The basic reason is that long muscle fibers are easier for your teeth to separate than break apart, so let your knife do the hard work and give your teeth a break. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt goes into excruciating detail as to why. (My thanks to William Couch for the link)
Well, we certainly wouldn’t be doing our namesake justice if we passed over this story. In addition to the four everyone knows (bitter, sweet, sour, salt) and the fifth most of you know (umami), researchers are suggesting that the human palate can detect fat as a distinct taste.
The research also found that a person’s sensitivity to tasting fat appeared to correlate to weight — essentially, the theory goes, people with lower BMIs have a higher sensitivity to the “fat” taste and tend to eat less of it. (Chef’s hat tip to Mr. Kottke)
Olive oil, especially extra virgin, enjoys a special place of privilege in the American pantry. The past ten years or so have seen it rise to a stature of near infallibility, suitable for nearly every purpose, the “good fat” health benefits lauded roundly as the cure for a great many ailments. That the average grocery goer even knows what “extra virgin” means and stares at rows upon rows of the stuff crammed into store shelves, the very definition of the tyranny of choice, is a triumph of the humble olive, not to mention marketing. I dare say there isn’t half an hour of Food Network programming that goes past without a few splashes of some “EVOO”.
When it comes to cooking with heat though, I’m going to suggest there’s another way. To understand why, you need to understand what happens to oil when you heat it up.
The temperatures we typically use in the kitchen, in the 325°-450° range, change our food — it is, after all, why we heat things. Heat denatures proteins, kills bacteria, caramelizes sugars and browns meat. Cooking oils are no different and at a certain temperature their chemical composition begins to change, to break down, which also changes the flavor of the oil. Sometimes, like with a browned butter sauce, this is a desirable change, but usually you don’t want an off-tasting oil to overshadow the food. The temperature at which this change happens, when the fat turns into a gas, is what’s called the smoke point and different oils, with various levels of refinement, have different smoke points.
Generally, animal fats have lower smoke points than vegetable fats and unrefined fats have lower smoke points than refined fats. So, butter has a low smoke point (around 250° to 300°) while refined canola and grapeseed oils have a rather high smoke points (around 450° to 475°).
The other factor to consider is cost. Extra virgin and extra light olive oils have relatively low to average smoke points but they’re also fairly expensive. Canola oil on the other hand is much cheaper and has higher smoke point as well as a rather neutral taste, making it suitable for roasting and frying.
The rule of thumb I use is I save my olive oil for cold use only — dipping bread or salad dressings. Refined canola oil is for most general purpose cooking like roasting or pan frying. I’ll use oils like grapeseed and peanut for deep frying, depending on the flavor I’m going for.
I tend to buy oil in small quantities, not the giant plastic value bottles, since it will go rancid if you don’t use it. Store it in a cool dark place (not the fridge, though) where heat and light won’t speed up the spoiling. I keep a few nut oils on hand (walnut, hazelnut) but only use them cold, mostly in salad dressings. I write the month and year when I opened it on the bottle with a sharpie and throw out anything that’s more than a year old — it won’t kill you but it will start to taste funny after a while.
While we’re on the subject of cooking oils, The New Yorker published an absolutely fascinating expose on the olive oil trade a few years back that’s thankfully available online. It detailed the widespread fraud and corruption that goes into nearly all of the olive oil, even the fancy high end stuff, we consume. That bottle of Bertolli (a division of Unilever!) that says “bottled in Italy” but sourced from who knows where probably isn’t quite what the label would have you believe.
For what it’s worth, I’ve found Spanish and even Californian olive oils that I quite enjoy and even prefer to so-called “authentic” Italian oils. Just not for my oven.
When Neven and I started Salt & Fat, this is the post I had in mind. A whole, roasted chicken, one of my absolute favorite meals to cook. There’s something about the whole bird, with the crisp skin and flavorful dark and white meat that I think we lose when we pick up a cellophane wrapped skinless chicken breast. Roasting it yourself is so much more fulfilling than grabbing one of dozens of dried out rotisserie chickens spinning around at the prepared food counter. This is what real, honest cooking is all about and it’s something everyone can do. Once you’ve learned the basic technique, the variations are limited only by your own resourcefulness.
