The London Review of Books (“LRB”) published “Too Specific and Too Vague“, a review by the English culinary writer Bee Wilson of two recent books that refer to the ways that Asian cooking encountered English tastes in England in the 20th century. One book is about the work of 7 women presenting immigrant dishes in British and American restaurants and cook books. The other was about the history of the English word curry. The article appears to be accessible, LRB has had a paywall. I am not sure if the paywall is taken off selected articles, or has been removed, or if a bypass plugin is necessary.
The story is complicated and nuanced. English adventurers encountered Indian cooking as early as the 16th century. Manufactured curry powders – blends of ground dry spices -became popular in the 19th century. The English labelled several other spicy dishes encountered in Asia as curry. In the 20th century, immigrants to Britain cooked and sold spicy food. The English liked the food. The English found it simpler to call anything made by immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and other parts of Southeast Asia “curry”. English lexicographers concluded that the English decided that anything like anything cooked with manufactured condiment curry powder was curry. As the history of the term involved English colonialism and empire, and the reaction of the English to South Asians immigrants, the lexicographers’ decision was controversial.
Ms. Wilson mentioned Madhur Jaffrey, an Asian immigrant writer:
As a teenager, I started cooking from Madhur Jaffrey’s books and saw with a jolt that, for Indian cooks, hearing British people declaring they loved curry could come across as a crass postcolonial misrepresentation. Jaffrey arrived in London from Delhi in 1955 to study at Rada, and taught herself to cook using her mother’s recipes because she disliked English food (except fish and chips). In England, Indian food was thought to be anything sprinkled with curry powder …
‘To me the word “curry” is as degrading to India’s great cuisine as the term “chop suey” was to China’s,’ Jaffrey wrote in An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973). ‘“Curry” is just a vague, inaccurate word which the world has picked up from the British, who, in turn, got it mistakenly from us … If “curry” is an oversimplified name for an ancient cuisine, then “curry powder” attempts to oversimplify (and destroy) the cuisine itself.’
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For all its flaws, we seem to be stuck with the word because there are many occasions when there is no satisfactory synonym in the English language. Look at what a hash the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] makes of trying to pin it down. Curry, it says, is ‘a preparation of meat, fish, fruit or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served with rice. Hence, a curry = a dish or stew (of rice, meat, etc) flavoured with this preparation (or with curry powder).’ This definition is both far too specific and too vague.
….
Some of the curry deniers have softened their stance. … in the years since Jaffrey’s diatribe against curry in 1973, she has written a series of curry-themed books including Curry Easy, Curry Easy Vegetarian, 100 Essential Curries, 100 Weeknight Curries, Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible and Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Nation. Presumably, this was partly a way of luring as many readers as possible by seeming to offer something familiar. In Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Nation she wrote: ‘If Britain once colonised India, India has now returned the favour by watching spellbound as its food completely colonised Britain.’ That book was dedicated to Britain, ‘the Curry Nation that welcomed me all those many years ago’.
Last week I found a recipe in the American writer Anupy Singla’sIndian Slow Cooker for a dish titled “Chickpea Flour Yogurt Curry” which explained that this curry is a kadhi, a northern dish made with dairy and chickpea flour. I used the slow cooker recipe, (that book had options for full size crockpots and 3.5 quart pots), in a 6 quart Instant Pot, in a slow cooker program. I used buttermilk for the dairy, intead of yogurt. See Anupy Singla’s online Instant Pot recipe for a pressure cooker/multicooker method of cooking this dish. Ms. Singla also describes stir fried vegetable – e.g. Aloo Gobi – by the word sabji.
Most bread is made of grain that has been harvested and milled, to be hydrated, kneaded, and baked. Agricultural, industrial and culinary art have extended the usefulness of grain, but have not created a product to compare to the lembas bread of the elves in The Lord of the Rings. Bread is edible and palatable for a few days.
Bread is … an intermediate-moisture food product that is prone to mould spoilage. Normally bread is eaten fresh or preserved using additives or modified atmosphere packaging.
There are some breads that are baked hard and last longer – crackers and hardtack. Commercial bakers use additives and packaging – plastic – to extend the period of time that ordinary soft bread remains safe and palatable; there are some uses for stale bread.
Bread is porous and moist; it is vulnerable to mould (mold in the American spelling). Moulds reproduce by releasing microscopic spores. There are hundreds or thousands of spores in every cubic meter of household air. Most household filtration devices do not trap or control these spores. Mould spores will get on bread. Not all moulds thrive on bread, but several do. A mould, like a mushroom, has a mycelium of thread-like “roots”. Mould has health effects. Many moulds produce toxins. The antibiotic penicillin was derived from a common mould, that is popularly said to have been a bread mould. That is not a reason to eat mouldy bread.
Breadboxes are a convenient way of storing bread, and largely effective at protecting bread from most household animal and insect pests. Most people have a storage system for bread. Some kitchens have bread drawers in counters and cabinets. Modern breadboxes are often vented or have loose doors and lids or some mechanism to allow air flow that lets bread dry a bit – which delays mould, although it exposes the bread to some risks. Packaging can keep loaves from drying out for a few days. A consumer can combine a ventilated bread box with paper or bread bags or other wrapping. Many modern breadboxes use plastic or silicon seals to maintain the bread in an airtight chamber. This retains moisure and creates a humid storage space for bread. This delays bread drying out, and protects against some pests. This kind of box needs to be washed and disinfected regularly.
Refrigeration does not delay drying and staling. Some moulds grow in/on refrigerated foods. Some people use the refrigerator to store sandwich breads. Bread can be frozen and thawed. There is the practice, said to popular among the Dutch, of freezing and thawing bread.
