Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes

INTRODUCTION

Cooking can be one of the most satisfying things we do in life. It’s a chance to make things with our own hands, nourish and give pleasure to people we care about, and choose exactly what we eat and make part of ourselves. It’s also a way to explore the astounding creativity of the natural world and thousands of years of human culture, to taste foods and traditions from all over the planet at our own table. This endlessly rewarding quality is what has kept me delving into cooking for more than thirty years.

Cooking is especially rewarding when it goes well! It’s true, as we’re frequently reminded, that the only way to become a good cook is to cook, and cook, and cook some more. But many of us don’t manage to cook that frequently, and frequent cooking can also be cooking by rote, habitual and mediocre. The surest way to cook with pleasure and success—whether you’re a beginner, a weekend gourmand, or an accomplished chef—is to cook with understanding.

This book is designed to help you cook better by explaining what foods are, how cooking changes them, which methods work best, and why.

Keys to Good Cooking is not a cookbook. Recipes we have in abundance, in print and on the Web, from across the globe and across the centuries, from professionals and celebrities, families and friends. Instead, this book is a guide to help you navigate through the ever-expanding universe of recipes and arrive at the promised land of a satisfying dish.

It’s easy to get lost along the way. Some recipes give reliably good results, but many don’t. Some are sketchy and leave us guessing how exactly to proceed. Others are intimidatingly long and detailed. Different recipes for the same dish may give contradictory directions and explanations. Some place faithfulness to tradition above realistic handling of today’s ingredients. And many perpetuate old misconceptions and flawed methods.

Even good recipes are no guarantee of success. At best they’re an incomplete description of a procedure that has worked for the recipe writer. Whenever we cook from a recipe, we have to interpret and adapt it for our kitchen, our ingredients, and our experience. And the process of interpretation and adaptation is just as important to success as the recipe itself. A good recipe can be badly made.

Happily, it’s also true that we can redeem a flawed recipe by seeing its flaws and correcting them as we adapt it.

Keys to Good Cooking is meant to be a constructively critical companion to your recipe collection, and a guide to the kitchen, gadgets, ingredients, and techniques with which you turn recipes into foods. It’s a concise summary of our current understanding of food preparation. It provides simple statements of fact and advice, along with brief explanations that will help you understand why, and apply that insight whenever you cook. It will help you evaluate recipes, recognize likely flaws or problems, and make adjustments and corrections as you go. And I hope it will help you put aside recipes, improvise and experiment, and come up with your own ways of doing things.

The first six chapters of this book describe the range of tools and pantry ingredients available to the home cook, how heat and basic cooking methods work, and the essentials of kitchen safety. These subjects aren’t likely to be at the top of your need-to-know list, and you may figure you already know what you need.

But because we usually equip our kitchens and pantries piecemeal, and only pay attention in emergencies to how the oven works or doesn’t, it can be a real eye-opener to pause and take a closer look at these things. Once you think about how heat actually flows into and out of our foods as we cook, you’ll understand why standard stew recipes often dry out the meat, why a medium-hot oven can scorch baked goods, and what you can do to make sure you don’t have those problems again. And did you know that thorough cooking not only can’t kill some tough forms of bacteria that sicken us, it actually awakens them into rapid growth? Watch those leftovers! The most important kitchen facts are often the least obvious.

So I suggest reviewing these early chapters every once in a while to get better acquainted with foods and appliances and cooking methods, no matter how familiar they seem. And take the time to read through chapter 6, Cooking Safely. Tens of thousands of Americans are made ill by food every day, many of them due to unnecessary mistakes made by cooks who could and should know better.

The remaining chapters are organized by ingredients and kinds of preparations. Read the introductory sections to find out how to recognize and handle good ingredients. Then, when you’re cooking a particular dish, go to the paragraph or two devoted to that kind of preparation. Review the facts and the various possibilities before you start cooking, to help you choose a recipe or make adjustments to the one you’ve chosen, and just to get organized. If a problem or question arises as you go, if a step needs clarification, check again.

To keep this book a manageable size, it covers cooking basics, not advanced techniques or fine points. And because a cook in the kitchen needs to get back to cooking pronto, I’ve tried to make the information as quickly accessible as possible. I’ve kept statements brief and to the point, repeated them when necessary to save the trouble of hunting down cross-references, and highlighted key words to make them easy to spot on the page.

