Patel Two hours before your next barbecue, you realize you’re panicking. Your friends is coming over; the buns are lined up; the meat is smoking… but how much food do you need to feed everyone? Use the calculator at the top of page to turn guesswork into easy math. It predicts how many sandwiches you could … Read more
You start to panic when you are making a red wine reduction for your next dinner party and it is taking longer then expected. The steak has been seared; Cabernet has been used to deglaze the pan; but now the simmering sauce wont thicken. That’s because it isn’t all about time. It’s about heat intensity, … Read more
It’s measured in grams, not guesses, grams being the difference between vibrant pink slices of bacon and those which turn as pale as wet cardboard. To be sure: curing your own meats is one of cooking’s most patience-challenged chemistry experiments. The margin for error are slim. By adding sodium nitrite to your muscle tissue you’re … Read more
There’s a certain type of panic that comes from mixing a batch large enough for 20 cupcakes and having space in your pans for only 18. There is a bowl of leftover batter that are destined to become a sad, dense cupcake. That was going to happen, and this calculator prevents that. It connects liner … Read more
Your Kitchen Timer Is A Liar Baking sourdough with a recipe that says “mix for five minutes” or “until the dough is smooth,” is a waste of time. Timing isn’t as important than texture. And smooth is a texture, not time. Go by the clock and you’ll either over-mix (shearing through the gluten structure, turning … Read more
Making pasta salad is an exercise in waiting and attention to detail. Chop your veggies. Cook your noodles. Mix your dressing. Wait. Look at that! Your pasta salad looks great. Now wait some more. Time will do its thing. When company arrives, what’s there? Clumps of dry pasta and naked veggie. What happened? Why did … Read more
Seeing on the label of a pack of curing salt “less than a teaspoon per 5 pounds of meat” might make your heart rate spike, because it seems as if you’re praying and hoping to cure some meat. Math time. Let’s use our heads. Here’s a calculator that will handle all the math for you … Read more
Once you start preserving food at home, though, your kitchen begins to smell different. No longer does it smell like a meal in progress; now it smells like concentrated autumn. Now there’s a bowl of sliced apples, an oven turned on to its lowest reliable temperature, and a hope that you’ve got the timing right. … Read more
Cookie baking is a guessing game for most bakers. Scoop a ball of dough onto the pan, cross your fingers, and pray you got it right on time. Sometimes they turns out all wonky. They might spread too much, burn up, or have something else go wrong. But professional vs. Batch-to-batch results aren’t magical, it’s … Read more
You’ve dumped all that salad dressing onto your lettuce, but it’s sitting in the bottom of the bowl, not on greens. Too much? No; it’s about how much area is covered, not amount of liquid. Use this: a salad-dressing calculator will tell you just how much to put on (it’s all about the kind of … Read more