"It would be THE most useless scientific finding ever.... But that's never stopped me before" actually made me lol. Captures the spirit of a good portion of the content on RUclips I enjoy most.
Well one'd believe so right? But scientific studies which on the face of it was compltetely and utterly useless and a waste of time, have at times found really interresting and useful scientific discoveries. Don't discount it just because it seems useless, it might not be (though admittedly it probably will be).
I rinse the pasta because if I don't the leftovers stick together in a lump. As far as quaint Italian home cooks go, here's my story. A co-worker of my late father, of Italian heritage, realizing his grandmother was getting old, asked her if she could show him how to make her pizza, the likes of which he had never had the equal of anywhere. She agreed. He bought all the ingredients he could imagine she might want, imported groceries, etc. She went into the kitchen, and a while later came out and asked, "Where's the Velveeta?" He went out and bought her Velveeta. The pizza was exactly as he remembered it.
Hmm, my decidedly not Italian grandmother who was known as a horrible cook made us pizza when we were kids: Crust - frozen Bridgeford bread dough thawed and pressed into a square pan, Campbell's Tomato Soup undiluted for the sauce, and Velveeta sliced for the cheese. It was horrible. 😀
Don't rinse pasta mix in some sauce and it won't stick any leftovers but it will taste good ate leftover cold u can also mix a tiny bit of olive oil to leftover s How can there be leftovers without some sauce?
@@ginkgobilobatree I remember once my parents went out to eat on a Saturday night and left me and my two brothers home ( maybe we were slightly too old to have a babysitter ? ). They left us with the worst brand of frozen pizza in the supermarket - it was called "Tree Top". It was inedible and we threw it out the window. Not proud of that, but kids do dumb stuff.
Italian cooking 'rules' have changed over time. A lot of Italian Americans (like me) learned rules that have since changed back in Italy. Anyhow, rinsing pasta used to be pretty common in southern Italian cooking. You'll find it in old cookbooks. It's not because of calories, it's to get a cleaner, brighter, bouncier texture. My Lucca born grandmother OTOH would have been horrified if I rinsed the pasta, as it was thought that rinsing prevents the sauce from sticking.
Back in the day when I was young and beautiful I had a fling with a guy whose family had an uncultivated olive grove just outside of Lucca..... he was always rescuing my sister but those were disco days let's cast a veil over that time .... I live in Canada Toronto has a huge Italo-Canadese population ... his family came over when he was 9 and all he truly wanted was to go back and do something about that olive grove. For which major kudos!!!!!! Don't do social media who knows what happened next but in a perfect world .... one of the good guys for sure. One thing; so many huge contraptions for making espresso I know off topic why this podcast is a GEM .... simply a thing you put on the burner works every time what do I know my Dad from former Yugoslavia translated a cookbook for my mum cooked all the time made a huge mess we all cleaned up and with us it was ... turkish coffee or whatever it's calling itself right now loved your comment.
Never knew that was the case in parts of Italy! Sounds a lot like the Japanese rationale for rinsing their noodles-- the cold water quickly sets the gelatinized starch on the noodles' surface for a firmer, bouncier texture, and rinsing off the outside starches is actually desirable because Japanese noodle dishes are usually eaten with thin dipping sauces or in hot broth-- you don't want the liquids to get thick or cloudy in this case.
Adam, regarding the cooking loss being highest with slow drying, there's very likely another correlated variable that is not being tracked here that is actually responsible for the high cooking loss of slow-dried pasta. 3:45. Slow-drying pasta is more expensive and is practiced by artisanal pasta makers and the high-end pasta makers. Do you know what else is virtually universally practiced by the same high-end pasta makers besides slow-drying? Bronze die extrusion, which leaves the pasta with a really rough, almost chalky surface, which reputedly grips sauce better. Bronze extruded pasta also costs more because it is more expensive to produce, while the dies wear out faster and require more frequent replacement. That rough surface seems to me to be much more likely to be responsible for shedding starch into the cooking water, rather than the method of drying. Every time I've cooked pasta that is bronze-cut, I notice that the water ends up much more starchy, whereas the teflon-extruded pasta does not starch up the water nearly as much. It doesn't make sense that slow drying would damage the pasta more, or do any of the other plausible reasons you proposed. Slow drying is done because it results in the most homogeneous and gentle drying of the pasta. (See Alex the French Guy's series on dried pasta. He explores this topic in depth.) To settle this question for good, you would need to try a bronze extruded slow dried pasta to a bronze extruded vacuum-dried pasta along with a teflon extruded slow dried pasta and a teflon extruded vacuum dried pasta. They would have to be pasta of the same shape for a fair comparison.
I think I've found the paper Adam was referring to, and while I don't have the full text to confirm, it sounds to me from the abstract (summary) like they made the pasta themselves from scratch: "Pasta was processed from durum wheat semolina and dried at low temperature in a drying oven, at very high temperature in a convection-air oven, and under reduced pressure in a vacuum-drier. Pasta after extrusion without drying was referred to as control." I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't just make one batch, divide it into portions, and assign one of the different drying methods to each one rather than use different batches for each, or using ready-made products. Doing the latter just adds in all sorts of variables to muddy up the analysis of the results (in addition to the one you mentioned, they'd also all use different recipes and probably end up with different calorie levels to begin with, for example). Meanwhile, doing the former is pretty trivial, just needing access to the ingredients, drying equipment, and someone to prepare the dough, and eliminates as many non-relevant variables as possible.
@@Zeppongola Brilliant!!!! I know this is an ongoing conversation concurrently watching Alex the French guy the artisanal pasta from his perspective is prohibitively expensive so he's compromising it's fascinating! My variety store believe it or not has both also imported multigrain with buckwheat and corn ...I can't tell the difference you want al dente you get just that and the starchy water works who needs whole wheat which I frankly don't get but yes much more expensive also buy it anyway. For what it's worth because I'm lazy ratio water to pasta not so much just woke up brain definitely not on overdrive ....
Yes, totally agree with the 'bronze die' explanation. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the greatest rate of loss will be at the very end of the pasta cooking time; so if you do what one is supposed to by finishing the cooking of the pasta in the sauce (say the last 2 mins of an 11min cook time), then that loss will go into the sauce anyway. Like other commenters, I've been following Alex's pasta series; also Vincenzo's Plate's videos on pasta. It's never worth buying any crappy pasta thinking it will do. Got to be DeCecco or better. I always look to make sure the protein content is at least 10%, and it's not egg yellow without egg!
As an Indian who had moved to US and stopped eating lentils on a regular basis, can confirm the flatulence problem when I tried reintroducing lentils in my diet.
Soaking dried legumes (like lentils, chickpeas etc.) overnight and rinsing them before cooking reduces the levels of oligosaccharides and other antinutrients, like phytates, by 30-40%; increasing digestibility and bio-absorption of vitamins and minerals, especially calcium and iron.
@@ErebosGR bring the dried beans to a boil and then rinse..then I cook adding a few bay leaves that helps I eat alot of beans and vegetables and don't have a bean problem aybe your body gets used to digesting them and fiber so you don't have that problem at least not extreamly.
Another excellent dissertation Adam. You have such a refreshing way of both stating facts of obscure (to me) research that is enlightening, while presenting your own narrative of why it may or may not be useful. I feel smarter following everyone one of your videos, whether it be your podcast or your recipe demonstrations. You have, and are, earning every dollar that has come your way, and I am grateful that your leap of faith to go full time was successful.
One reason that salt is left out of noodles is the salt retains more water in the noodle. If you add salt you need to add more water in the recipe to get the same consistency that you would if you hadn't. With dry pasta the addition of salt extends the amount of time it takes to dry the noodle because the salt wants to hold onto that water and you likely had to add additional water to the recipe to properly hydrate the flour (in bread making its autolysis I'm not sure the same term is used with noodles but it's the same process)
The gas problem of legumes can be partially mitigated by rinsing them well, then soaking overnight and again rinsing well before cooking. That decreases the levels of oligosaccharides and antinutrients, like phytates, by 30-40%; increasing digestibility and bio-absorption of vitamins and minerals, especially calcium and iron. If you want to push that reduction even further (50-70%), you need to get them to sprout for a few days (3-6), but that needs very close attention (rinsing twice a day, specific containers that drain well etc.) to minimize the risks of bacterial infections. Sprouting also boosts the fiber content and protein quality of the legumes.
