 Let's get to the second misconception second misconception is that you have to really need well a lot of videos will tell you that Oh, you have to need your chapati for five minutes and ten minutes And some people will need for 15 minutes to get a really soft chapati and so right that is The way I'd say this is so Yes, you'll actually get a pretty soft chapati if you need well So there is there is no question about that But I think that's missing the point about How gluten formation actually works in the context of chapati dough versus when you're actually making something like a bread And so so when you're using Maida versus other right so the First and foremost a very quick high-level introduction to what gluten actually is right so regular floor has two kinds of proteins Gluten in and gladden right When you add water they have the special property of really forming these long chains that are elastic Right now if you remember rice when you cook rice the amylose and you know amylopectin The amylose actually becomes sort of absorbs water and becomes mushy a gel like structure But it's brittle in the sense that if you pull the rice grain apart, it's not going to stretch It's just going to break up on the other hand gluten in and gladden in In which incidentally by the way also has amylose and amylopectin as starches In fact, 80 or 90 percent of your wheat flour is still mostly carbohydrates the 10 or 15 percent of the protein that it has is Tremendously useful because in the presence of water it forms this stretchy elastic thing That is what allows us to make bread or chapati for that matter right now the interesting thing to remember is That this happens the moment you add water you actually don't need to need it So my first tip for you is that as long as you don't add salt because salt actually makes gluten a little bit tougher If you let the unsalted dough just add water bring it to a light mix so that all the water is kind of absorbed and Let it sit for 30 minutes After 30 minutes, you will find that even the lightest amount of kneading will yield a perfectly sort of shape Perfectly smooth gluten structure in your chapati dough, right so you can save you a lot of the Shoulder exercise, you know others of course the shoulder exercise was the point then in case you know go ahead and do it But you don't right so this process is called auto leasing right so in fact it's used in bread baking all the time And it really develops gluten structure much much better But you know it's important to remember a couple of other things right a couple of other sidebars here if you've realized why If ever tried to make chapati using Maida You will find that it is difficult to do so why because it gets really stretchy and really chewy, right? Because in Maida gluten formation is much better So, you know for those of the misinformation universe that says that I know I know has more protein is more nutritious, etc Yes, it's it's true in one sense But actually from the point of view of gluten formation art has actually terrible, but that's by design So, you know ancient in ancient India, obviously we figured out that to actually make chapati We don't want chewy chapati. We actually want a flaky chapati There should just be enough gluten structure so that it holds my food But it shouldn't be like, you know rubbery chewy, which is what you get if you try to make chapati out of Maida, right? So what they actually did is they figured out a way a milling process called the Chucky milling process So that's what your label says Chucky ground art and so on Is basically these two heavy granite stones that really Damage the grain to the point where they damage a fair amount of the gluten and the starches itself In fact, the heat is so much that some of the starch gets cooked in Ata, right? So this is what yields a flaky perfect chapati But if you try to make bread with it, it will always be a disaster So if anyone who's tried to make bread with Ata, this is why it's a disaster And yet at the same time for those of you living in the West if you've ever tried to make chapati with anything other than Ata You will notice that you will get an extremely chewy and absolutely unpalatable product So basically that's that's the whole idea of how a lot of this works. Couple of other general tips The more water you use in needing your chapati the softer your chapati will be, okay? But the more water you add the more sticky and really hard To knead and makes a massive mess and and so on so there's a certain balance typically about hundred percent by weight is is what We recommend from a chapati standpoint, but you know again It depends on the conditions in your home the humidity and so on so more water in general softer chapati Also, you can add eggs or milk to make it softer. These are also ways of enriching Not just the nutrition but also the the taste the softer taste of your chapati In fact, sometimes Naan or Kulchas will use eggs and milk as Instead of just plain water and so on right, but if you want to flake your product Right, so especially like Lacha parathas or and so on the idea is to add fat, right? So what