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9 Tomato Sauce Variations

May 15, 2020 By Boucanier

9 Tomato Sauce Variations

Keep this handy

Mark Bittman
Photo: Romulo Yanes

You can whip up a batch of tomato sauce from scratch in the time it takes to boil water and cook pasta. Diced tomatoes are super convenient, whether in cans, cartons, or jars. Just don’t buy crushed tomatoes or tomato puree, which are both much too watery.

Canned whole tomatoes will give you an even meatier sauce and are easy enough to deal with: First, drain off the liquid from the can and save it; you may need it to thin the sauce. Don’t bother to core them, but do use a knife to hack away at the tomatoes right in the can to break them up a bit.

Try one of these variations on the main tomato sauce recipe, below.

Tomato Sauce with Fresh or Dried Herbs

Stir any of the following herbs into the sauce just before serving: ¼ to ½ cup chopped fresh basil, parsley, dill, or mint; 10 fresh sage leaves; 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary, oregano or marjoram (or 1 teaspoon dried); 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme (or ½ teaspoon dried); or ½ teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon (or ¼ teaspoon dried).

Vegetable-Tomato Sauce

Chop up whatever leftover vegetables you have and warm them up in the sauce just before serving. If you don’t have anything handy, chop 2 cups raw eggplant, zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, or bell peppers. In Step 1, cook them alone in the oil until the vegetables are soft and tender, 10 to 15 minutes; add more oil to the pan if it starts to look too dry. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon, then add the onion to the pan and continue with the recipe. When the sauce is almost done, stir the vegetable back in just long enough to heat through.

Spicy Tomato Sauce

Known as arrabbiata. Skip the onion and put 1 tablespoon chopped garlic in the oil along with 1, 3, or 5 small dried red chiles or a big pinch of crushed red pepper. Cook, stirring, until the garlic is brown — deeply colored but not burned — then turn off the heat for a minute, add the tomatoes, and proceed. Remove the whole chiles before serving.

Tomato Sauce with Fresh Mushrooms

Cook 1 pound sliced trimmed mushrooms (any kind) along with the onion until they shrink and all their liquid evaporates, 5 to 10 minutes; then add the tomatoes and proceed with the recipe.

Cheesy Tomato Sauce

Right before serving, stir in 1 cup cubed fresh mozzarella cheese or use ½ cup ricotta or goat cheese for a creamier, milder sauce.

Puttanesca Sauce

Skip the onion and put about 1 tablespoon chopped garlic in the oil along with a few oil-packed anchovies. Mash the anchovies a bit as you stir; wait to add salt until the sauce is done. Just before adding the tomatoes, stir in 2 tablespoons drained capers, a pinch of red pepper flakes if you like, and ½ cup pitted, oil-cured black olives.

Meaty Tomato Sauce

Start by cooking up to 1 pound ground beef, pork, lamb, chicken, or turkey with the oil and onion until it browns, 5 to 10 minutes, before adding the tomatoes. You can also use sausage; just break it up into chunks as it cooks. Adjust the heat so the meat browns without burning.

Tomato Sauce with Seafood

When the sauce is ready, stir in up to 1 pound peeled shrimp, lump crabmeat, or chopped, cleaned squid, or scallops. Reduce the heat, so it bubbles gently, cover, and cook until the seafood is warmed or cooked through as necessary, 1 to 5 minutes. Or add a 6-ounce can of oil-packed tuna to the pan when you add the tomatoes.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

This takes a few minutes longer to prepare than canned. For a meatier sauce, use Roma (plum) tomatoes; slicing tomatoes have a brighter taste and thinner texture. Cherry tomatoes are fine if you cut them in half and don’t mind the chewiness of the skins, but they’ll never quite come together into the sauce the same way. In any case, figure about 2 pounds per recipe. I don’t bother to peel or seed them, but I do remove the cores. If you want to get rid of the seeds: Cut them in half — lengthwise if they’re Roma; around the equator, if they’re slicers — and gently squeeze out the watery interior. Then cut them into 1-inch chunks and proceed with the recipe.

Now, on to the main recipe.

