Status: Urban Legend
I know a lot of people who swear by the notion that you have to sear meat "to seal in its juices." But I've always thought the idea was a bit far-fetched (though I agree that meat is best cooked hot and fast), so it pleased me to read, in
a review of Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, that most food experts agree that it is indeed an urban legend that searing meat will seal in its juices.
About.com's barbeque expert agrees:
By definition, searing is to cook something hot and fast to brown the surface and to seal in the juices. Yet many of the leading cooking experts agree that searing does not seal in juices. Frankly the idea that you can somehow melt the surface of the meat into a material that holds in all the juices seems a little strange to me. But whether you believe searing seals in juices or not, a great cut of meat needs hot, dry heat to caramelize or brown the surface to give it that great flavor.
The same review of Davidson's
Oxford Companion to Food lists a number of other food myths. For instance:
MSG Causes Headaches (aka Chinese Restaurant Syndrome): "Jeffery Steingarten, food editor of the Vogue in New York, debunked this myth pretty comprehensively. Given the widespread use of MSG in China, he asked why weren’t there a billion Chinese people with headaches? He then went around relentlessly researching the theory in his characteristically thorough way, and came to the conclusion that MSG, taken in normal quantities, was perfectly safe." (I know many people who swear they get headaches after eating MSG, so I'm reluctant to accept this as an urban legend. But some quick research reveals that a
controlled study at Harvard University also concluded that MSG in food doesn't cause headaches.)
Croissants were invented during the 1529 Siege of Vienna, when a baker who foiled a Turkish plan to breach the city's walls was rewarded by being given a royal licence to produce crescent-shaped pastries: "Davidson debunks this romantic legend and informs us that in fact, the first reference to croissants did not appear until 1891, more than two centuries after the siege of Vienna."
In the Middle Ages spices were used to mask the flavor of spoiled meat: "Davison cites Gillian Riley to rubbish the notion... Indeed, in pre-refrigeration days, we had assumed that the role of spices and heavy sauces was to conceal the fact that meat had spoiled. Riley makes the valid point that in those days, spices were far too expensive to be used for this purpose."
Chop Suey was invented by a Chinese restaurant in California which threw together odds and ends ('chop suey' in Chinese) as a meal for drunken miners: "according to Anderson, quoted by Davidson, chop suey is a local dish from Toisan, a rural district south of Canton. In Cantonese, its name is tsap seui, meaning 'miscellaneous scraps'."
Comments
I don't know about much of the rest of this stuff, but I do know that MSG does cause headaches and I know why
MSG is put in food because if tells the brain that it likes the food, making it addictive.
MSG is an excitotoxin(sp), it excites the brain cells making them fire until they die
There is a natural defence though. B6 will protect the body against MSG.
Perhaps these 'experts' tested it on people with high B6 levels.
One final word every time I've had MSG I've gotten a headache unless I've prepped myself with B6 first.
This goes back to before I even knew MSG was the cause.
Sorry I had to vent, cos hearing that something I suffer from is supposed to be bullshit is bullshit.
MSG is not the "death" compound you think it is. MSG is an additive that has been used for centuries without any recorded problems. It wasn't until 1908 when it was finally isolated from seaweed. Moreover, most clinical trials, including some double-blind trials, have failed to find any symptoms arising from consumption of MSG, even large amounts, when taken with food. However, when taken without the presence of food (in raw form) there was a slight increase in symptoms of the MSG compared to the placebo (a placebo is a sugar pill used in psychological studies to make the subject think they are taking something they aren't). Yes, people can be MSG-sensitive; perhaps it's a deficiency of Vitamin B6. It is clinically proven that after taking 50 mg of vitamin b6 every day, eight out of nine people who were "MSG-sensitive" were no longer affected by it.
Personally, I avoid msg because I think that it's just like salt--too much of it is definitely unhealthy. In fact, until I posted this entry, I had never realized that msg had its defenders.
😝
"MSG Causes Headaches (aka Chinese Restaurant Syndrome): "Jeffery Steingarten, food editor of the Vogue in New York, debunked this myth pretty comprehensively."
Spoken just like the local doctor that was convinced that migraine headaches do not exist and that anyone suffering from them was just a malingerer. He has been pretty badly debunked over the last decade.
So, this one isn't a myth. I would consider "miscellaneous scraps" to be "odds and ends". Maybe the feeding it to drunk miners is a myth...but that doesn't seem like the point.
I heard about "searing in juices", but after trying it a few times, it's obvious that juices DO leave your meat WHILE SEARING. I think it just sort of starts the cooking process and it's able to cook more quickly in the oven. And I can't remember what it's called, but I used the scrapings in the bottom of my pan to help with the gravy.
Er, only in the way that sugar or salt tell the brain that it likes the food - i.e. by stimulating your taste buds. Glutamate is a naturally occuring amino acid, so MSG adds the "umami" taste associated with high protein foods.
Glutamate is used as a neurotransmitter, and so in large quantities it may act as an "excitotoxin", yes, but that you can achieve this effect by eating MSG (rather than having an epileptic fit or something) seems doubtful,
I think I'll take a look at that Harvard study.
It has always been my understanding spices were used to improve the taste of bland food common during this time.
But I would like to know why the spice trade was SO important. There are more people with more disposable income today, yet spices aren't made a real big deal.
