Pro chefs debate cooking tips and tricks

The logic they're all using on #2 is verkakte; the aromatics they're talking about penetrating the meat don't penetrate at all (the molecules are too large). Salt penetrates, which is why brining works, but flavors generally don't.

I don't think it's about absorbing, but more about how you pat dry your meat before searing. But then who wants to sit and pat dry two dozen tiny mushrooms one by one after wetting them.

I’d trust Harold McGee on just about anything.

For me the issue is not whether they will absorb the water or not, but aren’t they dirty. We wash everything before cooking, except meat.

Kenji is the best. Food Lab is always on my kitchen counter. Highly recommend it for anyone trying to improve at cooking.

Don't you have a device for puncturing the eggs in your country so they don't crack?

Called Eierpiekser in German: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B000A8BKX8/

One technique I find that works every time to make peeling easy is to instantly run the eggs under the tap once the timer has finished. My only explanation is it causes a temperature shock which helps the membrane peel away from the inner egg.

> For you Euro types who store your eggs at room temperature, everything discussed here still applies.

Hah, that was my question after I started reading, good thing I did ctrl+f fridge ;)

FWIW, Alton Brown has updated his recommendation to steaming: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/hard-not-boiled-eggs/

For me, they don’t crack right out of the fridge!

Boil the eggs in salted water (no matter if start is hot or cold, for hard boiled cook for 15 minutes from cold start, 10 if start from boil point).

After they are cooked place them in cold water until they cool off a bit.

You'll have no trouble peeling either way.

He's also at least addressed #5: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-clean-and-chop-mushrooms

I don't think he was the first of the Kenji/Alton Brown/Cooks Illustrated types to say this though. I'm pretty sure I switched to washing before he posted this.

I once needed to make 40 soft-boiled deviled eggs for a cooking contest. I got dozens of the cheapest eggs and tried all the techniques, both cooking and peeling. I found one cooking and peeling method that works for every single form of boiled egg.

The Ajitsuke Tamago method is the best cooking method. Stir egg(s) in a pot of boiling water for an exact amount of time and then dunk the egg in ice water. It's 100% accurate (no overcooked/uneven eggs) and fast. Change the time to switch between soft, medium, and hard boiled. Do not use too many eggs at once to prevent rapid temperature draw.

For peeling, the best method by far is the spoon method. You point the tip of a spoon into the eggshell at a ~15degree angle and move the spoon up between the shell and egg. Continue moving the tip up along the interior egg shell until the entire shell has been peeled away. You use a continuous motion so it's not finicky or time-consuming. None of the egg is damaged. Works on soft, medium, and hard-boiled eggs, and on old and fresh eggs alike. No water needed.

Re: sous vide, why not? We've been using this for quite a while, it was one of those "experiments" during the shutdowns.

Yeah, it takes some equipment, and like everything else there's a bit of a learning curve. For a lot of foods we like it works exceedingly well.

One thing though is that an item (poultry, fish, steak, etc.) cooked sous vide is essentially poached, probably not how you'd like to serve it. One way to deal with this is searing cooked meats rapidly in a cast-iron skillet. An alternative (that I prefer) is using my trustworthy Bernzomatic propane torch for the job. A quick "painting" with the flame gives a nice appearance and taste. Fun to do especially when we have dinner guests, a little dramatic flair never hurts.

And of course when not "incinerating" the evening meal, the torch is great for welding aluminum parts, a true multi-use tool.

I've read that for reverse sear the steak needs to be an inch and a half thick or more. That's rare to find here - have you made it work with thinner steaks?

Myself, I use a stainless steel frying pan on medium high, steaks stay on each side for about 4-5 minutes and that’s it. Perfect medium rare all the time with a great sear on the outside. That’s for 1” steaks by the way.

Ragusea’s video about how searing in extra virgin olive oil is perfectly fine (and in fact healthier than more neutral oils due to the monounsatured fats) was eye-opening. My dad always liked to sear in olive oil and said he didn’t believe the claims that it would impart a burnt taste to the food (but it indeed gives the crust a non-neutral flavor if that’s what you’re going for).

Personally, I never thought soaking dried beans overnight made sense. I eventually found a blog post where a chef did a blind taste test of soaking overnight vs directly boiling dried beans and found that they taste better without the soaking (but take longer to cook). Ever since then I have made what I think results in the tastiest hummus by skipping the soaking, skipping the baking soda (which imparts a weird aftertaste), and just straight boiling dried Umbrian chickpeas, followed by passing the final product through a #60 lab-grade sieve. Saves time, is much smoother, and tastes better than any recipe I’ve found online.