More surface area is also an indicator of quality pasta, "traditional" slow extruders made in bronze vs the super fast Teflon extruders that leave a more "glassier" texture. Rough surface=more surface area=sauce "sticks" better. Also probably releases more starch which I guess is good for certain recipe styles where you need it for the sauce anyways (aglio e olio, carbonara, pesto, etc)
yup! Alex the French Guy oy vey has tried every variation love that there are really smart people out there just don't mention Joe Rogan to me don't care can't stand that obnoxious twit. Still trying to figure out how Jordan Peterson plus daughter exist on exclusively carnivore diet or why JP wince had to go to Russia to get valium the mind reels.
Almost the entirety of actual Italian pasta recipes rely on pasta water. The starchier the water, the better. In general, when you make any (non traditional) pasta sauce, starchy water is your friend. Vacuum dried pasta therefore are pretty bad quality. I started trying higher quality pasta a year ago and can't go back. Any dish I make with them is so much better in flavor and texture.
The FDA states that the calorie information on food labels is allowed to be up to 20% incorrect. So perfect calorie counting is pretty impossible anyway.
Yep, weigh your sliced bread (or any pre portioned food) and compare it to the serving weight. I have found that most net weights are almost spot on however
Hah, I laughed out loud! Rusty will happily accept the mantle of Petite Freshwater Seal. xD We usually call him Fat Sausage so that's much more flattering. And now I am definitely going to go look for your chicken parm video!!
Pasta packages in my region are 500g. I'm in the habit of weighing 100g/portion, mostly because it's 5 exact portions per package. But that decision had a positive effect on the variety of food in meals with pasta in my home. I used to make pasta only lunches, now I have to at least have a big salad with some beans or something
Just realizing this has slowly become one of my top favorite podcasts - I don’t miss any episodes now. Up there with freakonomics, revisionist history, cautionary tales, jjho, and planet money :-)
About that Amylase thing making starch taste good: just chew a piece of bread (real bread, not that wonder bread stuff) for a while and you will notice that it starts to taste sweet. That's the Amylase breaking up the starch into sugars. I was taught this is in elementary school where I live (which is Germany - you know Germans love their bread, now you know why... lol).
I love how Adam tackles some of the ineffective notions regarding food preparation that are never questioned. Like the chef's notion that food must be evenly seasoned throughout (thus restaurants not having table salt) instead of aiming for heterogeneity, notion of needing to coat crispy food and similar, instead of trying out different methods and finding out what we prefer more. Great pod as usual!
Oh man, you might not like this as I'm completely on the opposite side, but I've never been more tempted to yell "shut the fuck up" at my screen then when Adam was going off on his kinda self-righteous rant about salt and pepper (not) being at tables by default. To me, it's a ridiculous argument. I'll start by addressing your comment and pointing out the obvious flaw: salt and seasoning should be fairly homogeneous, period, full goddamn stop, because that's how salt and seasoning dissolve and become part of the food in the first place. Expecting some kind of heterogeneity in the seasoning is absurd, because unless you intend to under season individual components of a dish and/or over salt portions of it, then homogeny will occur naturally because that's what happens when you apply the correct amount of seasoning to a dish. The only way to create some kind of heterogeneity in a dish vís a vís seasoning would be to take an individual part of it (say, steak fries) and season them differently for a variety of experiences. Of course, even then, the variation comes not from having the customer adding on pepper after the fries have already been seasoned, but by using a different blend of seasoning on each fry. As for salt, you can create some heterogeneity by serving a dish (let's use spaghetti for example) with multiple parts that are kept relatively separate (with the sauce sitting atop the spaghetti noodles versus being mixed evenly) and also salted to various levels, but at the end of the day, the parts are still salted such that they balance each other out when eaten together. Adding salt is just going to throw that balance off, period. And this is what gets me about Adam's ridiculous strawman about *something something the chef thinking their one true vision of a dish is how it must be enjoyed*. The reason to give someone a passive aggressive stare for requesting the ol' S&P is not about them daring to deviate from how you made the dish, but it's about insulting the chef on a basic fucking level. Reaching for the salt is like saying the dish isn't salted enough, which is cooking 101, and reaching for the pepper is saying the dish isn't seasoned enough; again, that's cooking 101. It's an insult and truly shouldn't be necessary if the dish is prepared with just a modicum of competency. Now, I could kinda excuse this if we're talking about eating at some place like a basic diner, where the food is more function before form (if form at all) but any place that takes itself seriously? Nah, fuck off with the salt n pepper shakers.
I’ve been absolutely loving these podcasts, they are super interesting. Great thing to listen to during work, homework, chores, cooking, or if I’m just bored. Thanks for these Adam!
You should contact NileRed (or some other chemist and/or science RUclipsr) for a collab. You can make fresh pasta, dry one batch at home in the traditional way, and your chemist collaborator can set up a non-industrial scale vacuum drying chamber. Cook and compare! Edit: I drain my pasta the same way you do. I’m not in a position where I have a ton of time and space to cook, so when I do, it’s nice to know the theory of *why* these shortcuts work so I can apply the food science in many different ways.
You'd be surprised how hard drying pasta is. Alex (channel used to be called Alex French guy cooking) did a whole series on it, and getting it right at home seems nearly impossible. It'd still be an interesting video, but not sure how accurate to professionally made pasta
I cannot express the enormous depth of my hope that M Bowersox reaches out to Adam. With dozens of languages dying out each year, we must do what we can to preserve and document this unique and fascinating culture.
A preference for soggy crispy food is found in many cultures IMO, for instance, there are many Japanese dishes that are breaded and fried, only to be softened in sauce or soup or gravy. One aspect of this type of food that may or may not hold water (ba-dum-tss), is the apparent preference of older folks with lacking molars and jaw strength to conquer the crispy/hard exterior of these foods.
Using distilled water would drain more nutrients from the pasta. Seeing as osmosis would play a bigger factor. Seeing the tiny amounts you would be working with. To account for differences in the water you could dry a control amount of water and check the weight of the the residue, then detract that from the pasta result.
Honestly I think both sides are valid when it comes to seasoning food after it has been served vs not. On the one hand, the diner is the one putting this stuff into their body, so they should be able to make it more pleasant for themselves if they like the food with more salt or pepper or whatever. On the other hand, I understand that the chef worked hard to cook that food and probably is pretty attached to that recipe, and to see it tampered with probably makes the chef feel inadequate as a chef. That said, people have different tastes, and what the chef thinks is the right amount of seasoning may not be the same as what the diner thinks. Ultimately, I think that diners should at least try a couple bites of a dish before they reach for the salt and pepper, but I think that they should be available. Also, if you’re gonna make something crispy, let it *stay* crispy by keeping the sauce on the side. Crispy stuff is good.
The caloric contet for pasta water... I never thought about that, lol. Usefull. I still use it for a nice sauce though. Also it was a surprice to hear that for Poland! Go forward slavic brothers!
That was a fun deep dive-side-tracked-roundabout. My take on the why put sauce on something crispy to make it soggy… A) crisping an ingredient up adds to its flavor profile, like searing steak. B) Cereal : can be eaten dry or drenched in milk. If the drenched version was its only purpose, paraplegic would just eat oatmeal. However the dry version allows for sooo much more variety and how you eat it is up to you. So the same would apply to your chicken Parmesan, or wings or whatever. Fun fact: Deli sandwiches are usually made with mayonnaise to prevent the bread from getting (too) soggy. Butter can deserve the same function if it’s a cold sandwich. Enjoy
@Adam Ragusea, I always save my pasta water, in a bowl in the fridge. It gels up, and is great to use for puddings with B vitamins in it, or as a supplement for pet food. I never drain my rice, so it keeps all nutrients. I don't rinse pasta for pasta salad, just do it al dente plus a couple minutes. I NEVER salt pasta water, because it makes the pasta taste like soap to me. I simply make the sauce for pasta salad slightly more liquidy, i.e., I add in cut veg/fruits like grape tomatoes, fresh onions, celery, and cucumbers, and salt and/or vinegar, which causes the veg to weep, the water of which melds with the starchy pasta external, and the Vegan mayo. Now, if only Vegan cheezes weren't tasteless. Mine is never soupy, nor a block of solid pasta. Btw, my husband and I frequently talk to each other via gaseous anomalies. We'll hear something in the news we don't like, and let one another know via an anal gaseous release, "That's what I think about that!" And in the morning, when we awaken, as we move and it moves things around, as we get up, sometimes I describe it as, "I blew you a kiss." Maybe a chocolate kiss... lol. As for sauced crispy, my favourite Chinese dish was crispy fried tofu, in a brown sweet and sour sauce, with onions, carrots, and mushrooms. I put that over fried rice. This way of doing tofu is SO much better than using plain wet, mushy tofu. I say, "was," because Mandarin House was the only Knoxville restaurant chain that had it, only at lunch, and it closed a few years ago. That sucks, because nobody else does crispy fried tofu like that. The secret is, boil the extra firm tofu, dry it, coat in corn starch, then fry it at high heat, while the veg is simmering in the sauce. Add the tofu in before putting it out for service, "The secret's in the sauce..."
