Recently in Debunking Food Myths Category

Cool article at Popular Science in the geekdom behind how our sense of taste works. Check it out if you're so inclined.

h/t Instapundit

Or, denaturization of proteins during cooking. I heard the crickets when I mentioned this before, believe me, but I had an interesting conversation during an excellent brisket dinner I had over the weekend, so I thought I'd share it.

Brisket is an excellent example of a cut of meat that can easily be ruined by improper cooking. The cut, located at the breast area of the cow, is heavily exercized and contains a great deal of elastin and collegen, the two types of connective tissue found in meat. There is a third type, located only in the hide, so a cook never encounters it. Elastin is the tougher of the two, it is the tough thread-like sinew you find and is little affected by the cooking process, so proper fabrication and slicing before service are required to remove as much of it as possible.

The other type of connective tissue, collagen, can be mitigated by proper cooking. A piece of meat has pretty much done all the contracting it's going to do by the time it reaches around 170º. As this contraction occurs as collagen begins to denature, liquid is squeezed out that used to be trapped between the fibers that used to allow them to move freely. This is the time that fat is so important. Without fat entering to keep the collagen fibers seperated, it becomes more difficult for the fibers to break down and you get the dry, mealy, over-cooked pot roast most of us grew up with. (Except me- Mom makes an excellent pot roast! Whew!!)

Let's talk about temperature now. We know that the meat has shrunk and lost as much juice as it's going to by the time it reaches 170º. Is it time to eat? The answer is, sometimes. If you've been lucky enough to get a cut with a nice fat cap, and you've cooked it fat side up so the fat can melt through the collagen fibers, they may be denturing nicely and you're good to go. But if you're not so lucky, you're going to dry your brisket out at 170º while you're biding your time.

The solution? The breakdown of collagens happens most effeciently around 205º, just below boiling. By smoking or baking at 205º, you're going to expedite the secondary denaturization, and you're going to do it more quickly, so your brisket will actually retain more of the fat that's dripped down into the fibers and keep the afore-mentioned mealy texture from developing.

And slicing. Terribly important. Take the time to figure out exactly which way the grain is running, and slice across it. This helps cut whatever elastin is present and any collagen remaining into short enough pieces that you won't notice them.

Our host, Chad, was doing all this instinctively. Served with a great homemade BBQ sauce, some awesome mashed potatoes and a terrific selection of grilled veggies I almost felt guilty about not helping to cook. Almost.

Here's a shot of the Hollandaise I made last Sunday, before it was plated with asparagus and a nice fruit salad.

There are a zillion ways to make Hollandaise and its related sauces, but my favorite way is to make it in a steel work bowl directly on the heat. No side towel or pot holder. If it's too hot to hold, it's definitely too hot for the eggs you're trying to gently cook without scrambling. I've seen a lot of cooks break sauces over a double boiler, including me as I was learning.

How do you make Hollandaise? I generally eyeball it.

(tpc- Grilled NY strip w/ancho-poblano cream sauce and carmelized onions)

I had an email over the weekend asking if Survival Spice™ was good for grilling steak.

The answer of course is yes, but the intriguing part of the email is that he went on to mention his frustration in being able to "seal in the juices" so meats would stay juicy.

It drives me crazy when I hear that phrase so I thought I'd rant about that a bit, because I've heard similar remarks from other similarly frustrated people.

First of all, you can't 'seal' in the juices in a piece of meat or anything else with moisture in it, for that matter, but let's use a steak in this example. As the internal temperature of the steak rises, the juices in the meat will expand and make their way to the surface. Don't believe me? Next time you're grilling, watch the top of your steak after you sear it and flip it. You'll still see blood rise to the top of the now 'seared' side. Short of anodizing your Porterhouse, there's no way to stop it.

Still, there are plenty of valid reasons to sear a piece of meat when you first put it in a pan or on the grill. The color is appetizing, the mouth feel of crispness yielding to a tender interior, etc. But is there any difference in flavor, knowing what we know now?

Indeed there is, due to an interesting phenomenon known as the Maillard reaction. Discovered in 1912 by a French chemist named Louis-Camille Maillard, he noted that when amino acids and sugars such as glycerol were heated in a test tube, a brown color was obtained. In addition to the color change, hundreds of new chemical compounds were created. (An interesting side note, Maillard actually had no interest in how these new compounds tasted.) So at any rate, the answer is yes, sear away, friends!

But how? Here's a few tips:

• Your meat should have no water in its surface. Water creates steam, which is an enemy of browning and will contribute to the loss of juices. Oil is fine, but if you've marinated your steaks, blot them dry with paper towels. I like to season with kosher salt just before grilling, it really helps to create a nice crust because it will 'raise the grain' of the meat by drawing out a bit of the remaining water.

• Put your meat on presentation (nicest looking) side down first.

