KitchenSavvy

Overcrowded Pan

Lots of recipes for stews and braises say to brown the meat "being careful to not overcrowd the pan."  What does this mean and why does it matter?

--Lisbeth

 

The basic idea of searing meat is to create a nice brown crust on the meat that adds flavor to the dish through a process called the Maillard Reaction.  Note that searing meat does not seal in juices, as many cooks believe (see KitchenSavvy Kitchen Science).  To brown meat correctly, you want to have the pan at medium hot and brown a few pieces of meat at a time.  Dry the meat with a cloth or paper towel just before browning to remove any surface liquid.  A good rule of thumb is to have at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) between pieces of meat, and to not cover more than about half of the surface area.  If necessary, brown the meat in batches.  If possible, do not use meat that was previously frozen, and have it at room temperature when you start cooking.

So, what happens if you put in too much meat at one time?  The meat makes the pan cool down, due both to the lower temperature of the meat and the evaporation of liquid on the surface, and instead of browning, the meat oozes out juices and steams rather than browns.  Even at the best of times, this still happens occasionally, depending on whether the meat was previously frozen or other factors.

Does this ruin a recipe?  No!  In fact, quite some time ago, when I was in my teens, I made beef stroganoff for a friend whose family was the majority shareholder in a national restaurant chain.  To my horror at the time, the beef started to swim in its own juices and I had visions of a ruined dish -- flavorless with tough, chewy meat.  Not having any other choice, I simply soldiered on and browned the meat as it dried out.  The stroganoff turned out perfect.  In fact it was so good my friend offered to see if there was any way I could get into training to be a cook at the restaurant, if I wanted.  That was the path untraveled, but the moral of the story is that it isn't necessarily fatal to overcrowd the pan.

What should you do if this happens? 

1. Make sure there is room in the pan for the leaking juices to evaporate.  If necessary, take a few pieces of meat out of the pan and cook them in another batch.
2. Keep up the heat.  Don't be tempted to turn down the heat while the juices evaporate.
3. Turn the pieces often.  As the liquid dries, the protein and sugars in the juices will adhere to the meat and brown.  After all, the Maillard reaction comes from the heating of amino acids, found in protein, and sugar.
4. Look out for the juices burning to the bottom of the pan.  One trick I have learned is to hold a piece of meat in my tongs and use it like a wipe to clean out the fond browning  in the bottom of the pan.  If the juices start to burn, take the pan off heat, remove the meat, and then use one piece to wipe out the bottom of the pan.  Unless the stuff in the bottom of the pan has started to turn black, you can just put that piece of meat into the final dish as it is cooking and it will add even more flavor.  You can do the same trick if you need to clean the pan between batches of meat that you are browning.
5. Don't be tempted to drain off the juices and put them back into the final dish.  Because they contain proteins, the juices may make the end product cloudy.  If you must drain off the liquid, throw it out, or save it for a soup.

Sometimes overcrowding a pan may not be salvageable, so it is better to avoid having it happening in the first place, but if it does happen the dish will still taste the same and, if you are even a little bit lucky, the meat will still be tender.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered, nor can we guarantee we will answer questions immediately
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Iced Cube Steak

We had some cubed steak in our freezer.  The freezer went out and the steak was thawed.  I cooked the cubed steak and have re-frozen it.  Is that safe,  or do I need to throw it away?

--Robin

 

Assuming that even though the steak thawed out, it remained at a temperature below 40°F (4°C) and for no more than a couplel of days, then you are likely OK to cook and re-freeze it.  You need to cook it thoroughly, to an internal temperature above 165°F (74°C), before freezing it again, after which it should keep well for a month or so. 

If the meat spent any significant amount of time above 40°F (4°C) before you got to it, then it is probably safer to throw it away.  If you aren't sure how long it was above that temperature, then best not to take chances.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Getting Your Juices Flowing

What is the purpose of drawing out all the juices from a piece of meat with salt just have to have them all reabsorbed again.  To me, this doesn't make any sense.

--Linda

I mention this process in the posting Salting Meat Before Cooking.  It is also part of the working of dry rubs containing salt that are used on meat.

