Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking

by Krish Ashok

best way to cook leaves is to blanch them in boiling water for 30 seconds and then to remove them away from

Squeezing some lime juice into the water also prevents oxidation.

always use salted water when boiling vegetables. Salt will prevent the leaching out of flavour molecules and nutrients from your vegetables, and also accelerate their cooking times.

steaming vegetables is a better approach than boiling them, especially if you are looking to retain most of the ...

vapour is less dense than liqui...

Muscles that are used regularly take longer to cook

succulence.

getting flavours into the meat is a process called brining. Letting meat sit in a salt solution, into which you can add other flavouring ingredients as well,

salt is a dehydrating agent. Yes, it is, but only for plant cells. For animals, including

caveat

unctuous

the translucent whites turn opaque, and if you cook it any further, hydrogen sulphide (H2S) gas will be released,

If you overcook the egg, the iron in the yolk reacts with the H2S from the whites to produce ferrous sulphide, which is that unpleasant green deposit you see between the yolk and white in an overcooked egg.

best way to cook an egg is to use low heat.

If you are scrambling an egg or making an omelette, 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 ...

When all the bonds in the fatty acid are single bonds, the fatty acid is saturated (with Hydrogen). When one of the bonds is a double bond,

it’s a monounsaturated fatty acid.

When there are more than one carbon double bonds, it’s a polyunsatur...

Any oil that has a higher percentage of saturated fatty acids is more likely to be solid at room temperature.

Any oil that has more unsaturated fatty acids is likely to be liquid at room temperature.

hydrogenation.

Saturated fats also have a longer shelf life than unsaturated fats.

omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

they describe unsaturated fatty acids in terms of where the carbon double bon...

Spices added to water, in contrast, lose most of their aroma to the air because flavour molecules do not dissolve in water.

smoke point,

remember that the smoke points of unrefined oils is almost always lower than the temperature you need for effective deep-frying.

more unsaturated fatty acids are more likely to go rancid.

oil used for frying has a characteristic ‘used oil’ smell. This is essentially early-stage rancidity.

supertaster’ to describe people with a genetic predisposition that enables them to detect bitter tastes more strongly than others.

propylthiouracil,

Supertasters are also more likely to be chefs and food critics. And women.

At lower temperatures, our tongues’ ability to detect tastes decreases.

cloyingly

taste buds operate at their peak between ...

saliva is mostly water, your tongue can only detect tastes coming from water-soluble flavour molecules.

What you smell before you eat is called orthonasal olfaction, and what you smell as a result of a ton of volatile flavour molecules hitting those receptors as you breathe out is retronasal olfaction.

But once you chew, a ton of umami flavour

Malodorous

olfactory nerve is close to the part of the brain that deals with emotions and memory, which is why the smell of food evokes nostalgia and memories,

we can feel ultrasound because it travels through bone more efficiently than regular sound, which is why hearing-challenged people can also feel the crispness of

Our tongues typically detect sodium in food and declare it to be salty.

Potassium chloride, for instance, does not taste salty and is used to make low-sodium salt, a dubious product that is a mixture of sodium chloride and potassium chloride, targeted at people looking to reduce their salt intake.

‘three-drug cocktail’

macabre

Iodide salts tend to break down at high temperatures and lend an acrid metallic taste to food.

it is recommended to use non-iodized salt when baking or deep-frying food.

The TRPV1 receptors detect high temperatures and strong acids in the mouth, and

Capsaicin is not water-soluble, it only dissolves in fat or alcohol.