Better Cooking Through Chemistry, a Promiscuity Self-Assessment, and More Dangerous Ideas

August 25, 2010 Molecular Gastronomists Don't Sear Their Steak Wylie Dufresne Chef The common belief that searing a steak will "lock in the juices" has been debunked by food scientists, yet some chefs persist in this practice. Watch » Chef Wylie Dufresne believes in playing with his food—but not in the usual sense of the phrase. In his Big Think interview, Dufresne explains the oft-misunderstood field of molecular gastronomy. It isn't just experimentation for experimentation's sake, he says: knowing about food chemistry will make anybody a better cook. Dufresne says that thanks to recent applications of science to the culinary world, we've learned more about cooking in the past 15 years than we had in the previous 15,000 years. One famous misconception, for instance, is that searing a piece of meat seals in the juices, when in fact molecular gastronomy has shown that making a slab of meat too hot will begin to draw the moisture out rather than seal it in. Dufresne also weighs in on the great foam debate in cooking, saying that foam has gotten a bad rap. "Engaging something in a new way, whether it be vinegar or butter or a flavor, but carrying it in a new form, is often very exciting to me." He also says that the "farm to table" movement is "like smoke and mirrors for the diner"—in fact, all good restaurants should be using good ingredients without needing to scream that fact from the top of a soap box. Finally, Dufresne says Scandinavia is the next big culinary hot spot. "They're introducing us, the culinary world, to a whole new group of ingredients that we are unfamiliar with. They're exposing us to a an approach, to a style of cooking, that has been around for a long time, but we're seeing it come back into vogue." How Ants and Humans Are Alike Mark Moffett There may be more similarities between ants colonies and human societies than there are between ants and primates. That's is because ants, like humans, can have societies in the millions. Watch » Tips For a More Sustainable Interior Thom Filicia Just because a room is eco-friendly doesn't mean it has to look like it's eco-friendly. Watch » Gravity Doesn't Exist Erik Verlinde The theoretical physicist believes that gravity is an emergent phenomenon, not the elemental "force" that Newton and Einstein theorized it to be. He thinks it is the result of patterns of complex, microscopic phenomena. Watch » The "Psychic Economics" of Creativity and Depression Rick Moody "The unhappier parts of my career enabled me to say the more trenchant things," says the novelist. But "if I'm not happy enough to finish the book ... it doesn't matter what truths I'm capable of scaring up." Watch » Julian Assange Has Blood on His Hands Paul Rieckhoff Some things need to remain classified, like the President's travel schedule, the location of nuke sites, or the names of Afghan informants. Watch » Dollars and Sex How Promiscuous Are You? Take Our Online Test Marina Adshade It's time to take a simple self-assessment test, which the International Sexuality Description Project—a team of more than 100 scientists—has ... Watch » Dangerous Ideas #22: Polygamy Is Feminist Max Miller Polygamy is alive and well in parts of America. According to researchers at Brigham Young University, there are 30,000 to 50,000 people currently ... Watch » Design for Good Japanese Machine Converts Plastic to Oil Maria Popova The perils of plastic are nothing new to most of us. A lesser-known fact, however, is that plastic has a higher energy value than just about any other ... Watch » Strange Maps 477 - Animal, Vegetal, Municipal: South Sudan's Zoomorphic Cities Frank Jacobs Eilert Sundt must have had a busy, happy week. As the president of the Norwegian Cartozoological Society, Mr Sundt probably is the world's most ... Watch » Dangerous Ideas #19: Design Your Baby Max Miller What would you do to give your child a head-start in life? If you're one of the millions of so-called "helicopter parents" we discussed ... Watch » About Contact RSS Privacy Unsubscribe This newsletter was sent by Big Think, 126 5th Ave., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10011. You are receiving it because you subscribed at bigthink.com. Original content is for non-commercial use under Creative Commons, except where otherwise noted. Some rights reserved. Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.