When working as a private chef years ago, I made a group of fudgy brownies; I slowly melted chocolate and butter, used eggs from a nearby farm, and included an expensive dose vanilla extract. I let the baked brownies cool and cut them into perfect squares. And when the family members I worked on took their first bites, they politely admitted that brownies enjoyed as garlic.
The culprit was easy to identify – I had not washed the cutting table in which I would cut brownies after cutting the garlic in it – but that didn't make my mistake less shameful or futile. I had to throw the whole pile into the garbage. If I had observed the rule that I already knew: Always smell your kitchen appliances before using it, especially when doing sweet things.
And smell every step of the way. In the case of those brownies, for example, other possible threats include silicon used to mix, saucepanand knives. (Although, as I will explain below, the material nature of a knife or a baking pan means that you only need to clean them. No smell is required; To understand why and when smelling your tools and equipment is so important, it helps to know a little about how fragrances and aroma work and how both can be absorbed and transferred from kitchen tools.
Photographs by Rick Holbrook; Food styling by Kaitlin Wayne
The meaning of the relationship between taste and wind
“Taste and smell,” Harold McGee explains in his book Sink into the nose“It is the molecular senses”, which means “they discover and report on the presence of particular molecules in the air around us and in our mouth.” For the wind, unstable molecules (meaning they evaporate easily from whatever you are smelling) enter your noses and make their way to smell the receptors near your eyes. In the case of taste, the taste loops are making the discovery; Non-unstable taste molecules from everything that is in your mouth is distributed in saliva. By detecting aroma or taste molecules, receptors send electrical pulses to the brain, where nerve cells process these signals in what we perceive as aroma and aroma.
Bakers know that the smell and taste work together to create a fragrance. This means that if you can smell it, you can enjoy it.
One reason you can smell it – as in the case of the cutting board I used for those browns – is that the residual contains non -volatile molecules (the type that can be perceived by the loops of your taste) is present. There is an easy solution to this problem: cleanse the object in question. Another option is that the smell surface has smelled, whether it is porous (as with wood), or, more often, due to the chemical nature of the material; McGee told me that the chemical nature of plastic, silicon and rubber “resembles (it) fats and oil – and unstable unstable molecules”. Cooks often hear that “fat carries fragrance” – and unfortunately many of our kitchen tools are made of work in a similar way!
Photographs by Kristin Teig; Food styling by Liz Neily
Keep the smell of annoying food
Then how do you fight these unwanted smells? One option is to use wind -resistant materials when possible. You are more confident than fragrances with non -important materials and, most importantly, chemically inert such as stainless steel, glass and glazed ceramics.
But in many cases, the use of odor -sucking materials cannot be avoided. In the case of silicone shoulders, plastic storage dishes, and wooden or plastic cutting boards, clean them well with (preferably unstable) soap or cleanser and, where necessary, baking soda and/or distilled vinegar. To treat bad odors and storage vessels, McGee recommends leaving them in the oven 200 ° F for an hour or two, which evaporates the instincts with small molecules. “I do this all the time with silicone ice cream trays to get rid of that bad smell.” Another element of the kitchen to pay attention is kitchen; Wash them in hot water with a blurry cleaner and dry them without sheets.
Want to go to extra miles? You can get a suggestion from professional kitchens and keep two sets of tools: one for nice food and one for sweet food. But it requires an investment and a lot of storage space!
Submission to your kitchen appliances is a simple step to prevent the flavor of your ripe goods from contaminating you. Make it a habit; The worst that can happen is for you to take a siding from a suspicious witness, while the best that can happen is to save a whole set of Braines to do-by-crop from ending to waste.
Picture covered (Rye cranberry bars) by Rick Holbrook; Food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
