The power of touch...
I was reading an article on how many cooks nowdays have an aversion to touching foods while preparing a dish...either raw or cooked ingredients. Thoughts were related to the take over of a hands-free approach, meaning machines doing our work...like food processors, pasta machines, bread machines & such. Without that human touch, how can we connect with the food & cook well? Thoughts & examples were: the doneness of fish or a steak without cutting into it, tossing salad with the fingers & one I can relate to---the process of making pie crust which for me is a go by feel must! So are you squimish about touching food during the preparation? Certain foods only? What works for you---share your tips! Side note, not talking board of health requirements in a commerical setting :)
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23 Comments:
Oh my gosh! Reading your post blows my mind! Kneading bread. Tossing a salad. Making meat loaf. If you didn't get in there hands on...how would you know .. if it was right?
NanaJoie at 5:11PM on 12/18/07
Only in this country have we become so jaded as to distrust people to the degree of the article you're referring to. Yes, food poisonings, e.Coli outbreaks and other instances should have us worried about our food processing. But is it so much that we can't trust friends and family to prepare our foods? That we can't trust ourselves? A few days ago I wrote a blog entry based on a BBC study stating that rinsing poultry actually does more harm than good because the bacteria doesn't rinse away but is instead relocated to being all over everything. It doesn't help that TV cooks promote the same process. There's no common sense to a lot of food safety issues at home because, meanwhile, a lot of pro chefs bring beef to room temperature before grilling it, going against the health codes they supposedly have to support.
Can you tell the over-regulation and over-promotion of so-called "food safety" is a sore spot with me? ;-)
LunaPierCook at 5:41PM on 12/18/07
I wash my hands obsessively (from touching food), which means that my fingers can get sort of raw. So touching onions and garlic hurts like hell, but I haven't found a way around it.
I don't toss salads by hand these days, but if it was a large bowl of salad, I would.
I don't knead bread by hand either because I'm lazy, and because I always end up adding too much flour, and because I like the sullivan st. recipe. With pie crust by hand, I usually fail and overwork the dough.
Where does a hand-cranked pasta machine fit in the spectrum? I'm not good enough to work by hand, and I lack the necessary counter space, but when I use the machine I wish I had a third arm. Or a motor.
But I think these tasks are viable with a machine: it's a tool for the cook to get the job done. A different aspect relates to people who won't touch raw meat, but will eat it, or people who don't like to handle the meat (deboning, stuffing, etc). The only way around that is through processing and other peoples' hands. Much iffier.
renzata at 5:46PM on 12/18/07
excuse me? Wash your hands and wash your tools. And go for the feel.
: ) It will come out gut!
NanaJoie at 5:58PM on 12/18/07
I don't like the feel of raw meat, although I do touch it (with bare hands) regularly. I like to explain this with the fact that my mom had a strong raw meat aversion when she was pregnant with me. In her case it was the smell, so that's probably not it, but it's a nice thought.
Everything else I'm glad to moosh around.
wellred at 6:04PM on 12/18/07
I love getting my hands into my cooking! I wash my hands often for the sake of the health of those I feed. But the experience would not be as sensual without inserting fingers into meatloaf, or kneading my dough.
Mich23 at 7:06PM on 12/18/07
I'm always in there with my hands. How would I know that my chicken was cooked to the correct doneness if I didn't touch it? How would I know how much salt I was adding if I didn't season by hand? And are there really people out there that don't roll their pasta dough out with a wine bottle and cut it with a knife?
Kerosena at 7:33PM on 12/18/07
i just finished making a batch of matzo balls, which required me to scoop up blobs of batter and drop them into boiling water with the ends of my fingers -- very messy and satisfying it was, too.
cybercita at 9:26PM on 12/18/07
My hands are my favourite tools! Meatballs, meatloaf, croquettes, crab cakes, stuffed cabbage/peppers/tomatoes/grape leaves/apricots, pie crust, yeast dough, matzo balls (thank you,cybersita!), latkes, even roasted potatoes (before roasting them, of course, not after) - how would I ever make any of these without using my hands?:-) Needless to say, I may wash my hands 15 or 25 times in the process (that's why I have the faucet that I can open using just my wrist, or the back of my hand, since - ironic, I know - I would hate to have a messy faucet). Then again, I also taste uncooked meat when I make meatballs or croquettes to determine the amount of salt and other spices needed...
brooke29 at 9:59PM on 12/18/07
"Then again, I also taste uncooked meat when I make meatballs or croquettes to determine the amount of salt and other spices needed..."
@brooke29: Ya' know, some people are going to throw up in their mouth a little bit when they read that! But at the same time, I do recall some of my relatives having done the same thing ... and then, I was queasy when confronted with Steak Tartare for the first time (which, of course, turned out to be unfounded). I'm thinking there are cultural issues involved in how we feel about such things.
LunaPierCook at 5:27AM on 12/19/07
Oh puh-leeze! I agree, it's impossible to make meat loaf and matzoh-balls with out getting your hands messy, but that's part of the fun! I think the media has over-emphasized this subject to a point where it's ridiculous. If you're really overly-concerned then get a box of those surgical gloves that the celebrity cooks sometimes use on the Food Network. Oh and Brooke29, I love to set aside a bit of raw steak or hamburger, put a slice of onion on it and slap it on fresh rye bread with good Dijon mustard. I'm still here and I've never gotten sick from it!