I always wait for your videos. One of the only channels I do so. This is the only pod I literally listen from start to finish, even coming back to it if I couldn't finish it at first.
Started cooking pasta in much less water recently. You dont waste a heap of energy boiling lots of water. You can use much less salt, or none. The results are as good if not better than a big pot of boiling water. The resulting pasta is more silky and you can use the (milky) water in the sauce. No need to haul a large pot of boiling water to the sink to drain it. All in all an improvement over using a large pot of boiling water. The one small thing you need to do is break pasta in half, if not going to fit entire length. So, optionally break pasta in half, whatever amount you want, and then cover with water to about double or triple the height, so the pasta is well covered, as it will absorb a lot of this water. Occasionally stir, with a fork or such. The small amount of leftover water when pasta is nearly ready, is used in the sauce, and combined with pasta etc.
Yeah, i never understood why you need SO MUCH water for noodles in general. Since i live alone i boil pasta in a amount what covers the pasta well. A bit more than with potatoes, because of the expanding of the noodles. But 2 l for a handfull of pasta? Nah
@@mlem6951 : wasnt too long ago i learnt the same for rice. i think some of the original thinking about pasta is that you need a lot of water so they dont stick, but is not the case at all with much reduced amount of water. saves a heap of energy, as it takes a lot, to boil a large pot of water. many people get burns from handling a heavy pot of boiling water to drain.
If you have enough water and bring it to a boil, you can fit the long spaghetti standing up. Just wait a minute and the pasta will bend and you could put it all under water.
@@carols3517 : whole point is not boiling a whole pot of water. anyhow, spaghetti cut in half is just fine and doesnt look worse on plate. using minimum necessary water does away with at least 10 minutes of heating water to a boil. starting pasta in minimal amount of (cold) water, it starts cooking in two minutes.
I'm a fanatic about the approach used in "Kenji's recipe." I want that free emulsion, so I always use a small pot, raised to a rolling boil, and heated until most of the water is absorbed, and then I'll either add the sauce directly, or let it rest if I'm making a casserole or something.
Sauce on side is the way to go. Especially if you don't know how long it'll sit. And for those wondering "what's the point," frying does add a lot of nice flavours that you would have not had otherwise (that Maillard goodness)!
I'm Bengali American and have never had a noticeable problem with beans. I've always assumed that's just because we eat daal all the time, so I think your theory about India is probably right.
BTW if you have difficulty breaking down starch and the resulting gastrointestinal difficulties the diet that will help you is called the low FODMAP diet. (Fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols.)
As a fellow Penn State alum, I appreciate your mention of the HUB and its Panda Express 🙂. Many fond memories of grabbing lunch at that Panda or the Sbarro next to it and chowing down with friends.
I said "pretty soon you're talking about real money" at the exact same time as Adam. And LOL good "seal"! I agree with sauce on the side, in fact I like to dip my pancake pieces into a little bowl of maple syrup, the pancakes don't get mushy from the syrup and you use less syrup if you get to taste the freshly dipped bottom of the pancake first.
Enlarged heart sounds good, dying heart cells do not get replaced, unlike most of the body. The Solent Green like thing (not from the film) that was available in the UK caused a lot of explosively loud digestion, could hear it echoing around the room.
Appreciate how conscientious Adam has been to incorporate social and environmental issues into all of his videos. It's so refreshing to not have to weather casual racism or macho b.s. against vegetarians, just to get good cooking content.
I agree that sauce should almost always be served on the side so you can mix them at will and not get soggy as the lady, who asked about it, expressed it. Btw I even put cereals on top (youghurt or milk) so they don't get soggy lol (I imagine that is perhaps not the mainstream opinion).
This is the first person I heard addressing that scam! About time, and thanks! I've been reporting those buggers but the way that youtube runs its reports, I think that it takes too long to strike them down and they still get enough exposure to be worth it. The only real way to stop it is to get people aware of it, so thanks, haha
"My dad used to make the whole 1lb box for all 4 of us and we didn't quite finish it." Dang... my family used literally double that, we do 2lb of dried noodles in our spaghetti for 4 people. Usually it doesn't survive the night
I love beano! I think everyone's system is different. for me, I use it exclusively for pinto beans, Beano really does alleviate the worst of the effects i get from eating pintos. I get a pretty bad gut reaction from these legumes, and beano makes that go way. so for me, its super useful And I am not at all concerned about negative effects.
gravy jello XD. I am a chef from Germany us was teached in culinary school, "traditionell" all Schnitzel with sauce wasn't coated in bread crumbs "Escalope naturel" only spiced and dusted with flour. With the upcoming of deep fryers, and populatity of the Vienna Schnitzel, most of the Schnitzel was swapped to the breaded one and put sauce on it. But anyone who dosn't like it so can always ask for the sauce on side, and dip each pice individualy.
lol, sogging out the crispy chicken. I've been doing my chicken marsala and franchise with sauce on the side for years now and my wife and I enjoy it so much more!
For Adam’s cooking loss question, I know canned beans nutritional value isn’t entirely correct at face value. There is some.. starchy bean juice in there with some nutritional value. Aquafaba has… 18 calories per 100g if you are interested
I'm from northern Sweden, we don't use pasta water. But when we make Palt (Potato and wheatflour and sometimes part ryeflour) dumplings. That water is traditionally used for baking bread, since the Palt water is usally unsalted (the potato dumpling dough is seasoned instead.) Palt on wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palt
I like to serve my chicken parm doused in sauce, but, much like you said about the orange chicken, I serve it right away. I drench the cutlet in already heated sauce, put the cheese on top, and immediately put it under the broiler to melt the cheese. We like it saucy at my house, so it works out great.
I add a tiny bit of olive oil to keep my pasta from sticking. Sometimes I don't make a dish right away and I don't like to use tap water here to rinse or cook my food, so rising isn't really a thing for me. I also don't think of keeping a large amount of filtered water aside to wash my pasta, but I suppose I could if I wanted.
It is standard practice in many fast food Italian restaurants to cold rinse the pasta and then make individual portion sizes in the prep hours ahead of time. Then all you have to do is heat up the pasta and serve.
Gas problem? I love beans and eat them regularly. I really like the 'good dialogue' that I have with my intestinal microbiome after eating beans. also if you crave salt or enjoy pepper, just let the chef know before they cook the meal.
Hi Adam, about the crispy and soggy texture thing. Well, let me introduce you to the fried fish soup. It is exactly what it sounds.. fried battered fish sogged up in soup. Dont knock it before you tried it. When you tried it, it makes sense! Unlike the examples you showed on chinese breaded sauced food. This fish soup is intended to be soggy. It is a textural thing, not exactly sponge thing
Re. flatulence, I always have major intestinal quakes when I have my first serving of Jerusalem artichokes when they come into season, but this diminishes after I've been eating them for a while.
The beano article is Journal of Familty Practice, Vol. 39, No. 5(Nov), 1994. They quote M. Bowersox but do not give a link at the bottom of their paper. Google does not find the actual Bowersox article.
Omg yes! I hate it deeply when I get served things drenched in sauce - either because it makes my fries soggy and really sad, or because I won't be able to taste what's drenched in sauce on its own. I don't eat meat any more, but I loved steak, and getting served a super nice and well made steak and then have it drenched in sauce for no good reason was just sad. Though I was the kind of guy that actually loved steak with only salt and nothing else (pork not so much without additional spices). The point of sauce to e.g. french fries is to get two different things in your moth at the same time, like being able to eat *crispy* fries with sauce
That's why I don't bother deep frying the chicken for chicken parm, I just sear it in a pan then put sauce and cheese on top and throw it under the broiler to melt. It's fewer calories and still tastes just as good.
This is one that I don't really understand as much. Usually when you see bright yellow pasta in grocery stores, it's the cheap stuff. Usually you want it to release a lot of starch into the water when cooking because that starch water is what makes a good sauce. The expensive stuff is the pale / dim yellow pasta that releases a ton of starch and everywhere on the internet has always said that is the pasta you should be using unless you can't obtain it.