happens is fat actually shortens gluten development, right? Which is why In fact, in many cases short bread, right? Essentially is is some kind of floor needed with a ton of butter or fat So that the gluten strands are so short so that you get a biscuitty crumbly feel so that's short bread or biscuits, right? But in case of paratha you just want enough fat so that the gluten strands are not very long, right? So that essentially gives you a flakier product as opposed to a chewier product So this is essentially tips for you to you know depending on how you like your chapati or breads, right now My third misconception is is that baking soda is is back for him now again. Let me some caveat here And the reason I'm saying hmm as opposed to it's just plain wrong is the fact that look, you know Anything in large quantities is pretty much back for him, right? So in that sense So I do not want to make nutritional claims. This is essentially a session about Food science and cooking and taste right so the misinformation around why baking soda is bad Of course, if you eat a ton of baking soda, you'll you'll feel uncomfortable, right? You will you'll burp a lot and sometimes you get that taste in some cheap restaurant food where they will sometimes use baking soda quite a lot For very valid reasons and we'll kind of explain why why restaurants use baking soda And why if you use it in the right amounts in your home kitchen, it will it will change your life For start is actually a very magical multi-purpose superhero, right? And I think you should really keep a small amount of baking soda right next to the salt and sugar because you need to be using it far more regularly Than than you normally do right one it can accelerate the mayard reaction So making soda is basic as opposed to acidic, right? So lemon juice is acidic yogurt is acidic tamarind is acidic, but making soda is basic, right? Mayard reaction is what makes your food deliciously brown, especially when you fry it in oil or saute anything At temperatures above 110 Celsius food becomes brown and it's absolutely delicious, right? Especially if you are sauteing onions till they go brown in color you may want to use a little bit of making soda because it actually absolutely creates a fantastic Browning of your onions you use too much the whole thing turns it too much So use very tiny pinch goes a long way, right second thing obviously it can it can be used to salvage of any, you know poorly fermented idli or any kind of Product where you think the fermentation is not good enough Biological fermentation is not good enough You can always help yourself with a little bit of baking soda, but you have to add some acid along with it as well But the third and often less appreciated one and this is in fact why restaurants use it regularly Is the fact that baking soda can break down pectin all plant cell walls have pectin, right? So in fact the reason why a chana or a chana dal or you know Kabuli chana or rajma Take such a long time to cook is because there's a ton of pectin And this baking soda actually accelerates the breakdown of pectin So a pinch of baking soda when you you know pressure cook chana or rajma will will literally Have your cooking time and restaurants use it because it saves cooking fuel and for their margins are really important, right? Now obviously the reason if you use too much of it and you literally taste unused baking soda, that's nasty, right? So you obviously you have to use some kind of acid to compensate for that So every time you are using baking soda at some point of time towards the end maybe squeeze some lime or something that Utilizes any unutilized baking soda. So in fact when you pressure cook chole You add a little bit of baking soda and you add tea bags Tea is acid and it will neutralize any unutilized baking soda and also give it a beautiful brown color So that's the added so the tea is not added for the brown color It's actually added to neutralize the baking soda as we've got forgot of the reason right now And last but not the least it can also clean your kitchen. It's a fantastic abrasive along with vinegar It's a fantastic cleaning agent. So if you don't like chemicals You might want to use this to clean your kitchen. These are chemicals too, but at the end of the day So you might consider those other chemicals more harmful than so on now my fourth misconception is Is the fact that Microwaves are underutilized and again the cause of misconception comes from a nutritional claim which I'm not going to address barring the fact that look Just don't go with any sir waves are bad or cooking is bad or boiling is bad or steaming is better and so on It's complicated depending on the ingredient depending on your metabolism and your genetics, you know, everybody is unique And in the sense that some foods you have to cook in order for you to get some of those nutrients for example carrots And tomatoes for instance you get more nutrition when you eat them cooked as opposed to you when you eat them raw But we regularly eat them raw too So it's not just often a blind decision that this is the right way to do it We often