What's the point of salting meat before you cook it?
What's the point of salting meat before you cook it?
When to salt meat is a controversial topic in cooking circles.
Some claim that salting early in the cooking process dries out the meat and inhibits a crust from forming. But we agree with the early salting advocates who believe that the salt has time to penetrate the meat, tenderizing it and improving flavor, and that salt (particularly coarse salt) help form for a crisper crust.
Those concerned about their salt consumption should note that if you wait until a steak is cooked to add flavor-boosting salt, you will probably end up adding more salt than if you'd salted before cooking.
An old chef's trick is to salt meat early, wrap it in plastic and refrigerate it for up to a few days before cooking. When you cook the meat, its texture will be improved by the tenderizing action of the salt.
Also, note that pork can take about the double amount of salt that you would use for other meats. If you have a mediocre pork loin, for example, double salt it, let it rest in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook it, then rinse off the excess salt and pat dry before cooking. It works like a charm.
Onion slices are versatile. In quick-cooking dishes, they stay distinct enough from the other ingredients that they don't permeate every bite as diced onions would. In longer-cooking dishes, they have enough surface area to turn soft and brown, but their natural shape and length keeps them intact.
To make contoured half-round slices, first cut the onion in half through the root.
Next, slice away the both ends of each half and pull away the onion's skin. Since the ends hold the slices together, cutting them off frees the slices to fall into individual pieces.
Starting on one side of the onion with the knife at an angle, make slices as thick or thin as you like.
Rotate the knife around the contour of the onion, bring it closer to perpendicular to the cutting board as you go.
What does "high on the hog" mean?
What does "high on the hog" mean?
To eat high on the hog originally meant to eat the cuts taken from the loin and leg—ham, chops and loin—that were generally considered to be the best cuts of pork.
The phrase has come to denote eating well in a more general sense. One can be said to be living high on the hog during prosperous good times, but the phrase is also used to describe someone living extravagantly or beyond one's means.
Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Chops With Mustard-Caper Sauce (Cookthink)
Recipe: Pan-Seared Pork Medallions (Cookthink)
Reference: What is Boston butt? (Cookthink)
Reference: How to tie a pork tenderloin (Cookthink)
(Image courtesy of Wessels Living History Farm.)
Salsa means sauce in Spanish, Italian and Arabic. But when people say salsa in America, they are generally referring to a fresh or cooked sauce used as an accompaniment to Mexican cuisine that ranges from mild to red-hot.
Salsa can be red or green and may contain tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, chiles, cilantro, lime juice and other ingredients. It can be used as a dip for tortilla chips or as a garnish for tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tostadas and other Mexican dishes. It is often paired with guacamole and sour cream.
Cooking pork is fraught with pitfalls. Fry a chop too fast or cook it too long and it will petrify. Though the National Pork Board advises serving pork while still pink (about 154F), some home cooks blanch at the very thought of blushing pork, even though its well-done alternative has all the sensual appeal of sawdust.
The problems arise from the nature of pork and the ways that nature is changing. Of all the commonly eaten meats, pork has the densest muscle fiber and the lowest moisture content (about 50 percent as opposed to chicken at 65 percent), which means it has a tendency to dehydrate more during cooking.
In the past pork was always cooked to 170F, or well-done. At that internal temperature the only thing that saved it from being hopelessly dry was the fact that its hefty fat content, which melted into the meat during cooking, made up for its lack of moisture.
But in recent years there has been a concerted and successful push by pork producers to lower the fat levels of pork (the other white meat), with the result that the nutritional numbers on pork look better than ever, but its tendency towards dryness has been laid bare. A growth in interest in heritage breeds of pork, like Berkshire and Yorkshire, that have substantial marbling and flavor, attempts to counteract pork’s march towards desiccation.