I live in Japan, where food packaging always lists calories as kCal. I always wondered why this was different from my home country. Adam (of course!) answers yet another question I had for years. :)
You’ll notice in the US that food packaging lists Calories with a capital C. The capital letter denotes that we are in fact talking about kcal rather than regular calories. Subtle, but important, difference
Soak beans, lentils etc. Drain off the rinse water, sometimes it has tiny bubbles. Use fresh water to cook them. Haven't had a problem with gas, I think your body gets accustomed to legumes if you eat regularly.
@@rambi1072 It's just a gag from one of His videos, He made a comparsion of buttermilk and milk with vinegar as a brine for chicken legs and to remember about its He kept saying "vinegar leg is on the right". That's all.
I feel this, why cover crispy stuff in sauce. This is one of the points why i'm not a sauce person. Most my meals, i eat whitout sauce. Also, i don't like it, that everything just tastes like sauce. So, no, mostly a non-sauce girl here uu.
Interesting segment with the dry pasta. Alex (who has about as many viewer as you) recently did a whole series on dry pasta that he was trying to make at home and it was a LOT more complicated than you would have though. At any rate, here's a link to the episode that he did when he though he figured it out, but was still having problems. I'm glad to be living in a time where we can get high quality dry pasta from the store. ruclips.net/video/Y8ctere_8Bc/видео.html
If my grandma ever caught me adding salt to her food she would´ve beat me with a stick. I don't think the cooks position of asserting they seasoned it perfectly is particularly male. But the agression associated with actively preventing the consumer of tempering with said seasoning might be. Well... at least in a professional context anyway
if someone in our home ever aggressively dictated someone else's plate of food (beyond "eat your veggies, child"), they'd be crucified. Once it's on your plate, it's yours. 🤣
I think he doesn't know that you have to put the starting 00:00 timestamp in the description in order for all the other timestamps to show up as chapters in the video. But yeah, if you didn't know already, the time stamps are always in the description of the video.
Thanks for the input on Beano! I'm moving more flexitarian in my diet, so still some meat but more beans legumes etc and am DEFINITELY having issues with gas. I put some Beano on my orders list for this month and hope it will help, but the study info sounds like it should at least help with the worst of the gas
Honestly, I thought it was no use to crisp something if it was to put it in a wet sauce afterwards. And then I had this recipe from the french equivalent of Hello Fresh that demanded to crisp gnocchis before cooking them in tomato sauce in the oven for fifteen minutes, and the gnocchis were still prefectly crisp and perfect after all that time in sauce ^^ I don't know if it's because they're not made from only flour, but yeah, excellent in a gratin :D
fyi I do no salt when cooking pasta, the starch water i use in broth to give it a little different texture and flavor. I also use bean pastas and do the same… it tastes good to me.
I have found that when making pasta using a silicon mat greatly reduces the amount of bench flour needed because the raw dough does not stick to the mat.
Hey Adam, there has been a lot of talk in Australia about peanut butter in plastic containers being toxic, is this true?? Channel 7 news had a news article about it, but didn't provide any real information other than the peanut butter was "toxic". Many thanks!!! Love your channel and podcast!!!
I don't understand why we, since I sometimes do too, discard the "pasta water". Isn't it easier and less wasteful to use just enough water to boil the pasta in, like Middle Eastern and Asian way of cooking rice? Less water is, well, less water to start with, needs less energy and it is faster. I generally prefer to do so and I don't think my 25kg extra weight is because I don't discard the boiling liquid...oh and I just arrived to Kenji's Mac&Cheese part. Ok, it is clearer now.
Every time I have used Beano, I have gotten the worst most painful gas ever. Like extremely painful, rolling around on the floor or bent over holding my stomach. I also cant burp or fart any of it out until the next day, which seems like it is forever away because of all the lost sleep and excruciating pain.
@@WanderTheNomad yes it is. But for whatever reason it messes me up bad. I thought the first time was a fluke so I tried it again, and the same thing happened. A few years later while out eating with my dad, he suggested I try it and I explained to him what it did and he said you have to have a full stomach. I said okay and tried it one last time. For almost two full days I suffered. So never ever again will I take Beano.
While growing up I was taught to rinse the pasta for pasta salad, I've learned not to do that. Allowing the pasta to cool naturally while stirring as it cools allows that starch gel to stay on the pasta. When totally cool the sauce added to pasta definitely coats better. Never rinse salad pasta. Yes, you need to account for that extra cooking time without the rinse.
Oh and another thing! KJ (Kilo-Joules) is a much more reasonable way of counting energy as it's an SI unit and easily compared to watt's which actually makes you realize how much a unit is worth.
Beano is a comic according to the Brits and it was quite funny hearing all about whether beano is bad for gut health, that could easily be a gag in The Beano.
Going off of the pasta question, I think it would be interesting to do an experiment comparing adding pasta water vs. just adding some kind of starch to finish a pasta dish. People always call pasta water 'liquid gold' etc... but isn't it just starchy water? Can you not just add some flour at the end instead? Corn starch? is there an optimal finishing starch for pasta???
high cooking loss doesnt seem to me like it *should* be associated with low quality. i understand why commercial operations would want low cooking loss, but as a home cook i want lots of starch coming off the pasta to make it easier to thicken sauces
9:39 I watched a video where someone sent food to a lab to get the caloric content of it, and some of the items were listening calorie counts of upto 100 less than what they actually were, with only subway saying a higher caloric amount then was actually present, with everything else tested said a lower amount
The Finnish food data base uses ATP-equivalecies as their energy information. Except for ethanol which still has the caloribomb value. If ethanol would be given ATP-equivalency then people would notice that it's less calorific than sugar.
I have pretty much consistent pancreatitus, so that would explain why I have digestive issues. My last scan showed scarring in my pancreas, so yeah, I'm basically just eating and drinking everything I can until it finally decides to give out.
I very much doubt that food labels account for cooking loss, as there are so many different ways to prepare something. It's simply not possible to account for how much will be lost, when some preparations, none of it will be, or very little, while other preparations, more than expected would be (boiled and rinsed rice)
Who woulda thought pasta water could be a topic for investigation? Starch is a good thing, gives you energy. We eat primarily for energy. Keep that starchy pasta water, every last drop! Why throw away food?
"It would be THE most useless scientific finding ever.... But that's never stopped me before" actually made me lol. Captures the spirit of a good portion of the content on RUclips I enjoy most.
never seen someone use the acronym “lol” correctly. good for you
Well one'd believe so right? But scientific studies which on the face of it was compltetely and utterly useless and a waste of time, have at times found really interresting and useful scientific discoveries. Don't discount it just because it seems useless, it might not be (though admittedly it probably will be).
@@hoiuffccmmbvgff I love this podcast not least because of great comments!! Tx from an unapologetic bluestocking.
Says the man that made a whole video series on brownie skin
I love him so much God damn it!
I rinse the pasta because if I don't the leftovers stick together in a lump.
As far as quaint Italian home cooks go, here's my story. A co-worker of my late father, of Italian heritage, realizing his grandmother was getting old, asked her if she could show him how to make her pizza, the likes of which he had never had the equal of anywhere. She agreed. He bought all the ingredients he could imagine she might want, imported groceries, etc. She went into the kitchen, and a while later came out and asked, "Where's the Velveeta?" He went out and bought her Velveeta. The pizza was exactly as he remembered it.
Hmm, my decidedly not Italian grandmother who was known as a horrible cook made us pizza when we were kids: Crust - frozen Bridgeford bread dough thawed and pressed into a square pan, Campbell's Tomato Soup undiluted for the sauce, and Velveeta sliced for the cheese. It was horrible. 😀
Don't rinse pasta mix in some sauce and it won't stick any leftovers but it will taste good ate leftover cold u can also mix a tiny bit of olive oil to leftover s
How can there be leftovers without some sauce?
@@ginkgobilobatree I remember once my parents went out to eat on a Saturday night and left me and my two brothers home ( maybe we were slightly too old to have a babysitter ? ). They left us with the worst brand of frozen pizza in the supermarket - it was called "Tree Top". It was inedible and we threw it out the window. Not proud of that, but kids do dumb stuff.
I LOVE it!
My family always added a little oil to prevent the pasta from sticking
Italian cooking 'rules' have changed over time. A lot of Italian Americans (like me) learned rules that have since changed back in Italy. Anyhow, rinsing pasta used to be pretty common in southern Italian cooking. You'll find it in old cookbooks. It's not because of calories, it's to get a cleaner, brighter, bouncier texture. My Lucca born grandmother OTOH would have been horrified if I rinsed the pasta, as it was thought that rinsing prevents the sauce from sticking.
