Microwave Magic

What is just about the one kitchen gadget that most households have? If you read the title of the post and guessed microwaves, then you're right!  But, do you actually know how your microwave works? Or is it just a magic box you put cold stuff in and hot stuff comes out? Let's talk a little big about how microwaves work.

Photo owned by Modernist Cuisine. (You didn't think I had a machine shop to make this, did you?)

The photo above shows a microwave that has been cut in half. On the left we have the chamber where you put your food. On the right is a device called a magnetron. (Tell all your friends you have a magnetron and watch them be afraid!) The magnetron uses a transformer to create microwaves, which are a type of electromagnetic radiation. As shown by the white arrows above, the waves propagate (fancy word for move) into the path of a fan, which disperses the waves throughout the chamber and thus heat your food by irradiating the molecules. The word "radiation" generally scares people a bit, so let me be clear: MICROWAVING YOUR FOOD WILL NOT MAKE IT RADIOACTIVE. Well, not any more than it already is. But that is for an advanced physics course to explain. The second thing that is concerning about radiation is that being exposed to it can cause cancer and other health problems. Microwaves are a type of radiation; however, they are contained in the microwave (the cooking device) in a very interesting way.

The most common type of radiation that people generally think of being concerned about is called gamma radiation. Gamma radiation is a very small wave that is so fast that it can pass right through solid objects and scramble their atoms, thus causing the health problems. Microwaves are much, much bigger than gamma waves, and thus can be contained. Gamma waves are about 10^-12 meters long. Microwaves are a few centimeters long. So containing microwaves is relatively simple. The screen door on the front of microwaves are usually plastic with some sort of grating on the front. We don't have to worry about being irradiated because the holes in the front of the microwave are so small that the waves inside are too small to get out! How cool is that? The holes are big enough that we can see through them and watch our food, but small enough that it protects us from the harmful radiation within.

This is a lot of complicated physics, so I did a little experiment that you can do yourself to show how big microwaves are. *Please note that the idea for this belongs to Modernist Cuisine and I have simply repurposed it for the use of showing a concept. All of the pictures are my own.*

First, I cut 10 cubes of cheese out of a block of sharp cheddar (good stuff) and made each subsequent block smaller than the first. I ranged the cubes from about 1in^3 to REALLY REALLY TINY.

On the right we see the REALLY REALLY TINY cube.

Below you see that I arranged them on a plate in a circular fashion so that as the base of the microwave rotates, all of the cheese is affected evenly.

Awww aren't they so....cube! (It's a pun on cute, just FYI).

Then, I put the plate with the cubes in the microwave for 10 seconds. And here's what I found:

Wait....what?

The three largest cubes melted the most, while the small cubes...did nothing. For posterity's sake, I put the plate in for another 10 seconds:

Here are the five smallest cubes...apparently unmelted. They were also quite cool to the touch. But what happened to the big ones?

Here we have....some large puddles of melted cheese. A quick thermometer test said that the melted cheese had reached a temperature of 114 degrees fahrenheit, while the little cubes were room temperature.

So what the heck happened?! The average home cook would shrug their shoulders and eat their melted cheese happily. But us molecular gastronomists demand answers! The answer is in the physics. The microwaves, as we said before, are a few centimeters in length. Half of the cheese cubes were smaller than that, so it is impossible to warm them with microwaves. They're too small to be warmed. If you've ever tried to make chocolate fondue or chocolate dipped strawberries, you usually put chocolate chips in a double boiler. A novice puts a big bowl of chocolate chips in the microwave and it takes FOREVER to warm them. Why? Because each chocolate chip is too small to be affected by the microwaves, so it has to warm the whole bowl rather than each individual chip; it's the same principle. So, the moral of the story is don't put small pieces of food in the microwave--it just won't work.

Liked this post? Let me know in the comments! Any and all questions are welcomed and accepted!

The Great Plan...

So for this post I'm taking a bit of a break from science and going to explain a bit more about my project. Today, I had a meeting with Joshua Hebert, Chef and Owner of Posh Scottsdale, one of my favorite restaurants. We were discussing the menu for a very large and important upcoming dinner I am having.

As part of my senior research project, I must produce something that will help contribute toward my conclusion of my thesis of whether molecular gastronomy is viable for the home cook--and I don't want people to have to take my word for it. So I decided the best way to test this hypothesis is to experiment on *cough* ask for some volunteers to be tasters at a molecular gastronomy dinner I will produce. There were a large number of teachers and administrators at my school BASIS Scottsdale that were more than happy to oblige.