How to Cook Pasta

Here’s your refresher

heated.medium.com

Pasta with Tomato Sauce

Time: 25 to 30 minutes
Makes: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • Salt
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil, or more as needed
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • One 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, including the juice
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 pound any dried pasta
  • ½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
  • ½ cup chopped fresh basil leaves for garnish, optional

Instructions

  1. Bring a stockpot of water to a boil and salt it. Put the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  2. Adjust the heat, so the sauce bubbles enthusiastically and cook, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes break down and the mixture begins to thicken and appear more uniform in texture, 10 to 15 minutes. Taste, adjust the seasoning, and adjust the heat, so the tomato sauce stays hot but doesn’t boil.
  3. When the water boils, cook the pasta until it is tender, but not mushy; start tasting after 5 minutes. When it’s done, scoop out and reserve at least 1 cup of the cooking water, then drain the pasta.
  4. Add the pasta and a splash of the cooking water to the sauce in the skillet and toss to coat, adding a little more cooking water or oil if necessary to create a slightly creamy sauce. Taste and adjust the seasoning and add more oil if you’d like. Then toss with the cheese and the basil if you’re using it. Serve, passing more cheese at the table.
  5. Here’s how to make extra sauce for the freezer: Complete the sauce through step 2, doubling the amounts of oil, onions, tomatoes, and salt and pepper. Let half of the sauce cool and pack it in sealed containers and freeze. Eat within 6 months or so. To defrost, heat it slowly in a pan over low heat, let it sit overnight in the fridge, or microwave it.

— From How to Cook Everything: The Basics

Filed Under: Cooking, Umami Tagged With: BBQ Sauce, Carolina BBQ Red Sauce, Tomato Sauce

About the Art of Living

January 13, 2020 By Boucanier Leave a Comment

What Anthony Bourdain Taught us About the Art of Living

Lauren MacNeish

Lauren MacNeish

Aug 13, 2018 · 5 min read

Photo: Laurie Woolever/Grub Street

When Anthony Bourdain’s name was trending on June 8th, the last thing I expected to see was news of his death. It hit like a punch to the gut. I’ve been following Bourdain’s travels for years. It seems insignificant to say that he merely wrote about food and travel; he wasn’t just a celebrity chef or a travelling food writer. To say that Anthony Bourdain was a ‘good writer’ would be the greatest disservice to a man that made food and travel writing kinetic and gave no time to the usual artifice of television and travel writing. When he famously said to the New Yorker in 2017, “I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do what the fuck I want”, this was a classic Bourdain understatement.

“Without new ideas success can become stale.”

His dark humour and caustic wit allowed him to captivate the minds of those that listened to him or read his writings. He lived a life that he didn’t take too seriously and opened the door to the unexpected appetising spots across the world; some gritty and some beautiful. It’s an understatement to say that Bourdain was a culinary giant; he taught us life lessons in how to love, how to travel, how to eat, and how to live. I’ll miss reading about his adventures that filled me with a yearning to ‘be like Bourdain’ but will be forever grateful for the inspiration and lessons he, unknowingly, taught us. Here’s four of them…

“Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”

This is one of my favourite quotes by Bourdain. In a world that constantly churns out negative news about how we’re living and how we should cut out this thing in favour of that thing, it was always refreshing to hear Bourdain tell us to live life to the fullest. It’s this vibrancy that fascinated me about him. I’m not sure if it was the allure of travel, food, or drink that kept me reading Bourdain, but what I do know is that I saw a guy who was doing what I dreamt of doing, with an attitude for life I wanted to have. Anthony Bourdain was an inspiration for embracing life, cutting out the shit, and doing more of the things that make us happy — is there any greater lesson than that?

“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.”

Go off the beaten track.

Bourdain once said: “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

He was renowned for taking us off the beaten track and had a knack for making us feel like we were there with him. He led us down the streets less travelled, into the homes of waiters and busboys, and here is where the people danced, ate, played dominos, laughed, and drank.

Celebrity chefs usually take us to picturesque scenes, usually in some Italian village or the French Riviera, but Bourdain took us to those less glamourous and shone a light on them. The Congo comes to mind. It probably helped to be a male with a camera crew, but let’s not take away his gutsiness and authentic ability to show us those roads less travelled.

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”

Respect the culture.

Bourdain’s attitude of openness and eagerness to learn was infectious. He taught us, with an enthused courteousness, that — no matter where we sit in this world — we’re more alike than we are different. Wherever he was, he was impassioned to eat their food, hear their music, and see their culture through their eyes.