don't only make nutritional decisions when we eat We also make taste and texture and enjoyment decisions that don't always necessarily are always sort of in the direction of great nutrition And so on so it's nutrition isn't the only thing yes It's it's important but beyond that we also enjoy food right so for starters Microwaves no they don't okay for starters I think Microwave suffers from this problem that it has considered radiation and you know the moment people think radiation They think Chernobyl they think gamma rays x-rays and so on If you didn't already know microwaves have less energy than visible light and infrared light Which is which is what heats up your food in say an oven and so on right? Literally putting your food outside under the Sun can also cook it over a given enough time At least in Chennai it can cook it over a couple of hours and so on but The interesting thing is that you are actually taking microwaves of a very specific frequency and you're you're concentrating it in a small box If you actually take a stadium floodlight type thing put it in a box and put food in it. It will cook faster than microwaves now Therefore for starters microwave as dangerous radiation. No microwaves are exceedingly low energy Compared to any of what you otherwise consider dangerous radiation the reason microwaves work whereas other forms of Radiation don't necessarily are practical in the kitchen is because of Some really really cool quantum mechanics that I will not go into here. It's there in the book. You can read it fantastic story, right? Microwaves apparently of a specific frequency have the ability to flip water molecules Which we said were polarized as you know positive and negative in the electromagnetic field of the microwaves It keeps flipping the magnetic fields if you keep changing the direction of the microwaves, right? Because it's a closed surface and that's what your microwave device does it keeps flipping the direction of the microwaves So that the water molecules keep keep flipping and once water molecules flip they heat up, right? So microwaves literally cooks food by heating up the water inside the food and that's all that's happening There is no other dangerous radiation ionizing radiation all that kind of stuff, right? So it is in fact if wonderfully, you know safe a nutritious way to cook food if you will right now Some cool things that you didn't know Because it only heats up water you can't cook Anything that does not have too much water Yes, you can heat some things up, but for most part it has unless it has enough water Microwave is largely useless Which we can put to great use by actually if you if you're short on time You can make a fantastic instant microwave sub-g by taking either coconut milk or a yogurt kind of base Remember that both coconut sorry coconut milk and yogurt are actually fat water emulsions in that they have both fat as well as water They've been mechanically agitated in a way that they form an they form an emulsion, right? So they they're not dissolved to each other So we know fats and water don't mix but they can be they can form an emulsion, right? so because now The fat itself does not get heated up by the microwave the water does You can now use this kind of base to actually make one shot sub-g You can literally take coconut milk add some canned chickpeas Some powdered onion so onion powder garlic powder that you have powder salt And so on and you can literally make something. That's a very very decent You know chana style sub-g because of the coconut it'll maybe a Malabar style chana sub-g if you will It's quite delicious, right? And then literally three minutes of time, right? So you you may want to experiment with that, right? So same thing with the yogurt as well Likewise, another thing that I often find people not using is the low power setting, right? So let's say you want to melt butter so it's quite common for people to take the butter out and say 15 seconds and By the way 15 seconds at high power will literally boil all the water in your butter and it'll practically turn into ghee Okay, that's not what you want, right? So what we want is to use the low power set so which means that if a microwave has 2,000 watts of power You can also cook With you know 800 watts of power or 500 watts of power, right? So check your settings and use the lowest heat setting so that it just melts the butter without evaporating the water Right. So these are just some tips that I give on microwaves, right? and my Last couple of ones as we get to the more interesting ones MSG again a misconception based on bad science from the point of view of nutrition The the whole idea that MSG is bad for health came from a racist article in the 70s That was not founded on science at all. It was just some random guy who Basically connected the fact that he felt uneasy to the Chinese food that he was eating with absolutely no Connection that said yes, it's possible that there are people like gluten allergies There are people who might be allergic in but then again small quantities For most part right be aware whether you have allergies or not That's a very