At this point, I have decided that I will do two separate dinners, one with meat, and one vegetarian. The menus at this point are under consideration and will be released only after both of the meals have been executed. Part of the appeal to molecular gastronomy is the experiential portion, and I want it to remain a surprise for all of the guests, some of whom read this blog.

These two dinners will be reviewed by the guests based on very specific criteria that will measure two things: the dinner itself, though this is also very dependent on my cooking and does not reflect the average chef, as well as preconceived notions about food science, cooking, and how they believe it applies in the kitchen.

Any questions about this or the previous posts? Please let me know below and I'm happy to respond to any comments or suggestions!

Under Pressure

Last week, I got a new piece of equipment: a pressure cooker! A pressure cooker uses an ordinary stove and basically acts like a big pot with an airtight lid. Why use a pressure cooker over just an ordinary pot? Pressure cookers can cook things a lot faster than normal methods because of the pressure they build up. At full pressure, most cookers go to about 1 bar, or 15 psi (pounds per square inch). When the pressure in the pot is raised that high, it also increases the boiling point of water from 212 F to about 250F. The difference in temperature accounts for the shorter cooking time. Pressure cookers are also used for canning (which ironically usually uses jars, not cans) at home. I found a recipe for pressure caramelized onions that actually used jars so I decided to try it out as my first pressure cooked recipe.

First, I put onions and baking soda (I still don't know the purpose of the baking soda) into small mason jars with some butter on top of it all. NOTE the caps were screwed on all the way, and then backwards a quarter turn to ensure the jars did not explode. If the caps had been screwed on all the way, the pressure differential between inside and outside the jars could have caused them to rupture.

Ooooo...artsy photography.

Then, I put the jars in the colander-like basket for the pressure cooker, and put about an inch of water in the bottom. I then put them in the pressure cooker for 40 minutes at 1 bar/15psi.

Jars.

Six jars...One pressure cooker....One delicious meal

In this picture you see the jars after cooking. Now, for those who don't know, mason jars that are used at home usually have two parts to their lids, unlike what you would buy at the store. There is a flat piece that goes on top that has the little button that pops after it has been open, and then there is an outer ring that screws on to tighten the flat piece down. (See here). So as I went to unscrew the lids of the jars, all of them came off...except one. Usually pressurized containers have to cool to allow pressure to equalize to the outside in order to open them, but this one was much harder than the others. I let it cool for about half an hour so I could physically pick up the jar, but it still wouldn't budge. Then, I noticed bubbles coming from inside the jar. It was still boiling. Don't believe me? Aha! I have video proof:

Wait, what? The jar was still boiling after half an hour at room temperature...and it was cool enough that I could pick up the jar? After a brief discussion with my physics teacher, we determined that a vacuum must have formed inside the jar, which lowered the boiling point of the water inside the jar. The idea is that as the jar pressurized, the gases expand out of the jar because it is not completely sealed. When the pressure cooker is taken off heat, the gases slowly cool and condense. On this particular jar, it must have happened that the lid was on slightly too tightly so as the pressure increased outside the lid, it created a seal. The cooling of the gases inside the jar caused some of the gas to revert back to liquid or solid in the jar or on the onions (called adsorption [no, thats not a typo]). As these gases became liquid or solid, they were no longer contributing to the overall pressure in the jar. Therefore, an area of negative pressure was created and caused a suction that made the lid nearly impossible to get off. The principle that allows the pressure cooker to be effective also works in reverse. As the pressure inside the jar went down, so too did the boiling point of water. Hence, the remaining water was able to keep boiling at a much lower temperature. After about two hours of cooling, and trying to pry the lid off with a knife, the mixture continued to boil until I used a can opener to create a hole to break the vacuum seal. Pretty cool, huh? I'm not sure how much sense that made, but if you have any questions feel free to comment and let me know! Stay tuned for the next post!

How to Bake a (Very Small) Cake in 35 Seconds!

