your baking? We spotted this tip on the Bitten blog last week and were instantly intrigued. We've been known to sprinkle flax seeds over ou...
Brewing Beer at Home: The Wort and First Fermentation
Beer Sessions
This past weekend, we got out all our shiny new beer brewing equipment and went to work. In this first phase, we boiled the wort, added the yeast, and got our very first batch of beer fermenting hap...
Sweet Ice! How Sugar Affects Freezing
Food Science
Have you ever had a batch of ice cream that stays soft and slushy no matter how long you leave it in the freezer? Or the other extreme, an ice cream that freezes so hard that you can hardly dig your s...
Would You Cook With Tomato Leaves?
So many leaves for just a few tomatoes! What if we could eat tomato leaves as well as the precious fruit? But tomato foliage is poisonous, right? Not so fast, says Harold McGee, in a recent article in...
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