Hacks and Tips Archives - Modernist Cuisine

How to Rescue Overproofed Dough

Posted on November 20, 2018 at 9:00 am.

Written by Caren

It happens to the best of us. You wait many hours for your dough to proof so that you can bake it, and then, somehow, you forget about the dough (it’s easy to do, especially when you’re juggling meal prep during the holidays), and it overproofs. You may have even baked the overproofed dough, hoping it would magically return to life; instead, you end up with a pale, low-volume loaf that smells like stale alcohol. Overproofed dough, however, doesn’t have to meet its end in the bottom of a trash can. While working on Modernist Bread we developed a technique for saving overproofed bread.

The ultimate goal of proofing bread is to increase the volume of a shaped piece of dough through the production of carbon dioxide. Most of the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation happens in the final proofing stage. (The largest volume increase comes during baking when the dough nearly doubles in volume in the oven.) To expand, dough must be strong enough to retain the gas that it has produced. Gluten makes the dough elastic enough that it can expand around bubbles without tearing. Proofing, which begins once the dough is shaped and placed in a proofing vessel or on a flat surface, has some effect on flavor and texture, but it is key in determining the shape, volume, crust, and crumb of the bread.

When carbon dioxide exerts more pressure than a fully proofed dough can withstand, the cell membranes tear, releasing the gas and deflating the dough. An overproofed dough won’t expand much during baking, and neither will an underproofed one. Overproofed doughs collapse due to a weakened gluten structure and excessive gas production, while underproofed doughs do not yet have quite enough carbon dioxide production to expand the dough significantly.

Calling proof, knowing when the dough has reached its maximum expansion, is one of the more challenging things bakers have to learn to do. It takes practice and learning from a few mistakes. Conventional wisdom holds that overproofed doughs are irretrievably damaged and should be thrown away. Our experiments found just the opposite. In fact, we were able to resuscitate the same batch of dough up to 10 times before it suffered any serious loss in quality.

Our method for saving overproofed dough works for many kinds of dough, including French lean doughs, high-hydration doughs (you may see a slight decrease in volume as well as in crumb size for these), and country-style doughs. The method also works for farmers’ bread and most rye breads that contain a proportion of bread flour, such as landbrot; brioche and enriched doughs, including sandwich breads; and pizza doughs, though they may have a pale crust once the dough is baked.

Sourdoughs are more problematic; you should attempt to revive a sourdough only if it was made and proofed within a few hours. Sourdoughs that are cold-proofed overnight or longer acidify because of the presence of lactic acid bacteria. This acidification makes the dough very tough; as a result, if you degas and reshape it, the dough is overly tense, and still tough. You’ll end up with a loaf that doesn’t expand or bake well, and that is also misshapen and very sour. While some people (including us) like that biting flavor, others may find it too sour.

Mistakes are inevitable when it comes to proofing bread, but there’s no need to throw out dough if it proofs too long. Below is our step-by-step guide to saving overproofed dough (we call technique dough CPR).

Dough CPR

Step 1: Perform the fingertip test to make sure your dough is overproofed. The test involves gently pressing your finger into the surface of the dough for 2 seconds and then seeing how quickly it springs back. The dent you make will be permanent if the dough is overproofed.

Step 2: Remove the dough from the basket or other vessel in which you’re proofing it.

Step 3: Degas the dough by pressing down firmly on it. The pressure applied is the same as when you shape the dough.

Step 4: Shape the dough, and return it to the basket or other vessel for proofing.

Five Easy Tips For Freezing Your Sourdough Starter

Posted on October 11, 2018 at 11:06 am.

Written by Caren

One of the most important discoveries we made while developing and refining the recipes in Modernist Bread is that yeast is among the most resilient life-forms we’ve ever encountered (and we encounter many in our lab, which we share with a bunch of biologists). As it turns out, freezing temperatures do not kill all the yeast and lactic acid bacteria in a preferment. Some die, but most remain dormant while frozen. The key is to know how to “wake it up” properly and to feed it well so it comes back strong and ready to leaven.

There are a lot of great reasons to try freezing your sourdough starter. Using a frozen preferment affords an almost instant starter; even with the added thawing and feeding time required, it provides a significant time savings over starting one from scratch. Having a preferment ready to go is convenient—you can freeze it in portions and just thaw what you need—and frees you from a feeding schedule. There’s no need to worry about entrusting someone with your starter when you go on vacation.

Our experiments demonstrated that a frozen levain will perform well for up to 2 weeks after freezing it. Eventually the ice crystals in the frozen preferment grow big enough to damage the yeasts and bacteria, rendering them useless for leavening. If you have levain that has been frozen for more than 2 weeks, you can still use it in combination with commercial yeast. The less-active levain will still provide your bread with complex flavor, and the yeast makes the dough rise.

Tips for Freezing Levain

Working with frozen levain is simple, although freezing your starter involves more than throwing it in a jar and stashing it in the freezer. Here are a few recommendations to help you get you started.

Tip 1: Freeze your preferment immediately after you make it. Freezing a ripe preferment won’t give the yeast the nutrients it needs because there will be little food left.

Tip 2: Our experiments demonstrated that a frozen levain will perform well for up to 2 weeks after freezing it. If you have levain that has been frozen for more than 2 weeks, you can still use it in combination with commercial yeast for an instant sourdough flavor. We utilize this technique for the Second-Chance Sourdough recipe in Modernist Bread.

