12 Great Apps for Cooking a Thanksgiving Dinner

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What Are Some Cooking Myths that Don’t Help?

Here’s what Jonas M Luster, an experienced chef, has to say about it -

” Some of the more common ones:

This is a TV-chef myth. It comes up all the time on the telly, which doesn’t make it any more true. In fact, the act of searing the outside of meat actually makes it more porous and therefore more likely to give off juices under pressure. This pressure does not have to be manual, the mere exposure to heat forces the muscle (almost all traditional cuts are muscles) to contract and therefore expel juices from the item.

You can’t stop those juices, but you can work with it. Searing at great heat and then finishing your meat at lower heat, letting it rest for a while after cooking and before serving, preserves the second-largest amount (top for that is still Sous Vide cooking) of juices.

I am guilty of that myth myself. Always the strict and fun-removed cooking instructor I want my students to sweat some. But the truth is, when whipping egg whites or cream, stopping in the middle and picking it back up a few seconds later (when that arm gets too heavy) doesn’t make your whip fall apart. If anything, it helps by allowing the structure to set and firm up a little. Just don’t remove your whisk, leave it inside your liquid at all times, and restart at medium speed, not at full bore.

Speaking about myths, you don’t need a special whisk for stuff. The whole idea of whisking is integration of air into a liquid – get the one with the most spokes, cheap or expensive, and if you still find yourself having issues use two whisks at once, you’ll see the insane difference.

My mother believed this one to be true, too. Plus those idiot TV cheflebrities with vaguely Italian names who think that a grandfather from Rome and a vacation in the 80s makes them “Italian” keep perpetuating it. Unless, and that’s really the only time, you make your own, 100% semolina (it’s not a good mix to begin with), pasta and do not rest/dry it, you don’t need to fill a huge pot with lots of water for some product. As long as all of the pasta is covered, crowding is never an issue. Add enough salt to make it, as my Italian chef always said, “taste like the Adria“, NO oil (never, ever), and bring to a light, not rolling, boil. And, voila, perfect pasta every time.

A foodie myth. Apparently, I am told, only home made pasta is worth it. Well, that’s a myth. Good bought pasta contains exactly the same stuff you’d put into it. Unless it’s ravioli (in which case you have to make it yourself to get stuff inside), buying pasta is completely acceptable and done anywhere and everywhere. Yes, that includes Michelin-starred places.

Clarification: Barilla and other durum-extruded pastas are different from home made pasta in contents and taste. They’re not worse or better, but different. When I refer to store bought pasta it’s the stuff you buy at a pasta shop, not a supermarket.

Cooking school myth. “Don’t put salt on the yeast, you’ll kill it”. Active dry yeast, double-rise yeast, all those kinds, don’t get too bothered by salt. If you are using bakers-loaf yeast (the alive kind in a block), salt can act as a desiccant and implode your yeasties, but if you bloom or add into dough just the packet yeast everyone else uses don’t worry about salt touching it.

THAT one is one persistent myth. Many people I know seem to like to cook their pasta, then shock it. And that, firstly, doesn’t stop the cooking process as quickly as one would assume, and – secondly – washes off all that nice starch covering the outside of the pasta. This, in turn, leads to thinner sauces, lack of sauce-pasta adherence, and to a drying of your pasta. Cook until 80% done al dente, then just remove and let stand and finish cooking while you set up the sauce.

Adding salt actually raises the boiling point of water. The amount of salt we add to cooking water, however, is way too low to make a discernible difference to the things cooked in it. Salt seasons food, it acts hygroscopic in some cases, and in the case of pasta it actually counteracts some of the starch cohesion while cooking.

Get a chef’s knife. Buying Santoku doesn’t make you more sophisticated or for better cuts. French knifes (the slightly curved blade kind, known as “Chef’s Knife”) work like saws – one slices them across the surface and the blade’s miniature ‘teeth’ cut through the product. Santokus work like axes – by pushing apart the cut. For this to work, Santoku have to be insanely sharp, thin, and be made of extremely good steel. Such technology does not come at a $200 price.

Stick with a chef’s knife, it’s better.

Lard has less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol than an equal amount of butter by weight. It also contains no trans-fats while Margarine and Shortenings do. The “Lard is bad for you” myth was started by the hydrogenated vegetable oil producers who wanted to push butter and lard off the shelves to make room for their chemical crapola.

