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Hot to trot
By Ann | January 2, 2008
There’s a fascinating article about heat in today’s NYT food section: The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen by that wizard of kitchen science Harold McGee. Have you ever thought about the astounding, transformative properties of heat? Sometimes it amazes me that heat can turn a liquid into a solid, like batter into cake. Or, the way heat softens and sweetens vegetables, like roasted red peppers, or steamed carrots. Or meat — without heat, it would be unpalatable. Yet that’s what cavemen ate for centuries. Anyway, the article has some interesting info on energy and molecules (interesting even to non-sciencey types like me) and the dangers of cooking with too much heat, or too little. Did you know that a covered pot of water will boil in less than half the time of an uncovered pot?
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One Response to “Hot to trot”
Comments
« (Too) Sweet treats | Home | Coming soon: Dining out and about »
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Re: pot covering, it’s because you can’t see the water when it’s boiling. So you’re less tempted to peek at the progress of things, in other words: to watch the pot. And watched pots, well, you know the rest.