There is some benefit from simply having the liquid reabsorbed, since it will make the meat more moist, but the real benefit is that the salt dissolved with the juices is absorbed at the same time.  The salt both seasons the meat, enhancing flavor, and causes the meat proteins to absorb more water, resulting in a juicier, more tender dish.

Because it takes a long time for salt to penetrate, this is mostly surface phenomenon in the case of salting just before cooking.  Dry rubs may take hours or even days for the salt to fully penetrate the meat.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Tying Roasts Together to Cook

I have 3 bottom rounds of beef that weight an average of 13 pounds each. I want to tie them together to cook. My recipe, which is for a steamship roast, is 5 minutes per pound at 500 degrees, then turn oven off for two hours then turn oven on again at 300 degrees for 45 minutes for medium to well done.

My question is do I cook them for the combined weight time or do I cook them for the time of the largest roast. If the combine weight is used, do I need to adjust this time?

I am tying the roast together for the purpose of making them fit into the oven.

I have already posted the answer to cooking two roasts at once if they are not tied together (see Cooking Two Roasts at Once), but when they are being tied the question is a lot harder to answer.

The common guideline for how much time that it takes to cook a roast is minutes per pound.  According to McGee (On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen), however, the time is more accurately proportional to the square of the thickness, or the weight raised to the ²⁄3 power.

What do these numbers mean?  Start with thickness.  If a roast of some given thickness takes, say, 1 hour to cook, then if you double the thickness, it should take 2² = 4 times as long or four hours to cook, and if you triple the thickness, it will take 3² = 9 hours. 

Now if you go by weight, what the formula tells you is that smaller roasts take more time per pound than do larger ones.  You have likely seen this if you have looked at suggested times to cook a turkey.  An unstuffed eight pound (3.61 Kg) turkey will take about 2 ³⁄4 hours, or about 20 minutes per pound (0.454 kg).  An unstuffed 24 pound (10.9 Kg) one will only take about 5 hours or 12 ¹/2 minutes per pound.

Obviously there is something wrong with these two estimates, given that in one case the time is rising wildly, while with the other it is decreasing in minutes per pound.  The reason is in part because the estimate based on thickness uses the mechanics of heat transfer and only looks at one dimension, so it ignores the heat coming in from the other sides of the roast, and also because you seldom get a roast that is twice as thick as another but measures the same in the other two dimensions.  In other words, the weight increases as something like the cube of the thickness, so on a per unit weight basis that roast that is three times as thick will weight something close to 27 times as much (3³ = 27) and the cooking time per unit weight is ⁹/27 or ¹/3 as long.

Estimated cooking time depends, of course, on a large number of other factors.  These might include how accurate the oven thermostat is, what material the roasting pan is made from and what color it is, the internal temperature of the meat when you start roasting it, and so on.

To make matters even more complicated, your recipe isn't at constant heat.  The two hours rest in the oven with the heat off is completely unpredictable in terms of how much the oven will cool down during that time.  There is simply no way to predict accurately how long it will take, since the amount of time depends on the shape of the roasts and how you end up tying them together.  I would suggest using the recipe as stated as if you were cooking a 40 pound roast, but use a meat thermometer to see how well done the tied together roast is getting, and be prepared to eat a lot earlier or later than you planned.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

 

Defrosting Frozen Turkey

How long does it take to defrost a frozen turkey?

--Andy

The length of time it takes to defrost a frozen turkey depends on a few things, most importantly the weight of the bird and the method used.  The length of time will also be affected by the temperature at which it is being defrosted.

There are two generally accepted ways of defrosting a turkey that are considered safe.  The best way is to place the whole bird in your fridge and defrost it slowly.  Using this method, it will take about 5 hours per pound, or 10 hours per kilogram.  The exact length of time may be a bit shorter or longer, depending also on the temperature of the frozen bird and the temperature of the refrigerator.  Since the thawed bird can remain in the fridge for a day or two after it is defrosted, it is better to give yourself some extra time, if possible, rather than not thaw it long enough.  It is recommended that you place a large pan under the bird so that any juices that leak out are caught in the pan rather than dripping onto any food on a lower shelf.