Onions brown, they do not caramelize. For caramelization to occur, sugar has to be present in mono- or disaccharide form. In onions, the amino acids are deprotonated and react with the sugar’s carbonyl group. Why is that important? Well, it’s bad form not to call a spade a spade (onions are browned, notcaramelized) and it’s important to cooks since, alas, temperature requirements are different.

The “flip once” team and the “flip often” team are both right and wrong at the same time. It does not matter, for even cooking, how often meat is flipped. Most of the internal cooking process works through liquid redistribution as the muscle contracts and expands accordingly.

McGee seems to favor “flip often”. He told me three years ago that he was on the fence, leaning towards no difference between the two. Since this seems to have changed (though I still find no difference in my own work), flip often if you wish, either way it won’t harm the meat :)

Capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) can be found anywhere in fruits that hold it (yes, chili peppers are fruits), but the highest concentration is actually in the placental layer of the fruit, the white flesh. Seeds have very little of it, actually, the heat comes from capsaicin that adheres to the outside of the seeds when the white flesh is cut.

Baking soda does not absorb bad smells. It’s an Arm & Hammer myth and scientifically false. How would baking soda DO that, anyways?

- Bonus: raw vegetables are not better (a major myth, lie, and source of massive income for some charlatans selling ‘raw food’ diet books)

Most vitamins are unaffected by heat.  Many of the minerals and vitamins in food are, actually, much more completely absorbed in the stomach when cooked beforehand. To re-iterate: raw foods are not, at all, healthier.

The “Chinese disease” is a myth. A very small number of humans have an intolerance to glutamates (much less than, say, to salts or sugars) and will feel adverse effects. MSG itself, however, is not harmful in the least to most anyone. To “poison” someone with MSG the amount would have to be so humongous, the food would taste like crap and be 90% MSG.

In 2005 a few niche providers of gluten free food saw an “in” and started maligning this age-old, completely harmless, substance. Today you can buy “gluten free” dog food, which is as much an abomination as the diet quacks and health food snake-oil vendors who claim that a gluten free diet has any positive effect on people. People with coeliac disease, however, must observe a gluten free diet.

Your grandmother’s Rum Cake or that red wine in the sauce won’t get you sloshed, but there’s nothing you can do to food with alcohol in it, short of rendering it inedible, that will remove all the alcohol. Cook without it if anyone in your family has an intolerance.

It violates everything basic chemistry taught us about alcohol, yes. Find a a USDA study I participated in and from which I draw my conclusions here:http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foo…

Neither one permeates the meat very deeply. Don’t believe me? Buy a cheap cut and some “tenderizer”, pour food coloring into the solution, and put your meat into it. A day later cut it open – only a very shallow outer layer will be dyed. Marinades adhere to the outside and permeate into the meat fractions of a millimeter, but they flavor, not tenderize, the meat.

Yogurt based marinades penetrate deeper and do tenderize. In general, still, the old-wife’s tale of marinades “penetrating deep and tenderizing” is a myth.

Adding ice to a burn will only damage the tissue more (think freezer burn), flour is a bad idea, also. When you burn yourself rinse with cool, not cold, water to stop your skin from cooking, add antibiotic ointment, cover, let heal. See a doctor for anything bigger than 5cm.

Muscles are great things. One of the cool things about them is their ability to be completely shut off against many food borne illnesses. Most any, close to 99% of all, food borne illnesses are found not in the muscle but – through cross-contamination – on its outside. Once that part of the meat is exposed to the heat of a pan most of them are dead, too. Two caveats: ground meat and, a pet peeve of mine, those “tenderizer” needle stamps. Both will, if it is present, introduce nasty critters into the inside of the muscle or product. If you use ground meat grind it yourself after washing off the outside of the meat with water, working extremely cool all the time. ”

Here’s the link to the original answer

Featured photo credit:  chef by seasonal kitchen via Shutterstock

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A Great Way to Get Some New Cooking Skills

Last summer, I became one of the early adopters of Google+. Having fully immersed myself in other social media platforms, I was curious to see how this new one would play out. For those of you unfamiliar with the platform, Google+ is a social media platform that enables interactions, similar to Facebook, but it allows you to sort and aggregate the people you follow, in order to selectively send information that is appropriate for those “circles” (e.g. You might want to send BFFs and acquaintances different sets of information via the same platform).

The other interesting addition that Google made was the inclusion of Hangouts – a real-time, live-video interface with up to 10 people. Early last summer, my thoughts were … that’s kind of cool, but I had not made any connections as to how it might change the way I interact professionally on the web.

