Cooking

The Lab Equipment Cooking at home is nothing more than a series of simple chemistry experiments that we conduct in our home lab. We just happen to call our home chemistry lab a kitchen! We use heat, mechanical energy, and chemicals to transform raw ingredients […]

Chemistry in the Kitchen There’s a lot happening on the food front, with equipment and ingredients evolving in directions that aren’t obvious to those of us who cook at home.  I’ve talked before about the unusual approaches being used by Charlie Trotter, Wylie Dufresne, Grant […]

Salt, Part 8: To Serve Man The ability of salt to cause water to move across cellular boundaries is at the core of salt cures and other forms of preservation using salt. Salted meats, whether fish, meat or fowl are cured by applying lots of […]

Salt, Part 7: Doctor Salt The concentration of electrolytes in our system must be precisely maintained in order for our bodies to work.  Sodium, along with potassium, are two of the most important electrolytes in our body, so not surprisingly our bodies have quite a […]

Salt, Part 6: Please Pass The Salt Salt is one of our five basic senses of taste, which also includes sweet, sour, bitter and umami (savory).  Haven’t heard of ‘umami’ before?  It’s kind of a recent thing, discovered and named by a Japanese researcher.  Umami […]

Wired for Food Wired magazine is full of weird stuff about technology, the internet, politics, our environment and the surreal nature of life.  When I find the time to work my way through an issue, I look at the world a little differently.  Here’s some […]

Salt, Part 5: The Salts of Our Lives Salt gets to our table in different ways and forms.  If you do much cooking, or pay attention to such things, you’ll have noticed that there are different forms of salt used in the kitchen, each with […]

Salt, Part 4: Getting Inside the Salt Salt is an ionic compound, which means that the atomic elements in salt gain or lose electrons rather than sharing electrons.  The chemical notation for salt is NaCl, which indicates that a molecule of salt consists of one […]

Salt, Part 3: Between Salt and a Hard Place Halite, the pure mineral form of salt, is the only rock that we routinely consume as part of our normal diet.  Unlike most foods we eat, salt doesn’t burn and doesn’t catch fire.  For all practical […]

CIA Boot Camp: Top Ten 10/3/2007 Here are my own Top Ten lessons from CIA Boot Camp week: •    The measuring cups are all gone.  Now what?  I just laid down that whisk, where did it go?  And, Dang! That stove is HOT!  I have […]