First of all, spices became common when edible lokal herbs were added to food (soup, bread, ) for variation in tastes.
Meat from domesticated animals in the Middle Ages didn't differ much from todays meat, although the quality was less constant, it depended on how well you could feed your animals.
But refrigerators didn't exist, so they used to prevent their meat from rotting with techniques such as drying, smoking and salting. With those techniques, however, meat loses most of its original taste. So when you take the (not rotten) meat out of the chimney or barrel, it requires some flavor, hence the herbs/spices.
MSG headaches are largely psycho sematic. You have a head ache because you're afraid of your food. You have a head ache because your mum/magazine/girlfriend/naturopath/etc... told you to have a head ache when you eat food with MSG in it. I'm sure, like with all things, too much can be a bad thing, but in moderation, it cannot be as evil as some hypochondriacs make out.
Upon reading Jeffrey Steingarten, I felt liberated from a life time of food phobias. I would recommend his book to anyone who wishes to have an adult relationship with their food, and embrace food as a friend, rather than a feared foe.
Sarcasm aside.. 😛
There are MANY things that may cause (or suppress) these reported reactions (or lack of), and even careful scientific studies cannot always be accurate and properly ferret it out. Else why don't we have a cure for cancer? Why do we still know so little about our own bodies systems? Heck, at one time, it was considered scientific fact that the Earth was flat and the Sun and stars rotated above and below.
While I certainly agree some people may have a poor reaction to large amounts of MSG, it could also be psychosomatic hysteria, or any other of many ingredients and complexes used in the preparation of various foods, or even simply using *too much*.. Indeed, many vitamins, minerals and complexes *required* for healthy operation of the human body, are downright deadly when taken improperly or in excess.
There's also a lot of variation among humans--YOU may suffer adversely from high MSG foods, but I do not, nor do I personally know anyone else who has adverse reactions to MSG. (And I, and all the people I know that I can think of off-hand, avoid MSG in general, so it's not even a case of "acclimatization," either.)
Just some food for thought. 😊
If you do, indeed, have a hardcore reaction to MSG, perhaps you have a larger problem, which could be some sort of reaction to Glutamates in general - including foods such as tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, anything that has an Umami flavor profile. Umami flavor comes from glutamates.
You will feel nasty if you eat too much salt at one sitting as well!
This is the first time i have used a store bought sauce.
Woke up this morning with a splitting headache.
Never had a headache in my life in the morning.
Checked the ingrediants on the jar........MSG.
Coincidence or not? Somehow i don't think so.
If you're concerned about having a sensitivity to glutamates, perhaps you should consult with a physician.
(Besides, if it's from China, the REAL culprit is probably the lead in the food coloring, not the MSG, silly!)
1. SOME PEOPLE WHO EAT ASIAN CUISINES, PARTICULARLY CHINESE, KOREAN, AND TO A LESSER DEGREE JAPANESE, DO IN FACT GET HEADACHES AND ABDOMINAL DISCOMFORT AFTER INGESTING THE FOOD.
2. IT IS NOT THE MSG IN THE FOOD THAT CAUSES THESE SYMPTOMS.
There is no correlation between MSG and "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". This does not mean that you are imagining your symptoms. True, a very low percentage of those who have this issue are in fact suffering from a placebo effect, but there are lots of other compounds in these foods which are the real culprits. MSG has been demonized by the press and food activists and is thus being used as a scapegoat. In reality, the "symptoms" are caused by a number of factors.
A few examples: Soy sauce and other fermented ingredients commonly used in these cuisines contain histamines, which are by-products of the fermentation process. Histamines can cause headaches and are found in most naturally fermented products, including wine and beer - hello, hangover! Soy protein (found in tofu, edamame, soy sauce, miso, saitan, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, etc.) can cause gas, bloating, and loose stool if it is not a regular part of your diet, as the enzymes needed to break it down are not produced by your body if you don't consume it regularly. Then it ferments in your digestive system, causing even more histamines to be released. This may be responsible for the 12-hour delay often noted between consuming the food and headache.
The real tragety of MSG is an environmental and humanitarian one. A good portion (200,000 tons per year) of the world's MSG is manufactured by the Lianhua coroporation in a plant located on the Huai river basin, where hundreds of people have died and continue to die due to the horrible pollution the plant (and others) dump into the river. Here is a link:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/quality/2004/0912chinapollution.htm
Maillard reaction browning is also responsible for toast, malted barley used in beer and malt whiskey, roasted coffee, and the flavor profile of dried or condensed milk (and, yes, dulce de leche...yum!). Yay, Maillard!
I can eat Japanese food because they do not use it in their food (miso soup has some, depending on where you go); a lot of Chinese restaurants use it, as do Korean and Vietnamese restaurants.
And for those who believe a food critic's assessment of something that causes people health problems, maybe you should ask him to be your physician as well.
We add it to almost every meal we make at home. My husband and four kids and I all love the taste - it's harmless, is natural in a long list of foods, and doesn't cause any ill effects.
So, this one isn't a myth. I would consider "miscellaneous scraps" to be "odds and ends". Maybe the feeding it to drunk miners is a myth...but that doesn't seem like the point.
The main part of the myth is that it was invented in America. This is not true. The fact that the meaning of the name is accurate doesn't mean that the rest of the myth is also accurate.