Some people are suspicious of ingredients with unfamiliar names, such as xanthan gum. We are frequently asked, “Aren’t your dishes chock-full of chemicals?” Well, yes, but all foods are, including the most natural and organic ones. But nearly all of those chemicals are derived from natural ingredients or processes that have been used for decades. […]
Whipping siphons are useful for making so much more than whipped cream. We use ours all the time for making fresh soda, speeding up marinating, infusing fruit, or topping a dish with foam or flavor or textural contrast. Whether you’re carbonating, infusing, or foaming, there are a few basics you should know. The siphon requires […]
Whipping siphons are easy and fun to use. This Valentine’s Day, try wowing your special someone with a Modernist dessert created with nitrous oxide or carbon dioxide. Use our suggestions below for tasty ideas beyond the realm of whipped cream. Lemon Curd: Try using a whipping siphon instead of a pastry bag for piping your […]
Pressure cookers are fantastic tools. They develop the characteristic flavors and textures of foods so quickly that what is conventionally a long, labor-intensive process becomes one hardly more time-consuming than a casual sauté. Risotto takes six minutes instead of 25. An intense chicken stock takes only 90 minutes. You can even pressure-cook food in canning […]
The Mac and Cheese recipe makes five servings, but you’re throwing a dinner party for nine people. You’re in luck: We’ve made it easy to scale our recipes up to greater yields (or down if you have fewer mouths to feed) by using baker’s percentages. Just follow these simple steps. Look in the scaling […]
Cooking sous vide is easier than its fancy name might suggest. You simply seal the ingredients in a plastic bag (you can also use a canning jar) and place them in a water bath, a combi oven, or any other cooker that can set and hold a target temperature to within a degree or two. […]
We’ve heard of chefs who claim that they can tell temperature by pressing a thermometer to their lips. Setting aside the problem that this technique could lead to a trip to the emergency room, the approach seems highly vulnerable to human error. Leaving temperature control to intuition is a recipe for disaster: dry and rubbery […]
When we found out that Top Chef would be filming season 10 in Seattle, we couldn’t let them leave town without stopping by the Modernist Cuisine lab. About midway through the season, we hosted Padma Lakshmi and the remaining contestants for a 22-course tasting to give them firsthand experience of some of the iconic dishes […]
Welcome to 2013! We hope you already decided to make “try Modernist cooking” your New Year’s resolution. We’ll be back later this week with tips on how to calibrate your thermometer (a key to Modernist-cooking success), but until then, browse through our Recipe Library and get ready to take the plunge!
As Nathan is fond of saying, Modernist cuisine doesn’t bring science into the kitchen; science has always been in the kitchen. Modernist cuisine takes the ignorance out of the kitchen. Watch the video above to see the latest episode of MDRN KTCHN, in which our Director of Applied Research, Scott Heimendinger, explains the ins and […]