Hotashi - Jack’s Blog

I’ve looked into some of the common knowledge people share about the Kitchen, mostly regarding cooking. I knew some of them to be false before but I decided to check into more of them. It seems many of the knowledge passed through the ages has proven to be wrong by modern science. Though I must admit there are many things that are confirmed by modern science as well. So without further adieu I give you my list. (these are all false)

1. Raw meat must be washed before cooking to kill germs and bacteria.

I have never come across anyone who doesn’t wash their meat before they cook. It turns out washing your meat could make things worse because you get the germs and bacteria in your sink, and the water you use to wash can splash into other parts of the kitchen. The truth is if you cook your meat thoroughly there is no need to wash them at all. And of course anything that the meat touches must be sanitized properly — including your hands.

Source: Food Standards Agency (UK).

2. Baking soda eliminates odours.

Baking soda is actually quite poor at absorbing odours, contrary to what years of marketing has led you to believe. The only way to eliminate odours is to be sure you don’t have spoiled food in your fridge, cover everything, and clean the entire fridge out once in a while.

Source: Ask a Scientist. Department of Energy (US).

3. Cold water boils faster than warmer water.

I’ve always thought this just to be one of those counter-intuitive ways physical science work sometimes. But it turns out it’s not true at all! However, under special circumstances hot water does freeze faster than cold water.

Source: Scientific America.

4. The reason to add salt to water when cooking pasta is to raise it’s boiling point.

The real reason you want to add salt to water when cooking pasta is to flavour it. Nothing more. Scientifically speaking salt can raise the boiling point of water, and lower it’s freezing point at the same time — in fact this is how anti-freeze works — but the amount you need to add in order to raise the boiling point by any practical amount is too high. However, this property is practical for lowering the water on our driveway’s freezing point during.

Source: I don’t know, just Google it, I’m sure there are tons of sites on this.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Maybe I’ll add more later when I do more research.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:08 pm by Jack, and is filed under Food, Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.