“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.”

The ‘no assholes’ rule.

Bourdain once said: “It is truly a privilege to live by what I call the ‘no asshole’ rule. I don’t do business with assholes. I don’t care how much money they are offering me, or what project. Life is too short. Quality of life is important. I’m fortunate to collaborate with a lot of people who I respect and like, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

If you’re reading this on your dreaded morning commute or on your way home from another day at the office with the ‘assholes’, you’ll know that we don’t all have Bourdain’s ‘privilege’, as he put it. But it’s something to aspire to, isn’t it?

“Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.”

Lessons for life.

Some of Bourdain’s lessons were stated plainly, while others were revealed less obviously. He wanted to encourage us all to learn more by slowing down and showed us that travel isn’t about living in a postcard, but an embracement of people and culture.

Tall, tattooed, quick witted, with an infectious attitude for life, Anthony Bourdain had an idiosyncratic way of sharing his love for the world. He had a way of projecting his steeliness; an invisible armour that protected him from the demands of the public eye, and — while the cruellest enemy of all is what got him in the end: the enemy within — he was the real deal. Anthony Bourdain: the benchmark of our creative outlook.

Has Anthony Bourdain inspired you in any way? I’d love your thoughts.

Keep in touch on Twitter and Instagram.

View more at: laurenmacneish.com

Filed Under: Cooking, Umami

The Perfect Dish: Babi Guling

December 24, 2019 By Boucanier Leave a Comment

Umami Media

Umami Media Follow Oct 2, 2018 · 2 min read

Babi guling (suckling pig) is possibly Bali’s signature dish, with streetside warungs (hawkers) and famous restaurants vying for the title of the island’s best joint.

Often hotly contested by lovers of the dish is where one can find the best rendition of babi guling. Connoisseurs of the dish go on road trips, visiting all the famous spots to sample all the various takes on the classic Balinese dish. From famous joints in Jimbaran packed all-day long with ravenous diners to hidden back-alley secret spots in Canggu open only in the wee hours of the dusk, the depths of a cult following that the dish inspires is mind-boggling.

A traditional Balinese dish, the pig is typically cut, cleaned and stuffed with an assortment of aromatics, the proportion and mixture of which are closely-guarded secret handed down through the generations by individual vendors. Spices commonly used include salt, pepper, garlic, ginger, galangal, chili, shallots, turmeric, coriander seeds, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves. Once marinated and infused with the spices, the pork is grilled over spitfire and basted till it is cooked to crisp perfection. The crackling is separated, the meat is sliced and both are portioned atop steaming hot white rice, accompanied by lawar (Balinese salad) and sambal matah (Balinese chili dip) for one’s enjoyment.

Whether one is a first-time traveler to Bali or a returning visitor, a trip to a babi guling joint is something of a mandatory checkpoint amongst other delicious offerings on the island.

DIRECTORY

Babi Guling Sanur

Jalan Bypass Ngurah Rai

Sanur, Bali, Indonesia

T: (+62) 361 2873 08

Warung Babi Guling Pak Malen

Jalan Sunset Road, №554

Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

T: (+62) 851 0045 2968

Filed Under: Cooking, Umami Tagged With: Dish, Pig, Pork

Salty success: Southeast Alaska sea salt business takes off

October 29, 2019 By Boucanier

  •  Author: Elissa Brown
  •  Updated: September 28, 2016
  •  Published July 19, 2015

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This is a story about salt. It’s a humble mineral for one that has served as ancient currency and shaped historic trade routes.

But this is also a story about Alaska oceans, a love of place and a passion for creating an unparalleled product to share with the world.

Darcy and Jim Michener, founders of Alaska Pure Sea Salt Co., have quietly pioneered North America’s salt renaissance from their homegrown operation in Sitka.

After years of lugging jugs of seawater up the dock, they perfected the methodology to produce a unique flake-style salt. Those flakes are spreading throughout Alaska and the Lower 48, finding a place in the go-to arsenal of top chefs and in the pantries of home cooks.

The discovery

In May 1999, Jim Michener woke during his honeymoon with a troublesome thought. He and his wife, Darcy, were staying in a remote Southeast island cabin, and they’d left a pot of saltwater on the stovetop overnight. Jim worried it had gone dry and ruined the pan; instead, he found some remaining water with a few odd floaters.

