Olive Oil, Any Oil-Keep it Cool
A chef friend once admonished me years ago to keep my oils AWAY from heat for daily storage. So don't keep your oils right by your cooktop stove or above your stove in the cabinet that is often there. My mother sometimes keeps her olive oil in the refrigerator and I suspect she read that this is a good idea. Maybe we can get her to comment on the source of this information. While I do not know if this helps maintain the integrity of the oil, my only complaint is waiting for it to thaw when I am ready to cook.
Another tip I picked up while on cooking vacation in Italy while visiting an olive oil producer is that one should always look for an expiration date on the oil bottle. New oil is pressed generally in the Fall of each year. If the bottle you have either has no date or is over a year old, rethink using it. I also learned from our chef instructor that each year
Costco contracts with an olive oil producer in Tuscany to bottle and label a
Kirkland's Signature brand, found in their stores
starting in February each year. I have been buying this oil ever since. If you have a Costco nearby, keep an eye out for it, and notice the dating, remembering the most recent year is the best year.
Finally, as to shortening, which we use less and less these days. I no longer buy the larger can, but rather the
Crisco sticks. (Even purist Alton Brown likes their butter flavored version.) I keep them in the butter section of my refrigerator. There is nothing worse than having the thought to make biscuits or something requiring shortening and pulling out the aging bulk can, only to smell it and know it has become rancid. Oxygen, heat, light and time are no friends to fats. Keep it cool!
The Skinny on Butter-Salted and un-Salted
A few years ago, after making chocolate chip cookies I noticed they didn't seem to have the same sweet and delicately salty, crispy bite that those my maternal grandmother made always had. I asked her about her recipe and she explained that she had always used the recipe on the back of the Nestle's Chocolate Chips bag for Toll House cookies. OK, that's the same recipe I had used. As we talked about what I could have been doing differently than she, we stepped through the ingredients and recipe. Voila! She had always used salted butter, and I used un-salted butter. Since I had long since been using un-salted butter for all of my cooking [Chefs remind us that controlling the amount of any salt when cooking is easier when additions are in your hands. You can add but you cannot take away.]
I asked her why she used the salted variety. She explained that 'during the war' (WW II), when butter was scarce, salt had been added to keep it from spoiling and make the limited supply stretch longer. Once the war was over, she just never changed the habit of using salted butter. Fascinating information, which I stored away without much thought until a recent visit home to the deep South. I noticed that in the refrigerators of family members, the salted variety was the only type on hand. A trip to butter section in the grocery store was interesting as well. There was a much greater supply of salted butter on the shelves, and only a limited supply of the un-salted variety. So does the local market demand salted butter or has the unseen hand of economic forces created that demand?
Fast forward to today, as I ponder what other differences may exist between the two varieties. For the factual reference, I turn to famed food science expert Harold McGee for answers in his tome On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen .
Butter is made in several distinct ways, producing varieties with different tastes and behaviors. In simplest terms, butter is produced when cream (or milk) is agitated to such an extent that its fat globules are damaged, the fat leaks out, and comes together in a mass we know and love.
Raw cream butter, whether salted or un-salted is a rarity today around the world. The milk is not cooked or pasteurized, results in a sublime flavor, and a fragility which makes it shelf life limited to less than 10 days. Let's move on.
Sweet (un-salted) cream butter and Salted sweet cream butter are the two varieties most commonly found on grocery store shelves in the US. Both are made from pasteurized fresh cream (cow's). By regulation both must be at least 80% fat. Butter produced in Europe or here in the US as European- style must have a fat content greater than 80%. Higher fat butters have 10-12% less water, and can be advantageous when using them in baking where they will produce a flakier product.
Sweet cream butter must be no more than 16% water with the remaining 4% as protein, lactose and salts contained in the buttermilk droplets.
In contrast, salted sweet cream butter contains between 1 and 2% added salt, the equivalent of 1-2 teaspoons per pound. McGee verifies that originally salt was indeed added as a preservative, and at 2%, the equivalent yield of 12% in the water droplets. Additional reading reveals that annatto, a flavoring and colorant from the annatto seed, is often added to butter (salted more often than un-salted). If you have a nut allergy, remember this. Cows that get little time consuming fresh pasture and the resulting orange carotene pigments, produce pale milk fat and thus pale butter.
Whipped butter begins as sweet (un-salted) butter and is then subjected to the injection of nitrogen gas (oxygen would produce rancidity), which weakens the butter structure and make it easier to spread. It is not the best choice for use in baking.