Alternately, if you are short of time, or if the turkey hasn't completely defrosted in the fridge, you can try defrosting it in a bath of cold water.  The water must be kept at or below 40°F (4°C), and the bird must be completely submerged.  Run cold water into a large basin or sink and place the bird, still in its packaging into the water.  If you have a probe thermometer, you may be able to use it to be sure the water remains cold.  Because water is a better heat conductor than air, this method is somewhat faster than using the fridge.  Depending on the size of the basin or sink, defrosting should take about 30 minutes per pound or one hour per kilogram.

Methods that are not recommended are thawing the turkey in your microwave, assuming you have one that is big enough, or thawing at room temperature.  Both of these methods increase the risk of food borne illness.

To read about how long to cook the turkey, see Roast Turkey Temperature.

To read about keeping leftovers, see How Long will Leftover Turkey Keep in the Fridge.

And to read about food safety for stuffing, read Dis-dressed Turkey.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

 

Give It a Rest

Why should you rest meat after cooking it?

-- Darren

Resting meat serves three purposes.  First, it allows the meat to finish cooking through,  Straight out of the oven, or off the fire, the outside of a piece of meat is hotter than the middle.  The difference in temperature can be quite large.  During resting, the heat from the outside penetrates to the middle, finishing the cooking of the interior.  That is why many recipes call for taking a roast or whole bird out of the oven when the temperature read on a thermometer stuck into the middle of the meat is actually a few degrees lower than what is desired.  The meat finishes cooking outside of the oven because of the carry over cooking.

Second, allowing meat to cool allows the collagen and connective tissue to firm back up again, making slicing easier.  See the posting Slicing Roast Beef, where this was discussed.

Finally, according to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking , as the meat cools, its water-holding capacity increases, meaning that less juices will be lost during cooking or drain out of the meat once it is on the plate.

The length of time that the meat should rest depends on the type of meat and its thickness.  For smaller pieces of meat 5 to 10 minutes may be enough.  Large roasts may be rested 1/2 hour to a full hour, or sometimes even longer for very large pieces.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Blowing Smoke Rings

When I barbecue meat, there is a layer just under the surface that doesn't look like it got cooked, even though the middle looks done.  What causes that?

-- Dean

What you are seeing is called the smoke ring.  It is an area of meat that, although it is cooked, hasn't turned the greyish brown we associate with cooked meat.  There are actually two different causes for meat to still be red, despite being cooked, both of which relate to the oxygen carrying protein myoglobin found in meat.

When you barbecue, the burning wood, charcoal or gas produces trace quantities of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) as one of the combustion byproducts.  The nitrogen dioxide combines with water molecules to a form mild acid called nitrous acid (HNO₂).  The water molecules may be on the surface of the meat, in the air surrounding the meat, or as another byproduct from the burning of the fuel,  In any case, the nitrous acid that comes into contact with the meat slowly penetrates the surface to a depth of up to ½ inch (12 mm) or so, where it comes into contact with the myoglobin, replacing the oxygen atom that is attached to it with nitric oxide (NO).  The effect is the same as using nitrates to make sausage or other preserved meats.  The red color of the myoglobin is locked in, causing the pink color to remain.

The formation of a smoke ring can be enhanced in several ways:

1. Keep the temperature as low as is safely possible, around 200°F(93°C).  This will keep the surface of the meat from drying out, thus providing more moisture for the above reactions and keeping the outside tender so that the nitrous acid can penetrate.  It also slows down the rate at which myoglobin denatures from heat and can no longer react with the nitric oxide.
2. Add moisture to the cooking environment by placing a pan of water in the barbecue.  This has two advantages, one being more moisture for the reaction and the other that the water acts as a bit of a heat regulator, keeping the temperature close to the boiling point of water.
3. Don't dry out the surface of the meat before cooking.  Most recipes are looking to have the surface dry so as to encourage the Maillard reaction (see Browning Meat for Slow Cooker).  In this case you want to leave the moisture on.
4. Where you would usually allow meat to warm to room temperature before cooking, going straight from fridge to fire will lengthen the amount of time it takes for the myoglobin to become denatured.
5. Finally, the nitrogen dioxide is a result of poor combustion.  I don't recommend fiddling with your gas barbecue, but if you are using wood, you want lots of smoke.  Not only does this help flavor, it also increased the amount of NO₂ produced.

