I began to chart recipes in tables when I realized that each manufacturer has its own set of programs for its machines. Predictably, standard recipes (e.g. Bread Lovers Bread Machine Cookbook) fail in some devices. Bread machines are either dry (flour) first or wet (water or milk) first, according to manufacturer’s recommendation. Either way, load …
Rice? Any vessel that can hold rice and water can cook rice. A rice cooker applicance, a pot on a stove top, or a pressure cooker all cook rice. Using a pressure cooker or pressure multi-cooker to cook rice may not be the best use of that device, depending on the meal being prepared. For …
The principals of Double Insight developed the Instant Pot pressure multi-cooker in 2008-9. It was on the market by 2012, and took off in 2015-6 with social media and presence in Amazon Market Place. “Instant Pot” is not a trade mark like Vacuum Cleaner or Bandaid. Instant Pot launched a sous-vide heater in 2018, and …
A pressure cooker reaches cooking temperatures above the boiling point of water (212 F. or 100 C.). Pressure cooking involves time to bring water to a boil, reach cooking temperature, and a period at the operating pressure and temperature. Pressure cookers use high heat to build pressure and get food to a cooking temperature; low …
I used a slow cooker for many years. I have invested time and effort in learning that method of cooking. Slow cookers braise food in liquid at low heat. Most slow cookers made from the 1950s to the early 21st century used ceramic crocks heated by a single electric heating element- low powered and poorly …
The hypothesis of Catching Fire is that cooking food was a learned cultural practice that affected the physiological evolution of human beings. It used “external” energy to make eating and digesting food take less time and liberated people to get on with life. Ceramic cooking vessels were the dominant technology in societies in which people …
Joe Bageant was a journalist who wrote about how America misunderstood its white working class. He said in an inteview with the BBC in 2008 that white working class “rednecks” have political power, and were tending to conservative populism. Bageant’s comment on the financial crisis of 2008, Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball almost predicted the …
Android Apps evolve to keep up with technology: new versions of the Android OS, new features (e.g. Chromecast) I used PocketCasts happily to search for and download podcasts. It was acquired by some podcast content providers in 2018, and “upgraded” to version 7 in March 2019. I noticed bugs – the phone got hot and …
The language of dry beans is complicated. Botanical taxonomy and the language of farmers, markets and cooks are inconsistent. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recognizes 11 types of dry pulses, the seeds of several legumes, harvested as dry grains: dry beans, dry broad beans, dry peas, chickpeas, cow peas, pigeon peas, lentils, bambara …