The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

EGGPLANT PARMESAN CASSEROLE If you had asked the fourteen-year-old me what my three least favorite things in t ...

mozzarella? I can get that. Breading and deep-frying? A bit messy, but nothing overwhelming. But prope ...

To find the best way, I tried five different methods: Salting, resting, and pressing the slices firs ...

compress them. It also makes them soggy and mushy. It’s a technique better suited for eggplant ...

So, microwaving it is, though you can prep yours sandwiched between baking sheets oven if you ...

As with my chicken Parmesan, seasoned panko bread crumbs are the way to go here. When all is said and do ...

the use of Parmesan cheese or from the Sicilian word parmiciana, a reference to window shutters an ...

1 cup vegetable oil Double recipe Perfect Easy Red Sauce (here), warm 1 pound mozzarella cheese, grated 2 tabl ...

into the crumbs until evenly coated. Transfer to a wire rack set on a rimmed baking sheet. R ...

Gooey, cheesy Italian American–style Eggplant Parmesan Casserole (here) ...

HOW MICROWAVE OVENS WORK A microwave oven works by bombarding food with electromagnetic radiation in the ...

Because microwave ovens allow so little energy to be lost to the outside environment (unlike the ...

COATING Style 3: BEER BATTER Beer-Battered Fried Fish Here’s the thing: Fish is extremely delicate, while f ...

grazing along the ocean floor, like gigantic cows of the sea. As such, their muscles don’t get much of ...

This is why you want to batter fish before dropping it into the oil. Battering is all about mitigating ...

each other in the presence of water, creating gluten, which is what causes your batter to stick to t ...

Other grains, like rice flour or cornstarch or corn flour, can have varying effects. Rice flour and ...

my batter nice and light and crisp: the alcohol. Vodka (even the cheap stuff!) is the secret to extra-crispy ba ...

is, its propensity to evaporate quickly) would cause it to jump out of the batter faster as it fried, ...

your hands to get rid of excess flour. From there, it goes straight into a wok (or Dutch oven) ...