Some people believe that high-altitude baking—3,000 feet above sea level is where the problems start—is an Xtreme sport that could only appeal to people with a death wish, but, actually, the risk is low if you follow the rules of the game.
Unfortunately, the game and its rules change with every 500 feet of increased altitude, which means the cake that wins a blue ribbon in Denver is a disaster in Aspen. So I’ve created a chart customized for each elevation.
High-altitude baking requires six adjustments: higher oven temperature, shorter baking time, more liquid, more flour, less baking powder, and less baking soda. Click the link below that comes closest to matching your elevation to display the printable chart. It’ll give you excellent baking results, whether you live in Indian Wells, Arizona (5,772 feet), South Bannock, Idaho (6,560 feet), or Hells Half Acre, Wyoming (7,878 feet).
When it’s new, the $190 Wusthof Classic is a better knife than the $10 Ginsu. But a few months later, the Ginsu is still worth $10, and the Wusthof is worth about a buck ninety-eight. [click to continue…]
In this 2-minute video I show you how to catapult your salads onto the best-dressed list, and I offer a product-placement idea for a gadget that should be in every kitchen but isn’t well-known.
I always felt Natalie Portman and I would make a great couple if I weren’t already happily married, if I were thirty years younger, if I were taller and more interesting, if I were a famous actor and philanthropist, if I didn’t go to bed at 8 o’clock, and if she would stop blocking my calls. But now that I’ve seen her slice a cucumber in the movie “Brothers,” I’m reevaluating our relationship. Here’s my 1-minute review:
Brodie Welch contributed the headline for this post.
Risotto can be very good, but the cost-benefit ratio is out of whack. You stir and stir, neglecting the more important parts of the meal, and after all that work and dedication, you still wind up with—rice. For all the trouble it takes to make risotto, you could have carrot cake.
But Barbara Kafka sets things right. Her microwave recipe produces a perfect, creamy, al dente risotto with the ease of nuking a TV dinner. If it makes you uncomfortable to reap unearned rewards, I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to live with the guilt.
Actually, there was only one test question, and it was concealed in the headline above. You just answered it. Thank you for participating in the study! Here are your results: [click to continue…]
I always thought it was because one of the prep cooks stole them. But chefs tell me it’s because they don’t need them. They’ve developed tricks that cut the scissors out of the deal.
For example, if you or I were going to par-bake a quiche crust, we might snip a sheet of parchment into a circle to line the crust before adding beans or pie weights. But a chef does it with origami: She folds the sheet three times, then tears it. No tool required. [click to continue…]
“We trussed the chicken,” according to a White House spokesman, “because the chicken cooks more evenly.”
This turned out to be inaccurate. Trussing presses the thigh against the breast, insulating it from the oven’s heat. So now the thigh, which is already the slowest-cooking part, falls even further behind the other parts, which overcook as they wait for it to catch up. [click to continue…]
Shopping at Wal-Mart a few days before Easter, I was shocked to see a carton of eggs priced at $10. I took a closer look, and realized they weren’t regular eggs; they were colored Easter eggs. Which explained the price.
And so it has come to pass: The only item left in an Easter basket that isn’t a high-fructose semi-edible has now itself become a processed food.
When did children and their mothers start outsourcing their Easter egg production? And how could they ever think that the thing to do with Easter eggs is to own them rather than to make them? [click to continue…]
Rinsing a chicken before you cook it makes about as much sense as tidying up the house when the cleaning lady’s coming. The chicken will soon be cooked to 165°F, a more effective antibacterial treatment than Lysol. What’s the point of drowning the condemned microbes only minutes before they’re due to be burned at the stake? [click to continue…]
It’s a cruel injustice that some people are born with a silver whisk in their hand, and they waltz through life making effortless, perfect Hollandaise. And then there are the rest of us, les miserables, who—well, may I offer you some tender spears of asparagus enrobed in scrambled eggs from Denny’s?
But my wife recently reminded me of a wonderfully forgiving method for making Hollandaise—and I mean the genuine article, not some Hollandaise-like thing. You almost can’t screw it up. Professional chefs don’t promote this foolproof technique and may not even know it exists, which is understandable. What’s the point of spending all those years at culinary school if cooking is going to be this easy? [click to continue…]
I know fussy cooks who take the extra step of removing the tiny stalk of folded baby leaves at the center of the garlic clove. They say this improves garlic’s taste, because, they’ve been told, the germ is bitter.
