Fried rice hints

[steuard]

When following a recipe for fried rice that calls for "frozen peas, thawed", it's a good idea to ensure that your peas are in fact entirely thaw: this ensures that they don't still have any little bits of ice trapped inside their skins. Furthermore, although your recipe may not state this explicitly, it's a good idea to pat the thaw peas dry before using them in the recipe.

This has been a public service announcement.

Meanwhile, two fun facts for the day:

1. Have you ever wanted to coat a wide range of surfaces with a uniform thin coat of oil? Just heat the oil and then sprinkle small drops of water into it. The sudden boiling of the water will spray oil in all directions. Handy hint: It's also effective to drop in lots of small damp objects.

2. Peas can act like popcorn! Take some incompletely thawed peas and heat them in oil: after a few seconds, the ice crystals inside will turn to steam, explosively bursting their shells and launching the peas across the room.

Comments

[steuard.livejournal.com]

For the sake of my own pride (but to the detriment of my hypothetical cooking show), let me emphasize that I don't usually end up with quite this level of kitchen chaos. I was just tossing together a quick lunch without really thinking about what I was doing.

Still, I'll bet Alton Brown doesn't run into pop-peas too often.