Once your food has been grown and harvested (or slaughtered), you’ve got your core ingredients, ready to be eaten or processed one step further. The core to really understand what happens next though, is that you really understand those ingredients. Understand why they are the way they are. Make sure you’re able to compare ingredients, and understand why they’re different and, very importantly, understand what their role is in your specific application.
Previous step: all these ingredients started out at a farm!
Next step: transform those ingredients, wherever necessary, into food through processing or cooking!
Always looking for a new experiment, I decided to try my hand at some black bean brownies the other day. Looking for a fun variation on brownies, and having some left-over sweet potato, I ended up making sweet potato-black bean…
When looking into scientific literature you will find that some ingredients have been researched very intensely, whereas others have barely received any attention at all! Western staple ingredients such as wheat and potatoes have millions of hits when searching for…
Just because you are allergic to milk, use less dairy milk out of concern for the environment doesn’t mean you can’t eat pancakes anymore! It so happens, pancakes don’t really need (cow’s) milk. They’re actually very flexible regarding the type…
Not that many years ago, my only reference to carrot cake was a Dutch joke. It involved a baker and a rabbit, who does not like carrot cake, though makes the baker think he does. In all honesty, a carrot…
You might not think you ever need (or use) moisture sorption isotherms. But if your bag of (icing) sugar has started to clump or your pie crust started to go soggy, you’ve at least come across some of the phenomena…
The simplest of breads are made with just water and flour (such as a chapati). Add a little yeast and maybe some salt or fat and you can make a wide range of breads from a wide range of cultures…
Once you’ve decided which of the many rice dishes you want to cook and once you’ve decided which specific rice variety to use, you’ve got another decision to make. How to cook your rice? And, just as importantly, should you…
This is a guest post by Karen Rutherford founder and editor-in-chief at the Cakedecorist. I was making cheesecake the other day and thought it could do with a strawberry sauce on top. So, I set out to boil down my…
The other day, having some rhubarb left and not wanting to make a rhubarb pie, cake or crumble (>90% of rhubarb recipes online seem to be for one of those!), I decided to try a rhubarb ice cream. I had…
This is a guest post by a fellow food technologist (in training), Shriya Kumar. She is currently working towards a Master’s degree at Wageningen University & Research and soon, a career in the food industry. Before you start reading this…
Ever unknowingly took a bite or big sip from a dish or a newly developed product and suddenly had your mouth on fire? Scrambling to find a glass of water (even though it doesn’t really help), some yogurt, a piece…
Have you ever bought a seemingly beautiful piece of meat for dinner, only to find out it turned out completely dry in your stew, or chewy when grilled? Is so, you’re not alone, choosing the right piece of meat for…