At first, he thought it was dust, and he brought over a flashlight for a closer look. “It was actually beautiful salt crystals forming on the surface,” he said. “I remember thinking, this is like French Fleur de Sal, only it’s from Alaskan water — how cool is that?”

In retrospect, it seemed obvious: Evaporated seawater makes salt. “It was just by chance that it happened this way and we noticed it and thought it was kind of fun,” Jim said.

The Micheners decided to evaporate the rest of the pot into salt and take it home. “The first batch wasn’t very good,” Darcy said. “It tasted salty, but it had the texture of sand.” But still, it was a nice memory of their honeymoon trip. Each following year, Jim and Darcy returned to the same cabin for their anniversary, bringing back a small batch of homemade salt each time.

In search of the perfect flake

Before long, the Micheners grew curious about how to make truly great salt. They sampled high-quality brands from around the world and learned of an English company, Maldon, the world’s leader in flake-style salt. “It had a nice crunch and a good, clean flavor,” Jim recalled. “It was spectacular. We realized we wanted to make that, and make it from pure Alaskan seawater.”

At the time, the world’s flake salt operations were sparse: England, Cyprus, Australia. Nothing in North America, but the Micheners had a vision. After all, there’s no supply problem — scientists estimate the world’s oceans contain 50 million billion tons of salt.

It began with a large lasagna pan. Jim, who worked as a fishing guide, would come home each day with 5 gallons of seawater, ready to tinker. “We would basically run the experiment over and over,” he said. “Changing one variable at a time, we were trying to achieve a good flake.”

It was a summer of evaporating water on the kitchen stove, a summer the Micheners refer to now as the “Lasagna Pan Summer.”

They ordered a custom 50-gallon pan. Jim trucked home 50 gallons of water in the morning and 50 in the evening, relentlessly experimenting while keeping the whole operation secret.

Years went by. The Micheners saved money, wrote business plans and fine-tuned their product. “We’re using this Alaskan water that is so amazing, and we really wanted to make sure we honored our community, ourselves and the product,” Jim said. “We wanted to be able to look people in the eye and say this is as good as any flake salt in the world and it’s made from beautiful, pristine Alaskan water.”

By 2011, the Micheners had constructed a small factory and were ready for their first large-scale trial. “We basically made a big leap of faith,” Darcy said. “All of our equipment was custom-made because nothing existed for salt-making. We had tried so many times and we thought it would work, but we just didn’t know.”

The first batch was set to take 12 hours to create. But after 12 hours, no salt had formed.

“It was utter panic,” Jim said. “I knew I’d been thorough with this and there was no reason it shouldn’t work. But if it didn’t work, we’d be homeless and broke.”

He reviewed his calculations, only to discover he’d made a small error, and the process would take 48 hours longer than expected. The Micheners were sleeping and eating at the factory, setting an alarm to check on the salt every hour. After three days, the salt finally formed: white flakes, exquisite and bright. The Micheners popped a bottle of Champagne at 10 a.m.

Easiest recipe

At the heart of it, salt-making is the easiest recipe in the world. Just go to any body of saltwater. Scoop some out, and evaporate it. The challenge is in making consistent crystals because water that evaporates out of a vessel has various concentrations of salt brine, and constant adjustments are needed to keep the flakes uniform.

Alaska Pure Sea Salt is considered a flake salt, a finishing salt for sprinkling on food in the final stages. The flakes are slightly smaller than some of the world’s other flake salts, deliberately so.

“Our flake size is a little more approachable for everybody, including the average home cook,” Darcy said.

The whole process requires three to four days, and each batch starts with more than 1,000 gallons of water. It takes around 10 gallons of seawater to yield a pound of salt. The factory runs 24 hours a day, and one of the Micheners must be around to tend to the product every six hours.

With about 1,500 pounds of salt produced monthly, the operation is quite small in the world of salt manufacturing. Jim and Darcy run all aspects of the business themselves and last summer opened their first retail store.

Anchored in Sitka

The Micheners hope to build their name upon their basic, classic salt, but they’ve also begun to play around with new, seasonal flavors.