Home bakers, bread machine bakers and internet advice sites have suggestions on inhibiting mould:
An article published at thespruceeats.com makes some sensible suggestions, unfortunately tending toward making over the kitchen.
I have tried storage options:
Vented breadboxes;
A Tupperware 23 cup (5.5 liter) plastic box with a hinged sealed lid. It is large enough to hold large (2 lb.) bread machine loaves. It seems to be airtight. Bread picks up mould spores which grow into mould on anything in the box, even crumbs. After a week or so it starts to become a petrie dish;
Metal tins with lids. Old cookie tins are too small, I have a manufacturer’s container for potato chips as sold in the 1950s and early 1960s. My mother had a few, used to store flour, rolled oats and sugar. This can hold a loaf or two. It may not do well with humid contents – I don’t want to see if the interior metal rusts, or find out what rust does for bread.
There are plastic food storage boxes on the market that will hold a loaf of bread. These keep a loaf from drying out, but are humid. These. like my Tupperware, have to be regularly washed to remove crumbs and prevent mould. I don’t want a new ceramic bread storage container, an accessory suggested on some sites, or another airtight container.
My answer is a ventilated bread box, with some packaging, in a clean kitchen. Housework, more housework.
The chile is the fruit of a plant in the genus capsicum, cultivars of capsicum annuum, a South American plant that travelled to Mexico before the common era. The plant grew in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America and was introduced to Europe and Asia in the 16th century in the Columbian “exchange”. It is used in cuisine that is considered, in modern terms, to be traditional or indigenous to those areas.
Fresh and dried capsicum cultivars were used in the indigenous cooking of Mexico and Central America for centuries before the Spanish conquest. Mexican cooking uses chiles in moles and other sauces, chiles rellenos (chiles stuffed with a filling and cooked), and other dishes.
Most cultivars produce the alkaloidcapsaicin. Most capsicums, including jalapenos, serranos, cayennes and Thai (Bird’s Eye) peppers are “hot”; new spicier cultivars have been developed. Capsaicin is an irritant which makes some peppers “red hot”. Capsaicin is not found in the seeds; little is found in the flesh of the capsicum fruit. It is in the white pith of the seed pod and the ribs of the fruit. The 1912 Scoville scale, based on detection of the diluted substance by tasters, is still used to assess the concentration of capsaicin although chemical analysis has superceded the 1912 method.
Many sources write chile for the capsicum fruit, and chili for stews made with chile. The English speaking inhabitants of South Asia (India) and Southeast Asia spelled the name as chillies. That spelling is still used.
Sweet or bell peppers are chiles. The bell pepper cultivar was developed in Europe early in 20th century and is widely grown and sold. The gene for production of capsaicin is recessive – bell peppers are not “hot” or spicy. Banana peppers and pimentos are mild too. Mild chiles add a sweet fruity flavour.
In pre-industrial practice, chiles could be used fresh, or dried. In the 18th and 19th centuries, processsors established methods of grinding dried chiles and storing and using chile powders and sauces made from dried chiles or chile powder. Ground spice powders made food safer and food preparation in kitchens more efficient. Powders of ground single cultivar chiles – e.g. ancho (dried ripe poblano) are available in some markets in the 21st century. In Mexican traditional cooking, a cook needed a supply of fresh or dried chiles, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and Mexican oregano (as opposed to the Mediterranean Origanum vulgare).
Black, green and white peppercorns are the fruit of the Asian piper negrum. The East Asian Sichuan pepper is neither capsicum or piper.
Allergies to bell peppers and other capsicum chiles are common, yet not well known or understood by the public. Many websites offer or share advice based on theories, some of which are or appear medical. The medical foundation of such theories is that allergies are immune responses to toxic glyco-alkaloids, or other alkaloids or proteins that may contact the skin or internal organs of humans. The theories blame substances in capsicum plants or in related plants in the nightshade family.
Con Carne
Chile con carne is a popular American stew:
Chili con carne (also spelled chilli con carne or chile con carne and shortened to chili or chilli; … meaning “chili with meat”, is a spicy stew containing chili peppers (sometimes in the form of chili powder), meat (usually beef), tomatoes and optionally kidney beans. Other seasonings may include garlic, onions, and cumin. The dish originated in northern Mexico or southern Texas.
Amercan Chili is based on meat. Pork and beef are traditional choices. The meat can be ground or cut to bit sized stewing pieces. There are recipes with other meats. It is customary to brown the meat to flavour the dish. Some make chili without beans. Many use beans. The beans used in chili (pinto, black turtle, red kidney, cranberry) are the dry seeds of cultivars or varietals of the central American wild bean, phaseolus vulgaris. The beans dry naturally and are harvested as a dry grain. The dry beans are hard and have to be cooked until they are tender and “creamy”. Dry beans can vary by age and other factors, making cooking times a matter of judgment or luck. Beans can be booked in boiling water or simmered in water near the boiling point. The slow cooker was developed to simmer beans, but is losing popularity.
Meat cooked in a chile sauce – carne con chile – is/was a north Mexican dish. Rick Bayless has established restaurants offering Mexican cooking, as an advance on American regional cooking, including “Tex-Mex” Western and Southwestern cooking. Bayless provided a recipe for carne con chile colorado from the state of Chihuahua in his first book, Authentic Mexican (1987). He has chile con carne on the menu in Frontera, a restraurant chain, and has published a version of the Frontera Uptown Texas Chili. By mentioning the question about whether chili con carne was invented in Texas and ny publishing the following comment he suggested that chili con carne is not an authentic Mexican dish.
Chile con carne: detestable food that under the false Mexican title is sold in the United States from Texas to New York
Rick Bayless, in Authentic Mexican (1987), quoting and translating Diccionario de Mejicanismos
Carne con chile was adopted by non Hispanic/indigenous consumers in the southwest US as American settlers migrated into the land annexed by the US from Mexico in the wars of annexation in the 1840s. It can be prepared and presented in thousands of way. It is often served with cornbread, a baked “cake” associated with the Southern states of the US. A “Tamale pie” is chili with a cornbread topping, baked in an oven.
