Open Flames and Alcohol...What Could Go Wrong?

Yesterday, I decided to try making bananas foster. For those who don't know, bananas foster is a dish where a sauce is made from butter and brown sugar, bananas are added, then after adding a bit of rum, you light the entire pan on fire.

It's all very good fun.

Lighting things on fire in cooking has a fancy french term (like most other things in cooking) called flambé. In the case of bananas foster, lighting the dish on fire allows two things to occur: caramelization of the bananas, and the burning off of the alcohol in the rum. Unfortunately, as I did my cooking, none of my pictures particularly turned out any good results, as the flame was nearly impossible to see in the sunlight since I was cooking outside (to ensure I didn't destroy anything). But this is a picture I found that gives you the general idea:



The flambé-ing in bananas foster is a way of reducing the liquid in the pan. When using a flame to burn off the alcohol, the water based components of the liquid are left behind. A more traditional form of reduction is simmering a sauce or soup on the stove. So after a few minutes of reducing something on the stove, it usually becomes thicker and the flavors are accentuated because water no longer dilutes it. Reducing on the stove liquids containing alcohol, usually wine or brandy or something of a lower concentration than rum, also gets rid of much of the alcohol. A normal bottle of wine usually contains somewhere between 10-15% alcohol, which is not very much by volume. The boiling point of alcohol is around 173 degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than 30 degrees below that of water at 212. So when cooking down a sauce, the alcohol is actually the first ingredient to begin to vaporize. Flavors become more concentrated when reducing because when the water and the alcohol are both removed, only a little of the original liquid is left, and it has much more concentrated flavor.

By comparison, dark rum like that used in bananas foster contains about 40% alcohol. Why not just use traditional reduction techniques? The first is that because it has such a high alcohol content, flambé is a much more efficient way of reducing the liquid without losing a lot of the water that is necessary to make the sauce for the bananas. The second is that the flame helps to caramelize the sugar on the bananas and really seal in the flavor. Perhaps the third reason is that frankly, who doesn't like to set things on fire?

For those of you who are still curious about the dish in the last post, it was green beans, gnocchi, and fried chicken hearts. If there is one rule I have about food, it is that I will try almost anything once. It's not about what something is, it's about how it tastes. And its amazing what can taste a lot better than you would think. Thanks for reading! As usual, please feel free to comment with any questions!