Samin Nosrat

Cooking is part artistry, part chemistry.

My general ratios for measuring salt are simple: 1 percent salt by weight for meats, vegetables, and grains, and 2 percent salinity for water for blanching vegetables and pasta.

food can only ever be as delicious as the fat with which it’s cooked.

A few secret drops of lemon juice will produce creamier, more tender scrambled eggs.

Boiling dilutes the relatively acidic liquid contained in vegetable cells, so it will generally yield more tender vegetables than roasting will

Roast big, beautiful slices of cauliflower or Romanesco broccoli to ensure they retain their shape

Boil potatoes or parsnips so that they melt into a puddle of tenderness, perfect for puréeing or mashing.

Acid also encourages bonds between pectin groups—the gelling agent in fruit—so that they can trap water to help set jam or jelly

Some fruits, such as apples and blueberries, don’t contain enough acid to bond the pectin on their own, so we help them along by squeezing some fresh lemon juice into the jam pot and into fruit fillings for pies and cobblers to encourage them to set

Acid is required when using chemical leavenings such as baking soda or baking powder. Visualize the baking soda and vinegar volcanoes of your elementary school science projects. Just like that, but on a much smaller scale, acid reacts with baking soda to release carbon dioxide bubbles to leaven baked goods. Doughs and batters leavened by baking soda should also have an acidic ingredient such as natural cocoa powder, brown sugar, honey, or buttermilk. Baking powder, on the other hand, already contains powdered tartaric acid and doesn’t need an external source of acid to react.