The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature
PDF ON FOOD AND COOKING The Science and Lore of the Kitchen COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED amarjeet kundu
One piece of information that is critical to understand in the kitchen, however, is that hydrolysis takes time. The structure has to literally untwist and break up, and due to the amount of energy needed to break the bonds and the stochastic processes involved, this reaction takes longer than simply denaturing the protein. For fun, try marinating a chunk of meat in papaya, which contains an enzyme, papain, that acts as a meat tenderizer by hydrolyzing collagen. Under the right conditions—usually, exposure to heat or the right kinds of acids—the native form of collagen denatures, losing its linear structure and untwisting into a random mess. Most consumers won’t have the necessary hardware to do this at home, but if you do have a sous vide setup, as described in Chapter 7, you’re …