Back in the day when I was young and beautiful I had a fling with a guy whose family had an uncultivated olive grove just outside of Lucca..... he was always rescuing my sister but those were disco days let's cast a veil over that time .... I live in Canada Toronto has a huge Italo-Canadese population ... his family came over when he was 9 and all he truly wanted was to go back and do something about that olive grove. For which major kudos!!!!!! Don't do social media who knows what happened next but in a perfect world .... one of the good guys for sure. One thing; so many huge contraptions for making espresso I know off topic why this podcast is a GEM .... simply a thing you put on the burner works every time what do I know my Dad from former Yugoslavia translated a cookbook for my mum cooked all the time made a huge mess we all cleaned up and with us it was ... turkish coffee or whatever it's calling itself right now loved your comment.
Never knew that was the case in parts of Italy! Sounds a lot like the Japanese rationale for rinsing their noodles-- the cold water quickly sets the gelatinized starch on the noodles' surface for a firmer, bouncier texture, and rinsing off the outside starches is actually desirable because Japanese noodle dishes are usually eaten with thin dipping sauces or in hot broth-- you don't want the liquids to get thick or cloudy in this case.
@@pennyfarting Yeah, pretty much the same reason exactly. It can be nice in a seafood pasta, for example.
Adam, regarding the cooking loss being highest with slow drying, there's very likely another correlated variable that is not being tracked here that is actually responsible for the high cooking loss of slow-dried pasta. 3:45. Slow-drying pasta is more expensive and is practiced by artisanal pasta makers and the high-end pasta makers. Do you know what else is virtually universally practiced by the same high-end pasta makers besides slow-drying? Bronze die extrusion, which leaves the pasta with a really rough, almost chalky surface, which reputedly grips sauce better. Bronze extruded pasta also costs more because it is more expensive to produce, while the dies wear out faster and require more frequent replacement. That rough surface seems to me to be much more likely to be responsible for shedding starch into the cooking water, rather than the method of drying. Every time I've cooked pasta that is bronze-cut, I notice that the water ends up much more starchy, whereas the teflon-extruded pasta does not starch up the water nearly as much.
It doesn't make sense that slow drying would damage the pasta more, or do any of the other plausible reasons you proposed. Slow drying is done because it results in the most homogeneous and gentle drying of the pasta. (See Alex the French Guy's series on dried pasta. He explores this topic in depth.)
To settle this question for good, you would need to try a bronze extruded slow dried pasta to a bronze extruded vacuum-dried pasta along with a teflon extruded slow dried pasta and a teflon extruded vacuum dried pasta. They would have to be pasta of the same shape for a fair comparison.
That makes sense from a physics perspective, the rougher surface would give the bronze extruded pasta a greater surface area to lose mass from
I think I've found the paper Adam was referring to, and while I don't have the full text to confirm, it sounds to me from the abstract (summary) like they made the pasta themselves from scratch:
"Pasta was processed from durum wheat semolina and dried at low temperature in a drying oven, at very high temperature in a convection-air oven, and under reduced pressure in a vacuum-drier. Pasta after extrusion without drying was referred to as control."
I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't just make one batch, divide it into portions, and assign one of the different drying methods to each one rather than use different batches for each, or using ready-made products. Doing the latter just adds in all sorts of variables to muddy up the analysis of the results (in addition to the one you mentioned, they'd also all use different recipes and probably end up with different calorie levels to begin with, for example). Meanwhile, doing the former is pretty trivial, just needing access to the ingredients, drying equipment, and someone to prepare the dough, and eliminates as many non-relevant variables as possible.
@@Zeppongola Brilliant!!!! I know this is an ongoing conversation concurrently watching Alex the French guy the artisanal pasta from his perspective is prohibitively expensive so he's compromising it's fascinating! My variety store believe it or not has both also imported multigrain with buckwheat and corn ...I can't tell the difference you want al dente you get just that and the starchy water works who needs whole wheat which I frankly don't get but yes much more expensive also buy it anyway. For what it's worth because I'm lazy ratio water to pasta not so much just woke up brain definitely not on overdrive ....
Yes, totally agree with the 'bronze die' explanation.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that the greatest rate of loss will be at the very end of the pasta cooking time; so if you do what one is supposed to by finishing the cooking of the pasta in the sauce (say the last 2 mins of an 11min cook time), then that loss will go into the sauce anyway.
Like other commenters, I've been following Alex's pasta series; also Vincenzo's Plate's videos on pasta.
It's never worth buying any crappy pasta thinking it will do. Got to be DeCecco or better.
I always look to make sure the protein content is at least 10%, and it's not egg yellow without egg!
As an Indian who had moved to US and stopped eating lentils on a regular basis, can confirm the flatulence problem when I tried reintroducing lentils in my diet.
Soaking dried legumes (like lentils, chickpeas etc.) overnight and rinsing them before cooking reduces the levels of oligosaccharides and other antinutrients, like phytates, by 30-40%; increasing digestibility and bio-absorption of vitamins and minerals, especially calcium and iron.
Same but anorexia was my reason for my lentil hiatus..
@@ErebosGR bring the dried beans to a boil and then rinse..then I cook adding a few bay leaves that helps
I eat alot of beans and vegetables and don't have a bean problem aybe your body gets used to digesting them and fiber so you don't have that problem at least not extreamly.
Thanks for sharing ! Be sure to keep us all updated regularly here on the Ragusea comment section !
@@samthunders3611 I'm glad to hear that you have no bean problem, Sam. Given your name, I thought you would have said just the opposite. 🤭
Another excellent dissertation Adam. You have such a refreshing way of both stating facts of obscure (to me) research that is enlightening, while presenting your own narrative of why it may or may not be useful. I feel smarter following everyone one of your videos, whether it be your podcast or your recipe demonstrations. You have, and are, earning every dollar that has come your way, and I am grateful that your leap of faith to go full time was successful.
One reason that salt is left out of noodles is the salt retains more water in the noodle. If you add salt you need to add more water in the recipe to get the same consistency that you would if you hadn't. With dry pasta the addition of salt extends the amount of time it takes to dry the noodle because the salt wants to hold onto that water and you likely had to add additional water to the recipe to properly hydrate the flour (in bread making its autolysis I'm not sure the same term is used with noodles but it's the same process)
The gas problem of legumes can be partially mitigated by rinsing them well, then soaking overnight and again rinsing well before cooking.
That decreases the levels of oligosaccharides and antinutrients, like phytates, by 30-40%; increasing digestibility and bio-absorption of vitamins and minerals, especially calcium and iron.
If you want to push that reduction even further (50-70%), you need to get them to sprout for a few days (3-6), but that needs very close attention (rinsing twice a day, specific containers that drain well etc.) to minimize the risks of bacterial infections. Sprouting also boosts the fiber content and protein quality of the legumes.
That's a political statement sucknuts.
More surface area is also an indicator of quality pasta, "traditional" slow extruders made in bronze vs the super fast Teflon extruders that leave a more "glassier" texture.
Rough surface=more surface area=sauce "sticks" better. Also probably releases more starch which I guess is good for certain recipe styles where you need it for the sauce anyways (aglio e olio, carbonara, pesto, etc)
yup! Alex the French Guy oy vey has tried every variation love that there are really smart people out there just don't mention Joe Rogan to me don't care can't stand that obnoxious twit. Still trying to figure out how Jordan Peterson plus daughter exist on exclusively carnivore diet or why JP wince had to go to Russia to get valium the mind reels.
Almost the entirety of actual Italian pasta recipes rely on pasta water. The starchier the water, the better.
In general, when you make any (non traditional) pasta sauce, starchy water is your friend.
Vacuum dried pasta therefore are pretty bad quality. I started trying higher quality pasta a year ago and can't go back. Any dish I make with them is so much better in flavor and texture.
The FDA states that the calorie information on food labels is allowed to be up to 20% incorrect. So perfect calorie counting is pretty impossible anyway.
Yep, weigh your sliced bread (or any pre portioned food) and compare it to the serving weight. I have found that most net weights are almost spot on however
Not to mention the way we measure calories is wrong. Adam had a precious podcast episode about the topics.
Hah, I laughed out loud! Rusty will happily accept the mantle of Petite Freshwater Seal. xD We usually call him Fat Sausage so that's much more flattering. And now I am definitely going to go look for your chicken parm video!!
Your ferrets are amazing.