In the early 20th century, food scientists at the New Mexico State University recovered “heritage” peppers from indigenous peoples and started the lines of New Mexico cultivars of capsicum annuum for agricultural use.
Proprietary chili powder spice blends and sauces became popular in the late 19th century. A few brand names endured; the idea of a blended powder became dominant in the American market. The chile in chili con carne is usually a blend of powdered dried chile with other dried ground spices including cumin, oregano (often not Mexican oregano), garlic powder, onion powder and coriander In modern (late 20th and 21st century) chili competitions, cooks may use multiple branded chili powders and sauces to get a unique and pleasing effect.
The origins and authenticity of chile con carne are, on the internet, a vast cavern. There are many web pages and videos of methods, recipes, festivals and competitions. In modern times it is a stew of meat and other ingredients in a tomato sauce flavour by onion, aromatics and spices including chile.
For several years I made stews, including chili, in a slow cooker with a ceramic insert (a crockpot). I used the methods suggested by cookbooks including the America’s Test Kitchen book Slow Cooker Revolution (2011). The ATK approach was to use canned beans, drained of the can fluid, which is not appealing and assumed to be unpalatable, Considering the use of salt in canning, salty broth is normally a health concern. I have been using an Instant Pot to prepare or cook beans for the last few years, and have given up using a crockpot.
Bread is made by mixing flour and water into a dough, introducing a rising agent (historically, yeast), kneading the dough, and baking the dough:
Bread is a combination of flour and water that has been baked. Over the years, its production has become increasingly more complex. Bread is a staple food in many countries, with cultural significance. With common sayings such as “the bread winner,” it has become one of the most important parts of the world’s diet.
Flour is the product of grinding and milling cereal (grain). The point of harvesting and milling grain is to preserve the starches, to be eaten and metabolized into glucose. When flour is mixed with water, starches dissolve. The starches are rearrranged by mixing flour with water, kneading dough and baking bread.
Grain and flour are NOVA class 1 unprocessed or mininally processed foods.
Unpackaged bread is a NOVA class 3 processed food, if
Processes include various preservation or cooking methods, and, in the case of breads and cheese, non-alcoholic fermentation. Most processed foods have two or three ingredients, and are recognizable as modified versions of Group 1 foods. They are edible by themselves or, more usually, in combination with other foods. The purpose of processing here is to increase the durability of Group 1 foods, or to modify or enhance their sensory qualities.
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Packaged industrially baked bread is considered to be a NOVA class 4 ultraprocessed food due to the additives and the processing of ingredients:
Additives in ultra-processed foods include some also used in processed foods, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilizers. Classes of additives found only in ultra-processed products include those used to imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of foods or to disguise unpalatable aspects of the final product. These additives include dyes and other colours, colour stabilizers; flavours, flavour enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners; and processing aids such as carbonating, firming, bulking and anti-bulking, de-foaming, anti-caking and glazing agents, emulsifiers, sequestrants and humectants.
A multitude of sequences of processes is used to combine the usually many ingredients and to create the final product (hence ‘ultra-processed’). The processes include several with no domestic equivalents, such as hydrogenation and hydrolysation, extrusion and moulding, and pre-processing for frying.
The overall purpose of ultra-processing is to create branded, convenient (durable, ready to consume), attractive (hyper-palatable) and highly profitable (low-cost ingredients) food products designed to displace all other food groups. Ultra-processed food products are usually packaged attractively and marketed intensively.
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Resources
Basic Technique and Science
Most people purchase bread made by industrial bakers from grocery stores. Some shop at bakeries.
Many people have kitchens and oven and could bake bread if they purchased flour and other ingredients and had time, and knowledge of technique and science. It isn’t rocket science but it is a specialized activity. Bread baking may have been a part of the education of students in home economics courses. Persons who work in bakeries may have taken courses in vocational educational institutions or learned from experienced bakers in work experience.
Publishers have published some texts and educational aids and many recipe books, but few books that can assist a beginner with basic technique. A useful book, in the Amazon Kindle store: Bread Science, by Emily Jane Buehler, published by Ms. Buehler, as Two Blue Books in 2006 and as a Kindle e-book in 2014, republished in 2021 in a 2nd edition. Ms. Buehler worked in a coop bakery, and taught community courses before she wrote this book. She researched the science of grain, milling, dough and baking in the professional journal collections of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She presents the science of gluten and fermentation, the practical technique of handling dough, an explanation of bakers’ percentage, and a discussion of the techniques of making and using preferments – sponges and starters.
Web
YouTube has videos that demonstrate technique and what dough looks like as it is worked. Finding them is not easy, as search tools drive users to sift through many search returns.
Lesaffre’s Red Star brand has some useful videos on its channel:
Whole wheat and bread flour weigh the same amount per unit of volume. Whole wheat flour, pastry flour and American all-purpose flour have proteins to make gluten but not quite enough. Bread flour milled to US and European standards (and Canadian All-Purpose) at 12.5% has more of the proteins that bond to form gluten. Gliadin and glutenin are insoluble proteins in grain and in flour. The proteins are found in wheat flour, and also can be extracted by milling, processed as vital wheat gluten (“VWG”) powder, and mixed into bread dough:
Consisting of mainly gliadin and glutenin, wheat gluten is unique among cereal proteins based on its ability to form a cohesive and viscoelastic mass. This rheological property makes it a dynamic material that is able to grow and keep the gasses within the dough during extended fermentation periods. The viscoelastic nature also provides the oven spring (increase in height due to the expansion of gasses) that we see in the oven.
