Chemistry of Food and Cooking
"Heat and Spice"
How did your cooking process transform your food macroscopically and affect the food’s overall characteristics?
The objective of my project was to find a relationship between the spice of a green chile based salsa, and the cooking process used. I created three different variations of the same salsa; in other words all three salsas had all the same ingredients, but were cooked via different methods and measured for their subjective spice. The three variations included a raw blended salsa: which just means that the ingredients weren’t cooked at all before they were blended into salsa, a pan fry: the ingredients were fried in oil before being blended with a small amount of water, and a boil: all the ingredients were slow boiled under low heat for an extended period of time. The raw blend and the pan fry salsas ended up being relative to each other when rated on their spice, with a difference that’s practically negligible. However on a larger basis of the visual and flavor level, the pan fry had a noticeably darker color than both the boil and raw blends. This difference in color was also reflected in the taste, as the pan fry tasted noticeably more ‘cooked’ or maybe smokey. Almost like both the boil and raw blends retained much more of the original raw flavor of the green chile than the pan fry. The boil however was the least rated spicy of the three.
On a molecular level the results were both fairly expected but also underwhelming. When cooked under heat Chile breaks down releasing Capsaicin, or the oil compounds responsible for our sensation of Spice. When cooked very briefly under high heat or for a much longer period of time, Chile releases more of its Capsaicin which can then get cooked out thus resulting in a less spicy meal. This explains why the boil was noticeably less spicy than the pan fry or raw blend, but it doesn’t explain why the Pan fry was relative or even spicier than the raw blend. Well I believe that this is because it was specifically cooked in Oil. Capsaicin as a nonpolar substance is attracted/ can bind to other nonpolar substances, so instead of just cooking out, the Capsaicin bonded with the cooking oil and was able to coat all ingredients of the Salsa to a greater extent as a result. The thing that I found underwhelming however was the extent for which it actually affected the Pan fry. When compared, the Fry and the Boil are very relative so it feels like while the element of spice in each recipe was affected, it wasn’t to the dramatic extent that I kinda anticipated.
How successful was your experiment in helping you understand your food and improve its characteristics? What would be next steps if you were to continue research on this topic?
This experiment helped me to understand the relationship between the way heat breaks food down and how that affects the way elements such as oils permeate the dish. Additionally I feel I have a greater understanding of the basic concept of cooking, for example when you collect an assortment of raw ingredients they wouldn’t taste like a meal even if you ate them all together. This is because in the cooking process, those ingredients break down and release oils and flavors that mix together that create a unique flavor. I feel in my experimental design, what I created wasn’t so much of a tasty food but more of a measure of spice. So if I were to improve some characteristics of my recipe, I’d really look at changing a lot of elements of my project including certain ingredients, such as using broth instead of water for example, or just things like that. From the perspective of a dish to be eaten there’s a lot I could do to improve my recipe, but at the same time I gained a lot from looking at this from a more experimental perspective.
One specific aspect that I found really interesting about my experiment is the way the pan fry salsa actually increased in spice, despite at least one of my sources pointing to the opposite reaction as being the case. The explanation for this is that the pan fry was also cooked in Sunflower oil, a substance that can bind to the capsaicin. However this brought a lot of questions regarding my ingredients and how the components such as oils get released in the cooking process, as well as how these might interact to affect the final dish. Thus if I were to continue researching this topic, I would like to look more deeply into how ingredients break down and interact during the cooking process, and how changing things such as the way each individual ingredient is processed would affect the final product. The simple truth is that my experiment was very simplistic in design, and my recipes didn’t have much to them as I tried to keep the ingredients largely together during the cooking process. Overall I think food science and just generally cooking are very interesting topics, and the cooking component feels relevant to some of my own day to day knowledge base.
The objective of my project was to find a relationship between the spice of a green chile based salsa, and the cooking process used. I created three different variations of the same salsa; in other words all three salsas had all the same ingredients, but were cooked via different methods and measured for their subjective spice. The three variations included a raw blended salsa: which just means that the ingredients weren’t cooked at all before they were blended into salsa, a pan fry: the ingredients were fried in oil before being blended with a small amount of water, and a boil: all the ingredients were slow boiled under low heat for an extended period of time. The raw blend and the pan fry salsas ended up being relative to each other when rated on their spice, with a difference that’s practically negligible. However on a larger basis of the visual and flavor level, the pan fry had a noticeably darker color than both the boil and raw blends. This difference in color was also reflected in the taste, as the pan fry tasted noticeably more ‘cooked’ or maybe smokey. Almost like both the boil and raw blends retained much more of the original raw flavor of the green chile than the pan fry. The boil however was the least rated spicy of the three.
On a molecular level the results were both fairly expected but also underwhelming. When cooked under heat Chile breaks down releasing Capsaicin, or the oil compounds responsible for our sensation of Spice. When cooked very briefly under high heat or for a much longer period of time, Chile releases more of its Capsaicin which can then get cooked out thus resulting in a less spicy meal. This explains why the boil was noticeably less spicy than the pan fry or raw blend, but it doesn’t explain why the Pan fry was relative or even spicier than the raw blend. Well I believe that this is because it was specifically cooked in Oil. Capsaicin as a nonpolar substance is attracted/ can bind to other nonpolar substances, so instead of just cooking out, the Capsaicin bonded with the cooking oil and was able to coat all ingredients of the Salsa to a greater extent as a result. The thing that I found underwhelming however was the extent for which it actually affected the Pan fry. When compared, the Fry and the Boil are very relative so it feels like while the element of spice in each recipe was affected, it wasn’t to the dramatic extent that I kinda anticipated.
How successful was your experiment in helping you understand your food and improve its characteristics? What would be next steps if you were to continue research on this topic?
This experiment helped me to understand the relationship between the way heat breaks food down and how that affects the way elements such as oils permeate the dish. Additionally I feel I have a greater understanding of the basic concept of cooking, for example when you collect an assortment of raw ingredients they wouldn’t taste like a meal even if you ate them all together. This is because in the cooking process, those ingredients break down and release oils and flavors that mix together that create a unique flavor. I feel in my experimental design, what I created wasn’t so much of a tasty food but more of a measure of spice. So if I were to improve some characteristics of my recipe, I’d really look at changing a lot of elements of my project including certain ingredients, such as using broth instead of water for example, or just things like that. From the perspective of a dish to be eaten there’s a lot I could do to improve my recipe, but at the same time I gained a lot from looking at this from a more experimental perspective.
One specific aspect that I found really interesting about my experiment is the way the pan fry salsa actually increased in spice, despite at least one of my sources pointing to the opposite reaction as being the case. The explanation for this is that the pan fry was also cooked in Sunflower oil, a substance that can bind to the capsaicin. However this brought a lot of questions regarding my ingredients and how the components such as oils get released in the cooking process, as well as how these might interact to affect the final dish. Thus if I were to continue researching this topic, I would like to look more deeply into how ingredients break down and interact during the cooking process, and how changing things such as the way each individual ingredient is processed would affect the final product. The simple truth is that my experiment was very simplistic in design, and my recipes didn’t have much to them as I tried to keep the ingredients largely together during the cooking process. Overall I think food science and just generally cooking are very interesting topics, and the cooking component feels relevant to some of my own day to day knowledge base.