The only item that I am surprised about on the list is the chefs’ collective opinion on reverse searing. Personally I’ve found it works better than almost anything else if you’re not looking for a technique that imparts additional flavor (e.g., grilling over binchotan is my ultimate favorite approach for many types of meat but that is due to the unique smoky flavor rather than grilling per se). Reverse searing tough cuts for 6-7 hours at a very low PID-controlled temperature even seems to work much better than braising for flavor. I would like to see some blind taste tests for claims about methods that work better than the reverse sear.

Helen Rennie is another good one

There are also cases where the thing the chefs were doing was correct, even if they didn't know why or had the wrong reason. This is both the pro and the con of tradition-based crafts.

Anyway where were they even to get this information? Kenji has been influential the last few years, and he builds very heavily off of McGee, which came out in the mid 80s. It's been only like two generations of chefs here since evidence like this was even partially available.

Before that, and still mostly, the intersection of science and cooking is driven by the needs of the industrial food system. Whether you can apply that to restaurant cooking probably depends a lot on your personal background and skill set, but most cooks I've worked with would be lost trying to read an academic food science paper and apply it to their work. I definitely would be.

That's a big part of the problem. Another issue is they're working in professional kitchens, and things aren't the same as they are for a home cook. Yes there are things a home cook can learn from pro kitchens, but a lot of other things don't translate.

One thing I love about folks like Kenji, Brown, Gritzer, McGee, Cooks Illustrated, et al is they approach their experiments from the perspective of a reasonable home kitchen.

Maybe but there's definitely a difference in the amount of water content left when cooked say, MR vs MW (and final weight would reinforce that as well). And I find fattier cuts are perceived to be more 'juicy' as well.

> which is ridiculous given the fact that the most likely etymology of the term isn't what some ignorant individuals assume.

What do you think is the most likely etymology that doesn't do back to Arabic for infidel?

It's kind of odd that your example of his rage bubbling is that he uses one word rather than another. I'd have expected at least something like going around the internet criticizing people for using the word he doesn't prefer for reasons he disagrees with.

I was reading the beginning of this thinking "oh god here we go again this is like that few years when everyone on reddit was slobbering to say the word niggardly and explain why it's good" and then you just did exactly that lmao.

If a word is bothering someone why don't you find out why, instead of explain to them why it shouldn't?

It depends how you like your food to taste. If you need ingredients to be as salty as possible, then sure, but when they hit your mouth with the salt that you added at the end it's not going to make much difference.

> What are you cooking that you add oil after it is done?

Really everything from salads to grilled meat. If you use good olive oil, cooking it will remove its taste, so it's really a waste. If you want to taste some good olive oil, you have to eat it raw.

> Also, most of the pro chefs that I have watched will add salt throughout cooking (especially if it is a dish they can taste as they go) to make sure the balance stays right

I know, but then I tried this at home many times and I could not taste a difference. Perhaps there is a slight difference but I wouldn't expect any home chef to notice.

Fresh pepper and olive oil always taste better than cooked pepper and cooked oil. Garlic is better when slightly cooked. Same for herbs like mint, coriander, etc. that I don't cook anymore.

I think you should salt as little as is necessary, as late as possible, if for no other reason that you can't unsalt a dish. Salting and tasting early and often is important for improvisational cooking, of course. And obviously that includes stuff like salting meat before roasting, salting cooking water for starchy foods and vegetables, etc. But I've seen people add salt to their sautéed aromatics, and there's really no reason to do that.

Not to mention blooming your spices.

I just wish I could cook two dishes, one with salt during cooking, and one with salt after, and do some blind tests. I bet most people would have no idea which is which.

The same thing happened with expensive coke and cheaper coke, or coke and pepsi, or branded yogurt vs cheap yogurt, or very expensive wines and OK wines. And blind tests tend to show that most people can't tell the difference. Yet everybody is convinced that they can :)

My opinion: taste discrimination in various realms (cheese, ham, beef, wine, etc.) is a perishable attribute, and one that requires conscious attention. Overall experience is important, but I can't pick out cattle breeds by the flavor of their ribeyes like I could when I was a kid. I was eating a lot of beef from local ranchers while I was raising beef cattle, I was looking for certain attributes in the genetic material I was buying, and so I could not only immediately pick out a Charlois from an Angus mix immediately, but I could also pick out differences in crossbreeds. Note that in my experience this isn't unusual, but I did have a knack for judging critters (somehow I won a judging award at Cal Poly SLO and it involved chickens among other animals: I don't know a damned thing about chickens).

Now I can't taste beef the same way as I used to, especially not with grain-finished crossbreeds. I think it's one of those things, like pistol shooting, that is perishable and needs heavy reinforcement. Also, age is physiologically a factor.

TL;DR: eat more!