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The addition of VWG generally increases the dough mixing time and fermentation time. As more protein solids are added, more water is needed for complete flour hydration.
Due to its cohesive and viscoelastic properties, its main function is a dough strengthener. It is also a film former, binder, texturizer, fat emulsifying agent, processing aid, stabilizer, water absorption and retention agent, thermosetting agent, and a flavor and color binder.
Vital gluten can absorb almost twice its weight in water (140–180% water). The quality of dry vital gluten is estimated with the Brabender farinograph or Chopin Alveograph. The breadmaking quality of VWG is also assessed through standardized baking tests.
When water is added to flour, these proteins bond into strands and sheets of gluten “a composite of storage proteins … found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, related species and hybrids … “. Gluten gives elasticity to dough, helping it keep its shape and often gives the final product a chewy texture. Gluten relaxes in time which lets the dough flow and rise.
Gluten forms when water is added to wheat flour. Bakers knead dough, stretching and folding it on itself, repeating the motion for several minutes. This structures the gluten. A baker can pause after mixing or start kneading, or pause during kneading. Kneading structures or pulls the gluten into a network of micro balloons. The dough should be viscous (tenacious and elastic) to hold together, but extensible to stretch, and to flow. A professional baker will probably use a mechanical mixer; many home bakers may have one. A mechanical mixer or stand mixer uses mixing arms, a paddle or a spiral dough hook in a circular or elleptical motion. A mixer has a range of speeds. The baker uses a slow speed to mix the ingredients and a higher speed to knead.
Rising Agents
A rising agent (leavening) creates bubbles in the dough that create the bubbled texture of the “crumb” inside the crust of the baked loaf. Until chemical leavening agents were developed, bread was leavened by adding baker’s yeast. Yeast consumes some of the starches – it ferments, creating gas, which is trapped in gluten in the dough, which makes the bread rise, after the dough has been kneaded. Bakerpedia explains, condensing a number of complex biochemical processes:
When yeasted dough ferments rises and increases in volume, and flavor is developed. Yeast converts starch in flour into sugar, carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol. CO2 gas is trapped by gluten proteins in the flour which causes dough to rise. Fermentation results in a light and airy crumb.
The yeast propogates. Propogation and fermentation accelerate until the yeast cells run out of starch, or are killed off by high temperature. The dough rises in 2 or 3 stages: bulk fermentation, and intermediate and final proof. Dough is knocked or punched down to release gas at the end of the bulk fermentation, and folded when the loaf is shaped. The dough rises again in the baking pan and springs when yeast warms up after the pan goes in the hot oven, before the heat warms the dough and kills the yeast.
Commercial bakers use chemical leaveners for some bread. Home bakers use baking powder and baking soda for corn bread, soda bread, cakes and other baking. Baking powder is baking soda mixed with cream of tartar. Kraft Foods Magic Baking Powder does not provide Food Facts on the labels of small jars in Canada. The published information is that 1 tsp has 300 mg. of sodium. Substitutions for baking powder involve 1/4 tsp of baking soda plus some acid (e.g. vinegar, cream of tartar) for each tsp baking powder. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. It has 1,259 mg. of sodium per teaspoon, which explains the food facts for baking powder. The science of substitution for baking soda and baking powder is to use potassium bicarbonate, which is the key ingredient of Featheweight – not an widely available (i.e. in grocery stores) product. It is available as a supplement but has a list of side effects and do not use if taking medication warnings. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for quick breads, and suggestions on low sodium “baking mixes”. “Natural” products that that might trap CO2. Some recipes for some baked goods suggest that some natural products may trap CO₂ e.g. whipped egg whites.
Salt
Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book Salt: a World History (2002) tells of the use of salt to bake bread in Egypt (3,000 BCE), The production of salt may have started about 8,000 years ago. The right ratio of flour to salt and yeast, among other things, means a loaf that will rise on time, and not overproof or balloon. The loaf should spring in the oven and crown to form a dome.
Salt is part of the process for most bread sold by grocery stores and bakeries large and small. Bread is high in sodium, as an effect of the baking process.
Salt is a standard and necessary ingredient in most formulas and recipes. Salt:
affects the development of gluten. It affects chemical bonds in amino acids in proteins in flour that has been exposed to mixed with water. It makes the gluten more tenacious and elastic;
controls yeast which affects fermentation. Fermentation affects flavour but it also affects rise, which affects the size of the loaf and the production line.
A few bread styles, such as Tuscan bread, are made without salt.
Salt can be reduced, with a reduction in the amount of yeast. Some books and internet pages eliminating salt but incorrectly list the same amount of yeast that would be used if there was salt in the recipe! This will may bake or collapse. In a bread machine, the dough will balloon and may or collapse before it overflows the pan.
Every reduction in salt has to be balanced with a reduction of yeast. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for yeasted breads and a note on the general adjustment for yeasted bread recipes. Artisan bread baking writers suggest that adjusting the salt in formulas leads to unsatifactory results – e.g. Peter Reinhart, Artisan Bread Every Day (Ten Speed Press, 2009) at p. 15 suggests not reducing by more than 10%. Salt and kneading affect gluten. It is easy to get to reduce salt to 50% and 33% reduce the salt added to the mixing machine when dough is mixed. These reductions are difficult for industrial bakers. Changes in salt will affect the gluten, affecting texture, and storage of bread, as well as fermentation and taste.
The most precise way of measuring is by weight.