Tip 3: Divide the preferment into whatever weight you would typically use for a specific dough. Stiff levain can be portioned directly into zip-top bags. You may want to add 10 g to the amount that you are freezing because ultimately some will stubbornly remain in the bag. Lay the bags flat on a sheet pan to freeze them.

Tip 4: For liquid levain, portion the preferment into an ice cube tray and use an offset spatula to even out the tops of the cubes. We use a piping bag to inject it deeply into the tray as possible, eliminating air pockets. Once it has frozen into cubes, remove them from the tray, and put them in a zip-top plastic bag in the freezer.

Tip 5: When you’re planning to make fresh bread with your levain, just thaw what you need. Take the portion out of the freezer about a day before you need it and let it thaw at room temperature (21 °C / 70 °F). When it’s ready, the bag will inflate as carbon dioxide bubbles form in the preferment. If you froze your starter into cubes, pull out however many cubes you need for your recipe, put them in a bowl, and cover them with plastic wrap. After making our dough, we like cold-proofing our levain in refrigeration for 24-36 hours to help develop the flavor.

Bake Fresh Flatbread On Your Grill This Summer

Posted on July 2, 2018 at 11:00 am.

Written by Caren

It’s no secret that our team loves to fire up the grill—so much so that we even found ways to bake fresh bread with one while working on Modernist Bread. Gas and charcoal grills (and infrared grills, which aren’t common but can also be used for this purpose) aren’t the first option that comes to mind for baking bread. It turns out, however, that you can successfully bake breads and flatbreads on grills. Summer is the perfect time to expand your grilling repertoire by giving it a try. Read on to learn how to bake fresh naan on your grill in a few easy steps.

Naan is flatbread with a long history and a lot of fans. The soft flatbread is traditionally eaten in South Asia and often accompanies a meal. There are many varieties of naan—some are stuffed with meat or vegetables, others are filled with fruit or nuits, and some are topped with ingredients in much the way pizzas are. Naan is baked in a tandoor oven, which requires you to build up as much intense, concentrated heat as possible inside the oven’s cavity. The oven is well insulated and made of dense materials that absorb and retain heat for extended periods of time. This type of oven has been around for centuries and is meant to cook food quickly—slight charring is even expected because the oven is so hot.

Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to mimic a tandoor with a grill. All you need is a basic home grill, a baking stone or steel, and some really hot embers. You can cook more than one piece of dough at a time if you can fit it on the baking stone or baking steel. The dough cooks so quickly that you can cook it as needed and eat the bread warm.

How to Bake Flatbreads on your Grill

Step 1: Light the charcoal. Allow it to heat until it is burning as hot embers.

Step 2: Place a tava directly on the grill, and heat it, with the grill lid closed, to a least 290 °C / 550 °F, about 30 minutes. A tava baking dome is made expressly for baking flatbreads. Alternatively, you can use a baking stone, baking steel, or wok (make sure that it has a metal handle). The wok or tava can be placed on the grill facing up or down. Use an infrared surface thermometer directly on the baking surface to determine the temperature. If you don’t have this type of thermometer, make sure to preheat for the recommended time. While you can use the thermometer built into most grill lids, those only measure the temperature of the air directly in contact with the thermometer probe.

Step 3: Once the baking surface has reached the target temperature, carefully place the dough on the tava, wok, baking steel, or baking stone. You do not need to cover the grill again. Bake the naan until it has brown pockmarks and the dough itself has turned a creamy white.

Step 4: Flip the naan over. Once it has browned on the bottom side, remove it from the grill.

Step 5: Repeat the process with as many pieces of dough as you have.

A Confection Dissection: Love and Tonka Beans

Posted on February 12, 2015 at 10:57 am.

Written by Caren

Love is a particularly difficult emotion to define. If you ask 10 people what love is and how it makes them feel, you’re likely to get 10 different answers. It’s an abstract concept that wraps up any number of emotions we feel because of another person. We soar and then fall. We gain wisdom and then lose ourselves momentarily.

It’s no surprise then that Valentine’s Day elicits a motley crew of reactions. On February 14, some of us celebrate the people we love, while others celebrate their interpersonal independence. We mourn, we embrace, we cry, we reflect, we ignore, and we laugh at what Valentine’s Day has become. What we can all agree on, however, is that it’s a day to enjoy chocolate.

This year we wanted to create something that would appeal to everyone, from die-hard romantics to cynics, and capture the complexity of the holiday. Of course we wanted to do it with a twist. Our literal interpretation of a chocolate heart is a dark wink to all of the heart-shaped confections out there.

We’re incredibly lucky—head chef Migoya knows a thing or two about chocolate, which makes it easy to turn our sweet ideas into a reality. “Let’s make a chocolate model of an anatomical heart,” we joked. And then it happened. The proof of his incredible skill is in the pictures.

The discussion then turned to ingredients and what we could incorporate to continue the literal nature of our theme. Enter the idea of dehydrated red velvet cake for texture. Why? Because red, of course. New questions emerged. What ingredients could we add to play on the duality of the day? What could we do for the bleeding hearts out there? “We should add tonka beans,” chef Migoya suggested. And we did.

