I’ve heard it said to never press down on a cooking burger with a spatula. Yet there’s a burger chain built around doing just this very thing (Smashburger) and their burgers are delicious.
I’ve made pot roast with a couple of bay leaves tucked under the meat, and the whole house fills up with an amazing, spicy aroma. No bay leaves, the pot roast is still good but definitely missing something. I think it’s the long, slow cooking in liquid that releases the flavor of the bay leaf. I may try grinding some up to a fine powder in my mini processor and see if adding that to burgers or meat loaf would make a difference.
And I never add salt to pasta water, and I never bother with parsley.
My rule for this: on a griddle or similar, pressing down is fine for that thin style (1/4 lb and under) burger. It helps develop a nice crust. On a grill, I avoid pressing down, as the juices just go straight into the coals.
There’s a difference there. Smashburger and other restaurants like it start with a ball of meat and smash it down right away, which gives it that great crust. The “don’t smash” rule is more for when you already have a flatish burger cooking and then you smash it down. That won’t do anything but squeeze out the juices.
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/09/the-burger-lab-smashed-burgers-vs-smashing-burgers.html
That’s not what it’s for. I don’t know how that meme got started, but it seems to be accepted fact in most circles. The oil is to help keep your pasta water from boiling over onto the stove: the old “pour oil on troubled waters” axiom, if you will. However, keeping the flame at a reasonable level and stirring the pasta will also do the trick.
It’s a good thing that the OP specified that opinions were okay. Many of the things presented here do make a difference, but that difference may not be important to the person doing the cooking.
I think a room-temperature steak makes a better result than a refrigerator steak. I can get a nice crust with a tender, warm, pink center. A refrigerator steak needs longer on the grill to get the center up to temperature, which means there is more crust and the meat is drier and tougher. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it does taste different.
There is an underwater method that takes it to the extreme. The meat is vacuum sealed and kept in 130 degree water for hours. Then it is put on the grill for a few minutes to give the outside a little crust. The inside is almost all pink, but it’s warm, tender, moist and so delicious.
Yep. Oil in pasta water is to prevent boil-overs,
Sous vide is the name of the underwater method. And the method I prefer for steaks, which I learned from Cook’s Illustrated (whose opinion I take with a grain of salt, but in this case am convinced by), has their “reverse sear” steak cooking method start with refrigerated steak. Something about keeping the temperature low, enzymatic action, and all that. Whatever it is, it works well.
Putting ketchup on a hot dog. I rarely eat hot dogs (at AT&T Park only, a few times a year). But I ALWAYS eat it with ketchup. (I just hope Clint Eastwood doesn’t see and kick my ass.)
And remember:
Archie: Ketchup goes with everything.
Gloria: Oh, you’d put ketchup on a donut.
Archie: If it needed it.
The reason that you’re supposed to let the crust rest in the fridge isn’t to make it easier to work with, but to let the fat become hard again. You’re supposed to have little bits of fat throughout the dough, which causes the flakiness.
However, if your way works well, and if you’re not getting complaints, then why fix what ain’t broke?
Just keep the lid off, I do. Never use oil, never have it boil over
Totally disagree.
First off, you’re not oversalting by salting while cooking. If anything, I think you end up with less salt, because salt permeates food. If you add salt while something is cooking, it will be absorbed into the food, and also carry other flavors along with it. That’s why you salt while things are cooking - you not only are adding salt flavor, you’re using the chemical action of a brine to pull flavors into the various ingredients of a dish.
And that leads to your second point - " most salt put in while cooking will not be able to be detected by taste". As I describe above, that’s patently untrue.
Adding salt at the end of cooking and just sprinkling it on top of the food simply does not taste the same as food that’s properly salted whilst cooking, and you also typically end up using less salt overall. A very basic test of this is scrambled eggs. Add a bit of salt in the egg mixture before you scramble. When it’s done, there’s no need to add salt to the top of the eggs; the saltiness permeates. Contrast with scrambled eggs made without salt, and simply add salt on top. You end up with bland eggs + granular salt. It doesn’t taste as good, and most people’s tendency would be to add more salt to bring up the flavor.
Because unless I am intentionally making something like “spaghetti in olive oil with garlic and herbs” the pasta is now oily if you add it after and I generally don’t want it to be, especially since I am only adding the oil to the water to keep the finished pasta from glopping together as it dries before I plate it.