Have you ever gotten home from a long day and thought, "I could sure go for some cake right now!" Maybe not. But if you were to think that, you would then remember all the work that goes into it and how long it takes to bake and perhaps forgo the whole debacle. But there is a solution! I can bake a cake in 35 seconds. Well, perhaps bake is a bit of a misnomer. I can microwave a cake in 35 seconds. Why can't we apply the same principles we use in the oven to a microwave? A part of molecular gastronomy is about finding ways to simplify cooking. Take a look at how easy this is! *Please note this recipe comes from Modernist Cuisine, but I have adapted part of it to make it even easier.*

A Personal Snack Cake

1. Get a few paper cups.

2. Make your favorite cake batter, or, alternatively, go buy a box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Cake Mix and follow the instructions to create the batter.

3. This is where I differ from Modernist Cuisine. They use a whipping siphon to make the batter light and fluffy. Which works great; however, after a few of my own bench tests, I discovered that you can produce almost the same results as them WITHOUT the whipping siphon! If you have a whipping siphon, then feel free to try it out! (If you have interest in this tool, I recommend an Isi Whipping Siphon, they're not too expensive).

4. Using scissors, cut about three holes in the bottom of the paper cup. Then, grease the bottom and sides of the cup with a nonstick cooking spray or vegetable oil.

5. Fill the cup no more than 1/3 of the way full with batter. It's thick enough that it won't leak out of the bottom.

6. Doing one cup at a time, put a batter-filled cup in the microwave and heat it on high. Microwaves are notorious for differing in their heating times. Modernist Cuisine recommends 1 minute. My microwave preforms best at 35 seconds. Try out a few different times on your own microwave and see what time gives you the fluffiest cake without losing moisture. The batter in the bottom of the cup will rise a surprising amount.

7. Take the cup out of the microwave and turn it upside down on a plate. Give it a few seconds to rest and allow steam to escape, then tap the cup on the plate to allow the cake to fall out.

8. Serve! You can pick almost any flavor you want. Serve individual warm chocolate cakes with fudge or caramel sauce. Serve lemon or vanilla cakes with fruit or freshly whipped cream (it's much better than out of a can, trust me. Also, another good use for a whipping siphon!) It's incredibly easy to do, I was shocked and amazed at how well it work.

Give this a try! Anyone can do this one, leave me a comment and let me know how it goes!

It's Just Mac and Cheese, What Could Go Wrong...

...apparently a lot. I now know for a fact that the term "food science" is indeed accurate, because science implies experimentation as well as failure. Yesterday I decided to make some macaroni and cheese, couldn't be simpler, right? Well, when you're using Molecular Gastronomy, every ingredient counts. I went to my favorite books, Modernist Cuisine, and found the recipe for mac and cheese. (Also found on their website here). I found a variation using sharp Cheddar and Swiss mixed for a tangier cheese sauce, and decided to go for it. As I looked over the recipe I saw Sodium Citrate listed as one of the ingredients. Hmmm. I don't have any of that. What does it even do? Naturally, the next step was to ask Google what purpose Sodium Citrate serves in cooking. Turns out, Sodium Citrate is the Sodium salt derived from Citric acid, and is a pH buffer, as well as an emulsifying agent for the cheese proteins. But I thought to myself, "Oh come on, it's just melting some cheese, how much could it matter?" And that thought became a very valuable lesson for me that I hope to share with you.

So I followed the recipe, put some milk in a pot, cut up the sharp Cheddar and the Swiss cheeses, and readied my hand blender, which is used to disperse the cheese quickly into the liquid. But I had a few problems from the start.

Cheddar, and Swiss, and Hand Blenders, Oh My!

1. I was using a pot that was too big, so the blade on my hand blender was too far above the liquid to be able to do anything.
2. I had the heat on too high for using milk, mostly due to my impatience with cheese melting.
3. I had no emulsifier whatsoever.

So, naturally, after about five minutes and very few pieces of cheese later, I had a mess of curdled milk, oily cheese, and lumps of lactate proteins sticking to the pan. Unfortunately, my disgust overruled my better judgement, so I do not have a picture of this wonderful mistake to share. I promptly dumped my slop into the drain and determined to start over.

I made a few changes. I started with a much smaller pan so that I could actually blend the cheese in. Second, I added some Soy Lecithin, because I figured that the wrong emulsifier was better than none at all. And third I started with a base of water rather than milk, so my impatience would not affect my dish. Of course, this did not fix all of the problems. As a matter of fact, I gained a plethora of new ones.

