Optimum
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Chemistry techniques to improve cooking skills
Hello,
which Chemistry techniques can be applied to improve cooking skills?
any methods that can be used to improve cooking?
Thank you
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XeonTheMGPony
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careful heat control and tracking of time.
To get a good cake is all about temp, to fast or too slow you get crappy texture.
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Sulaiman
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Cooking (especially baking) skills are directly transferrable to the practice of hobby chemistry,
the only chemistry practice that I've noticed missing in the kitchen is stirring whilst heating,
and even that would be of questionable value in most cases.
This chef likes to try 'lab' techniques in the kitchen. https://www.youtube.com/user/hestonsfeasts
(his restauraunt has caused food poisoning so take note)
CAUTION : Hobby Chemist, not Professional or even Amateur
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Optimum
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interesting..
but this examples look very basic...
can you describe others?
giving a more specific example,
what Chemistry techniques can be used to prepare "healthy" and "tasty" food?
any kitchen equipment can be considered chemistry equipment or can be used for some chemistry experiment?
some people argue that processed food is bad, so what could be the solution?
buy RAW ingredients and mix them up together using heat and time control?
some ppl prefer to cook slow and low temperature, what other techniques can be used?
Thank you
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SWIM
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With a strong enough magnet, a stirring hotplate could be a positive boon to those who like polenta.
I've seen polenta makers equipped with overhead stirrers not unlike the overhead ones used in labs.
You could probably make Holandaise sauce pretty easily with a thermostatically controlled hotplate stirrer and a jacketed addition funnel, but cleanup
would be a real drag. It might take the fun out of it too. Its gratifying for me to be able to whip one up with just a bowl, a whisk, and a pot of
boiling water.
Wasn't there some French food movement a decade or three ago that involved using vacuum and other lab-type conditions to make food?
I think there was equipment relating to that sold for home use at least in the EU if not over here in "Merica.
I cook, but I don't keep up with those modern trends. I use hand cranked meat grinder, and my favorite knives are Pre-WWII soft steel jobs.
They go dull fast, but they sharpen fast too, and they'll cut through a big frozen piece of pork butt or a whole butternut squash like nobody's
business.
EDIT: Just realized this is an Optimus Subprime thread.
This transformer OP will soon transform it into a pointless morass of vague questions and equivocal statements.
Don't believe me? Read the extracting chemicals from drinks thread.
[Edited on 22-12-2019 by SWIM]
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karlos³
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There is even such a self-driven stirrer unit that is placed in the pot, which is almost working reminiscent to a magnetic stirrer.
I'm a very dedicated cook and prepare all my meals myself.
It is a good trait to have for the ladies too 
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Optimum
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Quote: Originally posted by SWIM  |
EDIT: Just realized this is an Optimus Subprime thread.
This transformer OP will soon transform it into a pointless morass of vague questions and equivocal statements.
Don't believe me? Read the extracting chemicals from drinks thread.
[Edited on 22-12-2019 by SWIM] |
Thank you for the answer..
just trying to do some research and when you dont know much about the subject you cant do more specific questions .. will try to make better
statements ..
any Chemistry technique, knowledge besides the mentioned that can be applied to cooking?
some articles related to drink preparation mention the world chemistry on it where as the perfect drink should be served in certain conditions..
can the same concept be applied to food? its just a matter of picking up the right ingredients or can be applied chemistry techniques to improve the
process itself?
Thank you
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WGTR
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Measure your dry cooking ingredients by weight instead of by volume. That’s a lab practice that improves repeatability in the kitchen as well.
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Tsjerk
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Looking at what is actually happening in the pan/oven and understanding what is going on definitely helps during cooking. I explained friends why it
doesn't matter how high the fire during boiling is because boiling is 100 degrees anyway, and how you can tell just by looking how hot something is;
as XeonTheMGPony said, temperature is the absolute most important thing during cooking.