Goal
Reduction
Use Salt
Use Yeast
50%
50%
50%
50%
33%
67%
33%
33%
The accepted rule of thumb is reducing proportionately by weight to maintain the same percentage
Mixing and Kneading
Machines
Modern professional bakers work with hundred of kilograms of flour and water. Professional bakers have control over how long to mix/knead, rise (ferment/proof), bake, and over oven temperature. Ingredients are mixed and kneaded in large industrial mixers, fermented, put into pans and put into ovens, baked, turned out and packaged. The dough goes into pans in small irregular lumps. It has to rise and flow to fill the pan, spring when pans go in the oven, but not spring above the limited headspace of the pan. Professional bakers may use 10-15 minutes of “intensive mixing” – the mechanical mixing of yeasted white flour dough was dominant in professional bakeries for French loaves until Raymond Calvel devised the hybid style in the 1960s. Intensive mixing develops gluten in white flour rapidly. Home bakers with stand mixers use slower speeds due to limitations of machinery (see the stand mixer review by America’s Test Kitchen in print and YouTube) or to use a hybrid, modified or improved mixing method. Overmixing is a risk for professional bakers using industrial mixers. Machine mixing can stretch dough too much or too often, breaking the gluten strands. An overmixed dough cannot hold the gases, and will not rise. Intensive mixing may affect a loaf with effects short of the complete failure caused by overmixing. Home bakers can have the same problem. A variety of mixers are available to the home baker:
Food processors can mix dough, although a food processor might only handle 3 cups of flour, and has one speed – very fast. The mixing time may be less than a minute. Some food processors have a dough speed and/or special blade to mix dough. The risk of overmixing dough in a food processor is well recognized.
A home stand mixer can handle several cups of flour, at low-medium speed settings. The power output of a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a 5 quart bowl may be 325 watts. Larger stand mixers may output 800 watts. A Bosch Compact Kitchen Machine may output 400 watts into its dough hook in its stand mixer configuration. They have to be used at the right settings and for a short time.
Baker’s Percentage
Professional bakers and some home bakers express ingredient lists or recipes in baker’s percentage (B%) to use consistent processes to manufacture a consistent product. Professional bakers may use 2 pounds of salt and .77 pound of instant yeast per 100 pounds of flour. The B% for salt is 2%; the B% for instant yeast with most loaves made with bread flour is .7% but B% can vary. It may be over 1%. A yeast B% of .7% in one loaf works out to .3 ounces = 8.5 grams = 8,500 mg. salt per 3 cups (15 ounces) of flour. A normal loaf of bread weighing 1 ½ lbs. (a bread machine medium loaf) has 3,400 milligrams of sodium per loaf – several hundred milligams per slice or serving. Home bakers work with small amounts of salt and yeast. Bread machines use very small amounts for single loaves.
Measurement of salt and yeast by weight is desireable for home bakers and bread machine bakers. Few home bakers have scales precise enough.
Conversion? The great majority of recipes refer to standard ground table salt. For table salt: 1 tsp = 5.7 grams or .20 oz. Some fine crystal table salt on the market in the US weighs 7 grams per teaspoon. I do not pay attention to this information unless the recipe I am referring to has used a coarse or fine salt:
America’s Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking (2012) lists several brands of kosher salt and sea salt and compares them to table salt, suggesting that Morton’s brand is the standard for table salt at 1 tsp = 7.15 g.
Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp of table salt = .25 oz which converts to 7 grams.
The size of the salt crystals affects solubility, which can affect the distribution of salt in the dough, and effect of salt on yeast. However a gram of kosher salt works as well as a gram of table salt for baking bread.
Some sources say for instant yeast: 1 tsp = 3.15 grams. Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp instant yeast = .11 oz which converts to 3.12 grams. It is hard for home user to verify the weight of a teaspoon of instant yeast with home tools and methods. Instant yeast may vary slightly depending on the manufacturer, time and how the yeast has been stored and handled,
I had been taking prescribed hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) 12.5 mg per day, a diuretic – to control (reduce) blood pressure, since 2011. It was not effective to counteract edema, a side effect of another medication. It has side effects that interfere with digestion and absorbing potassium. I was hospitalized for 2 days in June 2021 as a result of falling. Someone on the hospital team thought I had a potassium deficiency (this was not suggested to have been a cause of the accident). Someone changed my medications to eliminate the diuretic, and prescibed a potassium supplement, for the days I was in hospital. This 2 day intervention did not affect my blood pressure, as far as I was told.
Potassium is an element; the chemical symbol is K. It is measured in milligrams (1/1000 of a gram, abbreviated as mg.) in nutrition. It is an electrolyte, and can also be called a mineral or a nutrient. The US Department of Health, National Institute of Health (NIH), Office of Dietary Supplements, publishes an online Fact sheet for Health Professionals which recommends an adult male person weighing about 80 kg. should consume 3,400 milligrams of potassium per day. The fact sheet, which has been varied 2018-2021, lists some foods high in potassium. The putative source data is found in the US Department of Agriculture’s database, available onlinein 2021 by an application program interface called FoodData Central. The database includes
SR (Standard Reference) data, in the USDA “National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Legacy (2018)”;
Branded data about foods presented as branded commodities “generated by industry through a public-private partnership” with LabelInsight, a data firm.
The data is not easy to search. A food source may be spelled differently than expected – moong beans may be moong or mung (the latter is a more popular version of spelling in on product packages in the USA). Many dry beans are listed both raw and cooked (boiled), but not all.
The information in the NIH fact sheet generally aligns to the database, but do not always align on product or serving,. The fact sheet seems confused on how much a consumer will consume as a serving. The NIH fact sheet does not list all the foods high in potassium. I transposed some foods from the fact sheet in a table below, and interpolated some foods – mainly legumes – not in the fact sheet. Comments on the fact sheet, the list, and the table:
A calorie is a unit of heat. Literally, food scientists burned food to see how much energy the food contained;
The Calorie on a food package is 1,000 times larger than the calorie used in chemistry and physics. A Calorie is a kilocalorie (kcal,), the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius.(), abbreviated mg.
