Louise-Adélaïde Boisnard 8:58 p.m., December 04, 2021

You will spike your Sunday roast with garlic, you will marinate the meat twelve hours before a bourguignon, you will cook 100 grams of pasta in a liter of water ... All these cooking rules are passed down from generation to generation. But are they really effective? Arthur Le Caisne, the guest of Laurent Mariotte comes to shatter several myths. He is the author of En cuisine, all the truths are good to say! 60 received ideas, sprayed for better cooking at Marabout editions.

"Cooking is not a matter of transmission. The good old traditional recipe is not the best to follow", affirms Arthur Le Caisne, author of

En cuisine, all truths are good to say! 60 received ideas, sprayed for better cooking

at Marabout editions. With the help of scientific arguments, he corrects received culinary ideas. "What we call traditional cuisine, it is very recent. For example, the addition of rice in the blanquette of veal is only 50 years old. The crème fraîche entered the dish 100 years ago thanks to to the Lady of Saintonge. "

French cuisine was codified around 120 years ago by Escoffier.

According to Arthur Le Caisne, we must change these codes because in the meantime food and tools have changed.

And above all, science has brought a lot of new knowledge which sometimes contradicts certain gestures that we pass on to each other.

On the set of La Table des Bons Vivants, he returns to several received ideas.

Prick the roast with garlic?

Useless

"A roast must be cooked at 55 degrees. Except at 55 degrees, the garlic remains raw and it does not diffuse its flavor. This practice dates from the Middle Ages when meats were pheasant. We therefore saved the taste a little. spoiled by putting in garlic, by pricking the pieces. It's a bit like marinades, it was used to protect meats and to modify their taste. "

Do you really have to salt the meat before cooking it?

Yes, but on condition that you salt it the day before.

"Salt it just before cooking it is of very little benefit. The salt must have time to penetrate the meat. We have made measurements with an electron microscope, there is no salt in it. inside the fibers when salt is added just before or right after. There is absolutely no difference. "

Always remove meat to room temperature before searing it.

Yes and no

"It depends on the thickness of the piece. You better take out a steak about two hours before cooking it, to have a rare meat. On the other hand, for roast beef, I do the opposite. that is, I put it in the freezer for an hour before cooking it. It's insane because the surface of the meat will be very low and it will be perfect for browning it. "

100 grams of pasta = one liter of water

"It depends on the pasta. If it's fresh pasta, you need a lot of water. If it's dry pasta, it's not necessary. Of the 10 minutes of cooking time, 8 minutes is only useful. 'to rehydrate the dough. Lots of water is heresy. It is useless because the starch on the surface of the dough becomes gelatinous quite quickly, one to two minutes is enough. water, it will dilute the starch content of the pasta water. And as you put it in the sauce, it will make it less sticky. If the water is more starchy, then it will stick more to the pasta, you will use less of it and therefore your sauce will be less diluted. "

How to cook roast chicken?

"The real problem with chicken is that the whites are cooked when they reach 65 degrees and the thighs 75. So there is something unstoppable. You have to remove the string from the chicken, it is just used by the poultry. that meat takes up less space in their fridge. Then you have to lengthen the thighs to the maximum. When you go to lengthen the thighs, you will refine the muscles. This is what I call chicken yoga. So, they will cook much faster because they will reach 75 degrees faster while keeping the whites at 65 degrees. "