Tonka Beans

If Jack and the Beanstalk has any basis in fact, his beans must have been tonka beans. Tonka beans are flat legumes that are roughly the length of a shelled Brazil nut. When cracked, the wrinkled black shell reveals a dense brown fruit. Although these beans will not cause skyward beanstalk growth, their aroma is intoxicating. It’s often referenced as a vanilla substitute; however, this is a bit misleading. Tonka has a beautifully complex scent—spicy with notes of vanilla, tobacco, and smoke, plus a hint of cinnamon. Tonka beans have been used as a tobacco additive, to create perfumes such as Guerlain’s iconic scent Shalimar, and as an aphrodisiac in some cultures. It’s rumored to have mystical properties, used in some traditions as a “love-wishing bean,” in addition to summoning courage and incurring money.

Tonka beans pop up every now and then on menus stateside, but by far it’s not an ingredient you often encounter. It has a rather nefarious reputation, despite its incredible flavor profile.

Tonka beans are the seeds of Dipteryx odorata (commonly called cumaru), a large tree that grows in the rainforests of Central and South America. The seeds contain a chemical compound called coumarin, which we have to thank for the beans’ distinctive aroma and bitter taste. Coumarin was first isolated in tonka beans; however, it naturally occurs in many plants, including cassia cinnamon, vanilla grass, sweet clover, sweet woodruff, strawberries, cherries, lavender, licorice, and even apricots. It’s the source of the sweet aroma of freshly cut grass.

At high enough concentrations, coumarin can be moderately toxic to the liver and kidneys. Tonka beans have relatively higher amounts of the compound, which is why their consumption is regulated. In 1954, the FDA restricted the use of tonka beans as a food additive after a study found that coumarin was hepatotoxic in rats at high doses. More recent studies have not been able to replicate the results in other rodents, such as hamsters, and some researchers have noted that other species of rodents and mammals, including humans, likely metabolize coumarin differently than rats.

Like nutmeg, a little bit of tonka bean goes a long way. Single beans are typically shaved or grated into food, and because small amounts make a big impact, it’s unlikely an individual would consume enough in one sitting to cause medical concern or an adverse reaction. Its use as a food additive is legal in many countries, including Britain and France; however, many have created guidelines for how much coumarin should be consumed each day, though many note that short-term elevated intake is not harmful.

Here’s where the bleeding heart comes in. A common, and persistent, misconception is that coumarin is also an anticoagulant that causes hemorrhaging when high concentrations are consumed. It’s a bit of a culinary myth, but the association is not far off. Coumarin can be transformed into a natural blood thinner, but it takes certain molds and fungi to make that transformation happen. When these organisms feed on plants containing coumarin, it is converted into a chemical substance called dicumarol, an anticoagulant. Dicumarol is the toxin responsible for sweet clover poisoning, which occurs when animals hemorrhage after eating toxic quantities of spoiled sweet-clover hay. The phenomenon was somewhat of a mystery until dicumarol was isolated by biochemist Karl Paul Link and his team. The compound was used as a pharmaceutical to treat and prevent blood clots until it was replaced by synthetic derivatives, such as warfarin and coumadin.

Anatomical Chocolate

Back to our heart. We have a lot of unconventional tools at our lab, such as the fishing-lure molds we use for our Olive Oil Gummy Worms, but no human-heart-shaped mold. So we created one using food-grade liquid silicone. Food-grade liquid silicone actually consists of a base and catalyst that are mixed together just before you’re ready to cast the mold. Mix ratios vary depending on the brand you use—we used CopyFlex, which has a 1:1 ratio. You’ll need a standard kitchen scale to ensure you’re measuring the base and catalyst equally. To start, estimate the smallest amount of silicone needed. You can easily mix and add more if you underestimate; however, you don’t want to be stuck with superfluous silicone. We used a spare can—you don’t need a special container to make the mold in, instead use something that you can discard and recycle afterward.

We wanted the shape to be as realistic as possible, so we found a life-sized teaching model, intended for anatomy classes. To cast the mold, Chef Migoya submerged the model in food-grade liquid silicone and then allowed it to set for 12 hours. Once the mold was ready, it was sanitized with very hot water, and then placed in baking soda to sit overnight so that the chocolate wouldn’t absorb the flavor of the silicone.

For the chocolate, he combined milk chocolate, cocoa butter, oil, tonka bean shavings, and the ground, dehydrated red velvet cake, which he baked the previous day and allowed to dry uncovered overnight in a dehydrator. The fats from the cocoa butter, oil, and milk chocolate make it easy to slice through the finished chocolate and surround the crumbs without rehydrating the cake, keeping the crisp texture intact. The result is a satisfyingly delicate crunch.

We used milk chocolate to complement the flavors of the tonka bean and red velvet cake. We found that milk chocolate was the best conduit for these ingredients—the finished product is pleasantly complex with hints of spiced vanilla, tobacco, cinnamon, and cocoa. To finish, the set heart was coated with a vibrant red cocoa butter and, for effect, plated it with splatters of pomegranate juice that we thickened with xanthan gum.

We think the result is a rather stunning tribute to Valentine’s Day and evidence that the world needs more chocolate offal.

Sweet Tips to Melt Their Heart and Your Chocolate

Posted on February 10, 2015 at 9:32 am.

Written by Caren

Spending time with your sweetheart is lovely, but the best part of Valentine’s Day is the chocolate. At least, it can be. Working with chocolate can be tricky, so we’ve compiled a few tips (and an easy step-by-step recipe) from head chef Francisco Migoya that will make creating homemade chocolates a little easier—no tempering necessary.

