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I notice this effect all the time when cooking, and the maddening part is how hard it can be to even figure out the right details. Like, the best sausages I ev

I notice this effect all the time when cooking, and the maddening part is how hard it can be to even figure out the right details. Like, the best sausages I ever cooked were at a barbecue in park, on a random public grill with no particular attention to the heat (I think the sausages caught fire briefly), and yet they were amazing. Juicy and delicious, with just the right amount of char on the outside. Over my home grill, with careful regulation of the grill temperature and a pro quality instant read thermometer, I’ve never quite managed to do better than “pretty good.” (I highly suspect one of the details is “undercook your sausages” which is easier to do when you’re blissfully ignorant of the actual temperature.)

tjanks 7y ago
I like to think you're on a quest for cooking the perfect sausage
Negitivefrags 7y ago
https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/the-food-lab-the-best-way-to-grill-sausages.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/the-food-lab-the-best-wa... This is the article to read. In general I can really recommend The Food Lab as the guy who does it has a very scientific approach.
chubot 7y ago
Hm this reminds me of reading Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the buttermilk chicken recipe, which has only 3 ingredients (chicken, buttermilk, salt). She says you have to orient the chicken a specific way in the oven because the corners of the oven are the hottest and the different parts of the chicken will cook evenly that way (?) Not quite sure since I didn't try it. But my friend made it and it was fantastic. So the way I look at it (without much experience) is that a thermometer measures one dimension, while a chicken is a 3D thing. And an expert chef noticed that enough to put the detail in her recipe. i.e. "reality is complicated". Not sure if that's the problem with sausages (since they're not that 3D) but there's a reason that specific foods are cooked in specific ovens. i.e. why do people obsess over pizza ovens and import them from Italy? Why is clay pot cooking different than metal pot cooking, etc.? Because temperature / heat aren't just one-dimensional. She says that good cooks look at the food and not at the thermometer. They're looking for signs in the food which stay constant across environments rather than measuring one aspect of the environment. tl;dr Samin Nosrat rejects the use of a thermometer because it doesn't measure enough reality to cook well.
annoyingnoob 7y ago
I've had very similar experiences and I've always wondered how much of that is expectations/perception. At home where I can control things better I have higher expectations. I didn't have any expectations for the camping grill. The 'best steak ever' from the camping trip is a great romantic story and a wonderful memory and maybe that is what makes it better.
joshspankit 7y ago
Don’t forget the source of the heat: even “the best” gas grill is an entirely different thing than a (presumably wood fire underneath) public grill
dan-robertson 7y ago
I think there’s a large emotional aspect: If you’re hungry and a bit tired (from a lot of exercise not stress), generally in a positive mood, and not super focused on the taste of the food then it’s going to taste a lot better than if you don’t particularly feel the need to eat, you’re a bit stressed, and you’re focused on perfecting sausage flavour. In other words, it’s probably quite easy to enjoy an ok sausage if it’s come from some random grill in a park because you’ll be focused on having a good time with your friends or family in a park more than on whether the sausage tastes good. If you make it at home (even if you’re inviting those same people) you can easily get yourself worked up about cooking the perfect sausage and whether the temperature is right and whether the time is right and so on, that you’ll just feel like the sausage doesn’t taste so good (and you’ll probably be more careful and critical about tasting the sausage). Then again maybe the sausages were just undercooked in the park. Or maybe you used different sausages (I’ve found much more variance between sausages being made differently than how they are cooke)

tjanks 7y ago

I like to think you're on a quest for cooking the perfect sausage

Negitivefrags 7y ago

https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/the-food-lab-the-best-way-to-grill-sausages.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/the-food-lab-the-best-wa... This is the article to read. In general I can really recommend The Food Lab as the guy who does it has a very scientific approach.

chubot 7y ago

Hm this reminds me of reading Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the buttermilk chicken recipe, which has only 3 ingredients (chicken, buttermilk, salt). She says you have to orient the chicken a specific way in the oven because the corners of the oven are the hottest and the different parts of the chicken will cook evenly that way (?) Not quite sure since I didn't try it. But my friend made it and it was fantastic. So the way I look at it (without much experience) is that a thermometer measures one dimension, while a chicken is a 3D thing. And an expert chef noticed that enough to put the detail in her recipe. i.e. "reality is complicated". Not sure if that's the problem with sausages (since they're not that 3D) but there's a reason that specific foods are cooked in specific ovens. i.e. why do people obsess over pizza ovens and import them from Italy? Why is clay pot cooking different than metal pot cooking, etc.? Because temperature / heat aren't just one-dimensional. She says that good cooks look at the food and not at the thermometer. They're looking for signs in the food which stay constant across environments rather than measuring one aspect of the environment. tl;dr Samin Nosrat rejects the use of a thermometer because it doesn't measure enough reality to cook well.

annoyingnoob 7y ago

I've had very similar experiences and I've always wondered how much of that is expectations/perception. At home where I can control things better I have higher expectations. I didn't have any expectations for the camping grill. The 'best steak ever' from the camping trip is a great romantic story and a wonderful memory and maybe that is what makes it better.

joshspankit 7y ago

Don’t forget the source of the heat: even “the best” gas grill is an entirely different thing than a (presumably wood fire underneath) public grill

dan-robertson 7y ago

I think there’s a large emotional aspect: If you’re hungry and a bit tired (from a lot of exercise not stress), generally in a positive mood, and not super focused on the taste of the food then it’s going to taste a lot better than if you don’t particularly feel the need to eat, you’re a bit stressed, and you’re focused on perfecting sausage flavour. In other words, it’s probably quite easy to enjoy an ok sausage if it’s come from some random grill in a park because you’ll be focused on having a good time with your friends or family in a park more than on whether the sausage tastes good. If you make it at home (even if you’re inviting those same people) you can easily get yourself worked up about cooking the perfect sausage and whether the temperature is right and whether the time is right and so on, that you’ll just feel like the sausage doesn’t taste so good (and you’ll probably be more careful and critical about tasting the sausage). Then again maybe the sausages were just undercooked in the park. Or maybe you used different sausages (I’ve found much more variance between sausages being made differently than how they are cooke)