Key subjects and important facts to keep in mind are indicated in boldface.

Directions and important actions are indicated in italics.

Here’s an example of how I hope you’ll use this book. Let’s say Thanksgiving is coming up, you haven’t roasted a turkey since last Thanksgiving, and you’ve seen a recipe for brining the turkey to keep it moist. You might start by looking at the introduction to cooking meat on p. 238:

No matter what you read in recipes or hear pronounced by people who should know, keep these simple truths in mind:

• Searing meat does not seal in its juices, and moist cooking methods do not make meats moist. Juiciness depends almost entirely on how hot you cook the center of the meat. If it gets much hotter than 150°F/65°C, it will be dry.

• Meat overcooks quickly. Low heat slows cooking and gives you the greatest control over doneness.

• Most recipes can’t predict correct cooking times. There’s no substitute for checking meat doneness yourself, early and often.

Then you could read the summary of brining pros and cons on p. 246:

Brining is the immersion of meat in a weak solution of salt and water, with or without other flavorings, for hours to days before cooking. Injecting brine into the meat interior speeds the process. The salt penetrates the meat, seasons it, and improves its ability to retain moisture and tenderness.

Brines of a certain strength, 5 to 10 percent salt by weight, also cause the meat proteins to absorb extra water from the brine, making the meat seem exceptionally juicy when cooked. Very lean poultry and pork can benefit from this extra moisture, especially when they’re overcooked.

Brine selectively. Brines have drawbacks: they dilute the meat’s own flavorful juices with tap water, and usually make the pan juices too salty for deglazing into a sauce.

And then you could look at the basics of roasting birds, which begin this way on p. 258:

Whole birds are a challenge to roast well. Their breast meat is low in connective tissue and best cooked to 150°F/65°C for chickens and turkeys, 135°F/57°C for duck and squab. But their leg meat is high in connective tissue and best cooked to 160°F/70°C, and their skin is best cooked to 350°F/175°C to make it crisp and brown.

To roast birds well:

• Don’t stuff the body cavity or rely on a pop-up thermometer. Stuffing must be heated to 160°F/70°C to kill bacteria, so the breast meat will be overcooked and dry. Pop-up indicators pop only when the breast meat is already overcooked.

Now you can decide for yourself whether you want to have a brine-moist turkey or an edible pan sauce, a moist breast or an in-bird stuffing, and you can add a cooking thermometer to your pre-Thanksgiving shopping list (and consult p. 45 for advice on thermometers).

You’ll notice that the pages of this book have plenty of blank space. That’s because the words on them aren’t the last, just the first. The margins and line spaces are there for you to fill with new information and ideas as they come along, and especially with notes specific to your kitchen, your tastes, your discoveries—your own personal keys to good cooking.

I hope that your copy of this book will quickly become well stained and marked up, and will long help you cook with insight, pleasure, and success.

Good cooking starts with a good understanding

1

GETTING TO KNOW FOODS

Good cooking starts with a good understanding of its raw materials, the foods we cook.

We’re all familiar with the foods that we regularly buy and eat, and the more we cook, the better we get to know them and the way they behave. But foods have histories and inner qualities that aren’t obvious from our everyday encounters with them, and that determine their value and behavior. The more fully we know our foods, the better we can choose them and cook with them.

I first encountered the inner world of foods decades ago as a student, when I headed to an unfamiliar section of the library and found shelf after shelf devoted to the science of food and agriculture. I browsed in them, and at first was startled and amused by what I saw: photographs taken through the microscope of meat fibers and the way they shrank as they cooked, microbes growing in yogurt and cheese, the oil droplets jammed against each other in a bit of mayonnaise, gossamer-thin gluten sheets in bread dough. But soon I was mesmerized. And though I’d stopped studying science years earlier, I found myself drawn into what was going on behind these scenes, into the nature and behavior of the protein and starch and fat molecules that they were constructed from. It was thrilling to begin to understand why meats get juicy when cooked just right and dry when overcooked, why milk thickens into yogurt and cheeses have so many textures and flavors, why well-formed bread dough feels almost alive to the touch.