Add a little bit of oil, such as olive or canola, to melted chocolate. This will prevent the chocolate from developing unsightly streaks if you’re not tempering it. The fat from the oil will destabilize the polymorphous fat crystals found in cocoa butter, preventing the crystals from arranging themselves. It’s the same principle used in chocolate-dipped ice cream cones, where the chocolate is mixed with coconut oil, and works beautifully to make chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Water and chocolate are not friends, however a tiny bit of water can be a huge boon to manipulating chocolate to work in your favor. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it is attracted to moisture and easily binds to water molecules. The sugars in chocolate are no different. When a few drops of water are added to the chocolate, the sugar will want to bind to the water, no matter how little is added. The reaction causes the chocolate to thicken, making it pipe-able.

You need only a small amount of water (think drops, not teaspoons) to thicken chocolate, and this technique works with any type of chocolate. The amount of water you add will vary depending on the viscosity of the chocolate you’re using, so it’s best to start by mixing just one or two drops into the melted chocolate, and then adjust to the desired thickness. To demonstrate, chef Migoya created dark-chocolate pops, covered in dehydrated strawberries.

First, assemble the pop sticks on a flat surface, such as clear plexiglass or a sheet pan, that is lined with an acetate sheet or parchment paper.

Next, add a few drops of water to the melted dark chocolate.

Transfer the thickened chocolate to a pastry bag. We used a round pastry tip, though any shape could be used to create desired effects.

Pipe the chocolate from one end of the stick to the other, overlapping to create a free-form chocolate latticework.

Once all of the chocolate is piped onto the sticks, add a topping for extra flavor and a punch of color. We used dehydrated strawberries, inspired by the classic combination. Immediately transfer the finished chocolate pops to a refrigerator until you’re ready to serve them. Refrigerating your chocolate will prevent sugar bloom, which creates a white powdery look on the surface of the chocolate.

If you’re still craving more, chef Migoya shared more sweet tips with chef Jamie Gwen. Stay tuned to our blog for even more heartbreakingly good chocolate later this week.

Keeping it Fresh: Make Your Juice Last Longer

Posted on January 8, 2015 at 9:51 am.

Written by Caren

Jack LaLanne was the world’s first fitness superhero, the “godfather of fitness.” He also really loved juice. The Jack LaLanne Juicer turned juicing into a mainstream practice and juicers into common kitchen equipment.

Research studies have yet to validate claims that juicing is more beneficial than eating whole fruits and vegetables, with some studies suggesting that cleanses or excessive consumption can do more harm than good. Juicing, within reason, is a great way to incorporate these ingredients into your diet if you aren’t naturally inclined to eat your fruits and veggies. There is also something undeniably delightful about a glass of fresh-squeezed juice or the unique flavor combinations that can be created—orange-durian-strawberry-mango-kale, anyone?

Whether you juice for health or to please your palate, here is everything you need to know about how to help your juice stay fresh and vibrantly colored for as long as possible and about selecting the proper juicer for your needs.

How Juicing Works

Juicing seems like a violent practice. There are gentler ways of retrieving flavor, such as stock making, when we coax flavors from these ingredients as they simmer. Juicing, however, is a form of violence on the biological building blocks of food so that we can unlock the liquid essence within. This means rupturing cells, but the cellular violence is well worth it—juicing yields incredibly rich flavors.

The rich flavors are fleeting, reserved for the freshest juice, which explains why the fresh stuff will always taste better than store-bought counterparts. When we make juice, sugars, acids, and peel oils combine to make the unmistakable flavor of fresh juice; however, over time, the acidity ruins the incredible flavor by destroying the aromatic peel oils over time.

Making the Most of Your Juice

Juicing is only half the battle. Freshly squeezed juice is fleeting. Although cellular destruction is required to release flavor-creating enzymes, as soon as cell walls are ruptured, the clock and biology will start working against you. The same oils that imbue juice with intense flavors and bright colors oxidize quickly. Aromas and flavors begin to diminish as flavor compounds break down.

When we cut open a piece of fruit, we know that it will eventually turn an unappetizing brown. The same applies for the liquid of those fruits. Many juices brown quickly in reaction to the trauma of juicing. Browning is a defense mechanism that plants use to prevent infection. To defend against germs, plants raise antimicrobial defenses. One mechanism is the release of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO) from tissue, which leads to the production of protective compounds, such as tannins, and to brown color. Pulp presents another issue. It typically browns long before the liquid. Pulp contains high concentrations of oxidizing enzymes and their molecular targets.

Browning may seem like a strange issue for those of us who are accustomed to purchasing juice at the store. Those juices, however, have already been treated to prevent color change and to preserve flavor. Although juicing is a relatively simple technique, these seven tips, used alone or in combination, will help you to improve your product and get the most out of your produce.

