Part 3 (2/2)
Finally, why don't the volatile molecules of the meat escape from the bouillon when the bouillon only simmers? That is the crux of the whole matter. First one should remember that the fat that melts during cooking remains in the stock as fat droplets, dissolving odorant molecules. Certain volatile-and odorant-molecules actually do leave the bouillon, but they react as well. They make new odorant molecules that enrich the stock, according to Brillat-Savarin, who was not entirely mistaken. Over the course of the cooking, Maillard and other browning reactions produce many sapid molecules that enrich the bouillon. The bouillon's flavor is primarily the result of this cooking process. Someday, compare the water a piece of meat has been steeped in cold, in which such browning reactions have not taken place, and a bouillon prepared according to these worthy, time-honored principles.
Can You Lose Weight by Eating Only Boiled Meat?
That is a serious question in our times, when we often do not get the physical exercise that would permit us less restraint at the table. We have seen that meat contains abundant protein but also fat, which gives it its desirable flavor. Could this flavor be retained by boiling meat?
In red meat heated to 150C (302F) or in white meat heated to 240C (464F), the fats melt and are released from the flesh. In cooking, meat gets rid of its fat. If grilled meat is sometimes criticized for being too fatty, it is precisely because it is coated with the fats that have issued from it.
Can the problem be remedied by boiling meat? Not necessarily. For a bouillon, the maximal temperature is 100C (212F), so the fats melt less and are released from the meat less easily. Additionally, the mineral salts and aromatic compounds of the meat cells can escape from the meat and pa.s.s into the bouillon. In sum, we obtain a less flavorful-and also less healthy-food.
It is better to wipe grilled meats with absorbent paper. This will allow you to retain the good taste (the taste produced by grilling, not the taste of the fats that you'll eliminate) while preserving your figure.
Steaming How Does One Tenderize Without Sacrificing Flavor?
Boiled meat can be tender, certainly, but it has no flavor. In the last chapter, we saw that the tough part, the connective tissue and especially the collagen, is dissociated as it reacts with the water, but the odorant and sapid molecules escape from the meat into the bouillon. All that remains are tasteless fibers.
Can the flavor of the meat be retained even while it is tenderized? That is the principle behind cooking with steam, no different from cooking in a sealed pot (a l'etouffee), a long cooking process in an atmosphere saturated with water vapor. During this operation, the saucepan acts as a papillote, a sealed tinfoil or parchment packet. The same principle is at work in a Texan barbecue, when the meat, set on a grill in a big canister full of coals, cooks for sometimes as long as two days at just 70C (158F).
Thus, for steaming, it is sufficient to have the food steep for a long time in vapor. Naturally, the hotter this vapor is, the more rapidly the food cooks. That being the case, you need a lively boil. Of course, the food must be above the liquid, or else you end up with boiled meat!
Often recipes recommend browning meat in b.u.t.ter before adding the liquid and a little salt. This is not a bad idea. First, the tenderizing can get started in this first stage of cooking at a high temperature, and, what is more important, it promotes Maillard reactions and the browning that produces the characteristic odor of grilled meat.
After the preliminary browning, liquid is added, above which the meat is raised-in the basket of a pressure cooker, for example, not used under pressure-and cooked for a long period-four to five hours-during which time the collagen tissue is dissolved. This method is especially suited to dishes in which flavors like those in a bouquet garni are to be highlighted. The herbs, spices, and seasonings are added to the liquid so that their aromatic compounds can be extracted by the water vapor (extraction by vapor is a method for separating compounds widely used in chemistry laboratories and also in the perfume industry), conducted around the meat, and recycled. Brought to a temperature never higher than 100C (212F), they are not degraded and gradually permeate the surface of the meat. Let us not overlook a method that offers such advantages!
Braising Meat for Cooking Meat?
I would love to introduce you to the notion that the supreme cooking method is braising. In this transformative operation that takes place in a closed receptacle, with almost no liquid, the meat loses as few elements as possible. Instead of the elements of the meat escaping into the liquid, the meat absorbs the best of the liquid.
Before going further, let us recall cooking's old familiar refrain: to kill microorganisms, provide flavor, and make tender. In braising, these operations take place in two stages: cooking at a high temperature, which kills microorganisms, browns the meat's surface, and creates odorant and sapid molecules through Maillard reactions; then a very long phase of tenderization and taste production using gentle heat. The result measures up to the effort: the meat, marvelously flavorful, melts in the mouth.
