I don’t do this to say I’m a better cook than anyone. I know a couple tricks, and my background gives me a different insight into what goes on with food. I’ve sat through countless demos and lectures by chefs I love and admire, and still found something to cringe at. This isn’t for me to say I know everything about cooking, or can do better than them. This is for me to point my Science & Engineering friends in a different direction (and the non-Science & Engineering peeps). Hubert Keller, for example, is one of my favorite chefs in my hometown of San Francisco, but you’ll still hear him talk about how searing meat “seals in juices.” Wrong. Is he wrong about everything else? God no. He’s still an incredibly talented chef and if he told me that the reason eggs firmed up by frying them in butter was because fairies magically transformed the eggs from liquid to solid, I’d still fry them in butter, but log in my head the fact that heat denatures and rearranges both the proteins AND starches present (yes, there are starches/sugars in animal tissue. Don’t believe me? Go grab a Bio textbook).
My background is Biochemistry and Microbiology. You’ll probably never see me write strictly about that stuff, because I’m either working on something that I want to patent, publish or is just incredibly technical that the only people who would get it are others who may want to steal my ideas. Yes, I’ve had ideas stolen. It’s not pretty. And if you know me, you also know how large I am and how violent I can get. Trust me, I’ve bought many people many wardrobes due to that temper and the strength I am afforded.
What I will do, is break down at the chemical, physical, molecular and cellular level what is going on. Many myths and misconceptions have been handled previously by other writers and scientists, but those myths and misconceptions are still out there. Cheers to men like Harold McGee and Herve This for laying the ground work. Kudos to Alton Brown for shedding a lot of light, but I find his over simplifications gloss over things in an incorrect way. He still does great work, though.
