Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking

by Krish Ashok

While there are a million different chemical reactions that happen when you cook food, the four major ones that are worth understanding are: starch gelatinization, protein denaturation, hydrolysis and the Maillard reaction.

Van Der Waals bond, the weakest of the lot but crucial to cooking because fats use this bond to attain the viscous texture they have.

Anything with more water cooks slower than anything with less water because of its specific heat capacity. This is why garlic, which has less water by proportion, must be added after the onions have cooked, or else it will likely burn.

White rice, like most starchy foods, has two kinds of starch molecules: amylose and amylopectin.

Rice varieties with less than 20 per cent amylose (80 per cent amylopectin) tend to become a little sticky after cooking, while varieties with more than 20 per cent amylose tend to have separate grains.

the trick to getting the softest and fluffiest results is to salt the broken egg at least 15 minutes before you cook it. The salt will uncoil the proteins in the egg before they have the chance to set rapidly when heat is applied. This allows for a softer texture in your omelette or bhurji.

common misconception is that it’s the seeds that contribute all the heat. They don’t. The seeds are removed because they taste bitter. It’s the placenta, which connects the seeds to the flesh, that has most of the capsaicin. So, removing that will reduce the heat levels in your chillies.

we will use a broad brush and categorize all

So, if you do not want to use a pressure cooker, there’s a magical chemistry trick you can use to accelerate the Maillard reaction, particularly when cooking onions. The magic ingredient is sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda.

ethyl mercaptan, a chemical so smelly that our noses can detect even one molecule in an entire room. This property has a very useful application. When added to LPG, which is dangerously odourless, it helps us detect gas leaks in our kitchens. Single

Blend caramelized garlic, cashew nuts, salt and green chillies to get the most astonishing chutney with the complex, savoury and sweet taste of garlic,

Every time you take an ingredient that has both sugars and proteins, and let it heat up to 110oC, you unlock a combination of the flavours listed above.

But do remember this, not all products of the Maillard reaction are good for you. At high-enough temperatures, one of the by-products of this reaction is acrylamide, which is bitter and, more importantly, carcinogenic. So, when people warn you about not eating burnt food, this is exactly what they are talking about.

You can also add a pinch of baking soda to the batter of whatever it is you are frying. Alkaline conditions accelerate the Maillard reaction and will result in more even browning. Try it with fried chicken or vadas!

The trick is to store freshly fried food at a temperature just short of the boiling point of water, so that no further cooking happens and it is easy for moisture to evaporate and keep things crisp. An oven at 93oC (200oF) will do the trick.

Try drinking a strong cup of black coffee with a tiny squeeze of lemon. As odd as this might be, if you are someone who is sensitive to strongly bitter tastes, you will enjoy the coffee more (and trigger coffee Nazis, which is not a bad thing to do). So,

A standard 330 g can of the drink needs a whopping 39 g of sugar, which is, in more visually impactful terms, nine full teaspoons.

Contemporary chefs who work with food scientists have determined that the pH of a good, balanced dish tends to be in the range of 4.3 to 4.9.

You can achieve a more layered sourness in your meat by using a combination of yoghurt, lime juice and amchoor, instead of just using one acid.

So, if you are making nimbu paani, lemon rice or jal jeera, squeeze the limes well ahead of time.

Vinegar, from the French word for ‘sour wine’, comes from the oxidation (which, in simple terms, is oxygen being greedy as hell for other atoms’ electrons) of wine, aided by a bacteria named Acetobacter aceti, which despite sounding like the opening lines of a verse from the Upanishads, has the ability to convert ethanol to acetic acid in the presence of oxygen.

Unfortunately, vinegars are under-utilized in Indian cuisine, except in Goan cuisine.

When recipes call for tomato puree, noobs add tomato puree, experts add tomato paste and legends add tomato ketchup.

The flavour of tomatoes is improved significantly by concentration (removal of water) and sustained low heat over long periods of time. The longer you cook tomatoes, the better they taste, which is why some pasta sauces are cooked for an entire day in Italy.

alkaloids,

Without alkaloids, we would not have a pharmaceutical industry.

tartaric acid (from grapes), malic acid (from apples) or citric acid (from citrus fruits).

A broth made with seaweed had a meaty, savoury and lingering taste that coated the tongue, while a broth made without it was distinctly underwhelming in comparison. A chemical analysis of the seaweed revealed that the magic molecules were salts of glutamic acid, an amino acid that is one of the building blocks for proteins.

Why is it that Indian cuisine seems to not pay too much attention to umami?

it’s the tinier fish that pack the most amount of umami. The cuisine of the North-East is also rather umami-heavy, thanks to the use of meat stocks and cabbage, which is also relatively high in glutamates.

Since we know that glutamates work even better in the presence of IMP and GMP, always pair IMP- and GMP-heavy ingredients, such as meat and mushrooms, with glutamate-rich ingredients like tomatoes or onions for an even more amaklamatic umami-bomb flavour.

it evolved as a mechanism for the tongue to detect protein-rich foods that are healthy.

If you bring an acid to the party, baking soda will be happy to produce carbon dioxide to help bake cakes and bread, and leaven idli, appam and dosa batters in case you are doubtful about the quality of the job done by the bacteria. You can even make a fluffier omelette by adding a pinch of this to the eggs before cooking them.

If you are frying fish (or vegetables) using a batter, try a batter made of maida, salt and vodka (which is just plain ethanol diluted in water). What the alcohol does is reduce gluten development, which we do not want in a fried product,

You can roll the raw papad into a glass tumbler and put it in the microwave. This way, every spot on the papad will rotate with the turntable and get even coverage.

sodium bisulphite. A really tiny pinch of this will keep your greens looking bright for a really long time.

xanthan gum.

If you have ever tried making rotis using millet-based (or any non-gluten) flours, you know how painfully difficult it is. Try adding a pinch of xanthan gum and you will be able to make jowar and bajra rotis in shapes that don’t resemble Yugoslavia at the peak of the Balkan crisis.

So, when certain kinds of hardwood are burnt at relatively low temperatures, they produce fantastic aroma molecules that lend complex flavours to the food being cooked over them. If the wood is burnt at too high a temperature, it produces acrid, carcinogenic substances that you should keep your food away from.

sous vide, which means ‘under vacuum’ in French.

Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad, and philosophy is wondering if ketchup is a smoothie.

Scrambled eggs: Break the eggs and salt them for 15 minutes before cooking. Then, at low heat, cook the eggs in butter. Stir constantly. You can also add some cream or milk for fluffiness.

Omelette: Break the egg and salt it for 15 minutes before making an omelette. Add cubes of frozen butter when the omelette is cooking for a creamier texture.

Add flavouring to the water: Onion powder, garlic powder, lime zest (but never lime juice).

autolysis,

Fat shortens gluten strands, which is what you need in a puri that needs to be flaky without being chewy.

In fact, a small pinch of xanthan gum can help you make millet rotis that do not break up like the Balkans.

Nomenclature territorialism is stupid in a country where no two homes use the same recipe for a dish.

Cook the marinated meat at low heat. Remember that any temperature above 65°C will make the meat tough and rubbery. The idea is to turn some of the collagen in the connective tissues into gelatin, which will ensure the meat stays tender without overcooking the tissues. This process will result in a delicious, melt-in-the-mouth flavour that is the hallmark of a great biryani.