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Understanding food production, whether it’s at home are in a factory, starts with science. Once you have a grasp on some of the more basic science concepts, which you can find below, a whole new world opens up!
Orange, purple, green, or bright red. You can find fruits and vegetables of just about any color out there. Some of them are very stable. Others disappear easily, or can even change color. Want to control the color of your…
Did your salad leaves turn yellow in the fridge? Did your green beans lose their bright green color while cooking? Or did you end up with some very pale cooked broccoli? Most natural colors, including green, aren’t very stable and…
Ever made your own chocolate milk? You carefully mixed the milk, cocoa powder, and maybe some sugar. And let it sit for a little while. If you waited too long though, chances are you had to stir a few more…
If you google vinegar + eggs, you’ll find plenty of articles discussing: “why to use vinegar when poaching eggs” OR “how to dissolve eggshells with vinegar”. But none explaining why vinegar added to raw egg whites changes the texture of…
One of the most important properties of food products is their pH-value. It gives producers an insight into the shelf life of a product, how stable it might be over time, and how it reacts with other products. It’s what…
Once you’ve peeled your banana, you’d better eat it. Leave it unattended for a couple of hours and you’ll get back to an unappetizing brown banana. Same for apples, pears, avocados, and plenty of other fruits (and some more vegetables).…
If you’ve brewed your own beer or made your own cider you’ll have probably come across the term: specific gravity. It’s a tool that’s commonly used to determine how much alcohol you’ll get in your final drink. But what does…
Making candy is often described as a science, requiring thermometers to boil that sugar syrup to the exact right temperature. Alternatively, you can cook the syrup to a prescribed stage, “cook to hard crack”, which can be daunting. If you…
If you think of chemistry, you might be thinking of a lab, with people wearing white lab coats, where lots of complicated, maybe even dangerous chemicals are being mixed and tested by experienced chemists. You might almost forget that your…
You might be familiar with the brightly colored version on a stick. Or you might regularly use it as a core ingredient in your (savory) Asian recipes. Or, you might use it to sweeten your tea. Rock sugar, or rock…
Making caramel, marshmallows, honeycomb, and most other sugar candies generally starts by boiling a sugar syrup. Often, you’ll find very detailed instructions for this step, having to boil it to a specific temperature or ‘stage’. Deviating from these precise instructions may…
Would you buy a raw brown steak? What about a blue apple? Green coconut flakes? Or a grey orange? Probably not. If the color of food isn’t ‘right’ consumers won’t buy it anymore, even if it is perfectly safe and…