People often believe that braising requires immense care, and this fear often makes them subst.i.tute roasting for braising. There is no need for this. If one sets about it methodically, braising requires no more attention than roasting, and its success is certainly more guaranteed. What is true, nevertheless, is that braising comes at some expense: braised meat cooks in the sapid juices of some other meat.
The principle of braising, then, is to cook the meat while at the same time nouris.h.i.+ng it with fortified juices. This is a long way from cooking in water! It is not only the method of cooking that characterizes braising but, just as important, what is added to the pot: bacon, meat juices, wine, brandy, all of which give succulence to the piece of meat being cooked in it. Succulence is the true goal of braising, the one toward which all the operations and various methods are aimed. According to the great Careme, to braise is ”to put strips of bacon in the bottom of a ca.s.serole and, on top, slices of meat. Then one adds either a goose, a turkey, a leg of lamb, a piece of beef, or something similar. Then one adds slices of meat and strips of bacon, two carrots cut in pieces, six medium onions, bouquet garni, basil, mace, coa.r.s.ely ground white peppercorns, a touch of garlic; then half a gla.s.s of well-aged brandy and two large spoonfuls of consomme or bouillon. Then it is covered with strong paper that has been b.u.t.tered, and cooked from above and below.”30 These instructions are not presented as a recipe to follow step by step; rather, they give us an idea of the philosophy of braising. Let us consider a recipe: in a large pot that will be closed and go in the oven, one puts a fatty substance (oil or goose fat, for example), a layer of onions, a layer of carrots cut into rounds, ham, the piece of beef that will be eaten, strips of bacon, another layer of ham, another layer of carrots, and a final layer of onions. Without covering it, the whole thing is placed in a very hot oven to brown. Then bouillon, meat juice, white wine, and possibly brandy are added. Then the covered dish is put back in the oven, at very gentle heat, so that the braising is indicated by only a very slight trembling. At the end of the cooking, the remaining juices are recovered and bound with a light roux. Then the sauce is skimmed while the meat is kept hot.
What Happens During Braising?
The principle behind braising, I repeat, is to tenderize the meat and make a very flavorful sauce. Here I must cite some new scientific results, which disprove some old theories. Previously, it was thought that there were two main kinds of cooking: by expansion and by concentration. In the first case, however, exemplified by boiling meat, no expansion of the meat takes place. On the contrary, it shrinks, because the collagen contracts when it is heated and the juices that flavor the stock leave the meat. In roasting or in braising, on the other hand, there is no concentration, as it was thought, but again some contraction because the collagenic tissue shrinks.
It is better simply to remember that, the higher the cooking temperature, the greater the loss of juices. In braising, the low temperature that should be the rule keeps as many juices in the meat as possible, while the collagenic tissue dissolves slowly, releasing gelatin and amino acids that give the sauce taste and a satiny texture.
Braised Meat Without Sauce?
Braised meat without sauce? That would be a crime against gourmandise. In fact, the sauce for braised meat is not difficult to prepare: either the juices thicken enough naturally to be served as they are or binding them with a bit of potato flour, roux, or beurre manie completes the preparation of this delicious, mouthwatering dish.
Let us remember that a roux is prepared by cooking flour very slowly in b.u.t.ter. The mixture of b.u.t.ter and flour must form bubbles that rise gently and then collapse again. The roux is ready for the liquid it will bind when it has a nice hazel or light brown color, according to the taste desired. After the juices have been added to the roux, skimming completes the sauce's preparation. The thickened sauce is heated for a very long time, keeping only one corner of the saucepan in contact with the heat, so that a single convection cell agitates the liquid. The top of this cell is skimmed to eliminate all solid particles that cloud the sauce. By eliminating excess flour and fat particles, this operation has the huge advantage of producing a healthy product that is, at the same time, flavorful.31 Beurre manie, a raw b.u.t.ter-and-flour mixture, is used when there is not time enough to make a roux. b.u.t.ter and flour are mixed with a fork, the liquid to be thickened is brought to a boil, and b.a.l.l.s of the blended b.u.t.ter and flour are added to it.
Chicken Stew, Beef Stew, Veal Stew How Do We Salt Them?
When should salt be added to a beef stew, a veal stew, or one of those chicken stews of good King Henry?
Try this if you have not already considered this question. One day when you have a little more time than usual at your disposal, make double the amount of a dish and experiment with the effect of salt. In two saucepans heated in identical fas.h.i.+on, place the same ingredients in equal quant.i.ties, but salt one of the dishes before cooking and the other one after. You will soon see the difference ... and the importance of osmosis. It is a matter of simple physics, as a familiar experiment will reveal. When a drop of colored liquid is added to pure water, and they are left together for a bit of time, we discover that the coloring agent eventually spreads throughout all the liquid.
