Unit Conversion

We’ve been haunted by the phrase: Season the water like the sea. But the ocean is much saltier then even a reasonable pot of spaghetti could ever be. This gap between taste and intuition is one that most home cooks try to fill by guessing wildly. Some throw in a handful and hope for the … Read more

The calories in olives may be misleading. The olive itself isn’t the variable; its the packing medium. Depending on whether you use olives packed in brine or in oil, you get a very different nutritional profiles. Brine-pickled olives has a moderate calorie count and sodium level (as listed) while oil-pickled olives have higher calories (because … Read more

And they’re also very high in calories: You can eat a ton of energy before you even know what happened. One small handful of cashews contains almost three-hundred calories. Cashews are creamy and satisfying; it’s realy easy to overeat. But most people guess at how much they eat. They think that “a moderate portion” must … Read more

It’s also useful because it makes me think about the nutrition value in something like meatballs, which tend to be regarded as a pretty harmless ingredient in most recipes, an unimportant filler, one way or another. But depending on what kind of meat goes into the mix, and whether you add breadcrumbs, cheese, and so … Read more

The next time you whip up some cream, only to find that it’s become all floppy and buttery and sad, you might panic: What went wrong? Why did my whipped cream fail? This is something that plagues home bakers all the time, typically at the exact moment you’re adding the last layer before company arrive. … Read more

In that pan of batter? All you see is a pool of goo. Not a single ball of cookie dough to be found in there. The stuff smells great, the mix of sugar, butter, eggs, and flour goes well together, but once you subjected them to any kind of heat, it collapsed on itself. More … Read more

A plate full of nachos will make you cringe. You know those chips is dense with calories. The cheese must be like liquid energy! And then there’s the guac. Healthy fat, so that counts for something. Breaking out the calculator to see the big picture helps clear up the confusion: it turns that vague sense … Read more

The rotisserie chicken was never realy about rotissering; it’s about convenience. And so you’re careful with that bird. When you bring it home and cook it, your nose tell you everything will be okay. Everything seems so simple: Just reheat it. Use it in a few different meals. But there’s a problem: Time. Once the … Read more

To illustrate, I’ve built a carb calculator (above) that will show how various ingredients impact carbohydrate in your meal. Why does this matter? Because they are based off tradeoffs we make in the real world, for example, swapping a lettuce wrap for a keto bun alters the numbers. Adding some bean chili add fiber which … Read more

Meat Sit-Out Time Calculator is a solution for anyone who’s worried about food safety at events. No more slicing up some turkey only to wonder “is this still OK?” once you realize it has been sitting out since appetizers arrived. Enter the start time, the room temperature, and whether it’s in a covered tray. Let … Read more