The Science of Good Cooking (Cook's Illustrated Cookbooks)
Tags: breakfast yolks CI cooking concept.
Recipe Review
Queezle_Sister from Salt Lake City, UT
The name says it all.
This cookbook explains the science behind why ingredients + heat lead to the desired (and undesired) effects. For scrambled eggs, addition of fat keeps the denatured proteins from binding tightly to each other - thus giving fluffy curds instead of rubbery globs. The suggested fat was half-and-half. I used a mix of skim milk and heavy cream. The recipe also suggests a yolk-heavy mix of eggs. Rather than having to decide what to do with a couple egg whites, I used eggs from my silkie hen, which despite being small, have large yolks and relatively little white.
Cooking entails a lot of mixing over gentle heat. Lovely cloud-like curds developed, and all claimed these to be the best scrambled eggs of their lives.
When a second round was called for, I used store-bought eggs, no extra yolk, but again added cream. Again the eggs were fluffy, but not quite as nice as with the home-grown egg-yolk-rich mix.
This recipe illustrated the Cooks Illustrated Cooking Concept #18 - Fat Make Eggs Tender.
Comments
friederike - 26th December 2012
Interesting review! I look forward to reading more of these! Sounds like a very interesting book! And merry christmas, of course!
Queezle_Sister - 26th December 2012
Merry Christmas, Friederike! This book was a gift from my son, and I think it will help me to be a better cook - and a better judge of recipes.
aj12754 - 4th January 2013
Lovely review -- my scrambled eggs improved exponentially a few years back when I read somewhere that low slow heat was the key. I only ever use half and half because that's often the only dairy in my house...but I do envy you your hen ...
Belated best wished for 2013!
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