The language and ideas of science are less familiar than our foods are, and I know that their strangeness can be off-putting. Try to put up with them anyhow, and don’t worry about the details. Just start by knowing that there are details, and that they can help you understand cooking and cook better. Then, when a question comes up, when you really want to know more, use the brief explanation in this book as an entry point to the world of details that’s out there to explore.

WHAT FOODS ARE

Foods are complex, dynamic, and fragile materials.

Most foods come originally from living plants and animals, which are nature’s most intricate and active creations. Some—fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh eggs, shellfish from the tank, yogurt—are still alive when we buy them.

Living things are fragile. They thrive in the right conditions, die and decay in the wrong ones. Their tissues can be damaged by physical pressure, by excessive heat or cold, by too little fresh air or too much, and by microbes that start consuming them for food before we can.

Most foods are produced on farms or ranches or in factories far distant from our kitchens. Before we can buy them, they have been raised, harvested, prepared and packaged, transported to the market, unpacked, and displayed—and require careful temperature control and gentle handling throughout to minimize their deterioration.

Our food plants and animals have been bred and selected over thousands of years and come in countless different varieties, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

The quality of a food is a general measure of how well it fulfills its potential for providing nourishment and the pleasures of flavor, texture, and appearance.

Food quality depends on many factors. These include the variety of plant or animal the food comes from, how that plant or animal lives, and how the food is handled in its progress from farm to plate.

HOW FOODS ARE PRODUCED

Cooks today can choose foods from a wide and sometimes confusing range of production systems.

Most foods are produced in conventional large-scale industrial systems that are designed to minimize production costs and food prices, and maximize shelf life. Conventional foods are produced and shipped from sources all over the world, wherever labor and other costs are low enough to offset the costs of transportation.

Most meats come from farm animals raised largely or entirely indoors, with little living space, on manufactured feeds that often include materials the animal wouldn’t normally eat (fish meal, rendered animal remains and waste), antibiotics to stimulate growth and control disease, and sometimes with growth-stimulating hormones.

Most fruits, vegetables, grains, and cooking oils come from plants grown with industrial fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Some crops have been genetically modified with modern DNA technology, which may reduce herbicide and pesticide use.

Most fish and shellfish are produced in aquaculture, the water-animal version of intensive meat production, in confinement and on formulated feeds. Some fish and shellfish are still harvested from the wild.

Most prepared foods are made from conventional ingredients, and usually include texture stabilizers, natural or artificial flavor concentrates, and preservatives. They’re industrial approximations of the original kitchen product, designed to minimize price and maximize shelf life.

Conventional systems have important drawbacks. Conventional agriculture and meat production, and aquaculture, can cause damage to the environment, the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and unnecessary animal suffering. Harvesting wild fish and shellfish has depleted many populations to dangerously low levels.

Alternative production systems attempt to remedy various drawbacks of conventional systems. Many foods are now advertised or certified to have been produced:

• organically, without the use of industrial fertilizers or pesticides, genetically modified crops, or most industrial additives, and with minimal use of antibiotics;

• sustainably, without damaging effects on the local or global environments, or on wild populations;

• humanely, with consideration for the quality of life of farm animals;

• fairly, with farmers in developing countries receiving a good price;

• selectively, without the use of genetically modified crops, certain hormones or antibiotics or feeds, or preservatives or other additives; or with the use of high-quality or heritage varieties;

• locally, with fewer resources spent on transportation.

Food production terminology is neither precise nor tightly regulated. The terms are loose at best, and because some justify higher prices, they may be used to mislead or deceive.

Be skeptical about alternative production claims, but not cynical. All food choices, even casual ones, influence the agriculture and food industries and the people who work in them, and have a cumulative impact on the world’s soils, waters, and air.

CHOOSING FOODS

Good cooking calls for good ingredients. Cooking can mask the defects of mediocre or poor ingredients, but it can’t make the best foods with them.

Foods land in our shopping carts with a history. Their genetic background, their variety or breed, and everything they go through from farm to display case influence their quality and what we can do with them.

Think about your priorities and choose foods consciously. If production practices and their consequences matter to you, then check the credentials of the suppliers and buy accordingly.

No particular production method is a guarantee of food quality. Both conventional and alternative foods can be mistreated or spoiled during the harvest or later handling.

