Mastering The Elements Of Good Cooking

By: Daniella Gutierrez

If you can master these ingredients, you can master the kitchen!

What food elements come to mind when we think of cooking? Perhaps salt?
​There are 4 elements that make up good cooking: salt, fat, acid and heat. Using these four elements in the kitchen will not only give your final product a delicious savory taste, it will also make you feel empowered to cook.


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SALT

It all begins with salt. Salt does magic to a recipe because it gives it more flavor and more texture. When we cook meats it's important to salt the meat in advance. Perhaps salting the meat overnight would be the best options for a more flavorful taste. When salt is added it clumps together and can eliminates moisture that is why for example when you marinate chicken with salt, you also want to soak it in buttermilk overnight to make the meat tender and juicier. It’s important to know that all salts are not created equal. For example, Morton’s Kosher salt is more dense than Diamond Crystal. One teaspoon of Morton’s Kosher is nearly 2 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal. Kosher salt also dissolves into your food more readily because the flakes are rolled and flatten. That is why the size of the salt crystal is important because it can affect a dish’s overall flavor as well as specific proteins. It is also important to consider the type of salt you want to cook with because some salts such as iodized salt makes your food taste metallic. When you add salt to food it enhances umami which makes the food more savory. A good example is soy sauce, it’s rich umami taste makes food more savoriness and satisfactory. Overall salt creates that sing in your mouth when a food is perfectly seasoned.

FAT

There is no easier way to say this but fat is flavor. The more fat, the more flavor a dish will have. Think about how delicious olive oil enhances the flavor of pesto sauce, focaccia bread, or how the marbling on a cut of meat makes the meat more flavorful and juicier. Marbling grade is correlated with juiciness and flavor intensity (was more closely correlated with juiciness and flavor intensity (Iida, Saitou, Kawamura, Yamaguchi, & Nishimura. 2015), so a fatty cut of pork will taste porkier than a lean cut. Fat creates texture and adds unique flavor to a dish. It amplifies the other flavors in a recipe which makes the food taste more delicious. When you begin to cook it’s important to know which kind of fat you are adding because fat should  never cover up the flavor of your dish. Instead it should accompany and enhance it. A few drops of toasted sesame oil can transform a plain bowl of rice, a dollop of sour cream will lend silky richness to a baked potato and half a cup of butter will make pastries tender and flaky. Fat creates 5 distinct textures: creamy, flaky, crisp, tender and light. The secret is how to harness it's magic.
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ACID

Using acid brightens food and creates contrast. Most importantly it does the job of balancing flavors which makes it essential to cooking delicious foods. Most of us cook with acid before realizing it, acid adds dimension and brightness to every dish. Acid is used to marinate meats to make them tender however it’s important to not leave for long because after a while the meat will toughen up like over cooked steak. Not only is acid used to tenderize meats, it is also used to ferment foods such as sourdough, soy sauce, sauerkraut and miso. Acidic agents such as lime and vinegar are used to marinate certain dishes such as ceviche and escabeche where the fish is raw and the acidity denatures the proteins and makes it safe to eat. It is not essentially cooked or raw but it makes it safe to eat. Acid plays a huge role in cooking foods, if you need to balance down the acidity you can always add salt, baking soda, sugar or water.

HEAT

Heat is what takes food from raw to cooked, pale to golden brown. It is the element of transformation. When heat is applied it creates strong aromas and browning. Browning is flavor, another word used is caramelization which creates that crispy edge or maillard reaction where high heat reorganizes aromatic compounds in our food and produce a deep savory flavor that doesn’t exist in the pale versions. For example bread into toast or raw tuna into seared. Some caramelization products are flavorful and have a pleasing odor, while others have a bitter and burnt taste to food, so it’s important to use your senses and observe over cooking (Provost, Colabroy, Kelly, & Wallert. (2016). Before you begin to cook an important choice to make is whether to use intense or gentle heat. Intense heat browns the food and gives that crisp surfaces and tender interiors while gentle heat uses time and liquids to transform dry, tough ingredients into tender juicy ones (Nosrat, 2017). When we heat foods the heat needs to be distributed evenly or else it will not cook evenly. To prevent uneven heat, create different zones to move around and not just stay in direct flame or having the roasted chicken on one side the entire time because the back of the oven is where all the heat is. Also cooking on high heat makes foods cook unevenly, so instead use simmering because it is more gentle. Pay attention to the food and not the fire by using your senses to look, listen, smell and taste and master the final element in good cooking: heat.

You don't have to use expensive foods to make good meals and recipes don’t have to be complicated to be delicious. The simplest ingredients can make a great delicious meal and don’t forget you’re suppose to taste what you’re cooking and use your senses.

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References
Iida, F., Saitou, K., Kawamura, T., Yamaguchi, S., & Nishimura, T. (2015). Effect of fat content on sensory characteristics of marbled beef from Japanese Black steers. Animal Science Journal, 86(7), 707-715. ISSN: 1344-3941

Provost, J., Colabroy, K., Kelly, B., & Wallert, M. (2016). The science of cooking: Understanding the biology and chemistry behind food and cooking.

Nosrat, S. (2017). Salt, fat, acid, heat: Mastering the elements of good cooking(Simon & Schuster nonfiction original hardcover).

LiveGlam. (2017). Honey and Lemon Mask - DIY Organic Mask Recipe to Try Today. Retrieved from https://liveglam.com/honey-and-lemon-mask-diy/




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