Needless to say, when I was approached by Joe Saad, the founder of ChefHangout.com with a proposition to join the inaugural group of chefs in a series of online cooking classes using Hangouts; I was intrigued. Our first interactions were, of course via Google Hangout, and I began to see how this platform could enable wider connectedness with those interested in what I do for a living, but also a new way of conveying information and a new model of learning!

Until now, I’ve been using social media as a tool to connect with community, and to promote things that are going on with my business (in that order). I’ve been observing how different brands interact on social media — seen the contests, the Wwitter chats, and thought it was interesting, but really the same model of engagement we’ve been used to all along, just on a social media platform, and sometimes it can seem forced. The thing that really attracted me to the idea of using Hangouts as a learning tool, is that while it is a very new way of interacting, it feels genuine and more personal.

I do a lot of gluten and grain-free cooking and baking – customizing gluten-free recipes. On the gluten-free baking front, seeing subtle differences in consistency is critical for success – and with gluten-free baking experts being so far-flung, getting that first-hand perspective has been all but impossible unless you are in the same city! In this area, the addition of as little as 2 tablespoons extra liquid, or a difference in oven temperature of 25 degrees can make or break your recipe! Its certainly not the end of the world, but definitely not an experience that encourages you to try baking again anytime soon. And that is my ultimate goal. While I cook for other people for a living, I am really passionate about democratizing food.

For me personally, the appeal of this new approach to learning is that it is truly interactive and there are no limits to who can join. I can be in a Hangout with someone on the other side of the country, with them cooking along with me, step-by-step. If they have questions about the caramelization of their onions, or the texture of their gluten-free bread dough, we can see what’s happening on-the-spot, and adjust as we go.

You learn by cooking along with the instructor. Many people are kinesthetic learners, and need to physically go through the motions in order to learn.Classes are small. Google Hangouts are limited to 10 people, so there will never be more than 9 other people in your class, meaning you have a chance to ask questions as you go.You get dinner (or cake!) at the end of the class. Classes are real-time, and because you are cooking along with the instructor, you will end up with something new that you have created, and you have dinner ready.

Food is a uniting force, and sharing a meal with family or friends is the ultimate bonding experience. Many of us however, are separated by geography and don’t have that many opportunities in a year to share that time together. Part of the appeal for me, was the fact that ChefHangout.com is virtual, meaning friends from across the globe can all sign up for the same class. They can learn something new together, I can bow out of the Hangout at the end of the class, and they can continue to talk over a meal!

There is no doubt that food unites and there is nothing that can replace the way we used to learn how to cook – at the stove, with a mentor guiding us through; this comes pretty close to that.

Its early days for this new venture, but I’m excited by the prospects because this is a totally new way of learning and communicating about food! I encourage you to check out ChefHangout.com – there are 24 chefs in total involved with the launch, so there’s sure to be something that piques your taste buds!

(Photo credit: Assortment of Fresh Vegetables via Shutterstock)

Disclaimer: I am not being paid or compensated to endorse Google+ or any Google products. I do receive monetary compensation for cooking classes I conduct through chefhangout.com.

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Cooking as alchemy: Homaro Cantu + Ben Roche on TED.com

Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche come from Moto, a Chicago restaurant that plays with new ways to cook and eat food. But beyond the fun and flavor-tripping, there’s a serious intent: Can we use new food technology for good? (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 9:34)

Watch Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

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New Majesco Cooking Mama 2 Dinner With Friends Product Type Ds Game Configuration J Video Games

Title: Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends. Genre: Simulation Video Game. Studio: MAJESCO. Marketing Coordinator: Pete Rosky Director of Creative Services: Leslie Mills DeMarco Logo, Package & Manual Design: Vic Merritt PR Account Director: Matt Schlosberg PR Account Coordinator: Laura Paul SVP of Publishing: Jo Jo Faham SVP of Business and Legal Affairs: Adam Sultan IT Manager: Paul Campagna Burn Room Technician: Kevin Tsakonas QA Manager: Eric Jezercak Project Lead: Jonathan Black Lead Tester: Manny Hernandez, Tito Jimenez Tester: Damion DeStefano, Larry Contreras, Jorge Cosme, Marc Dunyak, John Moran, Gina Giacobbe, Martin Sanelli, Phillip Johnson, John Rocco, Joseph Ronquillo, Onix Alicea, Joey Goldstein, Justin Rivera.

Price: $57.31

Click here to buy from Amazon