Learn to read the signs of quality in the foods you shop for. The chapters in this book describe what to look for in each food.

Check the ingredient lists on prepared foods to know what you’re really buying.

Care for the foods you buy to preserve their quality. A long hot car ride from the store can cause damage as much as mishandling at any other stage.

INSIDE FOODS: FOOD CHEMICALS

As with all material things, including our bodies, foods are composed of countless invisibly small structures called molecules. We eat so that food molecules will become our body’s molecules.

Molecules come in various families or kinds, and we call those kinds chemicals. Many chemical names—proteins, enzymes, carbohydrates, saturated and unsaturated fats—are familiar from nutrition guidelines and packaged food labels. They’re becoming common cooking terms because they can help cooks understand what their methods are actually doing to change foods.

The major chemical building blocks of foods are water, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. These chemicals, and the changes they undergo during cooking, create the structures and textures of our foods.

Water

Water is the primary chemical in fresh foods of all kinds, and a major ingredient in most cooked dishes. The cells of all living things are essentially bags of water in which the other molecules are suspended and do their work.

Water is what makes foods seem moist. Its loss is what can make them seem unpleasantly dry or pleasantly crisp.

Water is also an important cooking medium. We cook many foods in hot water, or in the watery fluids from other foods.

Water can be acid, alkaline, or neutral—neither acid nor alkaline. Acidity and alkalinity affect the reactions of other food molecules and are important factors in cooking. Acid liquids include fruit juices and vinegar, and taste sour. Alkaline ingredients include many city tap waters, baking soda, and egg whites, and taste flat.

The boiling point of water is an important cooking landmark. It’s instantly recognizable as bubbling turbulence, and it marks a specific temperature, 212°F/100°C at sea level (lower temperatures at high altitudes), that is hot enough to kill microbes, firm meats and fish, and soften vegetables.

The boiling point of water is an important cooking limitation. It is too low to develop the rich flavors of roasting and frying, which develop increasingly quickly above 250°F/120°C.

Water in foods can slow their cooking. When foods are heated in the hot dry air of an oven or barbecue, their surface moisture evaporates and cools them.

Proteins

Proteins are the main building blocks in meats and fish, eggs, and dairy products.

Proteins are the sensitive food chemicals, easily changed by heat and by acidity, and the reason that meats and fish are tricky to cook well.

Picture proteins as separate long threads, more or less folded up, crowded together in a watery world.

Proteins coagulate when the temperature rises to 100 to 140°F / 40 to 60°C and the threads unfold and stick to each other, forming a solid mass of stuck threads with water pockets trapped in between. This is why heating causes meat and fish flesh to get firm and liquid eggs to solidify.

Coagulated proteins dry out when they are cooked hotter than their coagulation point and stick more tightly to each other. This is why meat and fish flesh quickly get hard and dry, why eggs get rubbery, and why precise temperature control helps cook these foods just right.

Acidity can also cause proteins to coagulate, even at low temperatures. This is why acid-producing bacteria set milk into yogurt and an acid marinade firms and whitens pieces of fish in ceviche.

Enzymes are active proteins: proteins that change other chemicals around them, and so change food qualities. Meat enzymes make meats tender and more flavorful. Some fish enzymes turn fish mushy and unpleasantly fishy. Enzymes in fruits and vegetables cause discoloration and destroy vitamins.

Cooking inactivates enzymes and prevents them from changing foods further, because like other proteins they’re sensitive to heat and acids.

Gelatin is the exceptional insensitive protein. Instead of its molecules staying separate at low temperatures and sticking together irreversibly at high temperatures, they cluster together to form a solid gel when cool, melt when heated, and can be repeatedly gelled and melted.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the main building blocks in foods from plants: vegetables, fruits, grains, and so on.

Sugars and starches are carbohydrates that plants use to store energy, and that we can digest, absorb, and use for energy.

Fiber is the common name for the other carbohydrates that plants use to build the walls of their cells, and that we can’t digest and absorb well. They include pectins, gums, and cellulose.

Carbohydrates are not as sensitive and easily changed as proteins. When heated, most of them simply absorb water and dissolve. This is why ordinary cooking softens plant foods, and why precise temperature control is not important in cooking most of them.

Carbohydrates are also extracted from plants and used as purified ingredients.