The hand blender was doing its job quite well, but spattering hot cheese all over the stovetop--and me. A few seconds later, after turning my back for but a moment, I had about six inches of cheese foam forming on top of my sauce. Did I forget to mention that Soy Lecithin is also a very powerful foaming agent? A quick stir fixed the problem, but it was still a bit of a surprise I was not expecting. Finally, I had added all of the cheese and it had incorporated nicely...but the "cheese sauce" had the consistency of water. And watery mac and cheese does not appeal to anyone. So what did I do? Exactly what any good Molecular Gastronomist would do, I just started adding Xanthan gum until it thickened! A few grams later, the sauce had thickened nicely and smelled great. Whew. I poured it over the elbow macaroni that I had cooked (without incident) and added some diced green chile just for flavor.

The purpose of this story is to show how cooking is an improvisational art. True cooking is not following a recipe and getting what you expect, it's deciding what you want to eat and making it happen. This is why understanding ingredients and how they interact, not only chemically, but how flavors fit together and add or detract to a dish. Molecular Gastronomy exemplifies this by showing how even when you do not have the exact right ingredient, you can still be successful if you understand what each piece is meant to do. And sometimes, we get what we want despite those mistakes. And can sometimes be more delicious for doing so!

The more work you put in......the better it tastes!

The Importance of Stirring

Picture this. You're making dinner for your entire family. A fancy crown of pork, a huge bowl of mashed potatoes, and *insert your favorite dessert here*. Oh and a salad because serving a vegetable is mandatory. All of the ingredients for the dressing are put in a bowl: a drizzle of red wine vinegar, a smidgen of olive oil, some sugar, a dash of salt, done. You hastily whisk it all together until all of the ingredients combine...sort of. It is oil and vinegar after all, it's not like there is much you can do to combine them better. And while the salad is certainly tasty, you wish that you could have made your salad a little more special to match the rest of the meal. Some of the lettuce tastes vinegary, while other parts are oily. Is there no way to get a better mixture??? Aha! There is a better way! What you are looking for is called an emulsion.

Oil and Water DO mix....in an emulsion

An emulsion is when you combine two liquids that would otherwise separate due to density or polarity. They can be as simple as your whisked salad dressing, or as complicated as Mountain Dew (which is technically called a nano emulsion). Emulsions are all about how small the droplets of the two liquids are. A good emulsion means that the droplets are so small that they are indistinguishable by the human eye. Emulsifying involves two different parts: how you stir the liquids, and what you add too the liquids. Let's start with stirring.

There are lots of different ways to combine two liquids. You could just use a fork. Or a whisk, for a better emulsion. But think outside the box for a moment. How could we mix them further? How about a handheld milk foamer? (Which is basically just a tiny whisk that spins very quickly from a motor). Or beyond that, there is the handheld blender. These are the tools that are most available to the home cook. Past even those, scientists use machines called Rotor Stator Homogenizers, which create amazing emulsions. How we stir our liquids is half the battle, the other half is whether we use an emulsifier.

Emulsifiers, a kind of surfactant, are compounds that allow normally immiscible liquids to combine. They usually do this by binding to the outside of the droplets, making it harder for them to separate. One such ingredient is called Soy Lecithin. It is most commonly used as a dietary supplement derived from soybeans, but also has emulsifying properties. The convenient part for us chefs is that Soy
Lecithin is available at many health food suppliers or organic grocery stores.

I can see what you're thinking again. "I don't have a Rotor Stator Homogenizer! How can I create a better salad dressing from all this?" The answer is simple, and uses a device that most household kitchens contain. This might seem rather strange, but bear with me for a moment.

Put your salad dressing in the blender.

I'm serious! Think about what a blender does, it mixes all the liquids and solids at a high speed with a blade. That same principle behind making a milkshake can drastically improve your salad dressing. Still don't believe me? To prove my point, I did a little experiment involving oil and water to show you how much of a difference emulsions can make.

Now, watching that video would make you think that the whisk worked just as well as the hand blender. They all looked the same at the end. However, time shows which is truly the better emulsion. After I mixed all three solutions, I took pictures of the three cups every 15 minutes to watch their separation. Remember, the green is the whisk, the yellow is just the blender, and the blue has the emulsifier.

Notice how the green separates out immediately? The yellow separates into two layers, but clearly not as quickly or distinctly as the green. Meanwhile the blue only has a tiny strip of separation at the top. In fact, it took nearly 24 hours for the blue cup to separate into distinct layers. 

