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Chill

Heat Extraction

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By Michael Ruhlman

Published 2011

  • About

WHEN WE DEFINE COOKING, WE ALMOST always do so in terms of applying heat to food. Rarely do we recognize that part of cooking is often taking the heat away. Yes, we take things out of the oven or out of the pan. Anyone can put food into heat. The real skill is the awareness of when to take the heat away from it.

Moreover, few skills teach us as much about the way food and cooking work than understanding the power of stopping or reversing the application of heat. It forces us to pay attention to the stages of cooking—learning how a vegetable goes from hard to tender to soft helps us stop its march to mush. We learn to envision a steak as it goes from soft to firm on the outside and soft on the inside to firm throughout and therefore overcooked. We learn to see and understand the power of “carryover cooking”: that food continues to cook well after it’s removed from the oven or pan, whether a leg of lamb or a custard. Ultimately we learn to have greater control over our food so that we’re more agile in the kitchen.

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