Food
Amount
Size
K (mg)
Mass (g)
Water (g)
Calories
Total carbs (g)
Starch (g)
Sugars (g)
lipids (fat) g.
protein (g)
Dried apricots
½ cup
1101
80
24.7
193
50
42.7
Cooked lentils
1 cup
731
198
138
230
39.8
17.9
Boiled mature White beans: Navy, Great Northern Cannellini
*The mg. K number for 1% milk. The fact sheet says 366 mg; the database says 391 mg.
The NIH fact sheet states 1 cup of cooked lentils contains 731 mg K. It aligns with lentils cooked by boiling in water, without salt, in the database. This is a large “serving”. 1 cup of dry lentils braised in 2 cups of water yields what consumers would regard as 4 servings. The USDA data search returns on specific lentils and legumes in the branded product data are incomplete. Some show raw red lentils as containing significant potassium. US and Canadian farmers have been growing mainly large green and brown lentils. Red lentils are split, hulled, brown lentils. But hulled whole brown lentils are red or pink in appearance and marketed by farmers and distributors as red lentils. Brown lentils became scarce in grocery stores near me during the Covid-19 pandemic; red lentils (hulled split brown lentils) remained plentiful. French green lentils and black lentils are available some times in some stores.
Dried apricots and raisins, and banana and apples contains sugars, which are metabolized differently than the carbohydrates in vegetables including legumes such as beans and lentils. Sugar metabolizes into body fat if the body does not need the energy within hours of consumption. Some of the foods listed as high in K provide a rationale for eating high sugar fruits and dried fruits.
Spinach is bulky when raw but wilts. Folding a few cups of chopped raw spinach into a hot dish is easy and fast.
I have recipes for Aloo Palak (potato/spinach stir fry), Aloo Gobi (potato/cauliflower stir fry), Aloo Baingain (potato/eggplant stir fry), braised lentils with spinach, dal (split hulled moong beans) with spinach and other dishes. The potato/vegetable recipes, like lentils, will make several servings but are high in potassium. The grocery stores have been able to provide potatoes, spinach, cauliflower, eggplants and several kind of dry lentils and beans in 2020 and 2021.
A cup of wheat bran has 684 mg. of K. I have recipes for a dozen bran muffins made with 1.5 cups of bran and a half cup of raisins has 1642 mg. of K. 1 muffin has 137 mg. of K.
The recipe book is Anupi Singla’s Indian for Everyone, published in 2014 by the Surrey Books imprint of Agate Publishing; also a quality paperback 2016, and an ebook in the Amazon Kindle store.
The problem in the recipes for Aloo Mattar at p. 95, Panak Aloo at p. 97, and Aloo Gobi at p. 98, in the printed editions, is the cooking time for the potatoes (aloo). In these recipes, the raw chopped potatoes are added to lightly fried onions and spices and stir fried for a couple of minutes and then cooked on low after other vegetables are added, for about 20 minutes. These are all sabji or stir fried dishes, in this author’s presentation. The result was crunchy and barely cooked potatoes.
The author prefers to use peeled Russet potatoes. Russets is the collective term of a few cultivars, including Idaho – the brown, thick skinned starchy potatoes chosen as baking potatoes and potatoes for deep frying as “French fries. This does not explain the outcome.
The error is a missed or unstated step. The missing step adds to the time to prepare this meal, and involves additional vessels and resources – another pot on the stove or an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker to cook or parcook the potatoes. Madhur Jaffrey has similiar vegetable stir fry recipes for potatoes in At Home with Madhur Jaffrrey but she has boiled the potatoes before using them.
It is not necessary to cook the potatoes until they crumble, but the potatoes need some cooking time before putting them a stir fry.
The technique to cook potatoes on in a vessel on a stove is to scrub the potatoes and cut out eyes and other visible surface defects,cover the potatoes in water, bring the pot to a boil and simmer. Thick skinned starchy potatoes should be better peeled. Peeling thinner skinned potatoes (i.e. white or yellow or many varieties of red) is a matter of taste and purpose. Salting the cooking water is an option. The cooking time depends on the kind of potatoes and size of the pieces. Baby waxy potatoes may take less than 15 minutes. Small potatoes and quarters of medium and larger potatoes may take 20-25 minutes.
The cooking time for potatoes at high pressure (11-12 psi; ie. at 242-244 degrees F.) in an Instant Pot or other electric pressure multi-cooker is 8 minutes. To parcook, I use 3 minutes on high or 4-5 minutes on low. I use a bain marie method – the potatoes in a ceramic vessel on a rack in the pressure pot. (There is water in the pressure pot of course, put the potatoes are cooked by steam water that being boiled in water). For pressure cookers, some fluid is needed but it is not necessary to cover the potatoes; the potatoes can be kept out of the fluid by using a rack or steamer basket, or a bain marie vessel. The cooking time (on high) and release method vary:
Potato
Fluid (per JN)
Time | release Stovetop 15 psi
Electric or Instant Pot 12 psi
JN
LP
LP
Whole large or medium
.5-1 cup
10-14 min. | Natural
10-13 min. | Either
13-15 min. | Either
Quarters Large chunks
.25-.5 cups More fluid for mashed
4-5 min. | Manual
5 min. | Either
8 min. | Either
Small whole
.5 cups
8-10 min. | Natural
5 min. | Either
7 min. | Either
Baby, fingerling
.25-.5 cups
1-2 min. | Manual
5 min. | Natural
8 min. | Natural
Sliced or diced
.25-.5 cups
3 min. | Manual
Jill Nussinow, Vegan Under Pressure; Laura Pazzaglia, Hip Pressure Cooking
It is possible to add a little water and leave the dish simmering and steaming for an extra hour. This works with peas (Aloo Mattar) but less well with cauliflower.
