Does Hot Food Need To Completely Cool Before Being Refrigerated?

It's All About Time and Temperature

Okay, tell me if you've heard this one: “You can't put that in the refrigerator. It's too hot. It has to cool down first.” Of course you have. If you're like me, you've probably heard it from your mother who heard it from her mother, who heard it from.....and so on, all the way back to the days of the “ice box.”

But does hot food really need to “cool down” before you put it in the fridge? The answer is a qualified “no,” with the qualification being the definition of “hot.”

Obviously, you're not going to take a casserole or something right out of a 350° oven and put it directly into the refrigerator. Condensation becomes an immediate issue, to say nothing of the risk of the thermal shock that would most likely occur should you take said 350° dish and place it directly on a 40° glass shelf, which most refrigerators have these days. Bad idea all the way around.

The other concern – that of raising the temperature inside the fridge – goes back to the days of the aforementioned ice box.

Ice boxes were just that: insulated double-walled wooden or metal boxes into which blocks of ice were inserted for the purpose of cooling food and/or beverages. The insulation consisted of straw, sawdust, cork, and sometimes even fur stuffed into hollow spaces between the walls of the boxes. Since pretty much everybody knew even then that warm air rises and cold air falls, large blocks of ice were placed in compartments located at the top of the box. The cold – well, cooler – air would sink downward, thus somewhat cooling whatever was inside the box. Of course, even well-insulated ice eventually reverts to its liquid state, so drip trays were located at the bottom of the box. These trays had to be emptied at least once a day, more often in hot climates or in hot weather.

The first commercially successful electric refrigerator came about in 1927. (An older model, introduced in 1910 and called the “Dumbbell”, failed to catch on largely because it cost $1,000 in a time when Joe Average made less than $500 a year.) Made by General Electric and called the “Monitor-Top,” it was an improvement on the old-fashioned ice box. But just barely.

Based on a concept developed by French inventor Marcel Audiffren, the Monitor-Top employed the same basic design as an ice box, except it had an electric compressor perched on top of the box instead of an ice tray. The compressor distributed coolant through a hermetically sealed system, so no more emptying drip trays. Unfortunately, early units often utilized toxic gases like sulfur dioxide, methyl formate, ammonia, or propane as coolants. And they really weren't all that cool.

If you put a fifty pound block of ice in the top compartment of an ice box, the upper portions of the box would cool to around 52 to 54 degrees, while the lowest part might get down as low as 42 to 44 degrees. The new-fangled electric models maintained about the same temperature levels. They were just more consistent about it since there wasn't any melting of the primary coolant involved. Basically, they were just big electric coolers. Freezer compartments were still a few years in the future.

And so it began: “don't put anything hot in the ice box,” as my grandmother still called it well into the 1960s, “because you'll warm up the inside of the box and everything in it will spoil.” That was true in 1925. Not so much a hundred years later.

Modern refrigerators are light years ahead of their predecessors in terms of overall design, construction, materials, compressor power, coolant, insulation …everything...and they can pretty much handle it when you stick a dish of warm leftovers inside without dramatically raising the interior temperature. Some of the newer units even have sensors built in to compensate for such changes in temperature. So go ahead and put your leftovers in the fridge while they're still a little warm. Really. It's okay.

The real issue is this: The first thing you learn in culinary school or when you open a restaurant is the “time and temperature” mantra. Boy, do they drill that one into your head! Ya gotta keep your food outta the “food danger zone.” That's the temperature range between 40°F and 140°F (some sources say 41°F to 135°F) where bacteria grow rapidly.

The FDA Food Code recommends a two-stage food cooling process. Cooked food has to be cooled from 140℉ down to 70℉ within two hours, then cooled down to 40℉ or lower in the next four hours. If the food has not reached 70℉ within two hours, you've either got to throw it out or reheat it and then cool it again. The total cooling time can't be longer than six hours or it's all just trash can fodder.

This is all especially true of what the experts and pros call “TCS Foods.” That means “time/temperature controlled for safety” food. TCS foods include meat and poultry; fish and shellfish; milk and dairy; eggs; leafy greens, and potato, rice, pasta, bean or vegetable dishes.

So don't take chances when cooling your food before you put it in the refrigerator. Basically, you've got two hours to bring the food temperature down from cooking temperature (above 140°F) to room temperature, (70°F) in order to eliminate the risk of pathogen growth. Then you've got another four hours to get it from room temperature down to 40℉ or less. The FDA also says that if you get the temp down to 70°F in less than two hours, you've still got the rest of the allotted time to get it down to 40℉.

Now, I don't think the peas are going to rise up and give you food poisoning if you leave them on the counter for a half-hour. The problem is it's really, really easy to get busy and/or distracted and forget about the stuff that you've left out to cool. And a half-hour becomes an hour and then two hours.....and that's when those innocuous little pisum sativum become little green monsters bent on wreaking digestive havoc. It's all fun and games until somebody loses track of the time.

The best thing to do is this; as soon as your peas, carrots, beans, potatoes, rice, meatloaf, baked chicken, fried fish or whatever stop being hot dishes on the table, stick 'em in the fridge. After sitting out on the table (or on the counter) while you're eating – say a half-hour to forty-five minutes – your food has probably cooled to pretty near that 70° mark. Stick a thermometer in it; you'll see. And if you really think that your refrigerator can't handle 70° food, (and it can), the USDA says you can rapidly cool it in a cold water bath before you refrigerate it.