@@amunak_ Thank you! ^_^
Pasta packages in my region are 500g. I'm in the habit of weighing 100g/portion, mostly because it's 5 exact portions per package. But that decision had a positive effect on the variety of food in meals with pasta in my home. I used to make pasta only lunches, now I have to at least have a big salad with some beans or something
I am definitely going to try weighing next time.
I can never get it right by sight. It's always not enough or too much.
Just realizing this has slowly become one of my top favorite podcasts - I don’t miss any episodes now. Up there with freakonomics, revisionist history, cautionary tales, jjho, and planet money :-)
About that Amylase thing making starch taste good: just chew a piece of bread (real bread, not that wonder bread stuff) for a while and you will notice that it starts to taste sweet. That's the Amylase breaking up the starch into sugars. I was taught this is in elementary school where I live (which is Germany - you know Germans love their bread, now you know why... lol).
try a corn chip, it does this even faster!
aaaaand that was the reason why highly processed bread is terrible for health -- it's essentially sugar that doesn't taste like sugar
I love how Adam tackles some of the ineffective notions regarding food preparation that are never questioned. Like the chef's notion that food must be evenly seasoned throughout (thus restaurants not having table salt) instead of aiming for heterogeneity, notion of needing to coat crispy food and similar, instead of trying out different methods and finding out what we prefer more. Great pod as usual!
Oh man, you might not like this as I'm completely on the opposite side, but I've never been more tempted to yell "shut the fuck up" at my screen then when Adam was going off on his kinda self-righteous rant about salt and pepper (not) being at tables by default.
To me, it's a ridiculous argument. I'll start by addressing your comment and pointing out the obvious flaw: salt and seasoning should be fairly homogeneous, period, full goddamn stop, because that's how salt and seasoning dissolve and become part of the food in the first place. Expecting some kind of heterogeneity in the seasoning is absurd, because unless you intend to under season individual components of a dish and/or over salt portions of it, then homogeny will occur naturally because that's what happens when you apply the correct amount of seasoning to a dish.
The only way to create some kind of heterogeneity in a dish vís a vís seasoning would be to take an individual part of it (say, steak fries) and season them differently for a variety of experiences. Of course, even then, the variation comes not from having the customer adding on pepper after the fries have already been seasoned, but by using a different blend of seasoning on each fry.
As for salt, you can create some heterogeneity by serving a dish (let's use spaghetti for example) with multiple parts that are kept relatively separate (with the sauce sitting atop the spaghetti noodles versus being mixed evenly) and also salted to various levels, but at the end of the day, the parts are still salted such that they balance each other out when eaten together. Adding salt is just going to throw that balance off, period.
And this is what gets me about Adam's ridiculous strawman about *something something the chef thinking their one true vision of a dish is how it must be enjoyed*. The reason to give someone a passive aggressive stare for requesting the ol' S&P is not about them daring to deviate from how you made the dish, but it's about insulting the chef on a basic fucking level. Reaching for the salt is like saying the dish isn't salted enough, which is cooking 101, and reaching for the pepper is saying the dish isn't seasoned enough; again, that's cooking 101. It's an insult and truly shouldn't be necessary if the dish is prepared with just a modicum of competency.
Now, I could kinda excuse this if we're talking about eating at some place like a basic diner, where the food is more function before form (if form at all) but any place that takes itself seriously? Nah, fuck off with the salt n pepper shakers.
Tip from an ex-pro pasta chef: use semolina to stop your pasta sticking together and you will have less starchy water
It’s a shame here where I live I have to order semolina online.
Shoutout to the students in Poland 🇵🇱 for continuing our knowledge of food science 🔥 keeping it real 💯 🌽
I’ve been absolutely loving these podcasts, they are super interesting. Great thing to listen to during work, homework, chores, cooking, or if I’m just bored. Thanks for these Adam!
I like Adam's scientific rigor.
@@RandomDudeOne Same.
You should contact NileRed (or some other chemist and/or science RUclipsr) for a collab. You can make fresh pasta, dry one batch at home in the traditional way, and your chemist collaborator can set up a non-industrial scale vacuum drying chamber. Cook and compare!
Edit: I drain my pasta the same way you do. I’m not in a position where I have a ton of time and space to cook, so when I do, it’s nice to know the theory of *why* these shortcuts work so I can apply the food science in many different ways.
You'd be surprised how hard drying pasta is. Alex (channel used to be called Alex French guy cooking) did a whole series on it, and getting it right at home seems nearly impossible.
It'd still be an interesting video, but not sure how accurate to professionally made pasta
I cannot express the enormous depth of my hope that M Bowersox reaches out to Adam. With dozens of languages dying out each year, we must do what we can to preserve and document this unique and fascinating culture.
Adam, I really appreciate your sense of humor. I am one of your few fans in their 8th decade!
A preference for soggy crispy food is found in many cultures IMO, for instance, there are many Japanese dishes that are breaded and fried, only to be softened in sauce or soup or gravy. One aspect of this type of food that may or may not hold water (ba-dum-tss), is the apparent preference of older folks with lacking molars and jaw strength to conquer the crispy/hard exterior of these foods.
"Blowing ass" will now forever be a part of my vocabulary. Thanks, Adam, for upgrading my communication. 👍🏼
Ragusea body transformation part 2!!! Can't wait! Your first video inspired me to try it myself so :)
Using distilled water would drain more nutrients from the pasta. Seeing as osmosis would play a bigger factor. Seeing the tiny amounts you would be working with.
To account for differences in the water you could dry a control amount of water and check the weight of the the residue, then detract that from the pasta result.
Honestly I think both sides are valid when it comes to seasoning food after it has been served vs not.
On the one hand, the diner is the one putting this stuff into their body, so they should be able to make it more pleasant for themselves if they like the food with more salt or pepper or whatever.
On the other hand, I understand that the chef worked hard to cook that food and probably is pretty attached to that recipe, and to see it tampered with probably makes the chef feel inadequate as a chef.
That said, people have different tastes, and what the chef thinks is the right amount of seasoning may not be the same as what the diner thinks.
Ultimately, I think that diners should at least try a couple bites of a dish before they reach for the salt and pepper, but I think that they should be available.
Also, if you’re gonna make something crispy, let it *stay* crispy by keeping the sauce on the side. Crispy stuff is good.
The caloric contet for pasta water... I never thought about that, lol. Usefull. I still use it for a nice sauce though. Also it was a surprice to hear that for Poland! Go forward slavic brothers!
That was a fun deep dive-side-tracked-roundabout.
My take on the why put sauce on something crispy to make it soggy…
A) crisping an ingredient up adds to its flavor profile, like searing steak.
B) Cereal : can be eaten dry or drenched in milk. If the drenched version was its only purpose, paraplegic would just eat oatmeal. However the dry version allows for sooo much more variety and how you eat it is up to you. So the same would apply to your chicken Parmesan, or wings or whatever.
Fun fact: Deli sandwiches are usually made with mayonnaise to prevent the bread from getting (too) soggy. Butter can deserve the same function if it’s a cold sandwich.
Enjoy
Rinsing boiled pasta under cold water is essential if you want to eat them cold dipped in tsuyu sauce. Perfect for the summer.
@Adam Ragusea, I always save my pasta water, in a bowl in the fridge. It gels up, and is great to use for puddings with B vitamins in it, or as a supplement for pet food. I never drain my rice, so it keeps all nutrients.
I don't rinse pasta for pasta salad, just do it al dente plus a couple minutes. I NEVER salt pasta water, because it makes the pasta taste like soap to me. I simply make the sauce for pasta salad slightly more liquidy, i.e., I add in cut veg/fruits like grape tomatoes, fresh onions, celery, and cucumbers, and salt and/or vinegar, which causes the veg to weep, the water of which melds with the starchy pasta external, and the Vegan mayo. Now, if only Vegan cheezes weren't tasteless. Mine is never soupy, nor a block of solid pasta.
Btw, my husband and I frequently talk to each other via gaseous anomalies. We'll hear something in the news we don't like, and let one another know via an anal gaseous release, "That's what I think about that!" And in the morning, when we awaken, as we move and it moves things around, as we get up, sometimes I describe it as, "I blew you a kiss." Maybe a chocolate kiss... lol.
As for sauced crispy, my favourite Chinese dish was crispy fried tofu, in a brown sweet and sour sauce, with onions, carrots, and mushrooms. I put that over fried rice. This way of doing tofu is SO much better than using plain wet, mushy tofu. I say, "was," because Mandarin House was the only Knoxville restaurant chain that had it, only at lunch, and it closed a few years ago. That sucks, because nobody else does crispy fried tofu like that. The secret is, boil the extra firm tofu, dry it, coat in corn starch, then fry it at high heat, while the veg is simmering in the sauce. Add the tofu in before putting it out for service, "The secret's in the sauce..."