Sugars contribute sweetness to foods. In large amounts they also create a thick body—as in syrups—or a creamy or brittle solidity, as in candies.

Starch is a bland carbohydrate, the main chemical in grain flours and also sold in pure form. Starch molecules are long threads, and plants pack them into dense granules, the familiar powdery particles of cornstarch and other pure starches. When cooked in liquid, the granules absorb water and release the long threads, creating thick body in sauces and solid structure in baked goods. Starches from different sources— wheat, corn, potato, arrowroot, tapioca—have special qualities that suit them to different cooking uses.

Pectin is a bland carbohydrate whose long molecules thicken jams and jellies.

Agar, xanthan gum, guar gum, and locust bean gum are bland carbohydrates from seaweed, microbes, and seeds whose long molecules are also used to thicken and stabilize sauces, ice creams, and gluten-free baked goods.

Fats

Fats and oils are chemicals in which animals and plants store energy. They’re commonly extracted and used as purified ingredients. Unlike proteins and carbohydrates, they are fluids, and provide a delicious moistness to foods. Unlike water, they can be easily heated to temperatures far above water’s boiling point, and help create the characteristic flavors of roasting and frying. They also carry aromas better than water, and help flavors linger in the mouth during eating.

Fat and oil name different versions of the same chemical.

Fats are solid at room temperature and melt into a liquid beginning around body temperature. They come mainly from meats, and include butterfat and lard.

Oils are already liquid at room temperature, and solidify only when chilled. They’re mainly extracted from seeds—canola, soy, corn, peanut—and from the olive fruit.

Food fats and oils are mixtures of different chemical fats.

Saturated fats are fats that tend to be solid at room temperature and resistant to staling, thanks to the rigid structure of their molecules.

Unsaturated fats are fats that tend to be liquid at room temperature and prone to staling and off flavors, thanks to the flexible structure of their molecules.

Hydrogenated fats are unsaturated fats that have been chemically modified to make them saturated, more solid and resistant to staling.

Trans fats are unusual unsaturated fats that behave like saturated fats. Small amounts occur naturally in butter, beef, and lamb; large amounts occur in hydrogenated oils and shortenings. They’re unhealthful and are being eliminated from manufactured foods.

Omega-3 fats are highly unsaturated fats found mainly in seafood and in walnuts and canola oil. They appear to be especially healthful and are being added to many foods.

Meat fats are solid at room temperature because they have a high proportion of saturated fats. Poultry fats and pork fat (lard) are softer than beef and lamb fat because they contain more unsaturated fats.

Vegetable and fish oils are liquid at room temperature because they contain a high proportion of unsaturated fats.

Oils and melted fats don’t mix with water unless they’re helped by other ingredients. When combined, they form temporarily separate droplets. Fats and oils are less dense than water, so their droplets rise to form a layer above the water.

Emulsions are creamy mixtures of oil and water with droplets of one suspended in the other. Added egg yolk and other ingredients can coat the droplets and make a stable mixture that feels thicker than water or oil alone.

FOOD TEXTURES

Food texture or consistency is what a food feels like in the mouth: how hard or soft it is, and how it feels as we chew it, move it around, and swallow it. Texture is created by the main food building blocks, and by how the cook handles them.

Most cooking problems involve texture, not flavor.

Liquid foods may be thin and watery or thick and velvety, smooth or rough or lumpy, oily or creamy.

Solid foods may be hard or soft, moist or dry, chewy or tender, leathery or crisp.

Most pleasant textures result when the building blocks are evenly integrated with each other, and in the right proportions. Unpleasant textures result when the building blocks are segregated from each other or fall out of balance.

Meats, fish, eggs, and custards are tender and moist when moderate heat causes their proteins to bind loosely to each other and to water. They become tough and dry or curdled when excess heat causes the proteins to bind tightly to each other and squeeze water out.

Vegetables are tender and moist when brief near-boiling heat causes their cell wall carbohydrates and starch to bind less tightly to themselves, and to absorb water. They become mushy when prolonged heat causes the plant cells to lose their structure and fall apart.

Breads, cakes, and pastries are pleasantly firm when their carbohydrates have absorbed the right amount of moisture, too dry or too soft otherwise.