First, keep everything cold. Browning is caused by enzymes that respond to heat: for every 10°C/ 18°F drop in temperature, enzymatic activity falls by about half. You can safely chill most fruits to just above freezing before juicing them; however, avoid chilling subtropical produce, such as bananas, mangoes, avocados, and strawberries. Chilling these fruits can induce chilling injury, wherein low temperatures reduce the quality of produce.
Freezing produce prior to juicing will also prevent browning. Deep-freezing will permanently destroy the browning enzymes; however, flavor-creating enzymes might take a bit of a hit. If you decide to freeze your produce, thaw prior to juicing, unless you want to have a smoothie on your hands.
A three-minute dip in boiling water destroys browning enzymes. Blanching requires high temperatures, though, which will partially cook food by the time the enzymes break down.
Although some of us prefer a little pulp in our juice, filtering it out will eliminate the tissue that enzymes act on to form brown pigments.
Try lowering the pH of your juice. The more acidic the juice, the slower the enzymatic reactions that cause discoloration. High acidity also acts directly on brown pigments to lighten their color.
If you own a vacuum sealer, use it to help prevent oxidation. Although some oxygen is dissolved into the juice itself, vacuum sealing the juice will help slow down browning by removing oxygen.
Natural preservatives are another way to retain color and restore flavor. Ingredients like ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid, malic acid, and honey will prevent browning, while essential oil, alpha tocopherol (vitamin E), or even a squirt of fresh juice from a different batch will preserve flavor.

Picking a Juicer

The type of juicier you own will also make an impact on your juice. Devout juicing advocates prefer cold-press juicers over equipment that introduces any heat to the process. In truth, the mechanisms that make each juicer work can affect the quality of your product, yield size, and even what types of produce you can juice.

Centrifugal-style juicers:

Centrifugal-style juicers are similar to blenders—they pulverize food with a broad, flat blade that sits at the bottom of a spinning mesh basket. The pulverized food is flung against the basket wall, where centrifugal force expels most of the juice from the pulp through the mesh and into a waiting container. These juicers handle both fruits and vegetables well, but look for machines that are designed to automatically dispel pulp deposits to make cleaning easier and to prevent clogs forming in the basket. With centrifugal force comes one major drawback: the friction of the force oxidizes the juice faster, which damages the flavor and color. You’ll also find that the yield from these machines is smaller than its Champion-style counterpart.

Champion-style juicers:

Champion-styles juicers are workhorses. Food is pushed down a chute onto a serrated, rotating blade. As fruits and vegetables pass through the blades, cell walls rupture, releasing their contents, which rapidly collect in a bowl. These appliances excel at separating solids from liquids: pulp is discarded into a separate waste receptacle. Champion-style juicers are also ideal for juicing relatively dry foods, like wheatgrass or leafy greens that can be difficult for other machines to pulverize. The primary shortcoming of this style of juicer is that the pulp still retains some liquid, which reduces overall yield.

Food presses:

Food presses or cold-press juicers (also known as masticating juicers) force liquids out mechanically by squeezing food between two hard, unyielding surfaces, one of which is perforated. These machines, which theoretically seem like a medieval torture device for fruits and vegetables, are often preferred by serious juicers because they use less heat. Juice presses are great for softer foods or for foods that have been softened with sugar, enzymes, or a little heat. In some presses, including cider presses, food is placed between flat plates, often between multiple layers of plates. Citrus fruit presses accommodate the shapes of citrus fruits by using convex and concave pressing surfaces. Muscle power fuels juice presses, which causes juice yields to vary depending on the user. If you enjoy pulp in you juice beware— your juice will contain fewer particles because food is compressed, as opposed to being torn or shredded.

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Building a Better Turkey

Posted on November 19, 2014 at 9:03 am.

Written by Caren

When it comes to turkey, there are many different theories about the best way to prepare a bird. The topic can get downright philosophical with every side presenting evidence on behalf of a particular technique, leaving you to exit the fray with over a dozen methods, each one somehow better than the last. While some methods yield far better results than others, the only true loser is your dried-out bird. Here’s our guide, backed by science, for making a truly succulent turkey.

The Mechanics of Dark and White Meat

Structural differences between white and dark meat make succulence a particularly challenging goal. Meat gets its color from an oxygen-carrying protein called myoglobin, which naturally binds and shuttles oxygen throughout an organism’s body. Dark meat is comprised of slow-twitch muscles that are built for endurance and found primarily in the legs and thighs. These aerobic muscles require large quantities of oxygen-friendly myoglobin to help sustain prolonged use—such as long-distance running—hence their dark coloring. They also burn fat for fuel, so the meat ends up richer in flavor.

In contrast, if you were to look at a turkey breast under a microscope, you would see many light-colored, fast-twitch muscle fibers, geared for intense bursts of activity such as fluttering or scrambling across a road. These fibers work anaerobically and don’t burn fat, so few myoglobin proteins are present, resulting in a white, lean meat.

With different compositions and purposes, muscles cook at different temperatures—dark meat, for instance, requires higher cooking temperatures than white meat. That’s why preparing a turkey can get tricky. A Modernist approach is to cook each separately. For Thanksgiving, we like to create a confit of dark meat, brine the breast meat, and cook both sous vide at their respective times and temperatures. Cooking sous vide provides a precision-based strategy for maximizing juiciness, and it has an additional bonus: it frees up precious oven space for other dishes on your menu.

The Whole Turkey

It can be hard to imagine a Thanksgiving meal without an iconic, whole-roasted turkey. Maybe it’s a deep‑seeded, primal instinct based on millennia of roasting meats over a fire. Or perhaps it’s the nostalgia from that special moment when everyone in the kitchen holds their breath in unison to take in the aroma, the color of the skin, and the site of the steaming turkey as it emerges from the oven.

Whatever the reason, there are two issues that make roasting a whole turkey tricky. First, white and dark meat have to be baked together. Second, a crisp, golden skin requires temperatures that will leave the meat underneath undesirably dry. Suddenly, roasting a turkey becomes a juggling act between crispy skin and succulent meat, a task akin to an algebraic formula: if a turkey leaves the station in St. Louis at 15 mph, how long will it take to arrive in Denver with crispy skin and tender meat? Is there a definitive solution for roasting a whole turkey? Likely not. But we’d like to think that injection brining comes pretty close.