tiny percentage of the population Way more people are actually allergic to peanuts or gluten than they are actually to MSG And so therefore it's largely not a concern in tiny amounts. It actually makes no difference, right? So this is a this is a this is just just started out as racism In in the United States and we've just continued to believe that is somehow it causes brain damage and so right so very simple Monosodium glutamate is a sodium salt of an amino acid And amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. We are literally made of amino acids and by the way Just if you just take glutamic acid, which is the which is the acid from which the salt is made There's literally two kgs of that in your body if you are about 70 75 kgs There's two kgs of just glutamic acid based, you know in your protein And so on so if you have two kgs of it in your body already a pinch of it in your Chinese food is not going to hurt you Right and sodium is essential for body and glutamic acid is is an amino acid, right? So that's one Why it's useful is that it's actually Concentrated umami. So let me kind of explain what umami is, right? So there are you know, we used to think there are four tastes There is sweet salt bitter and sour and then the Japanese discovered that there's also this taste called umami Which is which amplifies other tastes and it gives it it lengthens the sensation of the other tastes, right? So it's not a sensation by itself So if it is salt and umami, you will feel the the taste linger longer in your mouth, right? So it amplifies other tastes and while also making it linger for longer periods of time And what's the amazing is that more recent research actually this research is still ongoing is that People can detect umami in other words people can detect glutamates on their tongue at one-fifth the concentration of salt Right and salt is something that our tongues are phenomenally good at detecting and we detect this We still don't quite know why we have a taste Once one one unexplained theory is is the fact that ultimately this is a way of detecting proteins because amino acid You know glutamic acid is a protein. So because your proteins are important for us It's just evolved as a way for us to be able to make sure that we eat enough proteins and so on So that's basically is one theory, but it's it's not verified yet, right? so What umami really does is that it amplifies and lengthens other tastes and it it also More importantly is present in a ton of things that you're already eating right if you're eating parmesan cheese If you're eating mushrooms if you're eating fish if you're eating shrimps if you're eating Tomatoes all of these are exceedingly rich in glutamates, right? So if you have a problem with MSG you might want to stop eating every one of those other things as well, right? So as I said, it's it's safe in small quantities and it's it's a fantastic addition to anything you make especially dry dishes works very well Sprinkling a tiny bit of here's another interesting thing, right? So if you're someone So saltiness for example is our tongues ability to detect sodium typically it's our tongue detecting sodium is what we feel So literally all sodium salts will taste salty Not just sodium chloride sodium chloride is the saltiest of the lot, but To varying degrees sodium bicarbonate monosodium glutamate every sodium salt will taste salty our pure tub, right? In fact, MSG is about one-third as salty because of the sodium as sodium chloride So if you're using one teaspoon of salt and instead you use three-fourths of a teaspoon and add One quarter of a teaspoon of MSG You will get the umami effect and the salty effect as well while consuming less sodium overall So that's something for you to think about. Okay. Now last couple of things before we get into Q&A is obviously one of my Favorite topics, you know, if you've followed me on Twitter, you would have heard me, you know sort of mentioned this like a million times Most people think pressure cooking is measured in number of whistles and that is Let's just say this You achieve the right outcomes by measuring whistles and in fact counting in whistles in your home environment for your stuff For the same amount of heat and for the same pressure cooker will work perfectly fine The where it breaks down is that if you suddenly have to use an induction stuff or a new cooker or a new Or a new, you know, a stuff which has a different heat output and so on the whole thing will break down Right now for that you kind of have to understand how a pressure cooker works Which is that you put water you put your food and then you heat it, right? So once the pressure inside reaches to at least one bar above what is normal atmospheric pressure The safety valve will just rise the the weight and the excess pressure will be let out Right and so it goes back down below that one bar of pressure again And then it will build up pressure again and then it'll do that now If you if your heat source is higher if you're using an induction stuff where the heating is very very fast The frequency with which it will build back pressure again is very small So in fact if you use your induction stuff and try to cook rice at a 2000 watt setting And say three whistles for rice you will end up with uncooked rice under cooked rice, right? This is because the whistle by itself is nothing more than an indication that it has reached peak pressure And it is just fallen back just a little bit, right? The value you need to keep in mind is how much time are you spending once the first whistle has reached Which is the peak pressure which is one bar above atmospheric pressure, right? Why do we do this because at one bar above atmospheric pressure water boils not at 100 Celsius but at 121 Celsius So because you're able to cook at a higher temperature while water is still liquid you can cook faster and You can do several other interesting things as well. In fact If you pressure cook without water and with especially things that already contain water like say carrots You can add carrots and butter Then literally pressure cook with no water for about six or seven minutes And it'll what you'll get caramelized carrot, which is actually may add reaction. It's a misnomer. What you get is a fantastic Brown version of your carrot which you can then turn into soup has so many flavors that you didn't know carrot actually had, right? So and last but not the least As much as possible, especially if you are other than dealing with tough cuts of red meat avoid cooking meat in pressure cookers, okay, so two things meat always gets harder when you cook and Vegetables get softer when you cook. This is a very important distinction. So plant material becomes softer with the heat and Muscle tissue and meat in general gets harder, right? So the in fact Chicken breast is notorious that the lightest amount of over cooking and it you just end up with dry Chicken anytime right so a couple of things to remember unless you're using Cuts that have bones in them in which case pressure cooking Will end up sort of causing a lot of the connective tissue to turn into gelatin Which again makes the the meat softer and so on but the muscle tissue will still be dry, right? So unless you're dealing with very very tough cuts of meat avoid pressure cooking meat in general The ideal way to cook meat is slow and low We may not have the time if you do not have the time by all means pressure cook And in any case I think you know Indian cooking does not rely on the intrinsic flavor Or texture of the meat itself. We add a ton of other flavor outside of it So it doesn't really matter if the if the mutton or beef or pork is overcooked because you can always add a ton of other flavors to make it tasty But if you have the time for it slow cook it is you'll always get way way better outcomes right my last one which is probably the most controversial one Which is that Marination adds flavor to be now The answer to this is yes, but there are strong caveats, right? Marination adds flavor only to the surface of the beat Marination does not penetrate inside the surface, right? There's enough science about it You can you know, I talk about it in the book as well a link to a lot of science as well But and there are some fantastic videos by Adam Raguse on YouTube where you can see where he actually uses a dye and Marinates, you know meat for a ton of time like you know sometimes six or seven days And you actually see that the dye does not penetrate barely under the skin Okay, so let's remember that marination adds flavor only to the surface of the beat, right? So here is my you know here is my thing that you perhaps may have found surprising Marinating for 24 hours is a waste of time Marinating for half an hour is no different from marinating for 24 hours that said If you kind of know that someone is marinating for 24 hours and they're using a traditional recipe and it's your grandmother's recipe And you know it's being cooked in some special copper vessel and all that you will naturally find it tasty because a lot of taste perception is actually Psychological just knowing for example knowing that something that what you're drinking is expensive wine has been shown to You know improve the taste of the wine the same thing applies to food as well But in a blind taste test most people cannot distinguish between a half an hour marinated chicken and a 24 hour marinated chicken, right? But what does add flavor inside is brining brining is essentially putting meat inside a salt solution It varies, you know anywhere between 8 to 10 percent salt Solution as you can add other flavoring as well by osmosis the salt actually gets directly inside and by the way Once salt gets inside meat it actually makes the meat retain water now again This is this might seem non-intuitive because when you add salt to vegetables the water comes out When you add salt to meat when you brine meat and what salt goes in then it retains water now It's not it's not it's quite obvious when you think about what happens when we all exercise and we get dehydrated, right? So when we get dehydrated in the sun We actually drink not just water and sugar and other electrolytes But we drink along with salt salt is important because if you don't drink that salt All that water will you'll be lost again, right? So salt actually helps muscle tissue retain water, right? So that's why we drink salt along with Electrol or whatever it is when we get dehydrated. It's the same principle here So you want to get the salt into the meat and that will help the muscle tissue Not dehydrate too much during the cooking process So it will remain juicy and it is literally the only way to make chicken breast not taste terrible, right? So it's game-changing if you're making biryani try brining for about an hour and then marination for half an hour That's all you need So anyway more in my book and so on right don't over marinate. Okay, so it's actually quite common It's fine if you're actually not using too much lime juice or strongly sour yogurt You're actually you can you can still go ahead do a 24-hour marination no harm We're using a very very acidic marinade acids will actually denature and cook proteins And you'll actually get a far worse product at the end, right and again sometimes you have to Sometimes cooking the meat in a tandoor a tandoor is almost close to 500 to 600 Celsius Yeah, the cooking in your home happens in the 100 to 150 Celsius range on a pan Maybe in your oven maximum 200 Celsius at 500 Celsius a lot of things are different, right? You can cook very rapidly without over cooking or moisture loss, right? So if you are cooking at home and you don't have a tandoor don't over marinate. Okay, right? So my last Thing before we get to Q&A is sort of some general cheat sheet on how to think about spices, right? So in the Without That's do Okay complimentary spy Yeah, I want to How do it spices? Okay, this is People for those buying spice powders and I know a ton of these companies are now cursing me Which is that if you're buying spice powder store them in the freezer not even in the fridge They don't last very long. So the moment you mechanically damage spices the whole idea of spice flavors is volatile aroma The meaning of word volatile is that all of those flavors every time you smell it. You're literally losing flavor okay, so now Therefore if you're buying powdered spices store them in the freezer and keep whole spices and then as much as possible Grant them just before you need it, right? So that's what right When it comes to fresh spices like ginger garlic and you know wet spices and so on The amount of strength of flavor you get is Dependent on how you actually choose to cut it So the way you do mechanical damage to it makes a difference, right? So pasting garlic will give you the strongest garlic flavor versus mincing garlic versus chopping garlic versus just using the whole clove itself You may you may actually then use it appropriate if you don't always want the strongest flavor So if you don't want the strongest flavor, then don't you know, don't find mince it or find paste, right? Similarly for dry spices a mortar and pestle will extract more flavor Than a blender or mixie because a motor and pestle literally crush the cells and extract those Aromas whereas a blender or mixie is moving too fast And it's only literally just cutting some parts of it and you lose a ton of the aroma in the heat itself Right so mortar and pestle especially is a good way to make sure that you maximize then again Convenience always trumps everything and it's a stylistic choice If you actually want a stronger or a weaker flavor go ahead, you know use a blender mixie or use a whole garlic And so on last but not the least See spice flavor molecules tend to dissolve in oil and alcohol not water So if you're adding spices to a gravy Remember that it's mostly getting lost You may still want you may still want it because you can add extra spice powder You lose some of it and then you you're you're sort of you keep tasting it and you get the right mix and so on but remember this that The reason Indian cooking starts with oil and whole spices is that that's when you want to extract a lot of the spices Into the oil before they escape off. So that's the primary goal of that, right? And likewise alcohol, right? So if you're cooking with oil Once you add a ton of this ginger garlic, etc Try adding a splash of hard alcohol like vodka or rum and you'll find that it improves the taste of dish because it'll extract more spice flavors From all the other ingredients as well, right? Which is why we use whole spices at the start of a dish Powdered spices towards the end because powdered spices lose aroma really quickly. You don't need to cook powdered spices to death So adding powdered spices at the start of a cooking process is actually largely meaning less Unless you add a ton of it and you want to reduce the flavor So cooked powdered spices like garam masala are added literally right at the end Right and by the way, you can actually apply this to most things if you're making say roasted jeera powder Try adding a little bit of it right at the end as opposed to a ton of it at the start And you'll find that the effect is largely the same So with that just go make some delicious food and uh, you can connect with me on twitter at at krishashore. Thank you