A similar effect to smoke ring is caused by slow cooking where the temperature is low enough that the other proteins in the meat, except for the myoglobin, denature first.  Once the myoglobin starts to denature, there is nothing left for it to react with and the color stays.  This is why confit of duck legs remain pink inside after long slow cooking, or why the meat in stews can sometimes remain red.

Finally, there is a way to fake a smoke ring, by sprinkling the surface of the meat with a small amount of a tenderizer or meat preservative that contains nitrates and leaving it for an hour or so before rinsing and cooking.  Morton's Tender Quick is frequently mentioned for this less authentic method.  Barbecue aficionados are divided on whether this constitutes cheating.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Pork and Pear Tajine with Dried Apricots

My lovely wife was recently on a painting trip to Portugal, Spain and Morocco.  You can check out some of her watercolors here.  While in Marrakesh, she really enjoyed the Moroccan foods and returned home not only with some great new spices for me to play with, but also a request that I try making some Moroccan food for her.

My initial experiments were dismal.  Even if you are able to read a recipe and have a sense for it, sometimes that's not enough.  After trying a few tries at recipes from books I found at the local libraries, and getting feedback from Pat on what worked and what didn't, I started to get some idea of how the Moroccan food should taste.

To supplement my spices, I had gone shopping at a local store that has a wide variety of ethnic ingredients.  There I found green cardamom pods and cinnamon bark.  A soon as I smelled the cardamom pods, I knew they were going into something special.  They have a wonderful flowery note that black cardamom lacks.

Then one day I had some pork tenderloin which I thought would make a good tajine.  For some reason, I had it in my mind that I wanted to do a pork and pear combination.  After some searching, I found three recipes, each of which had something, but was missing something else.  There was a Moroccan pork recipe that didn't use a tajine or cook in that fashion, a pork tajine that didn't have pears, and a pork and pear recipe tajine that didn't use any of the spices that appear to be related to Moroccan cooking.  What to do?  The answer was obviously to combine the best of each of the recipes, put a little personal spin on it and see what happened.

The result is my Pork and Pear Tajine with Dried Apricots.  I make no representation as to its authenticity.  In fact, since Morocco is largely Muslim, I expect a pork tajine is somewhat of a travesty.

Enjoy.

Pork and Pear Tajine with Dried Apricots

Serves 2
¼	C	Cilantro Leaves -- loosely packed
1	Tbsp	Flour
1 ¼	Tsps	Ground Cumin
1	Tsp	Paprika
¼	Tsp	Salt
¼	Tsp	Fresh Ground Black Pepper
¼	Tsp	Saffron Threads – divided
¾	Lb	Pork Tenderloin -- silver skin removed, cut diagonally into 3/4 inch slices
3	Tbsps	Olive Oil
½	Med	Onion -- diced
2	Cloves	Garlic -- minced
1	Tsp	Fresh Minced Ginger
1	C	Chicken Broth
2 or 3		Green Cardamom Pods
2 ½	Inches	Cinnamon Bark -- or 1 small cinnamon stick
1		Firm Fresh Pear -- Peeled, sliced into six wedges with core removed
6		Dried Apricots

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.
2. Set aside a few cilantro leaves for garnish and rough chop the rest.
3. Tie the cardamom pods and cinnamon bark together in a piece of cheesecloth so that they can be easily removed before serving.
4. Place the flour, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper into a plastic bag. Crumble in half of the saffron threads. Mix. Put the pork slices into the bag and shake to coat. Remove the pork from the bag, shaking off excess flour mixture.
5. Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a sauté pan or stovetop-safe tajine dish over medium-high heat.
6. Cook the pork slices, turning once, until lightly browned on both sides. Remove from pan and set aside.
7. Lower the heat to medium and sauté the onion in the remaining oil, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes.
8. Add the garlic, ginger and remaining saffron threads and cook about 30 seconds longer. Sprinkle any leftover flour mixture over the onions and stir.
9. Add the chicken stock and stir to thoroughly mix.
10. Return the pork to the pan, add the chopped cilantro and bring the mixture to a simmer.
11. If necessary, transfer the mixture to the base of a tajine.
12. Add the cinnamon and cardamom pods.
13. Arrange the pear wedges and dried apricots decoratively around the dish.
14. Cover and cook in the oven for 40 minutes, turning the pear wedges over after about 25 minutes.
15. When done, remove the cinnamon and cardamom pods and garnish with the reserved cilantro leaves.
16. Serve with couscous.