Maybe not the best example but: A friend of mine makes good money by selling clarified butter (HAHA), what he basically does is heating pretty cheap
butter, let it melt, let it separate and cool. He sells the fat, in a nice fancy jar, for about 10 times the cost of the butter. Not too chemistry,
but an example of applying basic chemistry in cookery.
He does something like this: https://www.ghee-easy.nl/
| Quote: Originally posted by WGTR | | Measure your dry cooking ingredients by weight instead of by volume. That’s a lab practice that improves repeatability in the kitchen as well.
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And learning to determine weight by eye! That just makes life so much easier.
[Edited on 23-12-2019 by Tsjerk]
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nitro-genes
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Ha... nice topic!  Me doing the cooking usually, I've given it some thoughts as
well.
In general, writing recipe details down, weighing ingredients and monitoring temperature and time enhances reproducibility, similar to chemistry. In
contrast to chemistry though, I guess flavor perception and molecular flavour composition are somewhat more subjective to individual taste and less
reproducible. For chemical reactions there usually is a reasonable prediction for the outcome and product of the reaction (In reality this is highly
debatable IMO ), which might not apply to this extend for cooking. Wines are a
good example, I actually never made any wine that ever tasted EXACTLY the same as a previous one. The grapes composition probably depending on soil
nutrition, amount of sun and rain, time of harvest, microorganism present, all interacting with the fermentation and aging process to make the flavour
profile a pretty unique one and hard to reproduce due to the many more interacting factors present as opposed to most controlled reactions in
chemistry.
Natural flavour molecules are usually a complex mixture of different compounds, each having their own boiling point, volatility, temperature/pH
stability, susceptibility to oxidation etc. When distilling wines this becomes pretty obvious, the flavour of each fraction (depending on the fruit
used) is usually slightly different, like a chromatography column separating all the different fractions of flavour molecules. Some fruit flavours
hardly come over, even for pot stills, guessing that their boiling point has a big influence.
During cooking the same thing happens I guess, the flavour of curry mixtures change immensely depending on how long it was cooked and under which
conditions. For many curry's for example, it seems that (like in chemistry) the addition order of the "reactants", cooking time and "reflux"
conditions or not, can have a big influence on the taste of the final dish. Cook them too long and vigorously, and all the flavour molecules will
make your house smell great instead of the dish. Garlic for example will have almost no taste left when baked in the oven for a long time, probably
due to high volatility/reactivity of the flavour molecules present.
So there are probably some similarities between cooking and chemistry, although the first is more like learning a language and the second (somewhat)
more of a science.
[Edited on 24-12-2019 by nitro-genes]
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B(a)P
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Stoichiometry to get the maximum amount of rum in your rum butter.
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Optimum
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| Quote: Originally posted by WGTR | | Measure your dry cooking ingredients by weight instead of by volume. That’s a lab practice that improves repeatability in the kitchen as well.
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what do you mean by "dry cooking ingredients"?
which criteria should i use to buy them?
can you describe other lab practices besides weight measure?
can you tell me more about repeatability?
| Quote: Originally posted by nitro-genes | Ha... nice topic! Me doing the cooking usually, I've given it some thoughts as
well.
In general, writing recipe details down, weighing ingredients and monitoring temperature and time enhances reproducibility, similar to chemistry. In
contrast to chemistry though, I guess flavor perception and molecular flavour composition are somewhat more subjective to individual taste and less
reproducible. For chemical reactions there usually is a reasonable prediction for the outcome and product of the reaction (In reality this is highly
debatable IMO ), which might not apply to this extend for cooking. Wines are a
good example, I actually never made any wine that ever tasted EXACTLY the same as a previous one. The grapes composition probably depending on soil
nutrition, amount of sun and rain, time of harvest, microorganism present, all interacting with the fermentation and aging process to make the flavour
profile a pretty unique one and hard to reproduce due to the many more interacting factors present as opposed to most controlled reactions in
chemistry.