How Brines Work

On a fundamental level, brines modify meat proteins. When dissolved, salt dissociates into positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chloride ions, which are the atoms that actually diffuse throughout your foods. Salinity is a measure of the concentration of these two ions, which equates to a specific ratio of salt to water. Ions flow from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration, but, due to a shallow gradient in muscle tissues, the diffusion of dissolved salt tends to be quite slow, which is why it can take months to properly cure a ham.

Brining technically does not work via osmosis, as popular opinion suggests. If osmosis alone were at play, water would be drawn out of the meat, but brining works by pulling water into muscles. Chloride ions from dissolved salt diffuse into muscle fibers and accumulate along the surfaces of protein filaments. As these ions increase in number, they generate a negative charge that loosens and pushes neighboring filaments apart. This newly created channel provides enough space for water to enter the muscle, causing it to swell from the influx of ambient water. Ions further modify muscle proteins by causing them to bind tightly to water and resist shrinking as the meat cooks. Muscle will continue to swell until the salinity reaches 6%—after that, it shrinks and begins to lose water.

Brining is a slow process; salt diffuses through muscle roughly 100 to 1,000 times slower than heat conduction. As such, traditional brining can take days—the thicker the cut of meat, the longer it will take to brine. Protein is also found in skin, thus water molecules are bound and trapped there as well. As a result, the skin of brined meat can easily get soggy because of the time it takes for the brining process to work. Excess water can, then, lead to soggy skin and a rubbery texture. Enter injection brining.

Injection Brining

Injection brining speeds up the process, turning a multiday event into an overnight task. This technique will give you more control over where your brine diffuses, allowing you to expose only the bird’s muscles to the brining solution.

The day before Thanksgiving, create a brine of 6% salt by turkey weight—a reasonable rule of thumb is to use at least as much water by weight as you have meat. Pull back the skin so that you only pierce the meat. Then, using a brining syringe, slowly inject the legs, breasts, and thighs. Inject the muscles evenly over the surface, leaving about an inch between injection sites. Turkeys can be large, so this may require dozens of injections. After your turkey is brimming with brine, let it rest overnight in your refrigerator. When you’re ready to roast the turkey, put it on a roasting rack over a drip pan. The rack allows air to circulate around the turkey, which helps amplify flavors and promote even browning of the skin.

Crispy Skin

Skin has an incredibly high moisture content—it’s about 70–80% water by weight. The science behind golden skin is simple: dry it out by removing moisture. For particularly thick skin, however, we like to add an extra step before cooking—don’t cover your brined turkey when you refrigerate it overnight. Instead, leave it uncovered until it’s time to put it in the oven. By doing so, you’re allowing the turkey’s skin to dry out so that it crisps better in the oven.

Crispy skin is also dependent on knowing the internal temperature of your turkey, so we like to combine the drying step with another equally simple step: tracking the oven’s temperature. Cover your turkey with aluminum foil, which will help prevent the skin from getting too dark, and then place it in the oven. Depending on your oven, bake the covered turkey between 191-204 °C / 375-400 °F. Once the turkey reaches an internal temperature of 68 °C / 155 °F, take the foil off, and crank your oven up to 232 °C / 450 °F in order to brown the skin. When the internal temperature reaches 71–72 °C / 160–162 °F, take the bird out of the oven. The turkey will continue to cook from residual heat to an internal, safe temperature of 73 °C / 163 °F. Note that for the most accurate temperature readings, you should insert your digital probe into the thickest parts of the bird, such as the turkey’s breast.

Patience is a Virtue

Once your turkey is out of the oven, it may be hard to avoid a display of turkey worship, but try to resist the urge to immediately carve your bird. Letting the meat rest can be one of the most difficult steps of the entire process, but it makes a considerable difference in flavor and texture. Ripe with brine, your finished turkey will be juicy. If you carve into it too soon, all of those glorious juices will end up on the cutting board instead of in the meat.

Why do we need to let it rest? Some popular theories suggest that the delay allows moisture, forced toward the meat’s interior during cooking, to travel back to the surface. But the slow diffusion rate of water actually prevents moisture from migrating during cooking and resting. In truth, degraded and dissolved proteins slightly thicken the natural juices as the turkey cools. The thickened liquid then escapes slower when the meat is sliced.

We recommend letting your turkey rest for 20 minutes. Use that time wisely by reheating vegetables made earlier in the day. Five minutes before service, gently warm your turkey in the oven.

One Final Debate: Stuffing

The subject of stuffing also happens to be fodder for debate. In one corner, there are devotees of cooking stuffing inside the turkey. In the other corner are those who insist that stuffing must be prepared separately.

If you want Thanksgiving to be memorable for all of the right reasons, make your stuffing in separate cookware, like a cast-iron skillet. Cooking stuffing inside of your turkey introduces food-safety issues—because turkeys are so thick, your stuffing will never reach a safe internal temperature, meaning you must contend with contamination issues from uncooked turkey drippings. Plus, you’ll miss out on the best part of stuffing: the crispy bits on the surface.

Ready for pie and leftovers? We have a recipe and more tips coming your way.

Great grilling with 3 tricks to tender, tasty beef

Posted on June 13, 2013 at 7:00 am.