A roasted chicken also activates so many different parts of your cooking brain. You’ll want to focus on the bird itself, where it came from, and then properly prepping, seasoning and, of course, cooking it. Out of the oven, you’ll need to break the bird down before you can put it on your plate. The leftovers are quite versatile, you’ll never suffer a dried out, boring chicken breast again. Then there’s making your own chicken stock, one of the great and simple rewards of being a home cook. This is real cooking, all from a bird that will cost less than a single mediocre meal at chain restaurant.
We’ll get to the variations and particulars eventually, but here’s a basic primer on roasting a chicken. Start to finish, the whole thing will take an hour and a half, which includes heating the oven and letting the bird rest, and most of that time is spent waiting.
First, find yourself a chicken, preferably one that’s raised locally without hormones or antibiotics. Three to four pounds is usually about right. Set your oven to 425°. Make sure there aren’t any gizzards in the cavity, rinse, then pat the inside and out dry with a paper towel. Rub about a teaspoon of kosher salt and black pepper inside the cavity, dust the outside with another tablespoon of kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper. If you have some kitchen twine, tie the legs together (we’ll work on advanced trussing techniques later) and tuck the wings behind the bird — the chicken in my pictures came from a farmer’s market where they used a loose flap of skin to tie the legs. Smart!
A small roasting pan with a rack (not the full sized one you’ll use at Thanksgiving) is the perfect cooking vessel, but a pyrex baking pan or even a cast iron skillet works just as well. Center the bird in the pan then put the whole thing in the dead center of the oven. Set a time for exactly one hour and find some way to occupy yourself in the meantime. Take the chicken out, make a small slice where the thigh meets the breast, the juices should run clear and an insta-read thermometer, should you have one, should register at least 160°. If not, back into the oven it goes for another 10 minutes or so. Let sit for at least 10 minutes (no need to cover with foil, I promise it’ll stay warm and steam will just cause that beautifully crisp skin to get soggy) before carving.
A basic carving technique is to first cut away each leg and thigh as a single piece of dark meat. Next, make a single cut down the center of the chest of the bird to expose the breastbone and separate the breasts. Cut along each side of the rib cage to remove each breast — let the rib cage guide your knife and remove each breast as a whole piece. If you want, cut the wings off and serve those as well or leave them attached to the breast for serving or just save for a snack later.
With sides, a whole chicken could serve four, but halving one with someone else is a real treat. Smear the crisp skin with some real butter and dijon. Rice, a simple green salad, fried brussels sprouts or glazed carrots would all make wonderful accompaniments. A crisp American pale ale goes especially nice.
Sarah “Home Cook Superstar” Simmons has some great tips on recreating Momofuku in your kitchen. This is the last I’ll say about David Chang until I attempt the bo ssäm myself.
Can Walmart really go up against Whole Foods? Long the bane of enlightened consumers, Walmart has been experimenting with local and organic meats and produce. The Atlantic decided to see how they fared against Whole Foods and the results are pretty interesting.
While not a coffee drinker myself, I’m married to a caffeine junkie - one whose wish list this past holiday season included an espresso maker. So researching I went, and I’m back from weeks of pained review-scoping to tell you that the general consensus is such: if you’re looking to spend less than, oh, $1,500, espresso makers are sort of a lost cause.
Every model seems to get the same complaints: inconsistent brewing, weird controls, wonky housing that’s hard to clean, unreliable hardware that fails in a matter of months. Even when I considered that for pretty much ever household item and electronic gadget there’s a loud minority who have had a bad experience, this was still worrying - what’s the workhorse of affordable, casual espresso makers?
The answer is a bit surprising - it may be this odd-looking little thing called an AeroPress. A hybrid design between a drip brewer and a French press, it’s a small, $30 set consisting of a chamber, cap, and plunger, which you position over your cup and then apply gentle pressure to press your coffee through a filter. It takes up no counter space, requires no electricity, has no moving parts, and is as easy to clean as a measuring cup. Sure, you have to buy filters; a year’s supply will set you back a laughable $6.
But how’s the coffee, you ask? Once again, I’m not the world’s biggest coffee drinker, but the AeroPress, combined with a frother, makes the best homemade latte I’ve had. My wife loves it, as do several friends who have them. It’s also recommended by Cooks Illustrated. At $30, you don’t have much to lose, really. I hope you find you’ve found a winner, though!
Care to guess what fancy restaurant this refers to?
It’s actually a Parisian public school where school lunches are a treasured and sacred part of school life. While in the U.S. we have to deal with ever evaporating budgets and “ketchup is a vegetable” approaches to feeding our kids, the French are feeding their students real, not processed, five-course meals.
—jimray
