Organoleptic characteristics of food change with cooking: the different properties may reduce, vanish, invert each other or get excited.
Every kind of cooking, if executed in a bad way, can be detrimental, and vice versa.
Grilled, baked, fried and in boiling water cooking is particularly indicated for meat and fish, but it's always better to avoid a too long cooking that, otherwise, may lose excessive quantities of water and of precious substances as well as taste and softness and may be difficult to digest.
Every kind of meat and fish presents different characteristics and different ways of cooking, but it is generally good to know that fowl must be cooked longer, slowly and with low warmth than flesh, but always without surpassing the cooking times, so that they stay sufficiently hydrated, that is soft, without being underdone.
The same concept is to be considered for fish even if, when the product is particularly fresh and safe, is advisable taking it raw or underdone.
The same thing is valuable for vegetables that, however, should be better taking raw and well cleaned; the steam cooking is, however, the most suitable for vegetables.
Even for pasta and rice it is advisable using slightly underdone cooking, which gives a better digestibility.
Cooking with fat
La The surface frying is that you make in the frying pan at a 140° temperature about; the fat is used only one time and is consumed with the food.
The deep frying is made soaking the food in the cooking fat (oil) at a 180° temperature about; the fat can be used ore than one time and only a small part of it is consumed with food. This kind of cooking has a longer length than the previous one and it is potentially more dangerous because it's easier that oxidative products of fat can develop; they are detrimental for one's health.
Meat cooked with fat or dried
The most important element is the loss of water in the food which depends from the kind and time of cooking, about the 15% for a grilled cooking and about the 30% for a roast well cooked. If the cooking time of roasts is too long, hard to digest products form, while the grilled cooking has the advantage of being able to eliminate fat in not too long times, which make meat more digestible. The myoglobin is modified by the cooking temperature, and the meat stays red till 65°about, it becomes pink around 70° about and then it takes a darker colour till brown with a temperature higher than 75/80°.
The mineral salts are preserved almost completely. The heat coagulates the proteins and hardens the muscle fibers at already 70°, so that a roast cooked at 90° is hard. So, poor pieces of connective tissue will be used for roast and grilled of short cooking, while richer parts will have to be cooked longer to soften.
Fish cooked with fat or dried
The loss of water, according to the kind and time of cooking, is of the 20/30%; for that the water quantity in the food can change from the 85% to the 60%.
Unlike the meat there's no loss of fat: in the fish the fat is not present in the subcutis and in this case the food is soaked by the cooking fat so that, as for the cod, the change can be from a 0,5% of starting fat to a 10% at the end of cooking.
Fruit and vegetables cooked with fat or dried
This kind of cooking is not much used, except the potatoes which are often fried or cooked in a frying pan with the fat. Nevertheless the loss of vitamins is smaller than when we cook in the water.
Cooking in the water
In this case we have a loss of nutritional principles in the cooking water; this loss grows up with the surface/weight ratio. For this is bigger in a wide leaf vegetable (for example: chicory) than in a root (for example: carrots). This loss, moreover, grows up when the cooking time and the volume of the used water grow up. The possible taking of the cooking water allows recovering a part of some nourishing elements, except for vitamins. The cooking by a pressure cooker is better because the loss of nourishing elements is smaller.
Boiled meat
The loss of water is more than the 40% according to the cooking time even if with different ways if the food is put in boiling water where the loss of water is at first swift and then it slows, or in cold water when it's the contrary which happens.
The boiled meat loses the 70% about of its salts, above all sodium, potassium, chlorine and phosphor, while the loss of iron is lower. Even the loss of vitamins is higher than in the dried cooking.
Boiled fish
The loss of water is between the 3 and the 10%. A part of vitamins and mineral salts has a loss in the water that is as higher as longer the time of cooking and greater the quantity of used water is.
Boiled fruit and vegetables
This kind of cooking, even if it's characterized by a loss in mineral salts and vitamins, makes often such food more digestible and makes the absorption of many nourishing elements.
PRAISE OF OIL "Praise to olive oil, for its fragrance, its taste and its great virtues; with the fragrance of freshness and the scent of honesty, it's the maker of every noble cooking" Giuseppe Bertuzzi 1995
The word "seasoning" means the fat used in cooking added to the consumed food.
The word "fat" without any other qualification, means the pork fat or lard. The adjective vegetable must be added to all the other fats which derive from fruit or seeds (e.g. oil), and the adjective animal if they derive from animals (e.g. butter).
Butter is an animal fat obtained only from the cow's milk; it's an emulsion of fat in water, with percents of the latter till to a maximum of the 16%.
There are different qualities of butter:
The margarines are, instead, solid alimentary fats which are obtained by an emulsion of an animal or vegetable fat, different from butter or pork fat, with water. The final product must contain from the 2% to the 16% of water, the total fat must be above the 84% and cannot derives from milk. The maximum allowed acidity is of the 1%.
The natural acidity expresses the quantity of oleic acid which is present in the product; such an acid is the principal constituent of vegetables oils and it's also present in animal fats like gooses' and human ones. A too high percent of oleic acid can be responsible of bad smells like rancid, mould, smoke or rotten ones.
The common characteristic of animal fats is their high contents of saturated fatty acids, which resist high cooking temperatures, but which can favour the atherosclerosis process.
Oils and vegetable fats, on the contrary, are mostly constituted by unsaturated fats and, as already said, they derive both from fruit (e.g. olives) and from oleaginous seeds ( e.g. sunflowers).
The oils so-called "virgins" are those which are obtained only by pressure and which haven't undergone any refining process.
Even olive-oils which pass through more manipulation than extra-virgin oil are consumed; so it's very important to know their different denominations:
So, the extra-virgin olive-oil is the most indicated to season, cook, warm, to fry slightly and fry (for the fries we can use also the peanut's oil, but we must never use it raw because it's rich in saturated fatty acids); seed-oils (all extracted with chemical processes) can be used only raw because they are unstable to heat.
Extra-virgin olive-oil is the only we obtain from the simple squeezing of olives.
Nevertheless not all the extra-virgin olive-oils present the same characteristics, the same taste and the same antioxidant power.
The knowledge of the origin of an extra-virgin olive-oil, the kind of olives used, the picking period and the kind of grinding is very important.
An extra-virgin olive-oil with mark "DOP" or "IPG" or "HS" which comes from plants clearly indicated on the label (e.g. "moraiolo" or "leccino" or "frantoiano") and obtained by olives which are picked and pressed at cold not later than November would be ideal.
In fact the quantity of vitamin E is fundamental to establish the antioxidant power of oil. Such a vitamin is present in olives in higher and higher quantities till their degenerative process (of aging!!!).
Generally such a process happens between the half of October and the half of November. This is the best period for the picking, because the vitamin E contents are at their best.
Surely the olive picking in this period produce a scanty yield in the olive production, which grows up if the picking will be delayed, but the product quantity is excellent as its duration; in fact an oil richer in vitamin E will grow rancid (pathological aging!) later than an oil which will be produced later, but with a lower concentration of antioxidants (vitamin E!).
"Quam acerbissima olea oleum facies, tam oleum viride optimum erit" De Agricoltura, Catone 149 a.C.
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