When heated, meat protein contracts, forcing any water held in the muscle fiber outward. The hotter the flame, the more the fibers tighten. Traditionally cooking meat means searing the surface at very high temperatures. For moist meats, like beef, which can be served rare, the dried surface and moist interior adds sensory charm, but for pork, the effect is opposite.
Because pork is dense, heat does not pass through it easily. Consequently, when cooking temperatures are very high the surface of the meat gets excessively hot before enough heat can penetrate through to the interior. By the time the meat is fully cooked most of the moisture is gone.
The obvious solution is to slow down the cooking. Pork should be browned briefly, and then the temperature should be lowered to allow the rest of the cooking to take place as gently as possible. Heat transference is helped by adding liquid, which tenderizes meat fibers more efficiently than dry heat while continually adding moisture.
What should you do if you eat a pepper that sets your tongue on fire?
Do not drink beer. Water won’t help either. (In a Caribbean folktale, children drown in a river trying to cool their tongues after eating habanero stew. See Dave Dewitt and Nancy Gerlach's The Pepper Pantry for the full story.) Capsaicin, the chemical that makes a hot pepper hot, doesn’t dissolve in water, so even ice water won’t help remove the heat.
Your best bet? Get milk. Because capsaicin is fat-soluble, a compound in milk can actually pull the capsaicin off your tongue and relieve some of the burn. Another option: eat bread or rice to absorb the heat. Cucumber can also have a cooling effect.
If you are feeling brave (or masochistic), you could try eating another pepper. According Robert Berkley, the author of Peppers: A Cookbook, you can build up a resistance to capsaicin by eating more chile peppers. With Berkley’s approach, you get the added high of a capsaicin-triggered endorphin release. Before you know it, you might be addicted to the hot little things.
Reference: How to seed a chile pepper (Cookthink)
Reference:: Why are some jalapenos hotter than others? (Cookthink)
Biting into a raw jalapeño will probably create quite a sting, but on the pepper scale of heat (the Scoville Scale), jalapeños are not really that hot. If you seed and core the pepper, you may not get any heat at all out of a jalapeño.
Some jalapeños are hotter than others. Mature peppers that are dark green and a little wrinkled will be hotter than younger ones. The hottest jalapeños are grown in the hot, dry climates of New Mexico or Arizona.
If you don't know where a jalapeño was grown, you may have to taste it yourself to measure the heat. Don't rely on someone else to tell you whether or not a pepper is too hot. Some people are more sensitive to capsaicin (the chemical that makes hot peppers hot) than others. In junior high, I watched a guy drink a bottle of Tabasco on a dare. He didn't even dab his forehead. If you want to try that at home, you can build up your tolerance to capsaicin by eating more chile peppers and hot sauce.
My father-in-law, Billy, eats raw jalapeños whole from tip to stem. He tells me they are good for his health, and the American Dietetic Association agrees. Peppers are rich in phytochemicals that appear to provide anti-inflammatory benefits. Medical studies show that capsaicin may act as a blood thinner. Spicing dishes with cayenne or pepper flakes also reduces the need for extra salt. Hot sauce, which is actually more salt than pepper, is another story. - Elizabeth Hughey
The Scoville scale measures the hotness of a pepper.
A "Scoville Unit" is actually a measure of capsaicin, the chemical that makes a hot pepper hot. Most capsaicin is found in the ribs and seeds of a pepper, which is why seeding a pepper makes it's heat less potent.
You might have noticed a Scoville rating on your bottle of hot sauce. Original Tabasco has a rating of 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. The hottest readily available peppers, Scotch Bonnet and habaneros, share a rating of 100,000–350,000. India's Bhut Jolokia pepper is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest known pepper. It measures 1,000,000 heat units. (Pepper spray weapons hit 5,300,000 units.)
The rating of a bell pepper? Zero -- no heat from this pepper.
Reference: Habanero vs. serrano vs. jalapeño
Reference: How to dice a jalapeño
Reference: Help! I ate a hot pepper!
(image courtey of wikipedia)