The molecules of the coloring agent, agitated by incessant movement and randomly b.u.mping into the water molecules, spread throughout the water, and their concentration becomes equalized throughout the solution. This phenomenon of diffusion is very common. In a medium where molecular movement is possible, compounds gradually distribute themselves so that their concentration is everywhere equal.
Let us complicate the experiment a little by dividing a U-shaped tube in half with a permeable membrane that only lets water pa.s.s through and stops any larger molecules, like those of the coloring agent, putting water in one compartment and the coloring agent in the other. In order to distribute itself equally throughout, the water will go into the compartment containing the color to equalize its concentration; the color molecules, however, will remain in their initial compartment because they will be stopped by the membrane.32 In the end, the compartment that first contained only the coloring agent will gain a bit of water, so the levels will be different. This is the phenomenon of osmosis. In the end, the compartment that first contained only the coloring agent will gain a bit of water, so the levels will be different. This is the phenomenon of osmosis.
The dilemma of when to add salt to the stew is as follows: if the dish, basically a piece of meat in water, is not salted at the start, the mineral salts pa.s.s into the solution in which the meat steeps. At the end of the cooking time, the meat is tasteless. On the other hand, if it is salted before cooking, the gravy will suffer because the meat's juices will remain within the meat.
You must thus proceed according to the spirit of the dish that you are preparing. If you want to enrich the bouillon, add salt only at the end of cooking. If you want to retain the full flavor of the meat, add salt right away. And if you want a good chicken stew, with a flavorful sauce, add salt a little before the end, so the juices are harmoniously divided between the two components of the dish.
Questions of Pressure Why Use a Pressure Cooker?
The pressure cooker is an antimountain. At higher alt.i.tudes, the air becomes rarified, and the air pressure is lower than that at sea level, so water molecules, for example, more easily escape the body of liquid in which they are found. In short, water boils at a temperature lower than 100C (212F). In a pressure cooker, the water that evaporates at the beginning of the cooking gradually increases the pressure in the pot, so water molecules have more difficulty escaping the liquid. The boiling point of the water is thus increased. In practice, today's pressure cookers are devised so that water boils in them at 110C (230F) to 130C (266F).
This increase in the boiling temperature has some advantages. Chemical reactions take place about three times faster in water at 130C (266F) than in water boiling at 100C (212F). Vegetables, for example, cook much more quickly.
On the other hand, the pressure cooker has some disadvantages that make cooks condemn it. First of all, you cannot see what is happening inside it and controlling the cooking process is more difficult. Five minutes too long in the pressure cooker is like fifteen minutes of traditional cooking. In addition, certain reactions that take place in an uncovered saucepan, involving the air in the kitchen, do not occur in a hermetically sealed pressure cooker.
Moreover, all reactions are not accelerated in the same way by the increase in temperature. The softening of vegetable fibers is more accelerated than the permeabilization of the vegetable cell walls. The vegetables are tenderized, but they remain tasteless. Some cooks will only pressure-cook a roast as a last resort. For others, it is a method of choice; they maintain that a pressure-cooked roast is less dry than an oven roast.
Let us not sit in judgment of the pressure cooker here. Let us only try to understand the principle behind it.
Cooking in the Mountains?
Since we have considered cooking under increased pressure, why not also consider cooking under decreased pressure?
Those of you who suffer from vertigo may rest easy. I am not inviting you into high alt.i.tudes. I am only proposing a simple device, the vacuum pump, which reduces the pressure in a receptacle to which it is attached. Present in all chemistry laboratories, the vacuum pump is a simple tube that can be connected to a faucet to allow water to run slowly (great for watering your culinary herbs, for example). This tube includes a lateral branch where a plastic tube is fitted, the other end of which can be attached to the opening of a pressure cooker where the safety valve is usually located. As it flows, the water takes in the air and creates a partial vacuum in the pressure cooker. Because of the phenomenon mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the boiling temperature is lowered. This time, the chemical reactions are slowed down in various ways; new tastes appear.
We tested this ingenious a.s.sembly of Nicholas Kurti's during the First International Conference on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy, held in Erice, Sicily, in 1992, but the results remain unexamined. We know that a bouillon reduced under low pressure has a different taste, but the circ.u.mstances that call for such tastes have yet to be discovered.
Cooks, the ball is in your court!
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