But the best, most effective and most recommended way to rapidly cool hot food is to reduce its size. If you've got a big pot of soup or stew or a big hunk of meat or a large pile of mashed potatoes or something to deal with, portion it out into smaller containers. Spreading it out in shallow bowls or pans will help the heat dissipate more quickly. While you're working, leave the containers uncovered to reduce condensation and facilitate heat transfer. Then seal 'em up and refrigerate 'em.

Here's another cooling tip: while your food is sitting out on the counter awaiting its trip to the fridge, have it elevated on a cooling rack. The air flow all around the container will dissipate the heat faster than if you leave the bottom of the container in direct contact with the table or countertop.

And make sure your refrigerator is set no higher than 40F°. A couple of degrees cooler is even better. Better still is a refrigerator that has separate temperature zones. One of mine, for instance, has controls that allow me to set the meat drawer to a lower temperature than the main body of the fridge and to adjust the humidity in the vegetable drawer. If your fridge is warmer than 40°F, then it's really not much better than an old-fashioned ice box and all bets for food safety are off. Numbered dials inside the fridge are good but your best friend for accurate temperature control is a refrigerator thermometer. Five bucks at Walmart. C'mon! Splurge!

One more thing: try not to stack stuff in the fridge. I do it all the time until I think about it, but doing so can mess with the air flow in there and make your poor old chill-chest work harder to do its thing.

Bottom line: as long as you do it the right way, it's okay to refrigerate your leftovers while they're still a little warm. It's better than “leaving them out to cool” while you go binge watch four or five episodes of something, (“Oh! I lost track of time. I hope this stone-cold rice is still good”). And its easier than sitting there monitoring the cooling process with a thermometer, (“Nope. The mashed potatoes are still registering seventy-four-point-five degrees.”) It's easy-peasy.....or easy-rice-y or potato-y or whatever.

To refrigerate or not to refrigerate; that is the question. And now you have the answer.

Air Is Your Enemy!

At Least Where Freshness Is Concerned

I had to wince the other day as I watched a friend “reseal” a resealable plastic bag containing shredded cheese. She took out a handful of cheese and then just zipped the bag closed and stuck it back in the refrigerator. “But isn't that what you're supposed to do with a resealable bag,” you ask? The answer is an emphatic “no!” When that bag went back in the fridge, it looked like a little plastic pillow. It was absolutely full of air.

I thought everybody knew better, but apparently I was mistaken. There is nothing that will render food stale or spoiled faster than prolonged exposure to air. Why do you think they make “resealable” bags in the first place? It's so you can seal in the freshness by sealing out the air. And my friend just sealed a whole bagful of air in with her shredded cheese.

Air, or more precisely the oxygen in it, causes all manner of nasty things to happen to stored food. “Oxidation” is what the scientific types call it, and it can make fatty foods go rancid and promote changes in color, texture and flavor in many other foods.

Biting into a limp, rancid-tasting potato chip is bad enough, but even worse things can occur in the presence of air. A sealed plastic bag full of air is a marvelous growth environment for airborne microorganisms like bacteria, molds and yeasts. And, since air usually brings moisture to the party, it's like a trip to the beach for those little critters that cause microbial spoilage. Which is, by the way, the number one cause of good food going bad.

Let's take that air-filled bag of cheese, for example. If my friend were to just leave that cheese out in the open air, it could start to spoil within a few hours. By sealing the air in with the cheese, she's pretty much guaranteeing a rapid decline in quality, to say nothing of safety. Refrigerating it is not the answer. All though it helps, some agents of spoilage aren't impressed by temperature until it gets down to sub-freezing levels. No, they'll just chill out and start covering the cheese with green and white mold. Next time she opens that bag...oooh, surprise!

Speaking, as we were, of potato chips, I'm sure you've noticed that they come packed full of air right from the factory. As a matter of fact, a common complaint is that there's more air in the bag than there is product.

But, it's not really regular ol' air that's taking up all that slack space, as they call it in the snack food industry. It's actually nitrogen gas. Seems that back around 1994, researchers discovered that exposing chips and such to nitrogen made them taste better for longer. So the industry started sealing chips in a nitrogen-infused environment to keep them crisp and tasty as opposed to soggy and nasty. Which is what you get when you open a bag of snacks and put it back in the cupboard or pantry without expelling all the air you let in when you opened the bag. No, you can't replace the nitrogen, but at least if you expel the excess air before you seal the bag with a chip clip or whatever, you'll preserve the taste and texture for far longer than if you trap air inside the bag. Same thing applies to cookies and crackers and snack cakes. They probably won't “go bad” as in “kill you deader than a hammer” bad or even make you sick as a dog bad, but they sure won't be as appealing after a few days in an air-filled environment.

And how about those leftovers you put in the zip-top bag? Did you just fill the bag with food and then top it off with a nice layer of air? Might as well have not bothered with zipping up the bag.