Sauces are smooth when starches or fats or proteins are evenly dispersed in the sauce liquid. When these ingredients are not evenly dispersed, sauces are lumpy or curdled or oily.

Bird skins and bread crusts are crisp when they’ve had all their water cooked out of them and the solid structures have no flexibility; as they reabsorb moisture and gain slight flexibility, they become leathery.

To understand texture changes, try to picture in your mind what is happening to the food’s building blocks as you cook.

FOOD FLAVORS

Flavors are the major source of our pleasure in eating. They come from specific chemicals in foods, usually present in tiny amounts, which we are able to sense with our taste and smell receptors.

Good cooks hone their ability to analyze food flavors, recognize how they can be improved, and make adjustments.

Flavor is a combination of taste and smell. We sense taste on the tongue, and smell, or aroma, in the nose.

There are five basic tastes.

• Saltiness comes mainly from sodium chloride, in foods and added in the form of salt crystals.

• Sourness comes from acids of several kinds, especially citric and malic acids in fruits, acetic acid in vinegar, and lactic acid in fermented foods such as yogurt and cheese, cured sausages, and sauerkraut. Acids stimulate saliva flow and contribute to the mouthwatering quality of foods and drinks.

• Sweetness comes mainly from various kinds of sugars found in plants and in milk. There are many different chemical sugars, all with names ending in -ose. Table-sugar sucrose is sweeter than corn-syrup glucose and milk-sugar lactose, but less sweet than honey’s main sugar, fructose.

• Savoriness, also called by the Japanese term umami, is the brothy, round, mouthfilling taste caused by monosodium glutamate (MSG) and a few other chemicals. It’s strong in meat stocks, soy sauce, aged cheeses, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

• Bitterness is the characteristic taste of chemicals that some plants make to deter animals from eating them. This is why it takes getting used to, and why not all people enjoy it. Bitterness is strong in chicories, brussels sprouts, and mustard greens, and an important part of coffee, tea, chocolate, and beer flavors. Added salt greatly diminishes bitterness.

Pungency and astringency are other important mouth sensations. Pungency is the heat and bite of black and chilli peppers, ginger, raw garlic and onion, and mustard, wasabi, watercress, and arugula. Astringency is the drying, rough effect caused by tannins in strong black tea or red wine.

There are hundreds of different aromas in foods. Aromas are what individualize foods and give them their specific flavor identities. All fruits have sweet and sour tastes, but only apples smell like apples, peaches like peaches.

There are many different aroma qualities in foods, which may smell not just fruity, meaty, fishy, eggy, nutty, or spicy, but also flowery, grassy, earthy, woody, smoky, leathery, and barnyardy.

Food aromas are always mixtures of aroma chemicals. Like chords in music, food aromas are an integrated combination of several individual chemical notes. Coriander seed and ginger share a lemony note in their spiciness; ripe banana has a note of clove.

When we combine ingredients in cooking, we create new aroma mixtures. Herbs and spices give us dozens of notes to fill out the flavor harmony of a dish.

Heat changes food flavors. Cooking gives meats and fish stronger flavors than they had when raw. It makes onions and garlic milder, cabbage stronger. Mustard greens lose their pungency and gain bitterness.

Cooking can add new flavors to foods. Frying in oil or fat creates a characteristic flavor from changes in the fat molecules.

High heat or prolonged heat creates especially delicious browned flavors. When a food turns brown in the frying pan or oven, or on the grill, it’s a sign that heat has caused flavorless proteins and carbohydrates to react together to form hundreds of taste and aroma molecules. The browning reactions are most productive at temperatures above the boiling point of water, so foods brown best when heat dries out their surfaces.

SEASONING FOODS

To season a food is to balance and adjust its flavors to give the greatest possible pleasure to the people who will eat it.

Good seasoning is the cook’s responsibility. It can’t be specified in a recipe, because ingredients and cooking procedures are too variable.

People perceive flavors differently. This is a matter of inescapable biology, not arbitrary preference. People inherit different sets of chemical receptors, and may be hypersensitive to some tastes or smells, completely blind to others. Some people are born with more taste buds than others. And everyone’s overall sensitivity to taste and smell declines in later life.

