How geeky is your kitchen?
October 22, 2012 by SusieFood science seems to have turned a corner for those of us who cook at home. Of course, practical advice has been around as long as there have been cooks – have all your ingredients at room temperature before baking! searing seals in the juices! (WRONG.) But the Internet has accelerated the spread of cooking do’s, don’ts, and “try this”es. For those of us who can’t resist an evidence-based cooking tip, it’s a golden age.
Are you a culinary
technophile? Have a look at your kitchen. How many
measuring devices do you have (not counting measuring cups/spoons)?
Got a timer? Got a thermometer? Got a kitchen
scale? Got a thermocontroller for sous-vide?
Of course, having a bunch of gear can’t make you a good cook, and not having a bunch of gear can’t make you a bad one. But today’s science-informed cookbooks, like Cooks Illustrated’s practical and educational Science of Good Cooking have a way of pushing us towards more thoughtful ways around the kitchen.
This month also saw the
publication of Modernist Cuisine
at Home, the “simpler” version of Modernist
Cuisine, the bible of the 21st century food geek.
Mostly, this is not easy food or weeknight food or quick food.
It’s food blind to everything but the quest for
deliciousness–food that’s willing to put off eating a balanced
meal for a week for the sake of having the perfect Pork Belly BLT
today. It’s a tantalizing vision of perfection that has me
wondering if it’s worth buying a pressure cooker and maybe a vacuum
sealer, too.
In the end, though, it doesn’t come down to lusting after another piece of equipment, or writing off another tool on my meager Schedule C, or even being able to swap tales of obsession with my other gearhead friends.
It’s just a matter of wanting to eat something that tastes really good every single day. Something good enough to stop time–rendering moot all the devices I have to measure it and all the ways I have to save it. You know?
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