If you can snag a bread machine, try this:
Buy yourself some vital wheat gluten. It’s the part of flour that gives the stretch.
Give each student some, add water, stir with a stick until it makes a lump, then knead it. and knead it. and knead it. You wind up with something like a rubber band! It is very cool. Let it sit for an hour or so and knead again…you’ll find the texture has changed.
Likewise, you can do experiments with yeast. The reward is the smell of the bread baking.
Electric skillets and griddles are great…if you have ventillation. You don’t want to precipitate a fire drill.
You will find there are colors in many vegetables that are acid/base indicators. This shows up in cooking because the difference between a bright appetizing color and a drab nasty-looking color can be the acidity the cook uses.
If you have a refrigerator, you may be interested what salt does to meat. If you put the salt on and let it sit about 3 hours, the juices of the meat come out. If the meat is cooked at this point, it is dry. After about 6 hours, though, the salt and the juice go back into the meat together! The cooked meat will be seasoned throughout and much juicer than a unsalted or recently salted piece. Also, if you brine a piece of meat (soak it in a salt solution) and then rinse it and let it sit in the refrigerator before cooking, you will find both that the meat cooks without expelling its juices so quickly and also that the texture gets “hammier”. This is because the salt unwinds the proteins.
The way meat browns also depends on how dry the surface of the meat is. It has to do with the temperature required to carmelize the surface.
There is a lot of science in food. Knowing it can make you a better cook, and can also make remembering the science facts easier.
For more ideas on the science of food, check out a book by Harold McGee, or else check out his website at
curiouscook.com/cook/home.php.
