I'm Just Here for the Food (56 page)
Read I'm Just Here for the Food Online
Authors: Alton Brown
Tags: #General, #Courses & Dishes, #Cooking, #Cookery
Yes, this is legal. A colloid is any substance, either gas or liquid, in which tiny droplets of one substance are dispersed in another.
Bones from cooked chickens won’t deliver as much collagen as those of raw ones because too many of the proteins have coagulated. Some folks like to roast the bones for flavor, but I’d rather keep my stocks neutral.
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The way I see it, stock is an ingredient and as such, shouldn’t be salted until put to use.
This is a really wonderful example of thermodynamics, and I just love thermodynamics. In this case the heat of the stock is moving into the bag. . . very groovy when you think about it.
Even if you have no intention of making a sauce, deglazing is still a good idea because it’s the best way to get cooked-on goop off the bottom of a pan. Just add enough water to the hot pan to come ½-inch or so up the side and let it come to a boil, scraping occasionally with a wooden spatula. The pan will come clean in no time.
I would compare it to liquid chicken but chicken meat contains connective tissue and eggs do not. Technically speaking the chalazae is a connective structure, meant to keep the yolk centered in the egg, but since it’s composed of nothing but twisted white (or albumen), it doesn’t really count.
The exceptions are starch-stabilized stirred custards such as pastry cream, which can, because of their starch content, be boiled to no ill effect.
There are those who will tell you that acidic items such as tomato sauce will rip a cure right off a pan. All I can say is I don’t buy it.
This only holds true for heavy-duty (read: expensive) models. Skimpy models are none too good for pan-frying because they don’t heat evenly over a burner.
There is currently a resurgence in Dutch-oven cooking out West and in, of all places, Japan.
Needless to say, mercury is really, really poisonous. If you do manage to break the thermometer during use, for the love of all things not genetically mangled, throw out the food.
The United States sees some forty thousand reported cases of
salmonella
each year, and more than one thousand of those result in death.
Shellfish harvesting is very tightly regulated. Merchants are required to display bed tags from each shipment that tell where and when the harvest took place. If any problems become associated with the batch, health officials can quickly track it to the source.
Botulinum
is especially ugly because it is an organism that produces resistant little spores that can withstand temperatures well in excess of the boiling point of water.
Botulinum
also thrives in anaerobic environments such as sealed vacu-pouches and cans.
It’s interesting to note that although smoke has preservative powers and tastes great, the main reason it was used for curing in the United States is because it’s an excellent fly repellant.
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