This post was published in 2021, with some later editing and further thoughts after more experience.
Cooked or Canned
Cooked dry beans are a staple ingredient. Some recipes provide directions for cooking dry beans as a step in a recipe, or by reference to another recipe for cooked beans in the recipe source/collection. Some recipes call for canned beans, rinsed. This is common in slow cooker recipes. Canned bean are dry beans cooked in the canning process. Dry beans may take twice the cooking time as other ingredients, or may not cook properly. Canned beans have cooking fluid in the can. This may contain sodium and other residual ingredients. It may be unpalatable. The extra fluid may affect the recipe. Most recipes recommend rinsing the beans and discarding the fluid.
Cooked beans can be substituted for canned beans in any recipe. The benefits are not paying for factory cooking and other supplier and seller costs built into in the price of canned goods, and avoidance of salt and additives. The cooking fluid can be used in the recipe or set aside and used as a vegetarian stock – it depends on how it tastes.
1/2 cup of dry beans makes 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans, the amount in one 14 fluid ounce can of canned cooked beans. Precision is generally not necessary:
For recipes requiring precise proportions, you should always cook … the dried beans before you measure them, using the average equivalents as a rough guide to estimate the amount of dried beans you need to prepare. Many bean recipes are fairly forgiving and adjustable.
The Spruce Eats – How to Measure and Use Dried Beans
Soaking before cooking starts hydration. It reduces the cooking time and improves the result. This is true for every cooking method except the extremely slow simmering e.g. in a ceramic olla as Rick Bayliss describes in some of his books on Central American and Mexican cooking. Soaking for at least a few hours prepares dry beans. The common advice is to soak overnight. This may mean 12 hours but can mean over 20 hours. Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen explained its tests on soaking at pp. 256-258 of The Science of Good Cooking (2012).
Some phaseolus vulgaris (Central American beans) varietals take up more water than others. For instance cannellini (white kidney beans) absorb more than pinto peas or black turtle bean.
Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen discusses variations on soaking: soaking in water at ambient (room) temperature, quick-soaking cook dry beans for a short time in boiling water or in a pressure cooker. The “quick-soak” or parcooking methods use any appliance and vessel that can hold dry beans in boiling water. Anupy Singla’s slow cooker recipe (The Indian Slow Cooker) for red kidney beans says quick soak in boiling water, and 5 hours on high in an electric crock pot type slow cooker. Laura Pazzaglia discusses soaking methods and times in her article/lesson Long-soaking and Quick-soaking beans in the Pressure Cooker and soaking for pressure cookers (including Instant Pots) in her article/lesson Pressure Cooking DRY versus SOAKED Beans.
Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen also explains soaking in brine, and/or adding baking soda to the cooking water. These use sodium to some degree. I have not tried them, as I avoid sodium. Those publishing brands tend to aim at an audience of home cooks striving to cook like restaurants, most of which use salt heavily for the taste buds of modern consumers, sensitized to highly salted foods.
The claim that soaking dry beans removes “indigestable sugars” and helps to avoid intestinal gas is common but unverified. Beans contain sugars: stachyose, verbascose and raffinose which ferment in the digestive tract, producing gas. There is support for the claim that soaking removes some sugars in some medical and scientific literature. For instance see this Michigan State University extension publication. However, soaking cannot remove sugars without removing other nutrients and flavour ingredients, and probably does not remove much sugar.
Instant Pot options
The pressure cooker program can cook unsoaked dry beans. It can be used to “quick soak” dry beans.
The pressure cooker program or the slow cooker program can be used, of cousse to cook soaked beans.
Medium and Large Phaseolus & Chickpeas
Rick Bayless’s slow cooker recipes for black (turtle) beans and pinto beans in Mexican Everyday (2006) start with unsoaked dry beans, to emulate cooking in an olla, discussed in his Authentic Mexican (1987), and Mexico, One Plate at a Time (2000). In Mexico, One Plate at a Time (at p. 192) he reported cooking in an olla heated the beans and water to 205-210 degrees (F), with little evaporation. He says 6 hours on the high setting in a slow cooker. In an Instant Pot with the slow cooker program this is 6 hours on the high slow cooker using the the sealing lid, with the pressure valve set to vent. Other traditional slow cooker recipe propose 8-10 hours slow cooker low for unsoaked black, pinto, cranberry (i.e. medium Phaseolus). I cooked small recipes in a small round traditional slow cooker on low in lower times.
Chickpeas and the large dry beans such as red kidney, Borlotti, cannellini, cranberry can be slow cooked in an Instant Pot by a three stage process:
a few hours by the natural method of soaking in water at room temperature – the beans will take up some water and swell;
in the Instant Pot, with enough water to cover the beans by a centimeter, a pressure cooker program “quick soak” (two minutes at high pressure, and a manual release); and
top up the water to cover the beans, and 2-4 hours at slow cooker program, high. If I have time, I keep the beans simmering at slow cooker program medium (which is equivalent to traditional crock pot low) for 3-6 hours. The beans can be kept warm as slow cooker program low, or the warming program.
This works in a six quart Instant Pot with one or two cups of dry beans in the bottom of the Instant Pot in less than a quart of water.
The larger phaseolus varieties are not necessarily the hardest. This method worked with seda beans, with extra time, but the beans were old.
The book is Madhur Jaffrerey’s Instantly Indian Cookbook, was published in 2019 by the Borzoi imprint of Knopf and as an ebook in the Amazon Kindle store.
