Cooking is life, well at least eating is. This is definitely something those with any level of cooking experience can appreciate.
Flavor and aroma are extremely important when preparing meals. Beginning with a blank template allows the creation of taste to be built one ingredient at a time. You may have never considered how a sneaky agent, used daily in almost every kitchen, attempts to impart itself in every meal you make.
This really was a ‘smack myself in the forehead' realization when I pondered all the clues I already knew. Have you ever been to a store and carried liquid fabric softener or dryer sheets home in the same bag as your food? Everything in that bag was bathed in the bold fragrant scent of fresh laundry. When preparing food, would you ever wash up, apply perfumed lotion on your hands, and then start chopping veggies? That would be a guaranteed wreck! Would you spray air freshener in the kitchen while you’re cooking? Please, tell me you wouldn’t. We should be able to agree that ‘crisp linen’ and ‘eucalyptus potpourri’ are not in the flavor profile of any typical cuisine. We do not want to consume those overwhelming scents nor the chemicals they are made of.
The little lingering residue
The offender I want to shine the spotlight on is a bit more subtle, but may possibly be violating your meals regularly. It’s your dish soap! No need to fret though, there is a fail-proof technique to be certain contamination exists, and prevent unwanted aromas and non-food compounds from affecting the flavor of your work.
A simple solution
I never wash my cookware in the dishwasher. I hand wash and usually place in an oven, sometimes warm. When I am ready to fire up the stovetop, I place my empty pot or pan on the burner and turn the setting to high. Once the pan begins to smoke I turn down the heat, quickly remove the pan, and rinse the extremely hot cookware under running water for a few seconds. The first streams of water hit the pan and evaporate into scalding steam. That is the moment you can actually smell the fragrance of the remaining residue from the dish soap used to clean the pan. It’s gone now! What would have been a strange, soapy fragrance included in your meal has been completely averted. Your flavor canvas is now truly blank, hot, and awaiting your ingredients!
This is the kind of knowledge that sticks with you. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll have to try even harder to ignore what you’ve learned today.
Thanks for that, it good to know the tip for cooking