The majority of food preservatives fall into this category, for the simple reason that tiny creatures eating and spoiling our food is, and always has been, a very big problem. As I mentioned in the last post, all of the classic preservation techniques are bug-killers. The problem with them is that each radically alters the […]
READ ONOf the major classes of food additives, preservatives are the ones that really get people animated. It’s understandable, since preservatives tend to have very science-y sounding names. But not all of them are the products of labs, and even among those that are, most are synthesized versions of chemicals that occur naturally (usually in plants). […]
READ ONReader Mark asks: Can you give us some examples of emulsions, and emulsifiers? Mark, I thought you’d never ask. The most common kitchen emulsions are dairy products. Milk and cream are both emulsions of the fat-in-water type, as are egg yolks. Butter is an emulsion of the water-in-fat type. Other common emulsions are mayonnaise and […]
READ ONDue to popular demand, I’m adding a fruit sorbet to the menu, since it really would seem a shame not to make anything with fruit in it. This recipe comes from David Lebovitz’s seminal frozen dessert book, The Perfect Scoop. Of course I’ve added a little Cremodan to it because, well, it helps. The formula […]
READ ONSo now we know what an emulsion is: a dispersion of tiny drops of oil in water (it can also be the reverse, but why complicate things?). That dispersion won’t be stable unless we get a little chemical help to prevent all those little oil drops from coalescing together. That’s what emulsifiers are. They’re like […]
READ ONForgive me for getting a little off-track with my food additives week, but whenever my white whale Michael Pollan surfaces, the Captain Ahab in me comes out. He breaches! Drop the sails! Lower the boats! Now that that’s over, let’s talk about emulsifiers, shall we? But before we can do that, we need to back […]
READ ONReader Al asks: Can you use too much stabilizer in an ice cream/sorbet? And what happens if you do? Indeed you can use too much, at great cost to your finished product. Using too much of a stabilizer like gelatin creates a mouthfeel that’s gummy, almost chewy in extreme cases. So, it’s better to err […]
READ ONThat’s the gist of most of the comments I’ve received about my post on Michael Pollan. And it’s entirely fair. What I tend not to write in my Michael Pollan posts is that I’d like to see many of the very things he talks about. I’d like to see people healthier and happier, a lot […]
READ ONFunny how things work out sometimes. Here I am talking about food additives this week, and who should show up in town? My old friend Michael Pollan. I don’t know how I missed all the promotion surrounding his lecture last night, but I did. Once I finally realized he’d be speaking a mere six blocks […]
READ ONMost of you have probably figured this is out already. Primarily, stabilizers interfere with ice crystal formation, helping to keep the crystals small and — hopefully — undetectable to the tongue. The upshot is the sorbet has a smoother texture. However stabilizers also offer another benefit. You’ll recall from an earlier post that stabilizers reduce […]
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