Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

Read Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food Online

Authors: Jeff Potter

Tags: #COOKING / Methods / General

Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

Table of Contents

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Recipe Index
List of Interviews
Preface
How to Use This Book
On the Web
Acknowledgments
How to Contact Us
Safari® Books Online

1. Hello, Kitchen!

Think Like a Hacker
Functional Fixedness
A Few Words on Nutrition
Tips for Newbies
Picking a Recipe
Reading Between the Lines
Cooking for One
Cooking for Others

2. Initializing the Kitchen

Approaching the Kitchen
Calibrating Your Instruments
Prepping Ingredients
Kitchen Equipment
Bare Minimum Equipment
Standard Kitchen Equipment
Kitchen Organization
0(1) Retrieval
Functional Grouping
Uniform Storage Containers
Counter Layout
Kitchen Pruning
Giving Kitchen Tools As Gifts

3. Choosing Your Inputs: Flavors and Ingredients

Smell + Taste = Flavor
Taste (Gustatory Sense)
Smell (Olfactory Sense)
Tastes: Bitter, Salty, Sour, Sweet, Umami, Others
Bitter
Salty
Sour
Sweet
Umami (a.k.a. Savory)
Others
Combinations of Tastes and Smells
Adapt and Experiment Method
Regional/Traditional Method
Rice, Wheat, Grains ≅ Congee, Cream of Wheat, Porridge
Seasonal Method
Analytical Method

4. Time and Temperature: Cooking’s Primary Variables

Cooked = Time * Temperature
Heat Transfer and Doneness
Methods of Heat Transfer
Foodborne Illness and Staying Safe
How to Prevent Foodborne Illness Caused by Bacteria
How to Prevent Foodborne Illness Caused by Parasites
Key Temperatures in Cooking
104°F / 40°C and 122°F / 50°C: Proteins in Fish and Meat Begin to Denature
144°F / 62°C: Eggs Begin to Set
154°F / 68°C: Collagen (Type I) Denatures
158°F / 70°C: Vegetable Starches Break Down
310°F / 154°C: Maillard Reactions Become Noticeable
356°F / 180°C: Sugar Begins to Caramelize Visibly

5. Air: Baking’s Key Variable

Gluten
Biological Leaveners
Yeast
Chemical Leaveners
Baking Soda
Baking Powder
Mechanical Leaveners
Egg Whites
Egg Yolks
Whipped Cream

6. Playing with Chemicals

Traditional Cooking Chemicals
Salt
Sugar
Acids and Bases
Alcohol
Modern Industrial Chemicals
E Numbers: The Dewey Decimal System of Food Additives
Colloids
Making Gels: Starches, Carrageenan, Agar, and Sodium Alginate
Making Things Melt in Weird Ways: Methylcellulose and Maltodextrin
Making Foams: Lecithin
Anti-Sugar: Lactisole
Meat Glue: Transglutaminase
Liquid Smoke: Distilled Smoke Vapor

7. Fun with Hardware

Sous Vide Cooking
Foodborne Illness and Sous Vide Cooking
Sous Vide Hardware
Cooking with Sous Vide
Commercial Hardware and Techniques
Filtration
Cream Whippers (a.k.a. “iSi Whippers”)
“Cooking” with Cold: Liquid Nitrogen and Dry Ice
Cooking with (a Lot of) Heat

A. Cooking Around Allergies

Substitutions for Common Allergies

B. Afterword

C. About the Author

Index

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Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

Jeff Potter

Published by
O’Reilly Media

Beijing ⋅ Cambridge ⋅ Farnham ⋅ Köln ⋅ Sebastopol ⋅ Tokyo

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Recipe Index

Breakfast

The 30-Minute Scrambled Egg

The 60-Minute Slow-Cooked Egg

Hard-Cooked Eggs, Shock and Awe Method

Oven-Poached Eggs

Buttermilk Pancakes