I always wait for your videos. One of the only channels I do so. This is the only pod I literally listen from start to finish, even coming back to it if I couldn't finish it at first.
I tried beano once. I was in extreme pain for an extended period of time so that was it for the Beano experiment
Started cooking pasta in much less water recently. You dont waste a heap of energy boiling lots of water. You can use much less salt, or none. The results are as good if not better than a big pot of boiling water. The resulting pasta is more silky and you can use the (milky) water in the sauce. No need to haul a large pot of boiling water to the sink to drain it. All in all an improvement over using a large pot of boiling water. The one small thing you need to do is break pasta in half, if not going to fit entire length. So, optionally break pasta in half, whatever amount you want, and then cover with water to about double or triple the height, so the pasta is well covered, as it will absorb a lot of this water. Occasionally stir, with a fork or such. The small amount of leftover water when pasta is nearly ready, is used in the sauce, and combined with pasta etc.
Yeah, i never understood why you need SO MUCH water for noodles in general. Since i live alone i boil pasta in a amount what covers the pasta well. A bit more than with potatoes, because of the expanding of the noodles. But 2 l for a handfull of pasta? Nah
@@mlem6951 : wasnt too long ago i learnt the same for rice. i think some of the original thinking about pasta is that you need a lot of water so they dont stick, but is not the case at all with much reduced amount of water. saves a heap of energy, as it takes a lot, to boil a large pot of water. many people get burns from handling a heavy pot of boiling water to drain.
If you have enough water and bring it to a boil, you can fit the long spaghetti standing up. Just wait a minute and the pasta will bend and you could put it all under water.
@@carols3517 : whole point is not boiling a whole pot of water. anyhow, spaghetti cut in half is just fine and doesnt look worse on plate. using minimum necessary water does away with at least 10 minutes of heating water to a boil. starting pasta in minimal amount of (cold) water, it starts cooking in two minutes.
I'm a fanatic about the approach used in "Kenji's recipe." I want that free emulsion, so I always use a small pot, raised to a rolling boil, and heated until most of the water is absorbed, and then I'll either add the sauce directly, or let it rest if I'm making a casserole or something.
These episodes have grown on me so much. Keep up the great work!
Already listened to the pod, came for doggo and otters! Super appreciate the content, thank you!
Sauce on side is the way to go. Especially if you don't know how long it'll sit. And for those wondering "what's the point," frying does add a lot of nice flavours that you would have not had otherwise (that Maillard goodness)!
I'm Bengali American and have never had a noticeable problem with beans. I've always assumed that's just because we eat daal all the time, so I think your theory about India is probably right.
BTW if you have difficulty breaking down starch and the resulting gastrointestinal difficulties the diet that will help you is called the low FODMAP diet. (Fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols.)
As a fellow Penn State alum, I appreciate your mention of the HUB and its Panda Express 🙂. Many fond memories of grabbing lunch at that Panda or the Sbarro next to it and chowing down with friends.
As a fellow Knoxvillian I enjoy a Petro from time to time. Beano (or generic) really helps me with the digestion. 👍
I said "pretty soon you're talking about real money" at the exact same time as Adam. And LOL good "seal"! I agree with sauce on the side, in fact I like to dip my pancake pieces into a little bowl of maple syrup, the pancakes don't get mushy from the syrup and you use less syrup if you get to taste the freshly dipped bottom of the pancake first.
Oo loom in uuu loll
L
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P.
I read this comment just as he said that. I believe this is called _talking‐about‐real‐money‐ception_
Enlarged heart sounds good, dying heart cells do not get replaced, unlike most of the body. The Solent Green like thing (not from the film) that was available in the UK caused a lot of explosively loud digestion, could hear it echoing around the room.
Appreciate how conscientious Adam has been to incorporate social and environmental issues into all of his videos. It's so refreshing to not have to weather casual racism or macho b.s. against vegetarians, just to get good cooking content.
Yes the lack of macho bs in general is amazing considering what youtube is. Love Adam.
Rusty is a ferret:- I like the way you ferret out the deep facts about profound nutritional issues!
I agree that sauce should almost always be served on the side so you can mix them at will and not get soggy as the lady, who asked about it, expressed it.
Btw I even put cereals on top (youghurt or milk) so they don't get soggy lol (I imagine that is perhaps not the mainstream opinion).
This is the first person I heard addressing that scam! About time, and thanks! I've been reporting those buggers but the way that youtube runs its reports, I think that it takes too long to strike them down and they still get enough exposure to be worth it. The only real way to stop it is to get people aware of it, so thanks, haha
"My dad used to make the whole 1lb box for all 4 of us and we didn't quite finish it."
Dang... my family used literally double that, we do 2lb of dried noodles in our spaghetti for 4 people. Usually it doesn't survive the night
I love beano! I think everyone's system is different. for me, I use it exclusively for pinto beans, Beano really does alleviate the worst of the effects i get from eating pintos. I get a pretty bad gut reaction from these legumes, and beano makes that go way. so for me, its super useful And I am not at all concerned about negative effects.
gravy jello XD. I am a chef from Germany us was teached in culinary school, "traditionell" all Schnitzel with sauce wasn't coated in bread crumbs "Escalope naturel" only spiced and dusted with flour. With the upcoming of deep fryers, and populatity of the Vienna Schnitzel, most of the Schnitzel was swapped to the breaded one and put sauce on it. But anyone who dosn't like it so can always ask for the sauce on side, and dip each pice individualy.
lol, sogging out the crispy chicken. I've been doing my chicken marsala and franchise with sauce on the side for years now and my wife and I enjoy it so much more!
For Adam’s cooking loss question, I know canned beans nutritional value isn’t entirely correct at face value. There is some.. starchy bean juice in there with some nutritional value. Aquafaba has… 18 calories per 100g if you are interested
I've always wondered how many calories come from the beans and how much is in the liquid. Where did you happen upon this?
I'm from northern Sweden, we don't use pasta water. But when we make Palt (Potato and wheatflour and sometimes part ryeflour) dumplings. That water is traditionally used for baking bread, since the Palt water is usally unsalted (the potato dumpling dough is seasoned instead.) Palt on wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palt
I like to serve my chicken parm doused in sauce, but, much like you said about the orange chicken, I serve it right away. I drench the cutlet in already heated sauce, put the cheese on top, and immediately put it under the broiler to melt the cheese. We like it saucy at my house, so it works out great.
I add a tiny bit of olive oil to keep my pasta from sticking. Sometimes I don't make a dish right away and I don't like to use tap water here to rinse or cook my food, so rising isn't really a thing for me. I also don't think of keeping a large amount of filtered water aside to wash my pasta, but I suppose I could if I wanted.
Waste of good oil
It is standard practice in many fast food Italian restaurants to cold rinse the pasta and then make individual portion sizes in the prep hours ahead of time. Then all you have to do is heat up the pasta and serve.
Gas problem? I love beans and eat them regularly. I really like the 'good dialogue' that I have with my intestinal microbiome after eating beans. also if you crave salt or enjoy pepper, just let the chef know before they cook the meal.
I usually use a mug to weigh my pasta in and then use the same mug to scoop out some pasta water.
Regarding Calories in food vs. calories in science, the kilocalories in food are often specified with a capital C. One Calorie is 1000 calories.
I've never seen a Calorie with a capital C in my life. It's always kcal.
Btw, snails actually generate their own cellulase enzymes to eat your garden so there is a metazoan being that directly digests cellulose.
Hi Adam, about the crispy and soggy texture thing. Well, let me introduce you to the fried fish soup. It is exactly what it sounds.. fried battered fish sogged up in soup. Dont knock it before you tried it. When you tried it, it makes sense!
Unlike the examples you showed on chinese breaded sauced food. This fish soup is intended to be soggy. It is a textural thing, not exactly sponge thing
Re. flatulence, I always have major intestinal quakes when I have my first serving of Jerusalem artichokes when they come into season, but this diminishes after I've been eating them for a while.
The beano article is Journal of Familty Practice, Vol. 39, No. 5(Nov), 1994.
They quote M. Bowersox but do not give a link at the bottom of their paper.
Google does not find the actual Bowersox article.
