It was an observation that anyone who’s ever cooked a steak could have made, and one that has since led restaurants to completely revise their cooking methods Indeed, many high-end restaurants these days cook their steaks first, sealed in plastic, in low-temperature water baths, searing them only at the end in order to add flavor The result is steaks that are juicier, moister, and more tender than anything the world was eating before von Liebig’s erroneous assertion was finally disproved The question is, if debunking von Liebig’s theory was such a simple task, why did it take nearly a hundred and fifty years to do it? The answer lies in the fact that cooking has always been considered a craft, not a science Restaurant cooks act as apprentices, learning, but not questioning, their chefs’ techniques Home cooks follow the notes and recipes of their mothers and grandmothers or cookbooks—perhaps tweaking them here and there to suit modern tastes, but never challenging the fundamentals It’s only in recent times that cooks have finally begun to break out of this shell Restaurants that revel in using the science of cookery to come up with new techniques that result in pleasing and often surprising outcomes are not just proliferating but are consistently ranked as the best in the world (Chicago’s Alinea or Spain’s now-closed El Bulli, for example) It’s an indication that as a population, we’re finally beginning to see cooking for what it truly is: a scientific engineering problem in which the inputs are raw ingredients and technique and the outputs are deliciously edible results Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not out to try and prove to you that foams are the way of the future or that your eggs need to be cooked in a steam-injected, pressure-controlled oven to come out right I’m not here to push some sort of newfangled, fancified, plated-with-tweezers, deconstructed/reconstructed cuisine Quite the opposite, in fact My job is simple: to prove to you that even the simplest of foods—hamburgers, mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts, chicken soup, even a g&#amn salad—are every bit as fascinating, interesting, storied, and delicious as what the chefs wearing the fanciest pants these days are concocting I mean, have you ever stopped to marvel about exactly what goes on inside a hamburger when you cook it? The simultaneous complexity and simplicity of a patty formed from the chopped muscle mass of selected parts of a remarkably intricate animal, seasoned with salt and pepper, seared on a hot piece of metal, and then slipped into a soft toasted bun? You haven’t? Well, let me give you a quick rundown to show you what I’m talking about ON HAMBURGERS Hamburgers start as patties of beef , no, let me back up a bit Burgers actually start as ground beef that’s then formed into , no, sorry, even further back Hamburgers start with whole cuts of beef that are then ground into Wait a minute, let’s get all Inception on this and go one level deeper: hamburgers start with cows—animals that live exceedingly complicated lives, that can differ not only in breed and feed, but also in terms of exercise, terrain they’re ... as fascinating, interesting, storied, and delicious as what the chefs wearing the fanciest pants these days are concocting I mean, have you ever stopped to marvel about exactly what goes on inside a hamburger when you cook it? The simultaneous... plated-with-tweezers, deconstructed/reconstructed cuisine Quite the opposite, in fact My job is simple: to prove to you that even the simplest of foods—hamburgers, mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts, chicken soup, even a g&#amn salad—are every bit... Burgers actually start as ground beef that’s then formed into , no, sorry, even further back Hamburgers start with whole cuts of beef that are then ground into Wait a minute, let’s get