The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

(numb-hot).
I also decided to give star anise a try, in a nod to British
chef Heston Blumenthal and his treatment of Bolognese
sauce. He found that, in moderation, star arise can boost the
flavor of browned meats without making its presence
known. He was right, as I quickly discovered. For maximum
flavor, make sure to toast your spices whole before grinding
them (see “Whole Versus Ground Spices,” here).
All I needed now was the traditional combo of onion,
garlic, and oregano, along with some fresh chiles (for added
heat and freshness) and tomatoes. I simmered everything
together, added my cooked beans, simmered again,
seasoned, and tasted.
So how’d it taste? Great. But not quite worthy of its
“Best” title yet. It could still do with some more meatiness. It
was time to reach into my Bat utility belt of culinary tricks
for the one weapon that has yet to fail me, my umami
bombs: Marmite, soy sauce, and anchovies.
These can increase the meatiness of nearly any dish
involving ground meat or of stews (see “Glutamates,
Inosinates, and the Umami Bombs,” here). Adding a dab of
each to my chile puree boosted my already-beefy short ribs
to the farthest reaches of meatiness, a realm where seared
skinless cows traipse across hills of ground beef, darting in
and out of fields of skirt steak, stopping only to take sips of
rivers overflowing with thick glace de viand.
I snapped out of my reverie with one thing on my mind:
booze. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water and,
even more important, it can actually cause water to
evaporate at a lower temperature. You see, water molecules