Everyday cooking
fromcooking.nytimes.com
3 hours agoIs There a Perfect Way to Cook Eggs?
The pursuit of a 'perfect' boiled egg can overshadow personal preferences and the joy of culinary exploration.
Potato sprouts contain compounds (specifically glycoalkaloids like solanine and chaconine), which stick in the potatoes' skin and become toxic in the body when consumed in large quantities, leading to an upset stomach or indigestion. However, it's worth noting that potatoes already contain glycoalkaloids - the compound is just more concentrated in the sprouts.
Food safety isn't just about how you cook your food; it's about how you cool and store it. You don't need a degree in microbiology to meal prep safely. Wash your hands (for a full 20 seconds), refrigerate food within two hours, cool fast and in shallow containers, and stop trusting your nose.
The word 'allium' is the name of a group of vegetables including garlic, onions, chives, leeks and others that are botanically related. Because of the myriad ways they influence flavor, in states ranging from raw to cooked (even burnt), they're culinarily related too.
When churning out cover after cover at the saute station you can't exactly be picky about what's on the shelf above the stove. But that doesn't mean professional chefs don't have opinions about the pans they use every day during service.
Whether donning an apron at home or in a Michelin-starred restaurant, pretty much everyone agrees on the merits of cooking with cast-iron pans. They've been around for generations, passed down like an heirloom and fired up for all kinds of meals, from everyday comfort food to special company-is-coming fare. But there's one thing that needs to be acknowledged: it's not ideal for everything - specifically, cooking eggs.
Freezing seafood seems like it should be a two-step process: open freezer, put fish in, but it's deceptively unforgiving. Fish and shellfish are mostly water (just like us!), with delicate muscle fibers and comparatively low connective tissue, which means small mistakes in freezing technique have noticeable quality consequences once thawed. Unlike red meat, which has a dense structure and intramuscular fat to buffer damage, seafood can't hide any missteps,
"Fold maybe 6-8 inches of that tapered in back on itself and tie it off. That will make the skinny end much closer to the thickness of the fat end and allow for the roast to cook evenly," he says. "Trussing the rest of the tenderloin with tight circles of butcher's twine every couple inches will also keep the tenderloin round rather than allowing it to flatten out, which will also help with cooking evenly."
So when engineers at The New York Times steered a generative artificial intelligence model to scale our recipes, I worked with them to address common questions that math alone can't answer and create nuanced rules for a range of situations. (How do you halve three whole eggs?) Our recipe editors, all of whom have decades of professional experience, then reviewed rounds of scaled recipes, and the engineers incorporated that feedback into their model to help ensure the best possible outcomes.
"Even just a few minutes makes a difference," Daud explains. "Resting lets the excess steam escape and gives the starches time to settle, so the rice ends up fluffy instead of wet or clumpy." Daud adds that the go-to time is 10 minutes for a standard amount of rice, but larger batches can require a longer rest. "If I'm making a bigger batch for a dinner party," she says. "I usually give the rice around 30 minutes to rest." However, when making certain "cultural dishes" like maklouba, Daud notes that she will "let it rest up to an hour or even a bit more before serving."
For example, if a recipe calls for 1 cup of chopped onions, do you know exactly how many onions you'll need to buy or ultimately, chop? Often, you won't know until you get deep into your recipe's ingredient list, whether you'll need a specific volume or number of onions (sometimes with a size specification, but oftentimes - annoyingly - without). This leads to further confusion as small onions weigh around 6 ounces, medium about 8 ounces, and large roughly 16 ounces.
A candle warmer can provide much slower, steadier heat. Just place your bowl onto the warmer and stir the chocolate gradually until it reaches your desired consistency. You'll get smooth results every time because you can control every second of the process. This also avoids any potential of the chocolate coming into contact with water, which can turn chocolate into a gritty mess.