RichardCrystal at 8:40AM on 12/19/07
There's some defense in not touching RTE foods without gloves but you are 200% correct - there are some foods that require the human touch to prepare correctly. I recently taught my BF to knead dough properly ("You knead dough with your entire body from the knees up.") Until he threw his whole body into it, his dough was bumpy and never resembled a baby's behind.
I'll admit that sometimes I'm more in the mood to chop onions than others, but that tactile sensation of feeling flour in my hands, shaping a perfect dinner roll or slamming a batch of brioche against the counter like my Chef/Instructor taught me is a big chunk of what I find so rewarding about cooking.
How do you cut a perfect brunoise without grabbing up all of those carrot or red bell pepper matchsticks? How do you form a perfect burger or meatball without cupping your hands just right?
@brooke29 - Nabbing a little of that prepared "meatball mix" before mom could get them all into the oil was a Sunday Morning Sport that rivaled football!! People can't fathom that now but in those days, we somehow didn't have a good dose of disease in with our chop meat.
chiff0nade at 8:47AM on 12/19/07
I won't make bread with anything but my hands. The only way I can tell if my kneaded dough is ready is by touch. My breadmaker was tossed, my stand mixer is hardly ever used, because I must touch my dough and lovingly knead it into perfection.
I also temper chocolate with my hands. I melt it over a double boiler, remove it, and then stir it with my very clean hands. It's in perfect temper when my fingers and the chocolate feel like one- meaning no discernible heat. Yes, it's terribly messy, but I make the best chocolates when I temper by hand. Then I proceed to hand-dip most of my chocolates if I'm not using molds.
My hands are the most valuable tools in my kitchen
ErikaWaz at 9:11AM on 12/19/07
If it can be done with my hands, I do it with my hands. Everything from tossing salads to shaping meatballs. I don't know how one would cook without doing so. Of course, I have absolutely no aversion to eating with my hands either. At home, alone, I will happily eat my salad, leaf by leaf with my fingers. I would never do such a thing in public.
The one area I'm a little hinky on is handling raw chicken. I'm so paranoid about contamination that I was my hands constantly during the process. I finally figured out that if I put the seasonings in a little cup before taking out the bird, I'd save myself 80% of the washing/drying, etc., so that's been a help.
See, I don't remember such poultry paranoia when I was younger. Has it always been there and I just started noticing it about 10 years ago, or is it relatively new?
chisai at 9:27AM on 12/19/07
@chisai, I can recall back in the 1960s my mom browning both chicken and pork on the stove prior to any other preparation to ensure it was going to be safe to eat. She and dad still won't eat anything that's at all pink inside.
LunaPierCook at 10:09AM on 12/19/07
Everything with my hands, always. Tossing salad, making meatloaf, testing for doneness, you name it. I love the feel of food. Raw chicken? So what! I rub the seasonings in, then wash my hands. Also for putting leftover pasta in a ziploc bag...it's the only way! As Grandma used to say, "You've gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die."
Barbara Hanson at 11:00AM on 12/19/07
I used to be squeamish before I started cooking. I wouldn't even grab a potato out of the bin for my mom if it had any bit of an eye growing on it! I loathed touching raw meat, I hated getting my hands dirty. Now, I'm in there like a pig in s**t (as my dad likes to say). It really is the only way! Plus, I'm lazy, and washing my hands is easier than washing a bunch of utensils or blender/food processor parts!
psychsarah at 11:47AM on 12/19/07
I didn't know this was going to be such a "touchy" subject :) I appreciate all of you who have chimed in; well said & thoughtful! Myself, I love preparing ingredients with my hands---shaping all those little Buckeye balls the other nite, scraping globs of dumpling dough into soup and as a young bride, picking the last bits if cooked turkey off the carcass. Excuse me while I go shred & layer the cheese for tonite's lasagna...
JEP at 2:18PM on 12/19/07
Another cook here who can't fathom the notion of cooking food without touching it. The only food I don't like touching is unidentified leftovers from the back of the fridge!
thebasilqueen at 2:21PM on 12/19/07
I'm very hands-on, and since I'm rather compulsive about hand-washing even when I'm NOT doing kitchen stuff, it's really not a problem (too many years in healthcare have left me with permanently chapped hands that look much more aged than my youthful-for-my-age face). I can't imagine not using your hands to prepare food. And, like others here, I'm big on eating with my hands. Actually, everything about food is sensory to me, and I use all of them with regard to it.
My only real *aversion* to hands-on is working with raw ground meat, because I hate having it under my fingernails. My solution is to wear surgical gloves (when I think of it, which is only maybe half the time) because it MUST be done by hand!
And, I do like to use mixers, etc., for certain jobs, or at least portions of those jobs, but only as a work-saver, not to avoid touching the food.
LoCo at 3:14PM on 12/19/07
I use my hands for everything! Yesterday I made chocolates filled with home made marshmallow and i doled out the marshmallow using my hands, it was so much fun! (just keep your hands wet!)
lola27 at 2:06PM on 12/20/07
Cooking without touching is like sex without touching!
CookiePie at 2:26PM on 12/20/07
I use my hands, too. I don't know any other way to make hamburger patties - you gotta get your hands in! Also, there's no other way I know to get the meat off the leftover chicken or turkey bones. And breaking down a chicken is fun with just hands and a boning knife. I don't like buying chicken parts.
And I know there are all kinds of machines for chopping vegetables for you, but I don't use them. I just use my knife. I don't like all these inventions that get my hands out of the food.
minstrel at 4:47PM on 12/22/07