Omg yes! I hate it deeply when I get served things drenched in sauce - either because it makes my fries soggy and really sad, or because I won't be able to taste what's drenched in sauce on its own. I don't eat meat any more, but I loved steak, and getting served a super nice and well made steak and then have it drenched in sauce for no good reason was just sad. Though I was the kind of guy that actually loved steak with only salt and nothing else (pork not so much without additional spices). The point of sauce to e.g. french fries is to get two different things in your moth at the same time, like being able to eat *crispy* fries with sauce
That's why I don't bother deep frying the chicken for chicken parm, I just sear it in a pan then put sauce and cheese on top and throw it under the broiler to melt. It's fewer calories and still tastes just as good.
This is one that I don't really understand as much. Usually when you see bright yellow pasta in grocery stores, it's the cheap stuff. Usually you want it to release a lot of starch into the water when cooking because that starch water is what makes a good sauce. The expensive stuff is the pale / dim yellow pasta that releases a ton of starch and everywhere on the internet has always said that is the pasta you should be using unless you can't obtain it.
I like your logic Adam. I wonder, people who suffer of IBS, will a high FODMAP diet benefit them by adapting the gut?
I live in Japan, where food packaging always lists calories as kCal. I always wondered why this was different from my home country. Adam (of course!) answers yet another question I had for years. :)
You’ll notice in the US that food packaging lists Calories with a capital C. The capital letter denotes that we are in fact talking about kcal rather than regular calories. Subtle, but important, difference
Soak beans, lentils etc. Drain off the rinse water, sometimes it has tiny bubbles. Use fresh water to cook them. Haven't had a problem with gas, I think your body gets accustomed to legumes if you eat regularly.
Day 44 of reminding Adam that the vinegar leg is on the right
What is a vinegar leg
@@rambi1072 something on the right
@@AspectRx oh I get it now thanks
@@rambi1072 It's just a gag from one of His videos, He made a comparsion of buttermilk and milk with vinegar as a brine for chicken legs and to remember about its He kept saying "vinegar leg is on the right". That's all.
@@AspectRx whats the a leg left
I feel this, why cover crispy stuff in sauce. This is one of the points why i'm not a sauce person. Most my meals, i eat whitout sauce. Also, i don't like it, that everything just tastes like sauce. So, no, mostly a non-sauce girl here uu.
Interesting segment with the dry pasta. Alex (who has about as many viewer as you) recently did a whole series on dry pasta that he was trying to make at home and it was a LOT more complicated than you would have though. At any rate, here's a link to the episode that he did when he though he figured it out, but was still having problems. I'm glad to be living in a time where we can get high quality dry pasta from the store.
ruclips.net/video/Y8ctere_8Bc/видео.html
23:49
I use an small handheld sieve to spoon up my pasta. I place it on my own plate that I will eat out of.
Hey Adam just wanted to let you know that this podcast has supplanted GBBS as my rainy day comfort show
If my grandma ever caught me adding salt to her food she would´ve beat me with a stick. I don't think the cooks position of asserting they seasoned it perfectly is particularly male. But the agression associated with actively preventing the consumer of tempering with said seasoning might be. Well... at least in a professional context anyway
if someone in our home ever aggressively dictated someone else's plate of food (beyond "eat your veggies, child"), they'd be crucified. Once it's on your plate, it's yours. 🤣
Hey Adam, would you be able to start including timestamps for each topic?
I think he doesn't know that you have to put the starting 00:00 timestamp in the description in order for all the other timestamps to show up as chapters in the video.
But yeah, if you didn't know already, the time stamps are always in the description of the video.
@@WanderTheNomad thanks
Thanks for the input on Beano! I'm moving more flexitarian in my diet, so still some meat but more beans legumes etc and am DEFINITELY having issues with gas. I put some Beano on my orders list for this month and hope it will help, but the study info sounds like it should at least help with the worst of the gas
Honestly, I thought it was no use to crisp something if it was to put it in a wet sauce afterwards. And then I had this recipe from the french equivalent of Hello Fresh that demanded to crisp gnocchis before cooking them in tomato sauce in the oven for fifteen minutes, and the gnocchis were still prefectly crisp and perfect after all that time in sauce ^^
I don't know if it's because they're not made from only flour, but yeah, excellent in a gratin :D
fyi I do no salt when cooking pasta, the starch water i use in broth to give it a little different texture and flavor. I also use bean pastas and do the same… it tastes good to me.
I have found that when making pasta using a silicon mat greatly reduces the amount of bench flour needed because the raw dough does not stick to the mat.
Hey Adam, there has been a lot of talk in Australia about peanut butter in plastic containers being toxic, is this true?? Channel 7 news had a news article about it, but didn't provide any real information other than the peanut butter was "toxic". Many thanks!!! Love your channel and podcast!!!
I don't understand why we, since I sometimes do too, discard the "pasta water". Isn't it easier and less wasteful to use just enough water to boil the pasta in, like Middle Eastern and Asian way of cooking rice? Less water is, well, less water to start with, needs less energy and it is faster. I generally prefer to do so and I don't think my 25kg extra weight is because I don't discard the boiling liquid...oh and I just arrived to Kenji's Mac&Cheese part. Ok, it is clearer now.
Very enjoyable podcast Adam, always keen for the next one
Every time I have used Beano, I have gotten the worst most painful gas ever. Like extremely painful, rolling around on the floor or bent over holding my stomach. I also cant burp or fart any of it out until the next day, which seems like it is forever away because of all the lost sleep and excruciating pain.
Isn't that the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do? 🤔
@@WanderTheNomad yes it is. But for whatever reason it messes me up bad. I thought the first time was a fluke so I tried it again, and the same thing happened. A few years later while out eating with my dad, he suggested I try it and I explained to him what it did and he said you have to have a full stomach. I said okay and tried it one last time. For almost two full days I suffered. So never ever again will I take Beano.
While growing up I was taught to rinse the pasta for pasta salad, I've learned not to do that. Allowing the pasta to cool naturally while stirring as it cools allows that starch gel to stay on the pasta. When totally cool the sauce added to pasta definitely coats better. Never rinse salad pasta. Yes, you need to account for that extra cooking time without the rinse.
Hey, I'm part of the "don't thoroughly drain the pasta" club too!
Very interesting about cooking loss. I sometimes over cook my pasta. I hate it. I did not rinse it either
when i put some (like 1/4-1/2 tsp) bicarbonate soda into a pot of cooking soaked dry beans it usually breaks them down enough to reduce gas
Oh and another thing!
KJ (Kilo-Joules) is a much more reasonable way of counting energy as it's an SI unit and easily compared to watt's which actually makes you realize how much a unit is worth.
Beano is a comic according to the Brits and it was quite funny hearing all about whether beano is bad for gut health, that could easily be a gag in The Beano.
Mr Methane is another British comic.
Hi Adam.
Is there an audio feed of this podcast somewhere? Can't see it in the description
Going off of the pasta question, I think it would be interesting to do an experiment comparing adding pasta water vs. just adding some kind of starch to finish a pasta dish. People always call pasta water 'liquid gold' etc... but isn't it just starchy water? Can you not just add some flour at the end instead? Corn starch? is there an optimal finishing starch for pasta???
high cooking loss doesnt seem to me like it *should* be associated with low quality. i understand why commercial operations would want low cooking loss, but as a home cook i want lots of starch coming off the pasta to make it easier to thicken sauces
Hey Adam, just wanted to say that 'most' Brits haven't used the term 'roughage' (ruffage? Spelling bad) since the late 80's'. Still, you do you.
9:39 I watched a video where someone sent food to a lab to get the caloric content of it, and some of the items were listening calorie counts of upto 100 less than what they actually were, with only subway saying a higher caloric amount then was actually present, with everything else tested said a lower amount
The Finnish food data base uses ATP-equivalecies as their energy information. Except for ethanol which still has the caloribomb value. If ethanol would be given ATP-equivalency then people would notice that it's less calorific than sugar.
I have pretty much consistent pancreatitus, so that would explain why I have digestive issues. My last scan showed scarring in my pancreas, so yeah, I'm basically just eating and drinking everything I can until it finally decides to give out.
You should talk about the benefits of rambutan fruit.
I very much doubt that food labels account for cooking loss, as there are so many different ways to prepare something. It's simply not possible to account for how much will be lost, when some preparations, none of it will be, or very little, while other preparations, more than expected would be (boiled and rinsed rice)
Who woulda thought pasta water could be a topic for investigation? Starch is a good thing, gives you energy.
We eat primarily for energy. Keep that starchy pasta water, every last drop! Why throw away food?