Written by Caren

BY W. WAYT GIBBS
Associated Press

You don’t have to go to some high-end steakhouse or shell out $200 a pound for ultramarbled Wagyu beef from Japan to get flavorful, tender beef for your next barbecue. Just keep three crucial factors in mind: the grade, the grain and the aging. A well-informed purchase and a couple of easy prep steps can make the difference between a so-so steak and one that sends your eyeballs skyward.

Step No. 1: buy the best meat that fits your budget. To do that, you need to know a bit about how beef is graded in the U.S. The system is based mostly on the age of the animal and the amount of marbling in the meat.

“USDA prime” is the highest grade. Only about 3 percent of cattle meet the criteria, so most prime-grade meat is snatched up by fancy restaurants and specialty butchers before it makes it to supermarkets. Below that is “choice,” followed by “select.” Anything below these is best avoided for steaks, ribs and roasts. In Canada, the equivalent grades are called “Canada prime,” “AAA,” and “AA.”

Though the visible fat content of red meat is easy to measure, researchers have found that it accounts for only about 5 percent of the variation in meat tenderness. The Australian government uses a much more reliable grading system that takes into account other important factors, including what the animal ate, how it was treated, and the pH of its muscles, which reflects how humanely it was slaughtered.

If cattle are exhausted, shivering, injured or highly stressed at the time they are killed, their muscles deplete their natural fuel store of glycogen, and the pH of the meat is abnormal as a result. Beef that is unusually dark, firm and dry often is a product of poor slaughterhouse practices.

A grade stamped on the package is one useful piece of information about the quality of the meat, but it isn’t the end of the story. Some of the best beef is not graded at all; it is sold by small producers who can’t afford to pay the high costs of having a USDA grader on site. In other cases, official-sounding labels — such as Certified Angus Beef — are not grades, but rather brand names used by loose associations of ranchers to make their meat appear distinctive.

Step No. 2: Whether you spring for a prime tenderloin or a select flat-iron steak, you can get the most tenderness out of the cut if you pay attention to the grain. Just like wood, meat is a collection of long, skinny fibers. If you cut the meat along the fibers, it’s like sawing boards out of a tree trunk: the resulting pieces are very strong and hard to chew. Instead, slice across the fibers; the tougher the cut, the thinner the slices should be. Each bite will then fall apart more easily and release more of its juices and flavor.

Step No. 3: For a real steakhouse experience, try aging your meat before you cook it. The best steakhouses use special humidity-controlled rooms to dry-age beef for a month or more. The drying process concentrates sugars, protein fragments, and other flavorful molecules to yield unparalleled taste. But because the steaks shrink as they dry and much of the exterior has to be trimmed off before cooking, this is typically an expensive step.

Here’s a shortcut: brush Asian fish sauce onto the steak (use about 3 grams of sauce for every 100 grams of meat). Put the coated steak in a zip-closure bag, then remove the air by submerging the bag in water while holding the open end just above the surface (the water forces the air out of the bag). Seal the bag, then lift it out of the water. Refrigerate the sealed meat for three days before you cook it. You may be surprised by how much tenderer the steak becomes and by the depth of its meaty, umami flavor.

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Photo credit: Nathan Myhrvold / Modernist Cuisine, LLC

Seven Salad Tips

Posted on June 7, 2013 at 11:00 am.

Written by Caren

With warm weather comes an abundance of produce. Salads are a classic way to create a mélange of flavors and textures by using the best produce of the season. But often times, produce can become soggy, wilted, or just plain boring. Here are some of our favorite tips to brighten up your salads during this or any other season.

1. Start with the dressing: Though it is commonly added last, dressing should be added to your bowl first. This will help evenly coat the salad when you toss it. Add slightly less than you think you will need. You can always drizzle a little extra over the top before serving.

2. Add a little lecithin: Liquid soy lecithin is a great emulsifier, which is why we add it to our vinaigrettes. Try adding about 1-2% (by weight of the oil) lecithin to prevent the dressing from separating. Make sure you use the liquid variety; the powdered kind is a foam stabilizer, not an emulsifier. We sometimes use a pasteurized egg yolk (cooked sous vide) as an emulsifier, but this adds flavor to salad dressings, whereas liquid soy lecithin does not.

3. Extend its life: Fruits and vegetables benefit from heat-shocking. Dipping them in hot water for a minute will increase their shelf life. Nobody likes wilted lettuce and shriveled celery in their salads, so, next time you come home with a bag full of produce, try our tips for extending crispiness.

4. Snip fresh herbs: Herb aromas are most potent right after cutting them, so snip them just before adding them to your salad. That’s right, we said snip. Not only do kitchen scissors make it easier to pluck and chop leaves, you can also snip these items directly into your salad bowl.

5. Think seasonally: While you can find many produce staples at grocery stores year-round, those in their peak season will still be best. In the spring, seek out asparagus, fava beans, peavines, new potatoes, rhubarbs, radishes, baby carrots, tarragons, and borages. In the summer, toss together the likes of tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, bell peppers, avocados, zucchini, stone fruits, melons, chervils, lemon verbenas, and basils. Sweet onions, arugulas, celery root, butter lettuces, apples, pears, figs, thymes, and parsleys are all good finds in the fall. In the winter, watch for spinaches, young chards, beets, citrus fruits, watercresses, winter savories, chives, and legumes.