• There are a few valid schools of thought on this, but I only flip meat once. Put your steak on, once you peek and see it's got nice grill marks turn it 90º (I actually prefer 60º, but 90º is what I was taught. Theoretically 90º makes the piece look bigger, but I think it looks like a tile job). Once your presentation side is looking good, flip and finish. This is important- any time you turn/flip, always put it on an unused spot on the grill because the grill where your meat was when you picked it up has cooled somewhat.

• Always have a hot end/cooler side to your grill setup. (Roughly twice as many coals to the hot end). If you finish your steaks on the slightly cooler side, the expansion forces won't be as great so you won't lose as much juice. If you're cooking a bunch of steaks, get your most well-done requests on first. Sear 'em off and move them to the cooler side to finish, where they won't bleed out completely. Do your mediums next and then sear-only your rares and medium rares. This way all your steaks are done at once. What a concept, eh?

• Let your meat rest for a few minutes! As your steak cools a bit, the internal pressure will lower , making it easier for juices near the edge to redistribute back into the center.

I hope this helps. It's just an overview and your mileage may vary but that's part of the fun, isn't it?

--tpc

The National Pork Board has announced its goal to increase the fat content in pork products by a few percent in the coming years, due to criticism of now widely-used practices of "enhancing" pork by basically brining the product to add moisture and customers trending towards more natural and organic food choices.

The Reuters article continues:

"Some people think we've gone too far in taking all the fat out," said David Meisinger, assistant vice president of educational services at the National Pork Board.

"When consumers buy pork, they don't want to see any fat in there. But when they eat it, they like the flavor and juiciness that a little bit of fat gives it."

Meisinger emphasized that this new pork will not be the high-fat, high-cholesterol variety that the industry abandoned two decades ago when it began likening itself to chicken with its well-known "Pork: The Other White Meat" ad campaign.

The goal is to keep pork healthy and lean while improving taste and texture by adding more marbling, Meisinger said, referring to the intramuscular fat that makes meat more juicy and tasty.

With more marbling, cuts may go from 99 percent lean to 97 or 98 percent lean, he said.

What a concept. Developing a product that actually tastes good instead of injecting crap with space-age polymers.

I like a fattier cut myself, like a shoulder or the pork butt pictured above, rubbed with Survival Spice™, and cooked low and slow in a smoker, in an oven or a combination of both. Always cook your meat cut fatty side up so as the fat renders during cooking it flows through the meat, adding flavor.

If you're cooking a chop or tenderloin, don't cook it until it's as hard as a brick, either. When in doubt, use a meat thermometer and pull it from the heat at around 145º. Carry-over cooking will take it to 150º. People are a bit overly concerned about trychnosis, which is just about unheard of these days and is killed at 138º anyway.

Oh boy, what a can of worms this is. Everybody's got their own way of making red sauce and I'm down with that. My version in a nutshell?

Sauce for pasta- crushed tomatoes, good olive oil, a bit of garlic, torn basil leaves.
Sauce for pizza- crushed tomatoes, good olive oil, a bit of garlic, fresh oregano, crushed red pepper.

That's it. Really. You can embellish it to a particular recipe but if you're just making sauce to can or keep in the fridge for a few weeks, keep it simple and customize it to your particular dish. And don't cook your basic sauce for hours and hours, if you later want to simmer braciola or an al sugo meat sauce until it falls apart, that's a different story entirely...

Great Italian food, and I was lucky to learn Italian cooking from old country Italians in a great restaurant kitchen, is about simple flavors.

Photo: Holmen Meat Market

Dr. Biggles, proprietor of the terrific food blog MeatHenge, mentioned lardonaise yesterday and it got me thinking about larding and barding.

A lot of you might not know these terms, so here's my take on it. They both involve adding fat to prevent moisture loss and contribute flavor to a dish. The main difference is that larding involves adding fat to the inside of your dish and barding is outside. Larding can be done by creating pockets stuffed with your fat of choice, bacon, salt pork, etc. or just rolling it up inside to create a roulade.

Barding is wrapping with fat on the exterior. Again it can be strips of bacon, pancetta, ham, or sheets of cowl fat. What's cowl fat? That's another post...

While I'm thinking about keeping meat moist, let's talk about basting. You should never baste with a liquid with less fat than what you're basting or you'll actually dry your dish out, because the hot liquids (your basting liquid and the juices in your turkey, for example) will try to reach equilibrium, which translates to a dry bird.

Sound familiar? Now you know why.

After I posted about the health benefits of grapes this morning, I felt that I had let you, the faithful reader, down a bit. Sure it was informative but it just wasn't out there enough, so I found this.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but let's just say I'll be heading to the store soon. This is potentially dangerous and generally kind of a dumb thing to do so I'm not recommending that you try it yourself but if you do, let me know. Pictures would be great.

You do have a fire extinguisher, don't you?