Natural flavour molecules are usually a complex mixture of different compounds, each having their own boiling point, volatility, temperature/pH
stability, susceptibility to oxidation etc. When distilling wines this becomes pretty obvious, the flavour of each fraction (depending on the fruit
used) is usually slightly different, like a chromatography column separating all the different fractions of flavour molecules. Some fruit flavours
hardly come over, even for pot stills, guessing that their boiling point has a big influence.
During cooking the same thing happens I guess, the flavour of curry mixtures change immensely depending on how long it was cooked and under which
conditions. For many curry's for example, it seems that (like in chemistry) the addition order of the "reactants", cooking time and "reflux"
conditions or not, can have a big influence on the taste of the final dish. Cook them too long and vigorously, and all the flavour molecules will
make your house smell great instead of the dish. Garlic for example will have almost no taste left when baked in the oven for a long time, probably
due to high volatility/reactivity of the flavour molecules present.
So there are probably some similarities between cooking and chemistry, although the first is more like learning a language and the second (somewhat)
more of a science.
[Edited on 24-12-2019 by nitro-genes] |
what might be considered the best recipes?
can you tell more about interacting factors? or you want refer to reactions?
you mentioned "natural flavour molecules", what about "natural compounds"? can someone describe them?
you mean cooking for long time or cooking for long time and slow temp?
ELI5 please
Thank you
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XeonTheMGPony
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Lower heat (Slow cooking) allows more time for flavors (Chemical compounds) to disperse in the reaction mixture (water is the solvent in this case)
Then with that said, additional compounds added by weight to alter the natural flavor (Salts, seasonings)
With pressure cooker we can alter the temp veritable with water by suppressing active boiling if we want to cook hotter
Time is another critical variable, the difference between blood rare and charcoal is simply time given a constant heat!
Best is subjective, what is best to you will be horrible to me vice versa so I wouldn't get hung up on that a recipe is a baseline, if you fallow it
you end up with a support matrix that you can then build on that best suites your and your local groups preference.
Lab work basically boils down to controlling variables, weighing carefully and good note keeping to achieve a desired goal, as you get the basics you
can to some degree use intuition, when it comes to heat levels, configuration of equipment, and for the reactants you will learn from batch to batch
you need a hair more of one to compensate for an impurity.
If you are hasty and sloppy you get lower results, if you're fastidious you will get better results, I aim for the middle of most as I don't want to
spend my entire week on any one compound! Unless it is really important.
Time and temp is every thing in cooking, in the lab time temp and weight of reactants is every thing, care full note taking makes it easier to repeat
projects, for the lab to figure out why you got a weird tar Vs a target compound!.
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Swinfi2
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Good mixing is important when heating, especially with thicker "reaction mixtures" such as roux's and sauces. Also fluids of similar viscosity mix
easier than dissimilar viscosity. (Beat lumps out of (ex: cheese sauce) while sauce is thick)
The Millard reaction is anhydrous but don't waste the char/Brown on the pan, pour a little boiling water into the (hot) pan to flash steam, hydrolyse
and dissolve that flavour. Add a little flour etc. and boil makes better gravy than instant stuff.
^ this also makes cleaning 100x easier. I suppose the technique is using knowledge of reaction conditions to exploit sauce.
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rockyit98
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go to youtube channel Reactions. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJ9oJ2GUF8Vmb-G63ldGWg they are what you looking for.
"A mind is a terrible thing to lose"-Meisner
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Nonexistent
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I'm not sure what you mean by techniques per se. For example cooling baths and blanching ensure you don't overheat your products. But generally apply
things you understand, like, how will the pH or temp or time affect the food?
Experiment, make your vegetable boiling water acidic or alkaline, one thing that greatly enhanced my understanding was a short stint at a food tech
job using different starches, or proteins in different amounts mixed with water/milk and heated at diff temps at diff pH's, play around with it.
Maillard + protein/fat oxidations reactions are delicious.
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