Same thing, by the way, if you're using plastic or glass storage containers with lids. Don't just snap the lid on after you fill the container. The makers of Tupperware used to highlight a little feature on the lids of their products that allowed you to “burp” them to get rid of any air inside before you sealed the container. You don't have to have a special “burp” button, just press down on the lid a little before you seal the bowl.

Whether it be cheese or chips or cookies or leftover veggies, it only takes a second to squeeze the air out of the bag – or bowl – before you seal it up. You have to develop the habit of doing it until it becomes instinctive. Muscle memory. Expel the air then seal the container. I've been doing so long that I don't even have to think about.

Now, I'm not saying you have to be a real fanatic about it. Just press or roll the bag until you get as much air out as possible. You're never going to get all the air out; just aim for doing the best you can.

Some folks swear by the water displacement method, whereby you partially seal your seal-able bag and then lower it into a pot of water, allowing the water pressure to push out any air in the bag before you finish sealing it. This is a tried and true method that works well with zip-top bags and such, but I wouldn't recommend it for sealing up an open bag of Doritos.

Then there are questionable tips like leaving an open corner and using a straw to suck the air out of the bag. Meh. That one's been around for a while. No less a resource than the venerable Good Housekeeping magazine actually recommended it at one time. But, I don't care if you just rinsed your mouth with a quart of Listerine, there's gonna be a few germs left in your oral orifice and do you really want to give them a free ride down into your leftovers? Just sayin'.

You could go off the deep end and buy a vacuum sealer. Greatest thing since sliced bread if you're into sous vide cooking (which I am) or if you buy in bulk and want to put stuff up for freezing (which I do.) As you might have guessed, I have one. But even I'm not dedicated enough to the cause of freshness to use it for day-to-day things. Besides the cost of endless vacuum sealer bags, I'm not sure how well the process would work with potato chips. I'm sure whatever crumbs would be left after the sealer got through with the chips would be undeniably fresh, but.....you know. (Actually, I saw a gadget online the other day – a mini bag sealer – that does nothing but seal the kind of bags that chips and snacks come in, but....really?)

No, just stick with pressing the air out and then sealing the bag/container as quickly as you can. As I said, you're not gonna get all the air out, but you'll do a helluva lot better of keeping your food nominally fresh than if you just chunk little air-filled plastic pillows into the refrigerator or pantry.

Remember, when it comes to food freshness and safety, it's far better to expel than to leave an air cell. (I know; it's a stretch but it's the best I could do.)

I LOVE Vincenzo and Everything On His Plate!

He Tells It Like It Is!

I've been writing these little bits and pieces of advice and opinion for over twenty years. I don't how it is that, up until very recently, I missed a guy named Vincenzo Prosperi.

Born in Abruzzo in 1983 and now living in Australia with his Australian-born wife, Vincenzo is the creative genius behind the YouTube sensation “Vincenzo's Plate,” which he launched in 2014. Vincenzo has amassed an enormous following across many platforms. Because I don't spend any significant time on social media, I stumbled upon “Vincenzo's Plate” quite by accident. I watched one video and immediately became a follower. I've since watched close to a hundred and have yet to find one I didn't like.

The guy could be a much younger version of me. Our philosophies on food are nearly identical. He eschews the title “chef” and instead prefers to be called a cook. He readily acknowledges the influence his nonna's cooking has had on his own recipes and techniques, and he is way beyond a stickler when it comes to preserving Italian culinary traditions. In short, he tells it like it is and doesn't care who he takes on or whose ego he punctures in the process.

His “reaction” videos are priceless. Watching him take on various TikTok and YouTube idiots who blatantly massacre Italian traditions in the name of “creativity” or “convenience” or whatever is absolutely inspiring.

You'll hear him say, “What is this 'Italian seasoning' they talk about? It's herbs like oregano and basil. It's used in all kinds of cooking. What's “Italian” about it?” Some TikTok cretin was getting ready to pour a pile of about six different spices into an “Italian” pasta dish. “Where am I,” he said, “in India? There's nothing Italian about this.” When somebody broke the spaghetti in half for a baked spaghetti, Vincenzo cried out, “Did you see that?! She just killed the spaghetti!” Preach it, brother!

And he is not afraid to go after the big guns, either. He has very little use for Gordon Ramsay, for example, and even though Guy Fieri and Buddy Valastro have Italian names, they didn't do well under Vincenzo's scrutiny. And I had to laugh at Vincenzo's reaction to Paula Deen. Her putting a dry burger patty between two Krispy Kreme doughnuts absolutely stunned and horrified him. He called her a “nightmare,” a sentiment with which I can identify.

Even when he is generally approving of somebody he's watching, like Stanley Tucci making aglio e olio, he still offers insightful criticism when he sees something wrong. Shame on you, Stanley, for wasting extra virgin olive oil by adding it to the cooking water. And thinly slicing the garlic is good, but mincing or crushing it is better because then you don't have to eat chunks of garlic.

In most of his videos, Vincenzo pointedly wears (and sells) t-shirts proclaiming the immutable facts that there is no cream in carbonara and no pineapple on pizza.

Besides his hilarious and spot-on take downs of the flaws and foibles in other peoples recipes and techniques, his own offerings on how to properly prepare various Italian dishes are master classes in the art. After watching him make spaghetti pomodori the other day, I had to go make some for dinner myself, pleased with the realization that we both make it exactly the same way. My wife was wondering why I was yelling, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” at my computer. It was because I was watching Vincenzo lambasting some moronic attempt at making aglio e olio and then demonstrating the proper method.