So, the moral of the story: put your salad dressing in the blender! Try it out! Leave a comment if you do and let us know how it worked for you!

And So It Begins

The ingredients have arrived! Which means that this week will end up being far more productive than I originally anticipated...so watch out for some pictures and experiments later this week!

Note the scales on the left. The top one goes to 0.01 grams of precision.

But back to the ingredients. In this post, I want to further explain what exactly I have and how I intend to use it. Similar to the last post, but on a much more specific level. So here we go!

The ingredients shown above can be grouped based on their uses into a few main categories (with a few exceptions): Spherification, Gelation (Gelification), and Thickeners.



Spherifiers:

Bacon Flavored Caviar Anyone?

All of the ingredients shown to the left are used in creating spheres out of liquids, which is one of the most common molecular gastronomy techniques. There are two specific types: regular spherification and reverse spherification. Regular spherification produces small caviar-like droplets of gel that tend to only be about the size of a pea. The Calcium Chloride on the bottom right and the Sodium Alginate on the top left are both used in this technique. Reverse spherification involves creating a much larger sphere, that is actually completely liquid on the inside. The Calcium Lactate on the top right is used with the aforementioned Sodium Alginate to produce this effect. More on the science behind this when I actually try to do it. The bottom left is Xanthan Gum, an extract derived from bacteria that is used to thicken a liquid to prepare it for both types of spherification; however, Xanthan Gum also has other uses.



Gelling Agents:

Never confuse a Gel for a Gelatin. Gelatin forms a Gel. A Gel...is a Gel.

As one might guess by the sheer number of those pictured here, gels are a large part of molecular gastronomy. Starting from the middle with the long thin sheets and going clockwise, here we have 160 Bloom Gelatin, Iota Carrageenan, Agar Agar, High Acyl Gellan, Low Acyl Gellan, and Kappa Carrageenan. All of these serve similar purposes: creating gels out of liquids. "Then why get six different ones???" Good question! While they all serve the same purpose, they all are meant for different situations and produce different properties in gels. Gels are described using a variety of specific words and generally are categorized by the following: elastic to brittle and tender to firm. Each of these gelling agents only will work for specific liquids based on factors like pH, temperature, molecular polarity, and more. Plus, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.



                                                                                      Thickeners:

Through Thick and Thicker

Thickeners are something that most people can relate too a bit better. You use flour to thicken dough. Corn Starch to thicken soup. Lambda Carrageenan to thicken milk for cheese making. Okay, the last one might be a little out there. While traditional thickeners are very potent and useful, molecular gastronomists have to take the other chemical ingredients into account. Every ingredient must be chosen precisely and used in a precise amount to ensure good results. It should be noted that Lambda Carrageenan, unlike Iota and Kappa, does not form a gel and is used as a thickener for products high in Calcium. Xanthan Gum is also primarily a thickener when not used for spherification.

The Good, The Bad, and
The Tasty

The Rest:
the final ingredients I ordered are from three other categories that are a bit more complicated chemically. The large package in the middle is N-Zorbit M brand Tapioca Maltodextrin, and one of the things I was most excited about in this whole package. First of all, it contains the same amount of material as the two packages beside it; it's just so light that it takes up twice as much space. It is used for transforming fats and oils into solids. Mix a little N-Zorbit M into some melted butter or olive oil, and it turns into a powder. As soon as that powder hits your palette, it will turn back into a liquid. How awesome is that?!?! The orange package on the right contains Ascorbic acid, used as a pH buffer. (No cool visual effect, sorry). The ingredient on the right is the infamous Sodium Hexametaphosphate. Arguably one of the most fun and impressive compounds to say. Sodium Hexametaphosphate is what is known as a sequestering, or chelating, agent. When in a solution with metal ions, a sequestering agent surrounds the metal ion and makes it much less likely to react with other substances in the solution. Chelating agents are most well known for their uses in detoxification in cases of heavy metal poisoning. (Either way, don't drink the Mercury). In cooking, it can help prevent certain ions like Magnesium from reacting in a way that they aren't supposed to.

Whew. That is a lot of science. And not much food to show for it. Yet. Stay tuned, in the coming weeks you will see all of these ingredients and more being used to their full potential. In the mean time, please ask any questions you would like in the comments section, and share this page with everyone! Get ready for the good stuff, coming later this week!