The Food Geek
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Allons-Y, Allium!
There's a family of vegetables that I love which polarizes many people: the alliums. Onions, garlic, shallots, and the like.
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The Secret of Spooled Gyro Meat
2 commentsThe first time experiencing a side of gyro meat can be a daunting and confusing experience. Fortunately, gyro meat is nothing but tastiness and a clever technique or two.
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A Thicker Bechamel
2 commentsSometimes a standard recipe isn't quite what you need. Usually we make changes to recipes for flavor, but what do you do if you want a white sauce to be thicker than it normally is?
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Red Velvet Vinegar and Baking Soda
1 commentNormally you mix baking soda in with dry goods when making a cake, but some Red Velvet Cake recipes call for mixing the baking soda with vinegar ahead of time. This seems odd.
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Baking Soda and Pretzels
2 commentsPretzels are very similar to bagels in terms of cooking technique and ingredients. So why do pretzels have baking soda on the outside?
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One egg at a time
A standard step with the creaming method of cake preparation is to add the eggs one at a time and fully incorporate before adding the next egg. But… why?
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A Bad Egg
7 commentsThere's quite a bit of mystery around eggs. Because of the effort to simplify when things go bad, there's some mystery about that, too. Let's see if we can't clarify things a bit.
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Resting Meat
3 commentsAnother bit of popular cooking wisdom is that you need to rest your meat before cutting, so it will "re-absorb its juices." What does that really mean?
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Soaking Basmati Rice
10 commentsIt's traditional to soak basmati rice, and proponents swear by the results.
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The Application of Salt
6 commentsSalt is one of the most important ingredients in all of cooking. When it is applied is often more important than how much is applied. Here is a grand tour of salt and its applications.
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The Hardest Cut
Sweet potato fries are tasty, but they take a lot of work to cut with a knife. There must be a faster way.
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Not All It's Cracked up to Be
8 commentsThere's some cracking good advice that's going around about eggs, but is it really as good as it sounds?
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The Second Rise
8 commentsWhen baking bread, you're often asked to allow bread to rise, then punch it down and let it rise again. Why go through all that trouble? What does this "second rise" do for the bread?
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Suet Secrets
3 commentsThere are some ingredients we just don't use much any more. This week, we examine beef kidney fat.
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The Purpose of Sifting
3 commentsThe whys of sifting, and a better way to accomplish sifting without using a sifter.
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The Convection Changeover
3 commentsThere are always pitfalls when working in an unfamiliar kitchen, but how much worse to have a completely new cooking method?
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The Cake Bump
10 commentsAn uneven surface at the top of the cake is not uncommon. Here we take a look at ways to mitigate, prevent, and/or fix the problem.
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Converting Measurements
1 commentHow many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? Will this be a one-word answer?
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Baking Soda and Baking Powder
8 commentsHow these two leaveners get a rise out of baked goods.
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ABOUT THE FOOD GEEK
Kitchen Mysteries is a weekly exploration of oddities surrounding cooking and food. They could be recipes that fail when they shouldn't, conflicting advice from different sources, or just plain weirdness. If it happens in a kitchen, and you're not sure why, send a tweet to The Food Geek to find out what's happening.
Brian Geiger started down the path of food geekdom after attending cooking school in Tuscany. A robotics project manager by day, he writes Fine Cooking’s Food Geek column, and in this blog tackles readers’ culinary mysteries every week. Be sure to check out his own blog at thefoodgeek.com.