Like me – and any Italian cook worth the title – Vincenzo is a huge proponent of finishing pasta in the sauce. He correctly says that cooking the pasta first and then dumping the sauce on top is a crime against good food. “The pasta dries out,” he says, “and it dies. It sits on the plate and it's dead.”

Neapolitan pizza dough, tomato sauce, cacio e pepe, Italian meatballs, gnocchi, lasagna, ravioli, arancini, bruschetta, tiramisu, cannoli.....and so much more. All done in the classic Italian style with no tolerance for “variations.” You wanna put cream and peas in your carbonara? Fine. But don't call it “carbonara” because it's not. Some YouTube boob will proclaim that Italians use garlic in everything. Vincenzo will call “stronzate” on that and show you how to use garlic with restraint, the way real Italians do.

The subtitles accompanying his videos are unintentionally funny in and of themselves. His accent is quite thick and whoever captions him often does it so badly that the English captions sometimes require English translation. For instance, in one video he said “spaghetti aglio e olio” but the caption read “spaghettio.”

Even though he lives in Australia, Vincenzo is proudly and passionately Italian and considers himself to be an ambassador for Italian culture. He finds inspiration in all things Italian. He once was inspired to create a baked pasta dish after listening to Andrea Bocelli and Ariana Grande sing “e più ti penso,” the inspiration coming from Andrea's classical Italian authenticity combined with Ariana's more contemporary approach.

So, I could go on talking about Vincenzo and “Vincenzo's Plate” for several more pages but why don't you just go and discover him for yourself? He's on YouTube and Facebook and all the popular platforms, but just Google “Vincenzo's Plate” and you'll find him. When you do, I promise you'll become a follower.

Serving Pasta The Authentic Italian Way

There Are A Few Old Traditions Worth Hanging On To

Okay, before we start, let me make this disclaimer: for all of you who are about to go the the “comments” section and scream about having the “right to do whatever the f**k I want with my food” or to castigate me for being a fussy, rule-bound old prig, let me say this: you do, and I am. There. With that out of the way, let's talk about the authentic Italian way to serve pasta.

There are two keys to serving authentic Italian pasta, and I'll get to them in a minute. But first, there are some basic pasta cooking rules that you've probably seen repeated over and over. However, because I am, indeed, a fussy, rule-bound old prig, I'm going to repeat them yet again.

Prima regola, don't break the pasta. Go ahead, I'm braced for it. “What difference does it make? It all tastes the same anyway. It fits better in my pot when I break it. It's easier to eat when it's broken up.” Does that about cover it? Good. Now, the explanation. Long pasta is long just because it's supposed to be long. It's part of the aesthetic of the dish and part of the cultural experience and tradition of making it and eating it. Some say that breaking long pasta is an insult to the skill and the craft of the pasta maker. Since most of what you buy in the store these days is machine made, I don't know how insulted the machines might be, but why take the chance? Bottom line? It's an Italian thing. Some rules are immutable and “don't break the pasta” is one of them. Or break it if you want. After all, you're gonna tell me it's your “right,” and it is. But it's not authentic and authenticity is what we're talking about here.

Secondo, salt the water. The only time you really get to enhance the flavor of pasta is in the cooking process. The pasta literally opens up during cooking to release starches and to take on flavor. After it's done, you can pour all the salt in the world on it and it's just gonna taste like salty noodles. Generous amounts of salt added to the water – about a tablespoon per quart – while the pasta is cooking is the only means of imparting proper seasoning to the finished dish. And save a little of the cooking water to help develop your sauce. The starchy, salty water acts as a flavoring and thickening agent that aids in the ability of the sauce to cling to the pasta as it enhances the overall taste of the finished dish. And you obviously don't want to rinse your pasta. You need some of that starch.

And while we're sort of on the topic, I'd like to find the old wife behind the old wives' tale about putting oil in the water to keep the pasta from sticking. Chemistry 101 says oil and water don't mix. All you're going to get is oily water.

Ultima regola, don't cook the pasta to mush. Al dente is the key. It should be a little firm “to the tooth” when you bite into it. If you want to overcook your pasta until it looks and tastes like something out of a Chef Boyardee can, go for it! It's your right. But it's not authentic.

And now that brings us to the first of those two keys to the authentic Italian way of serving pasta.

I'm old but I'm not old enough to remember how Americans ever came up with the notion of piling a heap of cooked spaghetti on a plate and then dumping a quart of sauce on top of it. But there it is; the typical American way of serving “spaghetti.” I guess it goes back to the early days of the Italian diaspora when everything Italian was still considered mysterious and exotic. Nobody outside the Italian enclaves knew how to cook the stuff, so they just punted. And that's what they came up with.

Now, I can give a little leeway to home cooks because, as I've acknowledged, you can do whatever you want with your food at home. It's the so-called “Italian” restaurants that really gripe me. If you run a place called “Vincenzo's” or “Giuseppe's” or “Lorenzo's” or “Giovanni's” and you serve pasta this despicable way, you should be stripped of your Italian heritage and the final vowel in your last name and you should just call your place “Vincent's” or “Joe's” or “Larry's” or “John's Place.” Because what you're doing ain't Italian and your mamma didn't teach you that way.