But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, these wild accusations are unfounded. My client is innocent of all charges, as I will now prove. [click to continue…]
This is awkward, but I have to say it: I boss you around too much. No, I do. I’m aware of it, don’t think I’m not. I mean, look at the name of the blog. Ordering you around like that. Like a person doesn’t need some personal space. How can I treat you like this? I feel terrible, I really do. [click to continue…]
When you’re following a recipe, an electronic tablet beats a cookbook six ways to Sunday, which is why I was writing all my Show & Tell Recipes for the iPad. But now look what Steve Jobs did. He declared war on the most popular online video format—the one YouTube uses. So the iPad won’t play my video cooking demos. It won’t play 75 percent of all the other video on the Web, either.
Cablevision, you think you know how to do TV blackouts? Well, eat your heart out. This is potentially the biggest TV blackout of all time. [click to continue…]
According to psychologists, separation anxiety is a developmental stage in which the child experiences fear when trying to drop an egg’s yolk and its white into separate bowls without wrecking either one. Most of us go through our entire lives without ever growing out of it. But with courage, determination, and the information in this post, you can put all that behind you. Here’s how: [click to continue…]
Whoever designed broccoli didn’t invite any cooks to the meeting, or they would have learned that we are not amused by vegetables that don’t cook uniformly. Until they release Broccoli Version 2.0 with the fix, here’s a 1-minute video that demonstrates a user modification that you can make with a common household tool.
It’s easy to believe, as Jerry Seinfield’s friend Elaine Benes did, that you’re a better dancer than you are. Who’s going to tell you there’s a problem with those little kicks? It’s easy for home cooks to be deluded about their abilities, too, because family and friends would rather be kind than candid.
People often say they have self-esteem problems. If so, it usually isn’t because they underestimate their abilities. A decade ago Justin Kruger and David Dunning published an article, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” For years, surveys have been telling us that everybody thinks he’s an above-average driver. But it turns out that people overrate their skills on all counts, and the worse they are at something, according to Kruger and Dunning, the more likely they are to think they’re good at it. [click to continue…]
You start off boiling potatoes, but you don’t use boiling potatoes. Starchy baking potatoes, like russets or Yukon Golds, are better.
Then it turns out the dish isn’t really about potatoes. To give mashed potatoes their due, you have to let the vegetable be upstaged by the richer flavors of butter, cream, and, perhaps, herbs.
And good mashed potatoes aren’t actually mashed. You use a ricer or food mill—not a mixer, masher, or food processor.
“Enriched extruded simmered bakers” would be more accurate, but maybe the romantics in the crowd would have a problem with that.
It’s impossible to find a good recipe for anything. I don’t mean that recipes tell us to do things wrong, but that they tell us in the wrong way. Recipes are not user-friendly.
Take one well-known piece of cookbook writing, Julia Child’s 3½-page recipe for hard-boiled eggs. It’s in the first edition of From Julia Child’s Kitchen. Julia, like most cookbook authors, mixes together different kinds of information that should be kept separate. Cooking theory, anecdotes, asides, bon mots, and step-by-step directions—they’re all pitched indiscriminately into the same stream of consciousness. So when you need to quickly find a single item of information, or you want an uninterrupted guide for organizing your workflow, bon chance.[click to continue…]
Energy economists lie awake nights worrying about something called “peak oil.” I’ve been obsessed with peak oil too, but it’s frying oil’s peak that’s on my mind. How can I ever be certain that the canola in the pan has hit the perfect temperature for searing?
It’s critical to know when this moment has arrived, especially if you follow the lead of professional chefs, who usually use uncoated stainless steel pans for frying meat so they get a crusty sear and a nice fond for the sauce. Rush meat into underheated, 300-degree oil, and it sticks to the stainless and cooks too slowly. Wait till you see wisps of smoke, signaling about 450 degrees for many frying oils, and the meat cooks too fast and delivers a flavor impression of—what is that subtle note?—oh, the fireplace! [click to continue…]
It’s okay to call them hard-boiled eggs, as long as you don’t mean it. The last thing you should ever do to an egg, even a boiled egg, is boil it. At 212°F, eggs turn into art erasers.
