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Top Flavoring Mistakes: That’s According to the Science of Taste

Seasoning dishes is a science in itself. There are numerous spices that you can combine and use in many different ways. Here you can find out what the biggest mistakes are when seasoning.

For a dish to taste good, it has to look good, smell good and taste good. People have always used spices to refine their food. Spices are usually herbs or seeds that are added to food in dried or fresh form.

Due to their intense inherent flavor, spices have a significant impact on the overall taste of a dish. The correct handling and dosage when cooking are therefore important for a satisfactory result. We tell you the most common mistakes that you should avoid when seasoning.

You just season with salt and pepper

Of course, if you just want to season your dishes with salt and pepper, that’s perfectly fine. However, there are a great many spices with a wide variety of flavors that you can combine in different ways. So it would be a shame if you only used salt and pepper. Human taste is an extremely complex matter. The overall oral impression of a meal consists of taste, aroma and appearance, as described in the book “Aroma – The Art of Seasoning” by Vierich and Vilgis.

Humans are known to be able to distinguish between five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. The latter is a flavor discovered by a Japanese scientist in the early 20th century. Umami stands for spicy and hearty. According to the latest findings, there is also a sixth taste, the fat taste – but it is not yet fully recognized in the professional world.

By the way: Spicy is not a taste, but a pain signal from the nerves, more precisely the trigeminal nerve. A dish seasoned with chilli only irritates the pain receptors. The same happens with ginger or mint, for example.

You are storing your spices incorrectly

Spices can lose their flavor and aroma if you don’t store them properly. You should observe the following tips to avoid this:

It is best to store your spices in a dry and cool place.
The color of many spices can be destroyed by UV radiation, making them no longer attractive. So protect them from sunlight.
You should also store spices in airtight containers and, if possible, in their entirety. Ground spices have a larger surface area. As a result, the essential oils and thus the aroma evaporate much faster, according to Vierich and Vilgis.

You season with the salt shaker directly above the saucepan

Spices should not only stay dry where they are stored – you should also keep them away from moisture when cooking. When you use your spice grinder or shaker directly over the steaming saucepan, the spices inside come into contact with water vapor. The moisture can then collect in the grinder or container, and your spice will go lumpy or even moldy. It is best to sprinkle spices over your dish by hand.

You don’t roast your spices

The point at which you season your dish is of great importance. Many spices only develop their full aroma when you roast them. The heat then releases the essential oils of the spice. It is best to roast the spices whole and only then crush them with a mortar. You can find a mortar made of olive wood in the Avocadostore**, for example.

Spices in powder form, on the other hand, are poorly suited for roasting, as they quickly lose their aroma and burn due to the larger surface. Sometimes they also develop a bitter taste. This is the case, for example, with paprika powder.

You can roast your spices in a pan with or without cooking oil. If you roast your spice in oil, the aromatic substances will dissolve in it – so use an oil that is as tasteless as possible, such as sunflower oil or rapeseed oil. If you don’t want to use oil, it’s a good idea to roast the spices individually. This way, you can be more careful not to accidentally burn a spice. As soon as the spices start to smell fragrant, you should remove them from the pan. Always roast on a low or medium heat so that the spices warm up slowly and nothing burns.

Attention: Not all spices are suitable for roasting! Here is a small list of spices that you can roast without hesitation:

anise
chili
fennel
cardamom
cumin
cloves
pimento
sesame
black cumin
mustard seeds
fenugreek

You buy poor quality powdered spices

As previously mentioned, the essential oils in spices are volatile and are released when crushed. Therefore, you should buy your spices in whole form if possible, for example whole peppercorns and not ground pepper. This is the only way they can develop their full aroma potential.

In this context, it is also an advantage if you buy spices in small quantities. If you stockpile large quantities of spices, you will end up with less of them as the flavors will dissipate over time.

Make sure you buy organic quality: Only with organic spices can you be sure that they are free of chemical-synthetic pesticides. The seals from Naturland, Demeter or Bioland are particularly meaningful. They stand for healthy spices without flavor enhancers and genetic engineering.

You only use dried herbs

Dried herbs usually taste more intense and you need less of them to flavor your dish. However, there are some exceptions that are much more aromatic when fresh. For example, it is best to use fresh basil, chives or parsley, as they are much more flavorful than in dried form. Ginger or bay leaves are also more aromatic when fresh.

Now you know which basic mistakes you should avoid when seasoning. Be courageous when cooking and keep trying out new combinations of spices. Only through practice will you learn which spices you particularly like and how they can develop their full potential.

Seasoning isn’t everything: what else makes up the taste of a dish

According to Vierich and Vilgis, the temperature also has a major influence on the intensity of the taste. We perceive salty and sweet to a greater extent in warm dishes, sour and bitter less. Heat-cold contrasts also stand for a full-bodied taste, which is why, for example, warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream tastes great. In connection with the taste, the temperature also has an influence on the seasoning.