And I hear it all the time from Italian restaurant owners: “But that's what my American customers expect!” And I know. I can feel your pain. I once took over running a little American diner for a friend. And he offered a “spaghetti special” on Fridays, which I immediately remade in the authentic Italian way. For the most part, it was a great success, with patrons gushing with praise for the improved quality. Many said it was better than the Italian place down the street. BUT.....and there's always a “butt”.....I had one disgruntled dude who complained that what I put on his plate looked like “leftovers” because everything was “all mixed together.” He demanded his pile of plain spaghetti topped with a quart of sauce. I tried to patiently explain why I fixed it the way I did, but he wasn't satisfied and I never saw him again. He probably went to the “Italian” place down the street.

Anyway, in real, authentic Italian cooking, you always finish the pasta in the sauce. You never, EVER pile plain pasta on a plate and cover it with sauce. And if you're eating at an “Italian” place that does that, I'm telling you that they are just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Don't let 'em do it! Send it back and tell 'em, “Non insultarmi, stupido! Cucinalo come farebbe tua mamma!” Well, don't say it like that or you'll probably get thrown out. But you get the idea. Don't accept mediocrity.

There's a good reason we cook it the way we do. When you take the pasta out of the water a minute or two before it reaches that perfect al dente stage and let it finish cooking for those last couple of minutes in that delicious, flavorful sauce, the flavors – i sapori – of the pasta and the sauce will marry and mingle in a way that is simply not possible to achieve by dumping them on a plate separately. The pasta has already released its starches and opened up to absorb the salt you've added to the water and now it's going to further accept all the nuances of that full, rich sauce. É semplicemente il migliore! It is the considered opinion of anybody with even a drop of Italian blood in their veins that there is nothing worse than a pile of bland, flavorless spaghetti sitting and cooling helplessly on a plate while somebody drowns it in some thin, unremarkable sauce. And yet, that is the typical American standard “spaghetti dinner” preparation and Italians will weep for you.

Yeah, so I'm a little dramatic.

The other key to serving pasta the authentic Italian way is to leave it the hell alone!

In the scheme of Italian dining, pasta is a course in and of itself! You don't put anything “in” or “with” pasta. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, “Would you like some chicken in that pasta, sir?” No, I don't want any frickin' chicken in my pasta! Chicken belongs to the next course, the secondo. This is the primo course and it's fine just the way it is. If you get nothing else out of this rant, get this, please: There is NOTHING wrong with eating a plain, unadorned, unadulterated dish of pasta and sauce.

In the traditional Italian meal structure, pasta dishes are paired with sauces that complement and enhance the overall flavor of the dish. Each ingredient plays its part in achieving a balanced outcome. Throwing chunks of chicken in there – or any meat or fish, really – throws that perfect balance out of whack. Those meats are considered secondary complements to the pasta, hence the term secondo. You serve them by themselves, or maybe in conjunction with the contorno, or vegetable, course, after, but never mixed in with, the pasta course. That's why you'll never find something like chicken Alfredo on an authentic Italian menu. Well.....you'll never find anything Alfredo on an authentic Italian menu, but that's another story. No “chicken tortellini,” no “chicken carbonara.” And Olive Garden's “Tour of Italy” is a visit to a place that simply doesn't exist. “A trio of Chicken Parmigiana, Lasagna Classico, and Fettuccine Alfredo on one plate!” There's so much wrong with that picture that I scarcely know where to start.

Putting aside the actual non-existence of chicken parm, you'll never find a “side” of pasta on a plate next to anything. Pasta is pasta and chicken is chicken. They don't belong together on the same plate. Neither does steak or pork chops or salmon. You don't mix meat with pasta and you don't serve pasta “next to” meat. That doesn't mean that meat can't be an ingredient in a pasta dish, like the pancetta or guanciale in a carbonara, but you wouldn't just slap a hunk of ham on a plate of pasta. Same goes for beef, pork, or veal in a Bolognese or in a ragu served mixed with pasta. But you don't, for instance, put hunks of meat – lookin' at you, meatballs – on top of a plate of spaghetti. And, while you might find some broccoli florets perched on a plate next to your 8-ounce sirloin, you'll never see a “side” of spaghetti there. At least you won't in madre Italia.

Okay, pluck the chickens and warm up the tar. I'm ready for the onslaught of commentary about how Italians are nothing but stuffy, pedantic, ultra-purist, hyper-critical pettifoggers and how food is food and you can fix it any way you damn well please. É vero! And you can wear white after Labor Day, wear socks with your sandals, and drive twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, too. Ain't freedom grand? All I'm sayin' is that authenticity usually comes with rules and that Italian culinary customs have developed over many generations. And that maybe, in this ever-changing world in which we live, there are a few old traditions worth hanging on to.

A Fifty-Cent Surcharge On Eggs? Okay, How About Buttered Toast?