For nice, silky eggs, start them in cold water and bring the temperature up slowly, so the whites don’t get too far ahead of the yolks. Cut the engine when the water hits 180°F—a bare simmer.
Use fresh eggs for beautiful colors. Use older eggs for easy peeling.
When they’re done, give each egg a couple of cracks with the back of a spoon and drop it into ice water. Start peeling from the broad end.
But the main thing is: Don’t boil. And if anybody ever says, “She can’t boil an egg,” tell them, “I can, but I choose not to.”
It was either the tablespoon or the teaspoon. One of them had to go. They sound—and more crucially, read— too much alike.
Call it the teablespoon problem.
The human brain is great at making distinctions, but asking it to discriminate between a pair of terms that mean almost the same thing and both begin with “t” and end in “spoon”? That, my friends in River City, spells trouble. It’s the rare dish that survives a teablespoon mixup. [click to continue…]
What would a psychoanalyst make of someone who has fantasies about kitchen timers? Well, draw whatever conclusions you will, Doctor. Here, from the depths of my subconscious, is what I’ve been dreaming about:
For little jobs like setting a timer, no one, as far as I’m concerned, has ever improved on the old-fashioned control knob. Turn it one way to add minutes, the other way to subtract them. Unlike timers with tiny buttons, a knob lets you set the device quickly, intuitively, and without complications. And if the knob-controlled timer is secured to a stable surface, you can set it with one hand, which is all you’ve got if the other hand is holding a pot or is covered with butter. [click to continue…]
Watch this 3½-minute video review of the OXO food scale—a product that almost looks like Steve Jobs designed it—and you’ll be so sorry you ever trusted that reckless Betty Crocker.
As a cook, I’m a case study in multiple personalities, though I’m proud to say that I almost don’t even qualify for medical coverage, since I only fracture into two identities, a low number that places me among the elite in the Diagnostic Manual. As my doctor and legal guardian keeps telling me, I’m so much better integrated than those hard cases who can get into a barroom brawl while they’re sitting alone in the bathtub.
But though there are no more than two sides of me that alternate the cooking chores, my split selves couldn’t be more divergent. [click to continue…]
If you’re reading this on an untethered laptop and you’re a fully-grown adult who knows when someone is joking, I’d like you to try an experiment for me:
Carry your laptop into the kitchen and get into the refrigerator with it. Right, just move the wilting head of lettuce aside and climb in. No need to pull the door closed. This won’t take long.
Now then. Are you beginning to notice any difference in your comfort level, compared with how you felt before you entered this new environment? It’s perceptible, isn’t it—the difference between 68 degrees and 38 degrees?
Thanks, now you can get out. You can’t? You closed the door, because you like to save energy? Well, at least you’re still connected to the Internet, that’s the important thing.
You think you know a product, then you find out you don’t know the half of it.
We ran out of half & half the other day, so I mixed up a batch of my own, using whole milk and some cream I keep on hand for cooking. My wife tried some in her coffee, and declared that it was much better than any supermarket brand. “And furthermore,” she said, building her case against big agra, “what’s up with the ampersand? Why is it never “‘Half and Half’?”
Putting aside for a moment the extremely important question about the “&,” I can tell you why she liked my half & half better. It wasn’t because I told her it was an artisanal product hand-crafted by a master cream chef, which I did, of course. It was because it had half again as much fat in it. [click to continue…]
Most of the people we see here at the clinic are in trouble because they can’t say no to something. With our lettuce patients, it’s just the opposite. They can’t say yes. It’s a national epidemic.
Denial is common: “Why should I eat lettuce?”
Your admission interview indicates that you’re beyond the denial stage and ready to face your demons. But in case you have any lingering doubts, let’s take a deep breath and acknowledge some realities:
Lettuce is good for you.
It is ridiculously inexpensive. A head of green leaf lettuce, enough to make a dozen side salads, is currently $1.98 at supermarkets here.
It is a convenience food—if you handle it correctly and aren’t hobbled by snobbery.
It is capable of thrilling the taste buds— if, as the recent New Yorker cartoon has it, you think of that crisp green leaf as a salad-dressing delivery system.
Lettuce gets the nutrition police off your tail. If you eat a corn dog, you’re a redneck headed for a heart attack. But if you eat a corn dog and a salad, you’ve just enjoyed a nutritionally balanced meal at one of LA’s edgier restaurants.