“We started thinking, let’s just make sure we’re really true to our sense of place, where we live and where we’ve lived for decades: in Sitka, in Southeast Alaska,” Jim said. “Let’s make salts that are indicative of who we are and where we are.”

They started with a smoked alder flavor in honor of the tree’s local abundance and cultural significance. Then came a vibrant purple blueberry salt — the first in the world. Last in the collection was a spruce tip flavor, a recipe that took the Micheners two years to perfect.

Colette Nelson, chef and owner of Ludvig’s Bistro in Sitka, has been one of the culinary forces who recognizes the value of salt grounded in place.

“The thing that I really like about serving their salt at the restaurant is that we pride ourselves in serving Alaskan seafood, and then when we add their salt — that’s what ocean to plate really is,” Nelson said. “Alaskan seafood served with salt from the water that the seafood is swimming in — it’s a full ocean-to-plate experience.”

Nelson uses the salt on grilled asparagus and salmon, as well as atop a chocolate torte. “It’s still a relatively new concept for people to have a finishing salt,” Nelson said. “But they’re really getting the flavor of Sitka with it.”

For the Micheners, Sitka has been a source of inspiration and abundance, but their success comes with challenges. They work hard to market their salt to larger audiences and to attend out-of-town trade shows. Despite the limitations, they hope to grow and provide jobs for locals, all while remaining true to their location and product.

One grain in the big picture

Alaska Pure Sea Salt is more than just salt. The Micheners are a part of Alaska’s local food movement, cultivating a sense of pride in the state’s landscape and resources. They’re also on a unique mission to spread salt awareness, putting Alaskan sea salt on the map with the help of enthusiastic chefs in the 49th state.

Rob Kinneen is one such chef and the founder of FORK Catering in Anchorage. He prioritizes using local ingredients, using the Sitka flake salt to finish plates as well as in desserts: alder smoked sea salt paired with chocolate, and a parsnip cake with spruce tip whipped cream and spruce tip sea salt.

“When you start talking about what Alaskan cuisine is, you look at our area and start thinking of the ingredients we have on hand, instead of ones we need to import,” Kinneen said. “We’re never going to be making a staple product and selling a billion pieces for 99 cents each. We’re going to be making higher-end products — sea salts, syrups, jams, botanicals and products that use those ingredients.”

Alaska Pure Sea Salt may be an artisanal product, but it’s also inherently fundamental. “Salt is the most natural flavor enhancer there is,” Darcy said. “It makes a big difference in flavoring your food, so if you’re going to use salt, might as well use a good one.”

The Micheners’ Alaskan sea salt is free of anti-caking agents or bleaching — its character shines through in the flavor, texture and structure. It’s caught the attention of local chefs and national restaurants, and its reach continues to spread.

“But for us, No. 1 is honoring the source and the place where we live,” Jim said.

It happens one flake at a time.

Elissa Brown is an Anchorage freelance writer.

About this Author

Elissa Brown

Filed Under: Umami

THE SCIENCE OF BBQ – WHY DOES GRILLED FOOD TASTE GOOD?

September 13, 2019 By Boucanier Leave a Comment

Through our series The Science of Barbecue, we’ve explored the processes of grilling, Caramelization, and Smoking; discussed how to make any meat into a succulent meal, and even the intricacies of marinating. All of these things make a feast full of flavor, but what IS flavor? Let us explore The Science of Barbecue – Why Grilled Food Tastes Good.

YOU’VE GOT GOOD TASTE

Taste is experienced through the use of both your tongue and nose. Your tongue is coated in about 10,000 papillae (pah-pill-ah), which are the little bumps that contain your taste buds. When you place something into your mouth it instantly comes into contact with them. Taste buds are a type of nerve cell that is activated by the chemical makeup of food. These chemicals change the specific proteins in the cell walls, sending message signals to similar sensory cells, who then pass this information to your brain as the perception of taste like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.

The mechanics of taste are interesting in and of themselves. However, most of what we perceive as flavor, the taste of whatever you are eating, is actually coming from the aroma. The way a food smells. When you fire up the grill and toss food onto the red-hot grids, the Maillard Reaction occurs. The browning of whatever you’re cooking smells divine, activating the saliva ducts in your mouth, which will facilitate the transference of the chemicals that activate your taste buds. Smoking and Caramelization have a similar effect on your olfactory sense.