I'll Fork Over Extra For A Decent Slice

The world was shocked the other day by the announcement that Waffle House is going to be charging a fifty-cent per egg surcharge. Well, at least it was shocking in the part of the world that knows what a “Waffle House” is. That means my two eggs, scrambled, with bacon, hash browns (plain) and buttered toast is now gonna cost me an extra buck. Boh! (That's pretty much the Italian equivalent of “meh”.) Like it or not, (and I don't) it is what it is and there's little to gain by screaming about it.

You really want something to scream about, though? How about the aforementioned buttered toast? I mean, why in the hell can't I get a decent piece of buttered toast at a Waffle House? Or an IHOP? Or pretty much any other chain breakfast place? Buttered toast. Emphasis on the “buttered.” It's a simple enough preparation. It seems like something anybody could do. I, myself, have been doing it since around the age of five.

I Googled “buttered toast” and was rewarded with numerous results containing actual recipes for how to make buttered toast. Seriously. But the very first one pretty much summed up the process: “Evenly spread butter onto toasted bread using a butter knife or spreader.” Ah-HA! THERE'S the rub! It's those first two words, “evenly spread.”

See, when I make buttered toast at home, I by golly make buttered toast. That means that you can actually see the butter on the toast and it also means that said butter is “ evenly spread” from the top of the bread slice to bottom and from side to side and corner to corner. In short, the toast is completely, thoroughly, and unequivocally buttered.

Not so in your average breakfast emporium. In many of those establishments I have to bring out a magnifying glass to detect the little spot of butter they administer with an eyedropper to the center of the slice of toasted bread. And in a lot of places, it's not even real butter but rather some unholy chemical concoction euphemistically labeled as “buttery spread,” “butter-flavored spread,” or my favorite “Liquid Butter,” which is actually liquid and hydrogenated soybean oil with a trace of salt, soy lecithin, and natural and artificial flavor, with beta carotene added for color and with dimethylpolysiloxane thrown in as an anti-foaming agent.

Honestly, I can't remember the last time I asked for buttered toast that it didn't arrive on my plate with a vague yellow smear across the center of the bread that made it look as though Remy, the delightful little rat/chef from the Disney classic “Ratatouille,” had dipped his tail in butter and scampered quickly across the surface.

Actually, I really do know why restaurants serve sub-par buttered toast. I don't like the answer any more than I like the surcharge on eggs, but.....

Let's bring Remy back into the discussion. A good chef like Remy would know that the magic number for an even, thick coating of butter on a piece of toast is one-and-a-half tablespoons. That's equal to about three-quarters of an ounce.

But, being a canny and cost-conscious little guy, Remy would realize that, with sixteen ounces to a pound, he's getting twenty-one slices of toast per pound of butter. As I'm writing this today, a pound of salted butter at my favorite restaurant wholesaler is going for about $3.25 for the cheap stuff and about $4.25 for the better quality product. Let's split the difference at $3.75. Twenty-one slices of toast per pound of butter equals roughly eighteen cents worth of butter per slice of toast.

Now, the standard two pound (thirty-two ounce) loaf of white sandwich bread that most restaurants use contains about twenty-eight slices and wholesales for about $5.25. Roughly nineteen cents a slice. Nineteen cents worth of bread and about eighteen cents worth of butter equals around thirty-seven cents that Remy's got to shell out for every slice of toast he serves if he's preparing it thoroughly buttered with real butter. An “order” of toast is generally two slices, so about seventy-four cents for an order of well-buttered toast. If Remy has a hundred covers (restaurant-speak for “diners” or “customers”) a day for breakfast, he's spending $74 a day on toast. $518 a week. $2,072 a month. You get the idea.

Now, “Liquid Butter,” on the other hand, wholesales for about $11.50 a gallon. There's 128 ounces in a gallon and if Remy just dips and smears maybe a teaspoon of cheap butter substitute on the toast he serves, that's 1/6 of a fluid ounce or about a penny-and-a-half per slice of toast. Add the bread back in to the equation and Remy can prepare a slice of “buttered” toast in this manner for about twenty-one cents. Forty-two cents an order. Forty-two bucks per hundred covers, etc. Does it matter that it's a crappy excuse for buttered toast? Nah. Not when the bottom line is on the line.

And then there's the toast itself. Inconsistent, at best. My grandmother used to like her toast burned to the consistency of carbon. Don't ask me why. My mother, on the other hand, liked hers barely warmed. A little brown was okay, but don't overdo it. Most restaurants strive to hit the middle ground. But lately I've been getting a lot of toast that is charred black on one side and barely warmed on the other. Or it's not really “toasted” at all. Lacking an actual four or six-slice commercial toaster in the kitchen, the cooks are slapping the bread in a pan or on the flattop and “toasting” it that way, or they're putting it on a sheet tray and sticking it under a broiler for a minute or two. Yes, technically it's “toasted,” but it's not really toast.

Tell you what; if you're gonna jack up the price of eggs by half-a-buck to cover the increased cost, I'd be willing to fork over an extra quarter to have a real, honest-to-goodness slice of buttered toast on my plate next to those high-dollar eggs. Real toast. Real butter. Slathered all over.

But I, as usual, am naught but a voice crying in the wilderness. It ain't gonna happen. And since Waffle House, IHOP, et.al. would likely look askance at me for bringing in my own buttered toast, I suppose my breakfast fate is sealed.

Or toasted.