Cultured cream butter is the standard is Europe, and involves a process if allowing some degree of fermentation to talk place in the production process, with bacteria introducing new flavors resulting in an overall richer taste. If you have never tried any imported butters or those made here in the US from the milk of animals beside cows, look for possibilities in your grocery store. Can't you just imagine a butter-tasting party in the summer when the corn is fresh?
Butter is a relatively fragile food when exposed to air (oxygen) and bright light, which break its fat molecules into smaller molecules and produces a stale smell and rancid flavor. When storing butter, it is best to keep it in a cold, dark environment, wrapped in an airtight container in its originally provided, foiled paper. However, wrapping in standard aluminum foil can speed oxidation of the fat in butter, particularly in salted butter. Freezing well-wrapped butter is a good way to maintain an extra supply.The appearance of translucent, dark yellow patches on the surface of a stick of butter indicate it has been exposed to air and dried out. If few in number, these patches can be scraped away to eliminate a rancid taste, and the butter still used.
One final note on storage, the popularity of butter bells deserves a mention. Butter bells are touted as an old-time way (i.e., before reliable refrigeration) of storing butter at room temperature, keeping it soft and easy to spread. Following the science of the effects of exposing butter to oxygen, with water being comprised of 2 hydrogen molecules and 1 oxygen molecule, I imagine that prolonged storage at room temperature, in a butter bell where the butter is immersed in water could weakens the fat molecules, speed spoilage and affect the taste of butter.
Using butter for sauteing or frying is difficult and often produces burning. This is caused by the milk solids in butter which brown then burn at a much lower smoking point than vegetable oils--about 150 degrees less than vegetable oils, which withstand heating to 400 degrees. Despite what I have observed in the pan and heard from many chefs, McGee says adding oil to butter does not completely, reliably overcome this sensitivity to burning at lower temperatures. Clarifying butter is the better way to achieve a butter-based medium for frying. Clarifying butter involves gently heating butter, skimming off the milk solids, cooling and using only the remaining product. Not many of us in the US employ this method often, but it is very common in other countries. Clarified butter can be heated to 400 degrees without burning.
We cannot leave a discussion of butter without mentioning margarine. Margarine was invented by a French chemist (Hippolyte Mege-Mouries) in 1869, to produce a inexpensive food fat for the indigent masses, and involved the introduction of beef tallow to milk and producing a mixture like butter. Margarine produced today is a completely different animal than its predecessors. Today it is 80% fat and no more than 16% water, just like butter. This is where similarities to butter end.
The production process for margarine includes a water phase using fresh, cultured or reconstituted powdered skim milk. The fat phase introduces any of a single or combination of vegetable or seed fats such as soybean, cottonseed, corn, or sunflower oil. If you have a nut allergy, remember this. The process is completed with the addition of stabilizers, coloring agents, flavor extracts, salt , vitamins and nitrogen if the whipped form. Read the label to confirm what you are buying.
So after all of this, which is 'better', salted or un-salted butter? Naturally, this is up to your taste and how you define 'better'. I still agree with chefs who desire to control the addition of salt to a recipe, wonder about the possible effect on blood pressure of the forgotten salt in the salted variety (my grandmother had hypertension her entire life; yet, some feel salt has been overly implicated in hypertension), and more and more tend to shy away from the addition of stabilizers, preservatives and colorings so opt for un-salted butter. Then again, my grandmother's chocolate chip cookies were perfect! In life, there are always exceptions.
Perfecting Risotto
[Updated Note: Recently I tried the domestically grown product RiceSelect brand in the 32ounce jar. While I am reluctant to ever say something negative about our attempts to grow non-indigenous products here at home, I was disappointed in the outcome of the risotto. Though I followed my now well-honed method, the resulting dish lacked the creaminess I have found when using medium grain rice originating from Italy. Most grocery stores now carry authentic medium grain rice from Italy, and World Market (Cost Plus) is another source.]
Risotto refers to a
method of cooking medium grain rice.
Arborio, Carnaroli and Vialone Nano are three varieties, grown in Italy.
After many attempts at trying to recreate the wonderful risottos I have tasted in the US and abroad, it was studying
Lydia Bastianich that helped me most.
Two key points:
1) The liquid being added throughout the cooking process should be at or just below boiling (i.e. a high simmer). The rice and liquid mixture should be kept at a high simmer, and new additions of liquid should not trigger a drop in temperature. Food chemist Shirley Corriher reminds us that there is a transformation occurring in the starch of the rice during heating, with liquid being absorbed by the grain and starch being released from the grains to produce the creamy texture of risotto. When you introduce a cooler addition of liquid, this process is interrupted and the results are less than stellar.
2) Use a wide pot, at least 10 inches in width, to create a uniform platform for heat dispersion and ensure even heating throughout the process.
Buon appetito!
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