6. Textural contrast: A salad doesn’t have to be all crisp and crunch. Textural contrast can be one of its great delights. Mix and match different textures, such as creamy (soft cheeses, egg-based dressings), tender (braised beets, cooked potatoes, baby lettuces), chewy (dried fruits, aged cheeses), crispy (lettuces, cucumbers, apple slices), and crunchy (fresh pickles, raw vegetables, sunflower seeds, croutons).

7. Use your hands: As long as you thoroughly wash your hands, there is no reason not to use them to mix salads. You will find that you are better able to coat each salad piece evenly. If you remain squeamish about getting your hands dirty, use disposable gloves.

Making your grill (or broiler) shine this summer

Posted on May 30, 2013 at 4:13 pm.

Written by Caren

BY W. WAYT GIBBS
Associated Press

Compared to other basic cooking techniques, grilling is hard: the temperatures are high, timing is crucial and slight differences in the thickness or wetness of the food can dramatically affect how quickly it cooks.

Bad design choices by equipment makers—kettle-shaped grills with black interiors, for example—make it harder still. But if you’re willing to do some simple arithmetic or break out a roll of foil, you can reduce the guesswork and get better performance from your grill. Similar tricks work for broiling; after all, a broiler is basically just an inverted grill.

Every grill has a sweet spot where the heat is even. You know you’re cooking in the sweet spot when all of the food browns at about the same pace. In most situations, the bigger the sweet spot, the better. One notable exception is when you need to reserve part of the grill for cooking some ingredients more slowly or keeping previously cooked food warm.

If you find yourself continually swapping food from the center of your grill with pieces at the periphery, that’s a sure sign that your sweet spot is too small.

You can get an intuitive feel for where the edge of the sweet spot lies by looking at the heat from the food’s point of view. I mean that literally: imagine you are a hotdog lying facedown on the grill. If the coals or the gas flames don’t fill your entire field of view, then you aren’t receiving as much radiant heat as your fellow wiener who is dead-center over the heat source. If the falloff in the intensity of the heat is greater than about 10 percent, you’re outside the sweet spot.

You can use the table below to estimate the size of the sweet spot on your own grill. The 26-inch-wide gas grill on my deck has four burners with heat-dispersing caps that span about 23 inches. The food sits only three inches above the burner caps, so when all four burners are going, the sweet spot includes the middle 16 inches of the grill. But if I use only the two central burners, which are 10 inches from edge to edge, the sweet spot shrinks to a measly 5.4 inches, too small to cook two chicken breasts side by side. I can use this to my advantage, however, if I have a big piece of food that is thick in the middle and thinner at the ends, such as a long salmon fillet. By laying the fish crosswise over the two burners, I can cook the fat belly until it is done without terribly overcooking the slimmer head and tail of the fillet.

Sweet spots are narrowest on small grills, such as little braziers, kettles, hibachis, and the fixed grilling boxes at a public parks. If the sweet spot on your grill is too confining for all the food you have to cook, you can enlarge it in several ways.

If the grill height is adjustable, lower it. Bringing the food a couple inches closer to the heat can easily expand the sweet spot by 2 to 3 inches. The effect on the intensity of the heat is less than you might expect: typically no more than about a 15 percent increase.

If your grill is boxy in shape, line the sides with foil, shiny side out. Your goal is to create a hall of mirrors in which the heat rays bounce off the foil until they hit the food. A hotdog at the edge of the grill then sees not only those coals that are in its line of sight, but also reflections of the coals in the foil-lined side of the grill.

The foil trick unfortunately doesn’t work well on kettle grills because their rounded shape tends to bounce the radiant heat back toward the center instead of out to the edges. But if you can find a piece of shiny sheet metal about 4 inches wide and 56 inches long, you can bend the metal into a reflective circular ring and build the coal bed inside of it. All food within the circumference of the ring should then cook pretty evenly.

Jury-rigging a grill in this way wouldn’t be necessary if grills came shiny on the inside and we could keep them that way. But, presumably because nobody likes to clean the guts of a grill, the interiors of most grills are painted black, the worst possible color for a large sweet spot. A black metal surface doesn’t reflect many infrared heat rays; instead it soaks them up, gets really hot, then re-emits the heat in random directions.

Someday, some clever inventor will come up with a self-cleaning grill that has a mirror finish inside, and the sweet-spot problem will simply vanish.

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HOW BIG IS YOUR SWEET SPOT?

For grills, measure the width of the coals or gas burners (including any burner caps that disperse the heat). Then measure the distance from the top of the coals or burners to the upper surface of the grill grate. Find the appropriate row in the table to estimate the size of the sweet spot, centered over the heat source. This table assumes a nonreflective grill.

To calculate the sweet spot of an electric broiler — which is the ideal vertical distance between the top of the food and the broiler element — measure the distance between the rods of the heating element. Multiply that measurement by 0.44, then add 0.2 inches to the product. For example, if the rods are 2.4 inches apart, the sweet spot is 1.25 inches from the element to the top of the food.

Width of heat source (inches)	Height of the food above the heat source (inches)	Width of grill sweet spot (inches)
14	3	8.1
14	4	7.7
14	5	7
16	3	9.9
16	4	9
16	5	8.3
20	3	13.2
20	4	12
20	5	11.20
23	3	16.1
23	4	15
23	5	13.3
29	3	21.8
29	4	19.7
29	5	18.9

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Photo credit: Ryan Matthew Smith / Modernist Cuisine, LLC