A good cook allows for differences in flavor perception. Discuss them openly to learn whether you’re especially sensitive or insensitive to particular flavors, and then take that self-knowledge into account when you season foods. Don’t be offended when people ask to season your food for themselves.

Tastes provide the foundation of flavor, and aromas are its free-form superstructure. To season a food is to balance its basic tastes and fill out its aromatic possibilities.

Always check the seasoning toward the end of cooking. Food flavors evolve during the cooking process. Flavor integration or melding is desirable, but often involves the loss of appealing flavor notes.

Season foods while they’re at serving temperature. Flavor perception is strongly affected by temperature. Saltiness, bitterness, and most aromas are accentuated in hot food.

To season a food, taste it actively. Ask yourself questions such as these:

• Is there enough salt to avoid blandness?

• Would the acid of some lemon juice or vinegar make the flavor brighter and more mouthwatering? Acidity is especially undervalued as a general flavor booster and balancer.

• Is there enough savoriness or sweetness to carry the aroma?

• Would some pungency from pepper add a desirable edge?

• Have desirable aromas faded away or become masked? Should they be revived by adding a fresh round of those aromatics? Should the aroma be filled out with a complementary herb or spice, or butter, or grassy olive oil?

2

BASIC KITCHEN RESOURCES

Water, the Pantry, and

the Refrigerator

Water and the foods we’ve always got on hand are so familiar that we seldom give them a second thought. It’s worth giving them that and more for the very reason that they enter into almost everything we cook.

Water is the lifeblood of cooking, a universal ingredient as well as a medium for heating foods, cooling them, and cleaning up. But there’s a lot more to it than H2O, and the water that happens to come out of the tap doesn’t always give the best or most wholesome results.

The pantry is a set of foods and ingredients that keep well and that we keep on hand because we cook with them regularly. It includes prepared foods in cans and jars; dry grains, beans, flours, and pastas; cooking fats and oils; and flavorings and seasonings, herbs and spices. The pantry usually expands without our planning it, and can turn into a very mixed collection of old and new, stale and fresh, flavorless and flavorful. It’s good to take stock regularly and cull it.

I’ve found one way to do some pantry maintenance that can also be pleasurable and stimulating. Occasionally I’ll just stand in front of my crowd of flavorings, open one container after another, and taste or sniff. Not with any particular cooking in mind, but just to refresh my memory of the things I’ve got and what they’re like, to enjoy each for its own qualities, and to set aside the faded for replacement. Malt vinegar and balsamic, black pepper and long pepper, plain brown cane sugar and winey brown palm sugar, vanillas from Madagascar and Tahiti and Mexico: they’re all absorbing on their own as the distinctive flavors of specific places and cultures, and as possible elements in what I’ll put together for my own table in the coming weeks. A world of sensations on a couple of shelves.

WATER IN THE KITCHEN

Pure water itself is plain H2O. But all actual waters—whether from a well, a city supply, or a bottle—contain small quantities of dissolved minerals, organic substances, and air. These minor components in water can affect the flavor, color, texture, and long-term healthfulness of ingredients cooked in it.

Tap water is usually adequate for cooking, but some foods may turn out better if you filter it or check its composition and adjust it.

Have your tap water tested for lead if your dwelling is old, newly plumbed, or part of a multiunit building. Lead is a potent nerve poison that is especially damaging to children, accumulates in the body, and is commonly found in drinking water thanks to the past use of lead in plumbing. In the United States even today, lead-free fixtures may legally contain some lead.

Let the cold tap run for 1 to 2 minutes or until cold if you haven’t drawn any water for hours. Even a mostly plastic plumbing system can release undesirable amounts of lead, copper, and zinc from faucet fixtures into the water as it sits in the pipes.

Use cold tap water for most cooking jobs. Water hot from the tap may carry more dissolved metals from the plumbing pipes, and off flavors from sitting in the hot-water tank.

Use hot tap water for steaming or in a water bath, when the water doesn’t come in direct contact with the food.

Check the taste of your tap water. Run the cold water for a minute, fill a glass, let it warm to room temperature, and taste it. If the taste is unpleasant, try to improve it with a water filter.

Check the pH and hardness of your water and make adjustments if necessary. Get this information from the water quality report for your city’s system. Or get pH test papers or a pH meter from a scientific supply company.