No. More salt is more salt. And I made two points:
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More salt leads to high sodium content which is not good for many and very bad for some. Salting while cooking leads to adding a lot of salt which means high sodium content. Sodium doesn’t cook off like alcohol does.
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Salt that ‘permeates’ as you say is much, much lest detectable than salt applied topically. That’s a fact. All you need do is bake some pretzels. In one batch, use no salt in the batter and only apply it topically… very salty. In another batch, put the same amount of salt into the batter and add none topically… hey, where did the salty taste go?
I’m not a fan of catsup at all, but hotdogs are my only exception. In fact, I think that catsup and hot dogs are mutually inclusive. By which I mean hot dogs are only edible with catsup, and catsup is only edible if it’s on a hot dog.
I don’t use oil, either. Just a large pot. Just explaining why people use oil.
The whole goal of cooking steaks or burgers is basically to do 2 things The first goal is to bring the interior temp of the meat up to where you want it to be- say… 135 for medium/medium rare. The second goal is to get a good browned crust going on the outside of the meat. This is what gives it a lot of flavor and texture- drying and Maillard reactions are the main culprits here.
The catch is that if you cook a steak to a interior temp of 135, and get a good crust on the outside, you typically have a crust on the outside, a ring of overcooked meat, another ring of less overcooked meat, and so on, until your very center is at that 135 that you want it at. Not exactly optimal, obviously.
That’s why there are so many techniques- warm to room temp, start with the steak cold, etc… There’s also the Modernist cooking trick of searing a solidly frozen steak, then finishing in a low oven. Or you can go sous-vide and cook it at say… 132, then quickly sear the outside with a blowtorch, or even deep-fry for a minute or two- just long enough to get that crust without really having the heat penetrate very far.
I think ultimately though, unless you’re willing to go to fairly extreme measures at home (sous-vide, frozen steaks, etc…) you’re going to end up with some variation on the rings of overcooked meat style, whether or not you let it warm up or not.
The only advantage I’ve found is that if I liberally salt and season my meat as I let it warm up, it really helps with the flavor and texture. It has nothing to do with the warming- it’s the salt and the time really, but letting it warm up doesn’t hurt either.
As for the OP, I think a lot of the foodie nitpicking about ingredients in a category is really silly. For example, people obsess and get all worked up about things like fish sauce. As if Red Boat somehow didn’t taste like fermented socks, and Squid/3 Crabs/Golden Boy/etc… does. They ALL taste like fermented socks, and unless you’re using it for dipping sauces without a lot of chilies and lime (which most fish-sauce based sauces I’ve had include), you won’t be able to tell the difference.
Or something like say cocktails; unless your spirits are really that different from each other, something in the same category can be substituted without wrecking the drink. I always roll my eyes when someone orders some kind of heavily flavored vodka drink (bloody mary, etc…) and specifies some super-premium vodka. Why? Nobody can tell Stolichnaya from Skyy from Grey Goose from Ketel One under all that tomato juice, hot sauce, celery salt and other stuff. I can see it maybe in a vodka martini though; there’s really nothing to hide the differences between the vodkas (minuscule as they may be).
(I also tend to think vodka’s kind of stupid in general, but that’s a rant for a different post)
You seem to be thinking that the salt added while cooking is some huge amount; it’s not. Believe what you want, but I find that salt that permeates ends up with less salt than adding it on top, but still a pleasantly salty taste. If you’re not tasting salt added to pretzels before baking, then maybe you’re more used to the in-your-face salt flavor that adding salt to the top of everything gives.
Another point: if you’re cooking from scratch, you have to add an awful lot of salt to everything to really get into health issues from salt. The high amount of salt that people need to watch out for is typically from processed foods. Whatever you make at home, no matter how salty you make it, you’re not going to compete with the massive amounts they manage to cram into fast food/processed food/etc.
There is no such thing as “properly salted”. The amount of salt desired is an individual preference. What is unbearably salty for one person may be unbearably bland for another. Same with black pepper. In my case, the “proper” amount of black pepper is absolutely none. I don’t know where this popular notion that adding salt to your food is somehow an “insult” to the chef came from, but it really should have been nipped in the bud.
Amen. i do not use salt as a seasoning when I cook. People who eat my cooking know that, and I always have salt on the table for those who desire it.