The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

in return, my readers tell me what they think, ask insightful
questions, and let me know what they’d like to see me
tackle next. It’s communal, and I owe my success as a
blogger as much to my readers and my ever-supportive,
always fun, incredible coworkers and fellow bloggers as I
do to myself.
That said, there are limits to what the blogging platform
can support. It’s great for short articles, it does pictures OK,
but good charts? Good graphs? Good, easy-to-understand
layout? Long-form content? Forget about it. That’s where
this book comes in. It represents the culmination of not just
a decade and a half of cooking and studying the science of
everyday foods, but of years of learning how to apply this
science in ways that can help home cooks cook everyday
food in better, tastier ways.
What you won’t find in this book are fancy-pants recipes
calling for exotic ingredients or difficult techniques or
chemicals or even much special equipment beyond, say, a
food processor or a beer cooler. You also won’t find any
desserts. They just aren’t my thing, and rather than fake a
few of ’em, I figured I’d just own up to the fact that they just
don’t interest me in the way savory food does. (Remember
that whole thing about not doing anything that I don’t love
doing?)
What you will find here is a thorough examination of
classic recipes. You’ll find out why your fried chicken skin
gets crisp, what’s going on inside a potato as you mash it,
how baking powder helps your pancakes rise. Not only that,
but you’ll discover that in many (most?) cases, the most
traditional methods of cooking are in fact not the ideal way