Spice Road Flavour for the community of Home Cooks

Earlier this year we spoke about the importance of an emulsifier in our home cooking. We also made the point that emulsifying should not be viewed as just another chefy or sciency process that’s best left to food manufacturers and restaurants.

Since then there have been Readers comments that it is all very well to focus on such things but when preparing the evening meal, there is little time to worry about emulsifying and settling the conflict between two warring ingredients.

Point taken but in our defence we should point out that all of the essentials for settling this conflict are already sitting in most kitchen cupboards.

Your Sunday Morning and Texture

Even more, I think we could safely assume that home cooks use these ingredients naturally, without the need for technical analyses. So why are we using your precious Sunday morning time chatting about such things.

Well, the reason I thought Readers might be interested is the relationship between emulsifying and texture. And surely, if there was one essential component of flavour in the evening meal or lunch, it is texture.

Continuing with this, texture with food is all about mouthfeel, that is, what is felt on the tongue, giving us the enjoyment of eating.

Mouthfeel and Flavour

Consider our popular pan fried chicken recipe. The recipe suggests olive oil, tomatoes, chicken stock and full cream, giving a lovely smooth mouthfeel from the texture and therefore, giving flavour.

Now, remove the full cream. You will see the olive oil and tomatoes will be separating giving a slightly jagged taste and by consequence, there will be no texture or smooth mouth feel from the sauce.

Home cook students of emulsifying will correct this by simply replacing the cream with tomato paste or mushrooms. Easy and straightforward. Texture will be restored.

Separating Salad

Texture in salad dressings follows the same pattern. A salad dressing is essentially made from your preferred oil and vinegar, the same two ingredients that do not like each other, leaving you to shake or whip the dressing each time you dress the salad.

That’s fine but does not fix the separation that will remain in the salad, giving the same slightly raw mouthfeel to the salad unless an emulsifier is added, say, mustard which we all add almost by instinct, giving a wonderful lift to the dressing.

Stay well everyone Arthur Huxley