A Few of My Annoying Things

Yes, there are still people out there who believe that the Earth is flat, that it came into existence a few thousand years ago and that history is full of legitimate alien sightings. The latter may turn out to be true, I don’t know, but science has clearly disproven the first two items on my list. In the kitchen, there is a similar list of beliefs that cooking science has dispelled but we simply go on with our hand-me-down beliefs. Let’s review the list.

Salad Dressing Must Be Emulsified: We all think of a French dressing with mustard and a 3-to-1 ratio of oil to vinegar instead of an infinite number of other choices including just oil and no acid, a Japanese-style dressing with sake, mirin and soy, tahini-lemon, or Thai-peanut, etc. There is nothing wrong with an emulsified dressing but the options are limitless and most home cooks in the world do not emulsify a dressing.

Don’t Start Onions in Cold Oil: I always start cooking onions, or any soffritto, in cold oil. This prevents the oil from overheating. Listen to the oil as the onions cook—you want a nice gentle sound. If it sounds angry, turn down the heat.

Mince Your Garlic: Most of the time, cook whole or smashed cloves in olive oil and then remove them from the oil when they are browned. This provides a subtle garlic flavor, the way they like it in Italy. Minced garlic is occasionally necessary but this is my go-to method.

Add Sugar to Tomato Sauce: This does not solve the acidity problem. Baking soda, just a tiny bit, does the job. Try a half teaspoon of baking soda next time you are cooking up a marinara and the tomatoes will taste sweeter and fuller.

Love Those Grill Marks! Nope, grill marks are a sign that the rest of the surface of, say, the steak is gray and lacking flavor. Constantly move a steak on the grill so the entire surface gets Maillard browning.

Soak Wood Chips for BBQ: Nope, soaking wood chips does nothing. It looks like a lot of smoke but it’s just steam. Once the water is baked off, then the wood ignites and you end up with the same amount of wood smoke that you would have had without soaking.

Sugar Will Make You Fat: Not really. One tablespoon of sugar is only 49 calories. And if you start substituting, say, honey for sugar in a baking recipe, disaster will follow since the chemistry of sugar is different than a liquid sweetener.

Hold the Salt! If you have a medical condition where you need a low-salt diet, well, that is up to you. For the rest of us, salt is critical for enhancing flavor. Keep in mind that the guideline for daily sodium intake is around one teaspoon. Well, if you make a soup or stew you might add one or two teaspoons of salt total which means that a soup that serves eight will have very little sodium per person.

Brown Meat for a Stew: This is not necessary. First off, if you are cooking a few pounds of meat for a stew, there is plenty of meat flavor. Second, if you finish cooking the stew, for the last hour plus, with the top off, the oven will brown the top of the meat on its own. (This is assuming that the meat is not totally submerged in liquid.)

Pea-Size Pieces of Butter: This is my favorite piece of lousy cooking advice thanks to Fannie Farmer! The French, for example, cut butter all the way into flour to make a pâte sucrée. Fully cutting the fat into the flour makes the dough much easier to roll out and prebake. Bigger pieces of butter do make a flaky dough but the resulting headaches are not worth it.

Good Cooks Never Follow Recipes! This is a subversive notion, one that produces a lot of bad food. If you want to make a dish from Thailand or Calabria, please follow someone else’s recipe. This is the holy grail of the information age—we learn from the experiences of others. Following a recipe is the sign of a seasoned cook, not a bad one.