An Egg Cracker? Really?!

Sorry, But I've Got To “Counter” This Recommendation

It's been a slow afternoon, and as I was scrolling through some useless stuff on the Net I came across a piece on the best way to scramble eggs. Since I've only been doing it for over a half-century, I thought I'd take a look and see what modern innovations may have revolutionized the process. And, lo and behold, the first “need” the young author presented in her list of essentials (all available for purchase on Amazon and various other outlets, by the way) was an egg cracker.

No. Really, An egg cracker.

For only nine bucks, it's something I never knew I needed. Imagine, I've been struggling to cook scrambled eggs, both at home and in the professional kitchen, for decades and now I realize that I've only been making things harder on myself by not possessing an egg cracker. I feel so utterly inadequate now. I hereby apologize to all the people to whom I have presented obviously sub-par scrambles owing to my egregious lack of proper equipment.

Seriously, this little gadget looks like a spoon rest with a raised ridge in the middle of it. In fact, the author notes that you can use it as a spoon rest when you're not using it for egg prep. So it's a multi-tasker! Yay! “It can help you cleanly break shells into a straight line," she enthuses. "All you do is crack your egg against the center ridge, then pour the whites and yolk into a bowl.”

I already have a similar device in my kitchen: it's called a countertop.

Now, I don't have one of these things in my hand, but looking at the picture it seems to me that the little ridge in the center would have the same effect as the edge of a bowl in that it would not necessarily “cleanly break” the shell. The preferred better and safer method of egg cracking is to give the egg a firm tap on a flat surface – like a countertop. The egg-sperts – see what I did there? – say this method is far less likely to drive little shards of shell and any possibly contaminating bacteria into the interior of the egg.

Every culinary school graduate I know uses a flat surface for breaking eggs rather than striking them against a sharp corner or the edge of a bowl. Even though you see the occasional TV chef employing that practice, I promise you it's not what they were taught in school. I've even run across a few people – very few – who break their eggs by smacking them together. Okay, fine. But what if you're only cracking one egg?

My mother and my grandmother and probably their grandmothers, too, cracked eggs on the edge of a bowl. It's intuitive and it's how most home cooks roll. I don't know when the “better,” “safer” method was discovered/developed/decided upon among professional cooks, but it's the one they teach now and it's the only one I use/teach as well.

Once you crack the shell, techniques for the messy part - breaking the egg open the rest of the way – vary according to the preference and skill level of the cook.

I can open an egg one-handed. It's not really hard. It just takes a little practice. You hold the egg in your hand with your thumb placed along one long side of the egg and your fore and middle fingers on the other. Bring your pinky and ring finger to the bottom side and press the bottom of the egg into your palm. Crack the egg against a flat surface, then, in a slight twisting motion, use your thumb and forefinger to lift the top half while using your ring finger and pinky to pull down on the bottom half. If you've cracked the egg cleanly, it should separate cleanly and everything will come out without any shell fragments. 

I seldom do it this way, unless I'm trying to be showy or something. Most of the time, I do it the way everybody else does: after cracking the shell on a flat surface, you lightly press the tips of your thumbs into the crack until the egg's keratinous outer and inner membranes break. Then you just gently pull the shell apart and the white and yolk parts will slide out into your waiting bowl, hopefully intact. And, by the way, while not absolutely necessary, it's always a good idea to crack eggs into a separate bowl before mixing them together for your scramble or omelet or cake batter or whatever. Reason being, if you get a bad egg – which can sometimes happen – you can isolate it before it mixes in with other eggs and ruins the whole works. And it's easier to fish a stray bit of shell out of one egg than it is to fish it out of two or three or more.

So, there you have Egg Cracking 101. And it didn't cost you a penny.

The advocate of the nine-dollar egg cracker, who identifies herself as a “Senior Editor, Home & Garden” goes on to recommend a wide variety of bowls, whisks, spatulas, pans, holders, cookers, containers, add-in ingredients, and more, all of which are only a click away throughout her article. Fine. Everybody has got to make a buck. But if you've got a bowl, a balloon whisk, a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon, and a non-stick pan, you've pretty much got everything you need. The most essential thing you'll require to make outstanding scrambled eggs is practice and you can't buy that online.

You can buy an egg cracker, though. But, really, don't. 

McDonald's Friendly Service: The Ultimate Oxymoron

The Night of the Blank Stare

My wife is one of those rabid fans of McDonald's McRib, so when she got a craving for one the other night, love took the place of common sense and I ventured out to the local Mickey D's to fulfill her wish.

Upon arriving at our neighborhood fast food palace, I couldn't help but notice that none of the exterior lights were illuminated at seven o' clock on a dark winter night. Not even the iconic golden arch towering high above the roofline. If I hadn't known the place was there, I wouldn't have known it was there. So, when I entered, I brought this to the attention of an employee, a young female who was rather desultorily mopping the floor. And in response, I got my first Blank Stare.

Now, for the sake of being a general nuisance, I have been known to speak Italian to employees of Olive Garden and other pseudo-Italian places. But, here, caro lettore, I assure you I was speaking perfect, unaccented English. For all the response I got, however, I might as well have been speaking Italian. Just a Blank Stare. For all I know, I could have informed her that her shoes were on fire and I probably still would have gotten the same Blank Stare.

