Having contributed the a successful Kickstarter campaign that claimed to “harness the power of phase change to keep your beverages cold” last year, we were excited to put the product to the test. In this post we compare both versions of this new product to two other cooling mechanisms we have on hand.
Here at the primary testing facility, it’s no secret that we like red meat. So, when we found standing rib-roasts on sale shortly before Thanksgiving, we couldn’t resist doing a science to one of them (getting two for control, seemed a bit excessive).
Initial observation:
Roast recipes have always seemed to be a bit of a dark art, with mysterious temperature changes in the middle, cooking times based on mass rather than linear dimensions. These peculiar practices seem to produce delicious results, and presumably have something to do with how heat flows into the meat during cooking. In this post we hope to shed some light on how heat flows through a roast.
While some whisky aficionados may prefer to drink their high end single malt whiskys neat, here at the Doing Science to Stuff headquarters, we tend to prefer our whisky on the rocks. This unfortunately dilutes the whisky considerably. As we have previously mentioned, the shape of ice can influence both the amount of dilution, and the amount of cooling when using ice. But what about cooling methods that don’t involve the melting of ice?
Recently we acquired a set of spherical ice molds at the primary testing facility. While the idea of spherical ice is exciting all by itself, the packaging for the molds makes several bold claims about the properties of spheres. Having all of the equipment on hand to test those claims, we decided to do science to them.
As we have previously mentioned, buying frozen steaks can be much less expensive than buying fresh steaks, and the quality was nearly indistinguishable, based on our previous experiment. However neither steak in that experiment was as good as a decent rib-eye should be. There was also a serious lack of control in that experiment with regards to the starting quality of each steak. In this study we examine the effects of freezing a steak starting from two steaks that are nearly identical. The goal is to see if it makes sense to stock up on steaks when they are on sale and freeze them, or is it better to simply wait until they are on sale to enjoy them.
There are a number of reasons you might want to use non-chicken eggs in cooking (allergies, taste preferences, availability), so in our first installment on examining the use of non-chicken eggs, we will quantify some of the differences between chicken, duck, and goose eggs.
When it comes to cooking certain cuts of meat, low and slow is definitely the way to go. Done properly this will melt collagen into mouth watering gelatin, which is absolutely amazing! A slow cooker can be an excellent way to do this, however for some reason meats cooked in a slow cooker can come out dry even when there is plenty of liquid surrounding the meat. To explore this phenomenon we did science to meat.
Living in an area that commonly gets over 200 inches of snow per year, having a bit of extra protection from the elements can be very beneficial. But what happens when that protection is no longer needed. Why Science of course!
When making a martini, shaking with ice is a common technique to mix the ingredients. This has two easily measurable effects. The first is that the martini is cooled by the melting of ice. The second is that this melting dilutes the martini. The melting of ice seems to occur even if the gin and the ice are the same temperature initially.
For some reason, we ended up with a large number of chicken breasts in the house over the weekend. Not to waste the opportunity, we did additional science to them.
Doing Science To Stuff 