Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking

by Krish Ashok

Protein Denaturation:

This happens around 60oC.

Hydrolysis:

makes meat tender when connective tissues break down into gelatin.

Maillard reaction:

This reaction happens between 110oC and 170oC.

enzymatic browning, which is not very desirable—this is what turns your potatoes and apples brown when they are left exposed to air.

Moist cooking methods involve the use of water (in its liquid form) or water vapour. And

moist cooking methods have to be executed under 100oC. Once water turns into vapour, it tends to escape and shirk its cooking responsibilities, unless you are

coaxes

Aluminium, for instance, heats up really quickly but does not stay hot for long once you reduce the heat on your stove.

Stainless steel, on the other hand, takes time to heat up but stays hot for longer.

aluminium and cast iron will react with any acid in your food, like tomatoes or tamarind, and produce off-putting

putting metallic flavours. Stainless steel, however, will not react with your food at all.

an alternating current flowing through a copper coil creates an oscillating magnetic field in its vicinity. When a cooking vessel made of a magnetic material (cast iron or steel) is placed on the stove, the oscillating magnetic field induces an electric current, which flows around

water will boil 30 to 40 per cent faster on an induction stove compared to a traditional stove.

heuristic:

water is that its solid form is less dense than its liquid form!

orgy

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.

temperamental.

fortuitously

If you cook rice in a pressure cooker at 2000 W on an induction stove, and measure in whistles, you are guaranteed to get undercooked rice.

The germ is the next baby rice plant.

The husk, which is the rough

protective layer for the grain, is inedible unless you are a cow, and while the bran is highly nutritious and contains proteins and fat (the source o...

When the bran is removed, we get white rice, which has a fantastic shelf life.

Because white rice is just the starchy endosperm with no other nutrients,

When the whole grain is partially boiled, it drives a good amount of the useful nutrients found in the bran and germ into the endosperm. This is why parboiled rice is almost as nutritious as bro...

diet that includes both parboiled and polished white rice, so that they don’t end up ...

amylose and amylopectin.

The percentage of amylose and amylopectin determine if a certain variety of rice will be sticky or have separate

grains when cooked.

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 pe...

When rice is cooked in hot water, a process called gelatinization happens.

Wash away as much amylopectin as possible

Wash rice till the water runs clear.

kidney beans (rajma)—raffinose and stachyose—cannot be digested by our digestive systems efficiently and, thus, become food for the bacteria in our guts.

eating fart-producing beans is not a bad idea at all because it encourages the growth of a diverse colony of healthy gut

imperceptible

Baking soda (see Chapter 5) breaks down pectin, the hard substance that holds the plant’s cell walls together, and

A teaspoon of oil added to the water in the pressure cooker will significantly reduce foaming when cooking legumes.

caveat:

cornucopia

There are two proteins in wheat—glutenin and gliadin—that form a stretchy and elastic

If a plant is exposed to more pests, it will use more of its resources to defend against them and, thus, be more flavourful for

One of the mechanisms a plant uses to sense insectile threats is to detect a substance called chitin.

Mechanical damage to many vegetables kicks off several enzymatic reactions that start ‘cooking’ and transforming them.

how you choose to chop can determine how much cellular damage you do and, therefore, the extent of the chemical reactions that modify taste.