Thread by @krishashok

Starting this thread for kitchen/food science hacks for inexperienced/beginner cooks to document verified, tacit wisdom from experienced folks. Will update it once or twice a week.

When using a blender/mixie for dry or hard ingredients, always start at the highest speed & then slow down. The idea is to break the large pieces quickly first & then slow down to avoid cooking the ingredients. Also improves motor life.

Source: Preeti Service Center engineers

Induction stoves will completely throw your pressure cooking game off if you measure by whistles because they heat water ~50% faster than gas stoves so the mean duration between whistles will be much smaller. Reduce heat after first whistle & measure time after that instead

This👇🏻. Measuring rice to water ratio in cups starts failing for larger amounts of rice and also for wider cooking vessels.

https://twitter.com/maith_i/status/1300299504953036801

Use the low power setting on your microwave to melt butter into perfect spreadable consistency without breaking the emulsion. The default setting will boil all the water in your butter &practically turn it into ghee.

PS: In Chennai, taking the butter out of the fridge is enough

This 👇🏼. You can use the fridge to dehumidify stuff like ladies finger, boiled potatoes, or anything you are going to deep fry, like vegetables for pakodas.

https://twitter.com/dr_gigster/status/1300447383482970112?s=20

These 👇🏼. Also, if you are using a small number of garlic cloves in a blender/mixie as part of a chutney/sauce, you can use it with the peel. And yes, peeling ginger with a spoon is way easier than struggling with a peeler.

https://twitter.com/sabcatsilver/status/1300503746342842368?s=20

When shopping for vegetables, pick the ugly, misshapen ones. The science is that misshapen fruit & vegetables are likely to have scars/scabs from having fought off pests, & flavour = defensive chemicals produced by plants

https://twitter.com/atJenny/status/1300509132420775942?s=20

Incidentally, this is why organic produce tastes better because plants that encounter pests produce nasty chemicals (anti-oxidants, polyphenols, anthocyanins and other flavonoids) that pests hate and we happen to love

When you store chillies in the fridge, remove the stalks (both the pedicel, which is the long thing & the calyx, which is the cap that sits on top of the chilli). The stalk is the only part of the chilli that catches mold. Doing this will increase shelf life by weeks!

Also, it's the placenta (the white bit to which the seeds are attached) that has most of the capsaicin/heat in a chilli. Not the seeds. The seeds are removed to reduce bitterness, not heat.

Cooking ladles made from Silicone rubber can withstand temperatures up to 300C. They are not like regular polystyrene based plastic and are perfectly safe for any kind of cooking that happens outside a Tandoor

Your tastebuds work at peak efficiency at room temperature (25-30C). This is why room temp coffee is too bitter & melted ice cream tastes cloyingly sweet. Always taste your dishes at room temp to get an accurate reading. Hot dishes will taste less salty than lukewarm ones.

This 👇🏼 In general, acids mute the pungency of alliums (garlic, onions etc)

https://twitter.com/KitchenChemProf/status/1303026383384465414

Steam eggs instead of boiling them. They end up with much better texture because steam is gentler on the eggs than boiling water, the shell is less likely to crack and the egg is also easier to peel at the end of it. 6 mins for soft, 11-12 for hard-boiled (h/t @dharmeshG)