2008 Woodie Awards
Rhody Eat Beat: Cooking Voodoo
Rebecca Long
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Editorial/Opinion
04/09/08 - Occasionally, when I'm attempting a new recipe, I stop and realize that one of the many steps I have followed is probably completely extraneous. I refer to these steps as cooking voodoo.
If forced to, I would define cooking voodoo as steps or ingredients that have become ingrained in a recipe or tradition despite there being no scientific or sensory evidence that they make any difference.
The first example that comes to mind is the use of the bay leaf. Called for in many recipes, especially soups, stews and bean dishes, the addition of one or two dried bay leafs to a whole pot of soup strikes me as impossibly insignificant. If you taste a dried bay leaf you will know what I mean: the flavor is so subtle that by the time it is diluted into a gallon of soup it seems almost impossible that it would be detectable.
A possible reason for this is that when the tradition of using bay leaves began, people may have been using fresh ones. Another factor could be the quality of the bay leaves that are being used for commercial drying.
Another herb whose quality suffers from drying is parsley. In my experience, commercially-dried parsley has no detectable flavor. Its only possible use could be to add a few specks of green to an otherwise bland-looking dish. If the dish is also bland in flavor, it will be of no help to the dish.
Some steps in recipes aren't useless, they are just bad advice, like adding garlic at the same time as onions when sautéeing. Garlic burns easily, especially when crushed, and takes on a nasty, bitter flavor when burned. You are better off adding garlic at the last minute, after the onions are almost done.
Another piece of bad advice, environmentally at least, is preheating the oven at the beginning of a recipe. Although most recipes will have this as their first step, modern ovens do not take more than a few minutes to preheat. And if you preheat the oven at the beginning of a recipe with a 40-minute prep time, you will be heating an empty oven for an extra 35 minutes.
If forced to, I would define cooking voodoo as steps or ingredients that have become ingrained in a recipe or tradition despite there being no scientific or sensory evidence that they make any difference.
The first example that comes to mind is the use of the bay leaf. Called for in many recipes, especially soups, stews and bean dishes, the addition of one or two dried bay leafs to a whole pot of soup strikes me as impossibly insignificant. If you taste a dried bay leaf you will know what I mean: the flavor is so subtle that by the time it is diluted into a gallon of soup it seems almost impossible that it would be detectable.
A possible reason for this is that when the tradition of using bay leaves began, people may have been using fresh ones. Another factor could be the quality of the bay leaves that are being used for commercial drying.
Another herb whose quality suffers from drying is parsley. In my experience, commercially-dried parsley has no detectable flavor. Its only possible use could be to add a few specks of green to an otherwise bland-looking dish. If the dish is also bland in flavor, it will be of no help to the dish.
Some steps in recipes aren't useless, they are just bad advice, like adding garlic at the same time as onions when sautéeing. Garlic burns easily, especially when crushed, and takes on a nasty, bitter flavor when burned. You are better off adding garlic at the last minute, after the onions are almost done.
Another piece of bad advice, environmentally at least, is preheating the oven at the beginning of a recipe. Although most recipes will have this as their first step, modern ovens do not take more than a few minutes to preheat. And if you preheat the oven at the beginning of a recipe with a 40-minute prep time, you will be heating an empty oven for an extra 35 minutes.