Moving on, I stepped carefully over the staring girl's handiwork and made my way to the counter in order to order my wife's McRib. You know, McDonald's actually discourages such behavior nowadays. They would much prefer that you order through their app or use that oh-so-personal ordering kiosk positioned right where you can hardly avoid it. But if you really must be old-fashioned and insist on actually speaking to a flesh and blood person, there are still a few of them around to serve you. All you have to do is find one and then get their attention. Easier said than done.

In retrospect, I think this is McDonald's way of admitting defeat. They know that the personality level of their employees is roughly equivalent to that of an automaton so they just put an actual automaton out front to begin with.

Anyway, there were at least four uniformed people “back there” that I could see and I know that at least two of them saw me step up to the counter because they made eye contact with me. They knew I was there. But they apparently couldn't have cared less. I guess it wasn't their job to man the counter, ergo, it similarly wasn't their job to find the person or persons whose job it was. So they just gave me the Blank Stare as I stupidly stood there waiting for service.

Eventually, from somewhere “back there,” someone in a management shirt appeared. “Ah,” I thought, “she is going to wait on me.” Alas, no. She was obviously focused on something having to do with the ice cream cone in her hand. She stood with her back toward me, intent on addressing the aforementioned Blank Starers. Whatever they were all discussing was evidently more important than taking my order as they all discussed it for quite some time. Finally, when I heard someone else “back there” shout out, “There's somebody at the back window,” I took the opportunity to chime in with, “There's also somebody at the front counter!” Well, that startled them all into noticing me. And giving me a Blank Stare. No greeting, no apology; simply a look that said, “who the hell are you and what are you doing standing there?”

Management person moved slowly to the register and stood there waiting for me to explain myself. Apparently, in lieu of anything along the lines of “hello,” or “may I help you,” her mere acknowledgment of my presence was all I was going to get. So I opened the one-sided conversation with the same observation about the lack of exterior lights causing me to almost miss the entrance. Surely, I thought, the manager would be interested in knowing this. Nah. I just got another Blank Stare. Not even a grunt.

Okay. I soldiered on and placed my order. A mumbled, “Is that all?” demonstrated that she could, indeed, verbally communicate, but when I said “yes” and proffered a gift card as payment, she merely pointed in the general direction of the POS terminal and said, “right there.” Ah, how foolish of me not to have noticed.

She came around a few minutes later to inform me that my order would be another couple of minutes because they were cooking the fries. Gamely attempting to be personable, I said, “Oh, good. I prefer them that way.” Blank Stare. Not even a smiling Blank Stare. Just the kind that said I was really being annoying by wanting something remotely resembling friendly, competent service.

Ultimately, my bagged order was placed on the counter in front of me and a guttural noise was made that could perhaps have been interpreted as “thank you” had I been in a more generous frame of mind. By now, though, I was more of a mind to interpret it as, “get the hell out of here and stop bothering me.” Especially since the utterance was delivered with the now-to-be-expected Blank Stare.

Sadly, this was far from an isolated incident. Somehow, the default setting on the faces of most fast food employees these days is flat affect, a clinical term defined as “a lack of emotional expression or response, often symptomatic of a mental health condition or of medication side effects.” I don't think that's the case in most cases. Rather, I think it's just a symptom of infinitesimally small and woefully inadequate social skills, caused, no doubt, by too much interaction with an electronic device and not enough with an actual person. After all, screens don't particularly care if you smile at them. But people do.

Now I'm not expecting the red carpet treatment or Michelin star service at a fast food joint. These are entry level jobs being filled by older teens and young adults with very limited social interaction beyond their own peer groups, groups where the things the rest of polite society consider to be rudeness are merely the accepted norm. But surely these young folks can muster something better than a sullen stare for the people who are financing their livelihoods.

Some fast food places can pull it off. Chick-fil-A, for example. I don't know how they skim the cream of young job seekers there, but I can unequivocally say that I have never had a bad service experience at a Chick-fil-A, a franchise where smiling faces and eager attitudes abound. And I'm not alone in that regard. Survey after survey has found that Chick-fil-A rates at the top of the service scale among fast food outlets. And the home of the Big Mac, the shiny Golden Arches, and the surly Blank Stare consistently ranks at the bottom of such surveys. So it's not just me. Seems that when McD's kicked their happy, smiling clown mascot to the curb, happy, smiling employees followed.

I don't know the answer. Chick-fil-A tends to pay its starting employees a little more than average, so maybe there's something there. But, in general, I think it's a matter of attitude. Young people just entering the job market seem sorely disappointed when they don't start at the top and it shows in their attitude. They seem to feel that they are doing their employer an immense favor by simply showing up for work and then they proceed to make their customers feel like impositions upon their paid social time, which, apparently, is what they consider their jobs to be. And I don't know how to solve that problem.

This is where I could come off as the curmudgeonly grandfather and say, “Back in my day, we worked for a dollar an hour and we were glad to get it!” Which is true, of course, but not really germane to the current issue. Which is either how do we get McDonald's employees to behave more like Chik-fil-A employees do or how do we get Chick-fil-A to start selling McRib sandwiches?

In the meantime, would you like fries and a grumpy Blank Stare with that?