I don't recommend replacing the green cardamom with black, as the result will not be as tasty, and the black cardamom may overpower the dish.

If you don't have a tajine, the dish can be made entirely in an ovenproof pan with a tight fitting lid.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Fixing Over-Salted Food

How can I remove the "over-salted" problem in a cooked pork roast.  I adjusted the sauce with red wine vinegar and brown sugar,which helped, and cut off the outside edges of roast.

I have heard that adding a peeled potato to soup that is overly salty will reduce the salt.  Is this true?

--Susan

There are only a few ways to deal with over-salted food.  One is to throw all or part of it out, as you did with the outer part of the roast.  Another is to mask it, as you did with the wine and sugar you added to the sauce.  And the last way is to dilute it, as you did by adding more liquid (the wine) to your sauce.

Robert Wolke, in his book What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained, describes an experiment he did where he prepared differing concentrations of salt water, boiled them with potato slices, and then measured for changes in the ability of the water to conduct electricity.  Pure water is a poor conductor of electricity.  If you add salt its conductivity increases, and if you remove salt its conductivity decreases so measuring conductivity is a good way to measure saltiness.  Since he was using only water, salt and potatoes, there were no other ingredients that could affect the conductivity.  The containers were also covered to minimize any evaporation.

What Wolke actually found was a slight increase in conductivity which he attributed to potassium that leeched from the potato slices.  After correcting for that, there was no significant change in conductivity, meaning that adding potatoes to salted water did nothing to decrease the saltiness.

Wolke's conclusion is that, "The potato trick just doesn't work."  The same is likely true for floating a slice of bread on over-salted soup, or using any other ingredient that is supposed to leech salt out of a liquid.

One other possible remedy that Wolke checked out was the idea that one flavor may be able to suppress our perception of another.  He points to a paper that says that salts and acids may suppress each other at high enough concentrations.  The evidence appears to be mixed, however, and the concentrations needed may affect the taste in other ways.

Assuming that you  only seasoned the meat, and didn't brine it, there is evidence that seasoning only penetrates the first 1/16 inch (1.5mm) or so.  You probably did the best you could to resurrect the dish by removing the outer portion and diluting the sauce.  Because brining penetrates deeper, simply cutting off the outer portion may not be adequate.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Chicken Oysters

Whenever I read instructions on how to cut up a chicken, the writer seems to invariably talk about the 'oysters'.  What are they and how do I find them?

--Sandy

They oysters are small tender pieces of dark meat situated just forward (toward the front of the chicken) of where the thighs meet the backbone.  Because they do very little work, they are quite tender.  In fact, some restaurants collect the oysters as they break down chickens and serve them as a specialty dish.  There are two per chicken.

It is easy to find the oysters if you have a leftover carcass you can look at as a reference.  Just ahead of the hip joint, where the thigh connects to the pelvis is a small scoped out area called the ilium.  That is where the oyster is found.  The oyster is about the size of the last joint of your thumb, and rests in this indentation.

To find the oysters, place the chicken breast down on your cutting board.  Pull the thigh slightly back, away from the wing.  The skin in front of the thigh is loose and will pull away from the body.  Using your chef's knife, cut through the skin in front of the thigh, just where it attaches back to the body.  Now if you were to feel under the skin just ahead of the joint and you would find the oyster.  It can be removed along with the thigh, or you can go back to get it after you are finished breaking down the rest of the bird if you want it separate.

If you are taking it out with the thigh, run your knife under the oyster and then continue back along the pelvic bone to sever the joint.

The easiest way to remove the oyster if you left it until later is to make a small cut at the front end of the oyster and then slide your thumb underneath, using your thumbnail to free and lift out the piece of meat.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward