Masterclass

Balancing tastes

People get a bit confused about the concept of “taste”. In colloquial use, we lump taste in with other factors that affect our perception of the food, such as texture, aroma, temperature and appearance. Scientifically, however, taste is defined specifically as the sensory detection of chemicals on taste receptors.

This might sound overly technical, but understanding this makes cooking a lot simpler. We have only five categories of taste receptors: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami (savoury). Adjusting our food to these five tastes is what we call “seasoning”.

Bitterness is found to varying degrees in nearly all vegetables. For that reason, we don’t tend to add many bitter seasonings to our food. For the remaining tastes, the balance of sweet, sour, salty and savoury is everywhere in cooking.

In this recipe, the Vietnamese nuoc cham sauce provides that seasoning, using one ingredient for sweet (sugar), one for sour (lime juice), and fish sauce, which combines both salty and savoury.

There’s no right or wrong balance; it should just taste good to you. 

To get the balance right for your palate, don’t just rely on measurements in this or any other recipe. Individual tastes will vary, as will individual ingredients. One lime might be more sour than another, and one brand of fish sauce may be saltier than the next.

The simplest way to do this is to balance two tastes first – sweet and sour. Combine the sugar and lime juice and taste it. If it tastes too sweet, add more sour. If it tastes too sour, add more sweet. There’s no right or wrong balance; it should just taste good to you.

Once that’s balanced to suit your palate, you can add the fish sauce, which, because it has neither sweetness nor sourness, won’t affect the balance of those first two tastes.

When adding the fish sauce, make sure your dressing is slightly over-salty. Once you combine it with the salad ingredients, the overall flavour will come out right.

Poaching chicken

One opinion I refuse to budge on is that in Australia, we consistently overcook chicken.

Our food standards recommend that chicken be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 74 degrees, but that figure is not particularly scientific. Our standards are based on the United Nations’ Codex Alimentarius, a global food code that draws data from US standards, which have been criticised for inconsistency and prioritising individual preference over science.

Those US standards recommend higher cooking temperatures for people at home than for food service, based not on safety but on “consumer preference”. Frankly, I’m not on board with a US food authority from 30 years ago dictating what my preferences are in Australia today.

If you are terrified of undercooking chicken, reading this is unlikely to persuade you to cook your chicken a little less for more flavour.

They call for a 7D or 99.99999 per cent reduction in harmful bacteria to be considered “safe”, although many experts believe a 5D reduction (99.999 per cent) is more than safe enough while allowing food to be cooked much less.

In cooking, killing bacteria is a mathematical equation of heat over time. The higher the temperature and/or the longer the time, the more bacteria will be killed.

At 74 degrees, a 7D reduction of harmful bacteria is achieved in about a second. At 70 degrees, it will take about 25 seconds. At 64 degrees, it will take about 5 minutes, and only about 3 minutes to achieve a 5D reduction. However, there is a huge difference in how your food will taste when cooked at those different temperatures.

At 74 degrees, chicken breast becomes dry and stringy; at 70 degrees, it still has some moisture; and at 64 degrees, it’s juicy and flavourful. By poaching chicken the way I suggest, the centre of the chicken is held at about 64 degrees for more than 5 minutes, achieving the same bacterial reduction as cooking to 74 degrees, but with much tastier results.

I don’t blame the food safety authorities for being cautious. That’s their job. But I’ve been cooking chicken to about 64 degrees for decades and have never been ill from it.

If you are terrified of undercooking chicken, reading this is unlikely to persuade you to cook your chicken a little less for more flavour.

But consider that those same overly cautious standards also recommend eating steaks that have been cooked beyond medium and heating all packaged hams. I’m pretty sure most people are OK with a medium-rare steak or a room-temperature ham sandwich.

Get hands-on

Clean hands are our most efficient kitchen tool, and most of us don’t use them enough.

I have watched in horror as people in Instagram videos shred chicken breast with a stand mixer (though admittedly, if you’re overcooking your chicken to the point where you can do that, you probably can’t do much more damage).

You could shred your chicken with two forks, I guess, but why? Using your hands will be faster and will do a much better job. Salting your hands while doing that task will also help season the chicken as you shred it.

Likewise, tossing a salad. You could do that with tongs or salad servers, but both will bruise a leafy salad and again, your hands are much better suited to the job.

You don’t need gloves. Just wash your hands well and get in there.