YOUR BURNING FOOD QUESTIONS... ANSWERED!

Debora Robertson

Some cooking queries just aren’t satisfied by the ‘I wonder what happens when I try this…?’ style of kitchen experimentation. We asked, via Twitter and Facebook, for your niggling food-related conundrums, then put the best of them to kitchen guru Debora Robertson (and friends)

1. Why shouldn’t you eat raw crab, although it’s fine to eat raw scallops and other fish?

We do eat raw scallops, oysters and even occasionally mussels if they’re very fresh, though it always involves some degree of risk. I asked John Wright, author of River Cottage Handbook: Edible Seashore (Bloomsbury £14.99), and enthusiastic eater of unusual things, if he ever ate raw crab: “White crabmeat is probably edible raw, but I wouldn’t fancy eating any of the several organs that make up the brown meat – too close to the digestive tract. Many creatures contain parasites beyond bacteria and viruses. I also suspect that none of it would taste too good.” Of the many fishmongers and chefs I asked, they all were in agreement that removing enough raw meat from the shell to make it worth the trouble would be a pain – why bother when it’s so entirely wonderful when lightly cooked?

2. Why do recipes still say to sift flour, even though it doesn’t contain weevils any more?

Habit. You really don’t need to. You can combine flour evenly with other ingredients such as baking powder, salt or cocoa effectively and far less boringly just by whisking it. You may want to sift flour to aerate it if you’re making a super-light sponge such as a génoise, but for your low-maintenance cupcake or victoria sponge, ditch the sieve and pick up a whisk.

3. Why do you never get hot padrón peppers any more?

I’ve been lamenting this lack of dinnertime jeopardy myself, so I asked Steve Waters from the South Devon Chilli Farm. He said: “There are new varieties now that give growers a longer season with mild fruits. The original padrón peppers quickly moved on to hot, after the mild, light-green stage. And as demand has increased, more of the fruit is likely to be smaller, less mature peppers, which are less likely to have heat.” For heat addicts, South Devon Chilli Farm sell a special hot pack of padróns.

4. What makes runny honey turn cloudy and set in the jar? Will it always happen once the lid has been opened for the first time and is there a way to avoid it?

I asked my sweet pal, Hattie Ellis, author of Spoonfuls of Honey (Pavilion £20), and she said: “Honey is naturally unstable and is always susceptible to crystallisation, depending on nectar sources, time and temperature. It’s not a sign of poor quality or spoilage and it can happen whether the jar’s opened or not, but keep the lid on once opened and store at room temperature. You can put the jar in a bowl of hottish water for 15 minutes or so to make it more liquid.”

5. Is some salt ‘saltier’ than others?

All salt is sodium chloride, no matter what the fancy label says. Regular table salt is highly refined and because the grains are small, you can’t use it interchangeably by volume with flaky salts – a tablespoon of table salt will make a dish a lot saltier than the same measure of flaky sea salt. Posh salts, such as Maldon and fleur de sel, are really finishing salts, added right at the end so you can best enjoy their textures and flavours – no need to use them to cook pasta, unless you love pouring money down the drain.

6. Is it true that, unlike cured continental sausages, British bangers don’t carry the same cancer risk?

No. When you look at recently cut raw red meat, you’re seeing a combination of the myoglobin, an iron and oxygen-binding protein found in muscle tissue, and its relation – haemoglobin, which is the similar iron and oxygen-binding protein found in blood. Raw meat is about 70 per cent water, so when you cook it, the tissues contract and release water and myoglobin, which is deeply pigmented (the more myoglobin meat contains, the redder it will be). As the meat’s temperature rises above 60°C, the myoglobin proteins start to solidify and turn brown – when the meat’s temperature exceeds 75°C its juices will no longer run red/pink.

7. Is it true you should never put salt in the cooking water when you’re boiling pulses?

I had long been a non-salter of pulses, which is weird as I practically worship at the altar of salt, but I bought into the received wisdom that salt made them tough. Then I read in On Food and Cooking (Hodder & Stoughton £39.99), the scholarly tome by food scientist Harold McGee, that he salts both the soaking water (2 tsp per litre of water) and then lightly salts the cooking water too. I do this all of the time now and find pulses cook more quickly and have more flavour.

8. Why do some recipes require unsalted butter? Is it personal preference, or does it make a difference to the end result?

Salted butter is my go-to for spreading on bread (I’m a fan of the Danish concept of tandsmør, or tooth butter, which means it’s thick enough to see your teeth marks in it, and a decent forensic dentist could make those charges stick). Unsalted is preferred for baking (particularly pastry) because it lets you regulate the amount of salt in the recipe, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t encounter unsalted butter until I was about 20 and managed quite well without it. If you only have salted in the fridge, don’t let it put you off making that recipe, just add less salt.

9. Why has butter become more expensive?

The price of butter certainly rocketed last year. After the drop in milk prices in 2016, many farmers went bust or quit dairy farming. The fall in production coincided with a trend for ditching vegetable spreads and a rise in demand for butter as we stopped demonising it on health grounds and began recognising it for the magnificent treasure that it is.

Written by Debora Robertson and others in "Delicious Magazine", UK, July 2018, excerpts pp. 47-49. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.