We perceive aroma through our sense of smell. The higher the proportion of essential oils, the more aromatic a spice is. Incidentally, the scent molecules that we perceive as pleasant serve the plants themselves either as a sex attractant or as a defense against predators. For example, truffles smell of androst, a boar sex hormone that is also found in many men’s perfumes.

Finally, of course, the look is also important for the overall perception of a meal. These include the texture, presentation and color of the food.

Incidentally, taste also changes over the course of life. Perhaps you have already noticed this yourself because, for example, you like to eat certain foods today that you did not like as a child.

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Food

Organic Farming: That’s Why Organic is Active Climate Protection

Organic farming is an important building block in the fight against climate change. We explain why this is so and how the consumption of organic products can help.

Protecting the environment, people and animals in the long term: that is the goal of organic farming. But climate protection is also a goal to which Bio actively contributes. For example, healthy soil is not only important for healthy vegetables and fruit, it is also a valuable CO2 store. In organic farming, attention is therefore paid to varied crop rotations and humus build-up – both prerequisites for a healthy soil that binds gases that are harmful to the climate.

Chemical-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers that damage the agricultural soil in the long term are prohibited in organic farming. Organic farmers, on the other hand, use natural materials such as compost and also rely on agricultural methods that protect nature and the climate.

Pests are fought, for example, through the targeted use of natural enemies, the “beneficial ones”. This maintains biological diversity, ecological balance, water quality and soil fertility in equal measure. Ecological management also respects the well-being of the animals, because farmers pay attention to animal welfare when it comes to organic farming.

Compared to conventional agriculture, organic agriculture is much more careful with our soil and ecosystems and is therefore considered environmentally and climate-friendly.

Organic farming is active climate protection

The number one climate protector is healthy agricultural soil. Because healthy, humus-rich soils are enormously large CO2 stores. Agricultural land that is used carefully through organic farming contains significantly more humus – and this is particularly important for carbon sequestration. Numerous microorganisms and organic compounds that are responsible for storing CO2 live in the humus layer. The richer in humus a soil is, the more gases that affect the climate it binds.

Studies by the Thünen Institute have shown that organically farmed soils bind on average 10 percent more carbon than soils from conventional agriculture.

On average, 256 kg of carbon is stored per hectare of organic soil per year. Converted to the organic agricultural area in Germany, there are currently 1.5 million tons of CO2 savings annually. Organic farming is therefore clearly active climate protection!

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Food

That’s Why You Should Never Eat the Green Tomato Stalk

It’s not just a myth that the green tomato stalk is poisonous. In this article you will find out why you should cut it off and not eat it.

Whether in a salad, in a casserole or simply on its own, the tomato is an indispensable ingredient. In this article you will find out why you should not eat the green tomato stalk.

Solanine in the tomato stalk

The tomato consists of 95 percent water and is therefore very low in calories. It is rich in vitamins A, B1, C and E and contains important minerals such as potassium, magnesium and calcium.

The green tomato stalk contains the toxic substance solanine in the base of the stalk. It is also contained in unripe, still green tomatoes. The riper the tomatoes are, the lower their solanine content, according to the German Green Cross. The toxin tastes bitter and, as the German Green Cross explains, is neither destroyed by heat nor broken down by human digestive enzymes.

Symptoms of poisoning appear from an intake of about 220 milligrams of solanine. Digestive disorders such as gastrointestinal discomfort and breathing problems are symptoms of mild solanine poisoning. Higher doses can cause nausea, vomiting, and hallucinations.

How toxic is the tomato stalk?

However, the tomato stem contains a very small amount of solanine. Even mild poisoning from eating a normal amount of tomatoes is unlikely. Nevertheless, experts recommend cutting off the stem and not eating it.

Not only tomatoes contain the toxin solanine, but also other foods such as raw potatoes or raw eggplant.

However, it is a myth that the tomato stalk is carcinogenic. There is no scientific evidence for this.

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Food

Boiling Eggs: That’s How Long the Hard and Soft Egg Takes

Boiling eggs could be so easy. But it’s not – sometimes it’s too soft, sometimes too hard, sometimes it bursts when cooking. Find out here how long it takes to cook the perfect egg.

It doesn’t matter whether you prefer a hard-boiled or a soft-boiled egg for breakfast – it is important to buy organic eggs to save the chickens unnecessary suffering. When you boil your egg, there are only two things you need to keep in mind to get the result you want: the size of the egg and the cooking time.

Soft or hard-boiled eggs: rule of thumb for cooking eggs

Before you get started, you should check the size of your egg. The cooking time varies depending on the size. There are the egg sizes S, M, L, and XL – they are noted on the egg carton.

Basically, you cook the eggs like this: just put them in boiling water and rinse them with cold water after the cooking time. For M eggs one can roughly say:

Four minutes: The egg white is set, but the yolk is still very runny – a perfect breakfast egg.
Seven minutes: the yolk is soft as wax – now you have a snack egg.
Eleven minutes: The yolk is hard and cutable – a typical hard-boiled egg.
If you are using S eggs you will need to cook them about 30 seconds less, for L eggs 30 seconds more.

