Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

Next time you’re in the kitchen, open the fridge door

few weeks later for making Christmas fruitcakes that I sent off to my friends.) This attention to planning will limit the amount of attention you need to give to the

be tender and yield with a bit of poking. You can either remove the skin (pan s

After cooking, the duck skin will still be flabby and, frankly, gross. But the meat should be tender and yield with a bit of pokin

Aversions
Your reaction to a particular taste is based in part on your prior experiences with si

detect, as well as how it responds to

carbonated drinks their effervescence, and pep

white females have a 35% chance of being supertasters, while white males have only a 10% chance. Asians, SubSaharan Africans, and indigenous Americans have a much higher chance of being supertasters.
If you’re wondering if you’re a supertaster, there are a couple of ways to tell.
Method #1: PTC or PROP test strips
The best way to tell if you’re

By trying various temperatures, I’ve found 600°F / 315°C to be the lower limit for getting a crispy, flavorful crust. At 700°F / 370°C, the crust becomes noticeably better. And at 950°F / 510°C? It takes 45 seconds to cook a pizza. But how can you get these temperatures? Most of us don’t have ovens that normally reach 950°F / 510°C, let alone 700°F / 370°C, and few of us have brick ovens, either. What’s a thin-crust-pizza-loving geek to do? If only there were a flow chart for this...
Decision tree for how to cook a pizza.
High-Heat Methods for

I once cracked a very nice countertop with an empty but still cold bowl during a demo at a large software company whose name begins with the letter M. I’m still sheepishly apologizing for it. One final tip: when serving guests something straightaway after contact with liquid nitrogen, check the temperature (using an IR thermometer) to make sure the food is warm enough. (As a guideline, standard consumer freezers run around –10°F / –