Steak

The taste map of the tongue that you are familiar with, illustrating that the tongue tastes specific flavors in specific places has been disproven. Taste can be experienced over any region of the tongue that has the presence of taste buds, although some spots may be more sensitive than others to specific tastes.

SO WHY DOES GRILLED FOOD TASTE GOOD?

Raw fruits and vegetables are edible, and even taste good, but for most food, it just tastes better when it’s been cooked. Flavor on food is developed and deepened when heat is applied. Caramelization, causes roasted vegetables to get sweeter, and meat becomes more savory thanks to the Maillard Reaction or Smoking. Proteins are broken down into amino acids, which then react with the carbohydrates present producing the scent and satisfying taste we crave. That is just the beginning. These processes, and other preparation methods, like seasoning, marinating, and injecting, accentuate the flavor profiles that you experience when eating.

IT’S A FLAVOR EXPLOSION

There are the four flavors that you already know, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty; but did you know that there are two others that you may not have a name for, but are very familiar with?

Umami:
Umami (oo-mah-mee) is a Japanese word that translates to deliciousness or yumminess. It is widely considered the fifth taste, although just being accepted in the international scientific food community. Umami can indicate protein in food. Coupled with the Maillard Reaction when we grill, it would signify, on a primal level, that food is fully cooked and safe to eat.

Umami flavor comes from one of three elements:

  • Glutamate: think saltiness like soy sauce and parmesan cheese. It naturally occurs in meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and seaweed, but has been artificially recreated in the form of MSG. It is an amino acid that is used by the body for the conversion of proteins into needed compounds in the body.
  • Inosinate: tastes like the hearty taste found in meat and fish. It is found in muscle fibers of animals mostly but can be artificially created from tapioca starch. This expensive flavor enhancer is known as kisodium salt or inosinic acid.
  • Guanylate: similar to the earthy taste of dried mushrooms. It is only ever used in conjunction with Inosinate or Glutamate. Another flavor enhancer that is produced from fish, seaweed, and yeast.

Umami is great, but when two umami compounds come together it is known as an umami-bomb or u-bomb; a complex flavor explosion. It is part of the reason certain foods taste so amazing, like grilled steak with mushrooms, chocolate covered pretzels, or **Sesame Chicken**. Add umami to your next barbecue, with a little feast, and you have a recipe for insane flavor that goes beyond just good. Try one of these umami leaden recipes.

TRY THIS AMAZING GRILL RECIPE FOR TANDOORI PORK CHOPS

Why Grilled Food Tastes Good - Tandoori Pork Chop

Fat:
Fat plays a huge role in how food tastes when it’s cooked. It’s the amount of fat that is in meat that influences the flavor; that is why we look for something well-marbled. Those striations of fat melt when heated. Amino acids and carbohydrates that are reacting to one and other through the Maillard Reaction are repelled by the water that makes up meat’s muscle fibers. Instead, those particles are being absorbed by the fat, which is what creates the aroma and taste in meat. This fat is also oxidizing during the grilling process, which brings out even more delicious aroma. Fat also feels good in the mouth. It melts and feels silky and smooth – think butter, cream, cheese sauces, and chocolate; or produces a satisfying crunch when used in conjunction with high heat – think French fries or the crust on a perfectly grilled steak. Finally, fat in food affects the way your taste buds react to food. Some flavors stick to the fat molecules prolonging the release of flavor on the tongue, giving you more complex layers of flavor and even aiding in the aftertaste.

TRY THIS RECIPE FOR BBQed CHEESE PIZZA

Why Grilled Food Tastes Good - Cheese Pizza

THE TAKEOUT

Next time you put something delicious in your mouth, think about how flavors develop on your tongue. Can you taste the separate components that make up the delicious whole? There is more to the Science of Barbecue than just how grilling works. Why grilled food tastes good involves preparation, cooking methods, and even the chemical components of the food itself. For more inspiration on making your own flavor bombs, check out our Recipe Blog for more inspiration and some great grilling flavors. Whatever you grill, now you know the science behind why grilled food tastes good.

Curated from – https://www.napoleon.com/en/ca/barbecues/science-bbq-why-does-grilled-food-taste-good

Filed Under: Umami Tagged With: BBQ, Taste, Umami

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