All Posts By Jennifer

Coffee grounds on a steak. I’d seen it on a steakhouse menu described as a coffee rub and assumed it was a gimmick for the menu writing. Then I tried it on a cheap cut that needed help, and it was the best crust I’d ever got on a piece of beef at home. What It Actually Does It builds a crust. Ground coffee is dry and slightly coarse. Pressed onto a dry steak it forms a layer that chars and crisps in a hot pan, giving you a thick dark crust that salt and pepper alone don’t produce. It …

Poached eggs used to defeat me. I’d get a pan of white wisps and a sad naked yolk sitting on the bottom. A splash of vinegar in the water fixed it on the first try. Why It Works Egg white is protein. Acid makes protein set faster. When the egg hits acidulated water the outside of the white firms up almost immediately, which holds the rest of it together instead of letting it drift off into the pan. Without acid, the thin outer white has time to spread before it cooks, and that is the cloud you’re left skimming out. …

I cried over onions for thirty years and treated it as the cost of cooking. Somebody told me to put them in the freezer for fifteen minutes first. It works. Not perfectly, but enough that I do it every time I’m facing more than one. Why Onions Make You Cry Cutting an onion breaks cells and releases enzymes that produce a volatile sulphur compound. That compound floats up, meets the water in your eyes and turns into a mild acid. Your eyes flush it out with tears. Everything that helps works on one of three things: slowing the reaction, stopping …

I stood at the hob turning bacon with tongs for years, getting spattered, ending up with strips that were burnt at one end and floppy at the other. Then I put a tray in the oven. I have not cooked bacon in a pan since, and I will not go back. Why the Oven Is Better Even heat on both sides. A pan cooks from below only, which is why one side crisps and the other waits. An oven surrounds it, so the whole strip cooks at the same rate. It stays flat. Bacon curls in a pan because the …

Grating cheese is one of those small jobs that’s worse than it should be. Half of it sticks to the grater, your knuckles are at risk, and soft cheese turns into a paste rather than shreds. Fifteen minutes in the freezer fixes nearly all of it. What Changes Cheese is soft because its fat is soft. Chill the fat and the whole block firms up. A firm block shears against the grater instead of smearing across it. You get separate shreds instead of a clump, and far less stays behind on the metal. It also means you can push harder …

A spoonful of peanut butter in a pot of chili. I know how it sounds. I resisted it for about two years after a friend from Texas told me. It is now the thing people ask me about, and none of them guess what it is. What It Does Three things at once, which is why it works so well. It thickens. Peanut butter is fat and protein and it emulsifies into the liquid, giving the chili body without the floury taste you get from a thickener. It rounds off the edges. Chili is acidic from the tomatoes and sharp …

My neighbor boils her corn in milk. Not water with a splash of milk in it — actual milk, with butter and a spoon of sugar. I’d been boiling corn in salted water my whole life and thought that was the end of the subject. It is not. What It Does to the Corn Three things happen that plain water can’t do. The fat carries flavor into the kernels. Milk and butter are fat, and a lot of what makes corn taste like corn is fat-soluble. Water rinses flavor out; a fat-rich liquid puts it in. The sugar keeps it …

A man at a barbecue put an ice cube on top of each burger patty before he closed the lid. I assumed he was cooling them down for some reason I hadn’t grasped. His burgers were the juiciest I’d had off a grill. I asked. He shrugged and said his father did it. What It Actually Does A burger dries out because fat and moisture render out and run away while the outside cooks. The thicker the patty, the longer the middle takes, and the more the outside loses. An ice cube pressed into the top of the patty melts …

My biscuits were fine. Fine is the problem. They were flat, dense-ish, and nothing like the ones at my aunt’s house that came apart in layers. She told me she grates the butter, frozen, on a box grater. I thought she was making it harder than it needed to be. She was making it considerably easier. Why Frozen and Grated Flaky biscuits come from small, separate, solid pieces of butter scattered through the dough. In the oven those pieces melt and the water in them turns to steam. The steam pushes the dough apart from inside and leaves a gap. …

My sister-in-law makes pancakes with Sprite. I watched her pour it into the batter at a family breakfast and assumed she’d lost track of what she was holding. Hers were taller than mine. Noticeably taller, and lighter, and I have been quietly doing it ever since. What Happens Two things, and they both help. The bubbles lift it. Carbonated liquid brings dissolved gas into the batter. The moment it hits a hot pan that gas expands and pushes the pancake up. You get lift from the fizz on top of whatever your baking powder is doing. The acid helps too. …