I'm Just Here for the Food_ Version 2.0 - Alton Brown [33]
By the way, the terms “roasting” and “baking” refer to the same method. The difference is the target food. If said food is a batter, or dough, or pastry, you’re baking. If it’s anything else, you’re roasting. The only dish I know of that steps out of line is ham. You always hear about “baked” ham, never “roasted” ham. And yet you’d never say “baked” turkey any more than you’d say “roasted” brownies. Strange, isn’t it?
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO ROAST
Before the days of inexpensive, accurate, digital thermometers, roasters relied on voodooesque charts that calculated cooking times based on the temperature of the vessel and the gross weight of the target food. This equation has stranded many a cook over the years because weight doesn’t matter nearly as much as shape.
Master Profile: Roasting
Heat type: dry
Mode of transmission: 50:45:5 percent ratio of radiation to convection to conduction
Rate of transmission: very slow
Common transmitters: Air (convection), oven or container walls (radiation), container (conduction)
Temperature range: from your lowest oven setting to your highest oven setting
Target food characteristics:
• relatively tender cuts of meat, including those from the loin and sirloin
• all poultry
• root vegetables and starch vegetables (potatoes)
• eggs
• a wide range of fruits, including tomatoes and apples
Non-culinary application: curing pottery
AN ACCURATE OVEN TEMPERATURE
To tell the temperature of your oven, a coil-style oven thermometer works best. The principle behind these bimetallic strip thermometers is based on the fact that different metals expand at different rates as they are heated. In this case, a coil sensor, made of two different types of metal bonded together, is connected to a pointer on a dial face. The two metals expand at different rates, but because they are bonded together, work in unison to dictate the coil’s change in length as the temperature changes. This in turn causes the pointer on the dial to rotate to indicate the temperature. I like this style for the oven because they’re fairly accurate at oven temperatures and are easy to read even through dingy door glass.
SANDWICH-MAKING TIPS
• A good way to make a sandwich sturdy, besides toasting the bread is to use a layer of spreadable fat like butter or mayo to provide moisture, flavor, and a waterproof shield that prevents the bread from getting soggy.
• A good way to cut a sandwich made on a long baguette is to wrap the finished sandwich in parchment paper, place clean rubber bands every 5 inches, then cut.
Case in point: pork tenderloin. If weight and oven temperature are the deciding factors, then a, b, c, and d should in fact be done at the same time, right?
Put these roasts in order from the first to be finished to the last.
The right answer is c-a-b, but what’s interesting is that a and c are very close to one another in total cooking time. What’s even more interesting is that even if you cooked only one piece of c, a still wouldn’t be far behind. That’s because the primary shape, not weight, is the deciding factor. Sure, one piece of c will cook quicker because its surface-to-mass ratio is a little higher than that of a, but the overall distance from the outside to the center is the same.
Despite an identical weight, b will take nearly twice as long to cook as a or c because its shape is different: its thickness has been doubled, so heat has to travel roughly twice as far into it.
Given that both pieces of c will cook a little faster than a, it stands to reason that cylindrical pieces of meat could be broken into several pieces to decrease cooking time. And since more surface area means more crust, you might consider breaking traditional roast shapes into single servings when appropriate (d). This might not work with a steamship round or even a prime rib, but various parts of the round, chuck, and loin do nicely (see