The error in the recipes for Plain Chickpeas at p. 20, Everyday Chickpeas at p. 22, and Chickpeas in Gingery Tomato Sauce at p. 24 is saying soaked (white) chickpeas can be done in an Instant Pot (or any electric pressure cooker/multicooker) in the pressure cooker program at three minutes on high pressure with a 3 minute natural cool down. In these recipes, the Instant Pot is used to sauté onions and make a sauce; uncooked soaked chickpeas are added. I was suspicious about 3 minutes. I set 6 minutes, but the result was crunchy and barely cooked. I put the lid on and cooked at high for another 8 minutes. This produced chickpeas with some texture, barely cooked.
The recipes are fine if the user has cooked chickpeas – either canned or cooked at home. Madhur Jaffrey used cooked chickpeas in several recipes in At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (2010) (in the UK, Easy Curry). She regarded canned chickpeas as acceptable but cautioned that the sauce or canning fluid was not good and should be rinsed off the chickpeas. except for some organic brands.
Dry chickpeas, even soaked, take more time. In an electric pressure cooker, Laura Pazzaglia’s Hip Pressure Cooking suggests
40 minutes on high for dry chickpeas and
20 minutes on high for chickpeas that have been soaked.
Madhur Jaffrey has a note at p. 20 of Madhur Jaffrerey’s Instantly Indian Cookbook that unsoaked chickpeas can be cooked in an Instant Pot set for 50 minutes of high pressure in the pressure cooking program.
In an Instant Pot, I would cook the legumes first, set them aside, wipe the pot, do the recipe as written and add the cooked chickpeas and give them the three minutes on high to cook some of the flavour into the cooked chickpeas.
The book is Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook (2003, republished 2014), Sasquatch Books, Seattle. The authors are Sharon Kramis and Julie Kramis Hearne.
The error is in the recipe for Tamale Pie, at p. 113 in the 2014 edition, saying this is a recipe that can be done in a 10 inch cast iron skillet. While there are recipes that work in a 10 inch skillet, this needs a 5 quart or larger casserole dish or Dutch oven. It is not a mistake that exposes the cook or the diners to harm.
The error is exposed by adding up the ingredients. It uses three cans of canned ingredients, an onion, a bell pepper and a pound of ground beef. The cornbread topping is a cornbread that can be baked in a skillet – the cornbread will fill the skillet by itself. This recipe is bigger and takes longer than one might expect. I use a skillet to brown the meat and soften the onions and fresh vegetables. I use an enamelled 7 quart Dutch oven as a baking dish.
Perhaps this recipe belongs with stew and chili recipes in a Dutch Oven cookbook, like Kramis and Hearn’s Dutch Oven Cookbook (2006, revised ed. 2014).
Tamale Pie, like shepherd’s pie, is a stew with a topping, finished by baking. A shepherd’s pie is topped with mashed potatoes. A tamale pie is topped with cornbread batter. No corn husks, banana leaves or other wrappers are used to make a tamale pie – it is not a tamale. It is an American chili con carne, a stew that may involve meat, beans, bell peppers, chili peppers, and vegetables. Mexican and Central American versions of chili feature the flavour of chili peppers, and use beans. American versions often stress meat and minimize beans, but there are bean free and meatless recipes. The food processing companies have been making canned chili since canning became a technology in the food industry. Canned chili may emphasize meat, or spice or meat-free. (Bean free canned chili looks like dogfood).
The Kramis & Hearne recipe is a a family recipe. It uses ingredients found in family pantries or supermarkets including ground beef, canned tomatoes, canned chili (for the beans, I hope), frozen corn, a bell pepper, an onion, and garlic. It uses “chili powder” (this normally means a concoction that uses some dried ground chilies, and other spices for bulk). The Kramis & Heane recipe adds cumin, oregano, paprika and crushed pepper flakes; also, optionally roasted poblanos or diced fresh chilis (I use serrano or jalepeno). It is a good recipe. There is enough meat and flavour. I am going to substitute canned or cooked black and pinto beans for canned chili.
Such lists usually don’t mention problems with recipes, writers and publishers:
Recipes
with philosphical or ideological agendas. I am not a fan of the “Small Planet” recipes and other nutrition centered recipes;
promoting demand for devices or ingredients. Some require obscure ingredients or follow culinary trends into blind alleys;
Poor recipes – dubious ingredient ideas or planning by the recipe writer;
Inadequate instruction;
Serious errors – There a references to such errors in printed and broadcast stories. Some address a famous restaurant recipe that does not replicate – the famous Chocolate Nemesis is cited in a 2019 piece by Felicity Cloake in the Guardian, Cookbook errors: recipes for disaster.
More on serious errors. Quotes from Marion Burros’s 1997 NY Times classic column:
The prevalence of errors in cookbooks is the publishing world’s dirty little secret. The problem is likely to get worse as an industry mired in economic doldrums resorts to cost-cutting, practically guaranteeing less editing and testing before publication.
….
”Book publishing contracts are very specific,” said Sydny Miner, the cookbook editor for Simon & Schuster. ”Publishers don’t have any way to amortize testing of recipes, so the responsibility falls on the author. We take it on faith that the recipes have been tested.”
….
Generally, mistakes in cookbooks come to light when they are so egregious that someone following them might be injured. Or if a book riddled with errors was written by a particularly well-known author. Julee Rosso’s ”Great Good Food” (Crown, 1993) was lambasted from coast to coast for its errors.
What book publishers don’t tell you is that they view errors as almost routine. ”Every line in a recipe is an opportunity for a mistake,” Ms. Miner said. ”They can be made by the author, the editor, the copy editor, the typesetter. I don’t think you can expect perfection.”
….
Writing recipes is a skill. Accuracy is obviously essential, but there is an equally important need to write directions clearly. Not everyone has the knack. ”Cookbook writing is very tough,” Ms. Jones said. ”You have to write for beginners and advanced cooks.” And there is an additional problem. ”There are a lot more dummy cooks than there used to be.”