Here at the clinic, you’ll follow a 12-step program to free you from your take-it-or-leave-it attitude about lettuce: [click to continue…]
By “As Seen On iPad,” I mean, of course, that this announcement is being seen on the iPad. In the best tech industry tradition, the product itself can’t be seen anywhere, because the delivery date is months away.
But later this year, when Steve Jobs or someone else steps onto the stage of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts or some other stage, and unveils Pimp-A-ChicTM Pro, no one will say it’s just a bigger iPhone. This is the product that is going to rock the world of roast chicken customizing.
Some people believe that high-altitude baking—3,000 feet above sea level is where the problems start—is an Xtreme sport that could only appeal to people with a death wish, but, actually, the risk is low if you follow the rules of the game.
Actually, there was only one test question, and it was concealed in the headline above. You just answered it. Thank you for participating in the study! Here are your results: 
“We trussed the chicken,” according to a White House spokesman, “because the chicken cooks more evenly.”
Shopping at Wal-Mart a few days before Easter, I was shocked to see a carton of eggs priced at $10. I took a closer look, and realized they weren’t regular eggs; they were colored Easter eggs. Which explained the price.
Rinsing a chicken before you cook it makes about as much sense as tidying up the house when the cleaning lady’s coming. The chicken will soon be cooked to 165°F, a more effective antibacterial treatment than Lysol. What’s the point of drowning the condemned microbes only minutes before they’re due to be burned at the stake? 
It’s a cruel injustice that some people are born with a silver whisk in their hand, and they waltz through life making effortless, perfect Hollandaise. And then there are the rest of us, les miserables, who—well, may I offer you some tender spears of asparagus enrobed in scrambled eggs from Denny’s?
I know fussy cooks who take the extra step of removing the tiny stalk of folded baby leaves at the center of the garlic clove. They say this improves garlic’s taste, because, they’ve been told, the germ is bitter.
This is awkward, but I have to say it: I boss you around too much. No, I do. I’m aware of it, don’t think I’m not. I mean, look at the name of the blog. Ordering you around like that. Like a person doesn’t need some personal space. How can I treat you like this? I feel terrible, I really do. 
When you’re following a recipe, an electronic tablet beats a cookbook six ways to Sunday, which is why I was writing all my Show & Tell Recipes for the iPad. But now look what Steve Jobs did. He declared war on the most popular online video format—the one YouTube uses. So the iPad won’t play my video cooking demos. It won’t play 75 percent of all the other video on the Web, either.
Mashed potatoes are no dish for literalists.
It’s impossible to find a good recipe for anything. I don’t mean that recipes tell us to do things wrong, but that they tell us in the wrong way. Recipes are not user-friendly.
Energy economists lie awake nights worrying about something called “peak oil.” I’ve been obsessed with peak oil too, but it’s frying oil’s peak that’s on my mind. How can I ever be certain that the canola in the pan has hit the perfect temperature for searing?
It’s okay to call them hard-boiled eggs, as long as you don’t mean it. The last thing you should ever do to an egg, even a boiled egg, is boil it. At 212°F, eggs turn into art erasers.
It was either the tablespoon or the teaspoon. One of them had to go. They sound—and more crucially, read— too much alike.
What would a psychoanalyst make of someone who has fantasies about kitchen timers? Well, draw whatever conclusions you will, Doctor. Here, from the depths of my subconscious, is what I’ve been dreaming about:
As a cook, I’m a case study in multiple personalities, though I’m proud to say that I almost don’t even qualify for medical coverage, since I only fracture into two identities, a low number that places me among the elite in the Diagnostic Manual. As my doctor and legal guardian keeps telling me, I’m so much better integrated than those hard cases who can get into a barroom brawl while they’re sitting alone in the bathtub.
If you’re reading this on an untethered laptop and you’re a fully-grown adult who knows when someone is joking, I’d like you to try an experiment for me:
You think you know a product, then you find out you don’t know the half of it.
Most of the people we see here at the clinic are in trouble because they can’t say no to something. With our lettuce patients, it’s just the opposite. They can’t say yes. It’s a national epidemic.
By “As Seen On iPad,” I mean, of course, that this announcement is being seen on the iPad. In the best tech industry tradition, the product itself can’t be seen anywhere, because the delivery date is months away.