Cooking eggs: It depends on the temperature

It would be nice if you could simply specify a number of minutes after which an egg is hard- or soft-boiled. But it’s not really about the cooking time, but about the temperature that the inside of the egg has to reach for the respective texture. And the “internal temperature” depends on three factors:

The size of the eggs – an XL egg takes longer to hatch than an S egg.
The temperature of the eggs – did you just get them out of the fridge or have they been out for a while? They take up to a minute longer from the fridge.
The temperature of the cooking water – most of us cook the eggs in bubbling boiling water. It’s about 100 degrees warm by the sea, but only 90 degrees on the Zugspitze. The higher your location, the longer the egg has to cook.
In fact, the egg white becomes solid at 62 degrees. The yolk is already no longer liquid at 63 degrees – so a solid egg white with a liquid yolk is not so easy to find! At around 66 degrees Celsius, the egg yolk is soft as wax, and at 70 degrees it is hard and cut-resistant.

For example, if you want a perfect egg, you could cook the egg at 66 degrees for hours and still end up with a waxy egg. However, most kitchen appliances are not that accurate in practice.

Cooking eggs

Are you unsure if your egg is still good? Then don’t just throw it away, but find out with the egg test. Because many eggs have a longer shelf life than the best-before date promises.

Eating fewer eggs overall is even better. You can also use vegan egg substitutes for many recipes – just give it a try!

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Food

Sour Cream: That’s How Long It Lasts

Sour cream is used in the kitchen for cooking and baking. But how long does it keep, how do you store it correctly and is there a vegan alternative? You can find out here.

Perhaps you have already used sour cream for cooking or baking. But do you actually know what the difference is between sour cream, crème fraîche, and sour cream?

All three products are acidified milk products and are made from cream. The only difference is in the fat content: sour cream contains at least 10 percent, sour cream 24 to 28 percent, and crème fraîche at least 30 percent fat.

This is how you store sour cream correctly

You may have noticed that there are two different types of sour cream. You can find one type in the refrigerated section, the other type in the normal range in the supermarket. As with many other milk products, the sour cream that is not in the refrigerated section is ultra-high temperature. This makes it last longer. Depending on whether you buy the sour cream chilled or not, you should store it at home accordingly.

Your fridge has different temperatures in different sections. If you know where it is best to store which food, you extend the shelf life.

The lower boxes in your fridge are suitable for fruit and vegetables and are around six to nine degrees Celsius. The compartments above increase with height: the lowest compartment is two to three degrees Celsius, the middle one is about five degrees Celsius and the top one is about eight degrees Celsius.
You should store sour cream (like other milk products) in the middle range at four to five degrees Celsius. Incidentally, you should not store open, sensitive products (such as open sour cream) in the refrigerator door, as the room temperature can have the greatest effect there when opening.

How long does sour cream keep?

As with most products in the supermarket, you will also find a best-before date (MHD) on the sour cream packaging. Many use this date as a guide and throw away everything that is after the specified date. But most of the products are also edible and healthy. The same applies to Schmand.

Before you throw a pack of sour cream in the trash, open it and go through three steps: look, smell and taste. Then you can judge whether you can eat the sour cream without any problems or rather dispose of it. A study by Greenpeace magazine found that some products were still edible more than half a year after the best-before date. So it’s worth taking a closer look.

Unopened, sour cream can still be enjoyed months after the best-before date. If you have already opened the package, the sour cream can be kept for a few days afterwards. If you seal the cup airtight again (for example with a lid or a beeswax cloth), the sour cream can be good for even longer. If you see mold or blisters forming on the sour cream and a musty, alcoholic smell coming your way, you should dispose of the sour cream.

Are there alternatives to sour cream?

Classic alternatives to sour cream are crème fraîche, sour cream or cream cheese. Depending on what you want to cook or bake, you can also use one of these products. For example, if you have cream cheese in the fridge that needs to go, you could use that instead of buying new sour cream. This is how you prevent food waste.

However, you should make sure that the fat content of your product fits your project. For example, you shouldn’t put a sour milk product with a fat content below 28 percent in a boiling liquid, or it will flocculate. For products based on milk, we recommend paying attention to organic quality and regionality. In this way you avoid chemical-synthetic pesticides in cow feed, prophylactic antibiotics in the animals and long transport routes with high CO2 emissions.

So far, vegan sour cream alternatives are not directly available in the supermarket. However, there are some vegan alternatives that lean towards crème fraîche, sour cream, or cream cheese. from dr Oetker, for example, has the soy-based cream VEGA, which is intended to replace crème fraîche. You can use them for cooking or baking. Vegan cream alternatives are Rama’s lentil-based cooking cream or Alpro’s soy-based cooking creams. Coconut milk or plant-based cream are always good vegan cream alternatives. Vegan cream cheese is now often available as a private label from various supermarkets.

For cold dishes, soy yoghurt is also a good vegan sour cream substitute. But you shouldn’t heat it up, otherwise it will flake. A squeeze of lemon juice gives you the tart taste that sour cream usually has.

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