🍕🧪 Tastes Like Science
12th edition - Sushi Ingredients, cooking with alcohol, and the most important thing you should do this summer
Happy Friday everyone!
Last week, we were giving away a $20 Amazon gift card and a copy of one of my favorite books, What Einstein Told his Cook! And the winner is...
! Look out for an email from me for shipping details.Also, I know I'm not giving anything away this week but I do genuinely love talking to you all in the comments of the newsletter compared to the shorter interactions on Instagram/TikTok. So leave a comment with your favorite weeknight dinner to cook!
Let's get started!
I've realized the main thing holding me back from being consistent with my newsletter is this segment, so I'm making a slight change to the format. Each weekly taste test will be proposed as an ongoing project, and I will make progress and update as I can! Each project could take a week, but maybe 2 or 3 depending on the difficulty. I think that this is more sustainable and will also allow me to tackle more complex projects.
So, given that our current project is sushi, I've sourced all the ingredients needed to make the sushi rice and assemble. I'm following a recipe from MadebyMusashi that uses rice vinegar, konbu (kelp), nori (seaweed), and katsuboshi (bonito flakes). Since Japanese cooking highlights technique and ingredients, I wanted to source everything from Japan and found this awesome website called The Japanese Pantry. It's also typical to use short grain rice, and apparently this is one of the most popular Japanese brands.
NEXT WEEK:
I plan on visiting a local Japanese market to buy some fish and make it!
The Special Role of Alcohol in Cooking
Alcohol is often in used in dishes to "deglaze" the pan, removing all the flavorful bits stuck on the bottom to incorporate into a sauce. But why use alcohol? Alcohol does provide some flavor compared to water, but there is some interesting science behind it!
The Science:
Water molecules are polar while fat molecules are nonpolar, this means that they don't like to mix together. Unfortunately, the food we cook is full of both polar and nonpolar molecules. If you were to just use water or stock to deglaze, it wouldn't be able to fully incorporate all the flavor.
Alcohol, however, has both: it's got polar regions AND non-polar regions. This dual nature makes alcohol like a molecular bridge that can dissolve both polar ingredients like meat juices and nonpolar ingredients like caramelized proteins stuck to your pan.
But it's good to know that alcohol doesn't just "burn off" during cooking. Depending on your method, 5-85% remains, continuing to work as a solvent throughout the cooking process.
Actionable Tips:
Use alcohol early in cooking for maximum flavor extraction from aromatics
For dishes where you want less alcohol: longer cooking times, uncovered pots, higher temps
Alcohol-based marinades penetrate deeper than water-based ones
Huckberry has this really awesome travel show "Dirt" that I recently found out about and have been loving. They travel all around the world and highlight food from different countries but do it in a way that highlights adventure and local culture that feels different from other travel food shows.
I know y'all aren't hydrated enough but in the summer it's even more important. First thing I do every morning is drink a big glass of water with electrolytes, and in the summer I probably have 2 packets. If you didn't know, electrolytes are important because they're necessary for how your body's cells operate! I've tried a lot of brands but my favorite for the past couple of years has been LMNT (not sponsored). I just like their flavors a lot and the dosage of electrolytes is spot on.
If you don't have a rice cooker, just get yourself one. My family has been using zojirushi rice cookers forever (not sponsored), but most Japanese brands are fine. And they're great because they don't just have to be for cooking rice! There's actually tons of one pot recipes for rice cookers like Thai chicken rice that you can make just by tossing all the ingredients in and turning it on.
Thanks for reading— Hope to hear from you and see you next week!
*If you’d like to read more of the Tastes Like Science Newsletter, you can read previous editions on my SubStack.
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Favorite weeknight dinner is some protein, imo pork chops work the best for this, white rice, and lettuce. U cut the protein up, put it and some rice in the lettuce, wrap it up, dip it in some sauce (usually a mix of gochujang and soybean paste) and it’s delicious
Dude, I loved the alcohol deglazing part! It's super interesting. That kind of info is gold, not just for cooking better, but also when you use it to get creative with a dish.