Water pH is a measure of acidity. The ideal pH for most cooking is a neutral 7. If it’s less than 7, it’s slightly acid and may speed the discoloration of green vegetables when they’re boiled. If it’s above 8 and alkaline, it will taste flat, will brew flat-tasting tea, and may cause pale vegetables and grains to turn yellow.

To adjust the pH of your water for cooking, add a little baking soda to make acid water more alkaline, or a little lemon juice, sour salt (citric acid), or cream of tartar to make alkaline water more acid.

Water hardness is a measure of calcium and magnesium content. Too much of either can cause a bitter taste, the yellowing of rice and other pale foods, scum formation on brewed tea, and slowed softening of boiled vegetables and grains.

If your water is hard enough to cause any of these problems, use bottled water for making tea, and steam sensitive foods rather than boiling them. Water softeners replace hard minerals with sodium. Softened waters vary widely in sodium content and taste.

To make clean-flavored ice, start with good-tasting water and clean ice trays. Once frozen, store ice cubes in an airtight container. Before using, rinse them for a few seconds in running water. Ice often sits in the freezer long enough for its surface to absorb unpleasant odors.

STORING FOODS

The aim in storing foods is to keep them on hand while slowing their natural deterioration and maintaining their quality as long as possible.

Stale foods are foods whose flavor and/or texture have deteriorated noticeably, but that are still edible. Cooking can often remedy staleness. Reheating softens stale bread and recrisps pastries, nuts, and fried snacks.

Spoiled foods are foods whose flavor and/or texture have deteriorated to the point that we consider them inedible. This judgment is subjective. Spoiled foods can still be nutritious and safe to eat, but off flavors and mushiness are warning signs that foods may be infected with harmful microbes.

The enemies of freshness and long shelf life are heat, light, and air. Heat and light energy, oxygen, moisture, and microbes cause foods to go stale and to spoil.

Most foods keep best when stored in cold, dark, airtight conditions.

Storing Foods at Room Temperature

Pantries, cupboards, and cabinets at room temperature are cool enough for storing dry, canned, and cured foods, and a few fresh root vegetables that are naturally slow to spoil. Dry foods will keep for months; hermetically sealed in cans for a year or more. Salt and refined sugars keep indefinitely.

Keep storage shelves as cool as possible. Don’t use toasters, countertop ovens, or other portable heating appliances directly underneath them. Pull appliances out from under food-storage cabinets before using. Avoid storing food in cabinets under the sink, next to the dishwasher or refrigerator, or above the stove top.

Store dry pantry ingredients in opaque containers, or in windowless cabinets. Glass bottles and jars look attractive but allow light to enter and stale the contents.

Paper and cardboard packaging and thin plastic bags can impart off flavors to dry foods, and offer little protection from moisture, oxygen, and insects. Choose products that are packaged in tough plastic bags, or transfer foods from the original packaging to glass or plastic canisters.

Canned foods often have a strong flavor from the high temperature at which they’re processed. They can be delicious; European connoisseurs prize the best and carefully age canned seafood and meats for several years.

Canned vegetables and fruits often include large amounts of salt, citric acid, sugar, and other additives to give flavor and maintain texture. Read labels before buying.

Refrigerate leftover canned foods in glass or plastic containers to avoid reactions between food, oxygen, and the exposed metal edge. If you keep food in the can, cover the opening with plastic wrap, not aluminum foil, which will corrode.

Mark the storage date on packages and cans, place new items behind old ones on the shelf, and use the oldest items first.

There’s no reliable rule for predicting the shelf life of pantry foods. Properly prepared and stored foods will not become dangerous to eat while stored unopened. They slowly slide from edible to barely edible to inedible. Different people will define these stages differently. Manufacturers’ expiration dates are usually conservative.

Taste long-stored foods for yourself, and use them quickly if they’re edible. Once opened, any packaged food will deteriorate much faster.

Storing Foods in the Refrigerator and in the Freezer

The refrigerator and the freezer are appliances in which we chill or freeze foods that would quickly spoil at room temperature. They also extend the shelf lives of many pantry ingredients.

Refrigerators and freezers help us store foods longer by removing heat energy from them. This slows the chemical changes that cause staling and spoilage.

Most fresh ingredients and cooked foods require chilled storage to