Idle Time

For many years I’ve used Michael Chu’s telling of the chocolate chip cookie recipe printed on every Nestlé Toll House chocolate chips bag. Chu’s version is the recipe that radicalized me into using a scale to measure flour; to this day, I use 360 grams of flour for a full batch, or (more often) 180 grams for a half batch, and I pay no attention at all to how many cups that is.

But part of Chu’s telling has always stuck in my mind:

… Nestlé’s recipe only states: “2 ¹⁄₄ cups all-purpose flour”. Is this flour sifted (as all flour should be before measuring), unsifted, or settled for one year and then packed down to fit as much as possible in a cup? I tested the whole range of flour density options starting with the USDA standard 125 g per cup (sifted) up to the maximum I could push into a leveled cup, 160 g per cup.

Recipes (should) always use sifted measurements when providing volumes of flour because of repeatability. If a recipe used unsifted flour, it would be nearly impossible to replicate the exact same quantity of flour using measuring cups because it’s impossible to tell how much the flour has settled. (See Kitchen Notes: Wheat Flour for more commentary on measuring flour.)

I can testify to that—back when I followed the recipe directly from the bag, I once tried making a half-batch and it was a mess. They came out completely wrong.

The linked article says, in the section on measuring, “Whenever possible, flour should be measured using a scale.” Since I learned that, I’ve made numerous half-batches with the flour scaled by weight, and they’ve come out perfectly every time.

So I wouldn’t even say you should measure flour by sifting it—you should weigh it. But, of course, that requires knowing what the correct weight is. Back in the recipe, Chu continues:

Unfortunately, in the case of this recipe, it was clearly not written with 125 g per cup in mind. After testing a whole range of flour measurements, it seems that 160 g per cup (or a total of 360 g) of flour was the intended quantity. For those of you who do not use kitchen scales and wish to dry measure this amount – it’s a little more than 2-³⁄₄ cup sifted flour.

Chu bases his conclusion that “360 g… of flour was the intended quantity” on, as far as I can tell, what he expects a chocolate chip cookie to be. He finds 280 grams of flour—roughly the weight of the prescribed 2+¹⁄₄ cups of flour if that flour has been sifted—to produce “thin and chewy” cookies that lack the body he expects, and finds his expectation fulfilled only at the upper end of the scale, 360 grams.

To be fair, his expectation is corroborated: Nestlé also make pre-made dough, in both break-and-bake and scoopable-tub forms, and the cookies so produced are more similar to what I’ve gotten from the 360-gram version of the recipe. An interpretation of Nestlé’s recipe that doesn’t get at least similar results to Nestlé’s pre-made dough rightly should be questioned.

At the same time… Nestlé employ professional bakers and recipe writers, don’t they? They should know full well that flour should be sifted when measuring by volume. Surely if they intended the recipe to use 360 grams of flour, but wanted to specify that in cups, they would have given a number of cups that equates to 360 grams of sifted flour?

For a long time I let that matter rest. Then I remembered something:

Nestlé didn’t create this recipe. They’re quite open about the fact that Ruth Wakefield, the proprietor of the real Toll House inn from whom they bought the recipe and the trademarks, created the original recipe back in the early 20th century.

So maybe there’s an earlier version of the recipe? What did Ruth Wakefield herself have to say about it?

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Sometimes I bake from scratch, and sometimes I work from a box mix. Either way, having an accurate recipe to follow is vital for consistently correct results, whether it’s from a cookbook or from the back of the box.

I’ve found errors in the package directions for a couple of Betty Crocker products: their “Batchables” cookie mix, and their boxed chocolate chip muffin mix.

If you’ve ever tried the different variations on a Betty Crocker package and gotten wildly different results than you expected, it might not be that you screwed something up—you were following bad directions.

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While I was writing the previous post about sodium in frozen chicken, it occurred to me that I should also include info on sodium in the lemon-pepper seasoning I often add to it, and eventually I decided to split that off into its own post.

I have high blood pressure. Have had for years. I take medication, but I’m also trying to reduce the sodium in my diet to limit how much it contributes.

It turns out that lemon-pepper seasonings, which I use frequently, are a significant contributor of sodium, as they all include salt (presumably sodium chloride) as one of their top two ingredients. Sigh.

There are salt-free options and I’m going to have to try some of them at some point. In the meantime, here are the sodium contents of all of the lemon-pepper seasoning products listed on Safeway’s website (minus the explicitly salt-free ones), plus the one currently in my kitchen, along with where “salt” is listed in the ingredients list.

These are all based on 1/4 teaspoon of seasoning, which ranges from 0.7 to 1 gram depending on brand. Most of these have either salt or pepper as the first ingredient; I’ve noted the exceptions.

[Content note: This post is about meat used in cooking. If you don’t eat meat, this will be at best academic. If you’re opposed to the eating of meat, feel free to skip this post entirely.]

I have high blood pressure. Have had for years. I take medication, but I’m also trying to reduce the sodium in my diet to limit how much it contributes.

I also do a lot of home cooking, and many of my dinners involve a frozen chicken breast tenderloin. For one person, namely me, this is the perfect serving size of meat protein. Generally I grill it on my George Foreman grill with a dusting of lemon-pepper seasoning.

Frozen chicken typically has some sort of brine solution added to it. I assume this helps the freezing process, or something. One consequence of this is that the sodium content of frozen chicken is greater than refrigerated chicken (which might be a reason for me to switch to refrigerated… hmmm) and also varies widely between brands.

I’m only going to be looking at tenderloins, since that’s what I buy. I’d guess that the ratios would be similar for a different cut—but if you buy a different cut and you care about sodium content, you should probably research the sodium content of your options for that cut yourself.

For most of these, I’ll link to the product online. One of them I don’t have an online product link for; the other, I’ll elaborate on after the table.

All of these are based on the nutrition facts label, which all of them give in terms of one 112-gram (4-ounce) tenderloin.

The least was Trader Joe’s at 75 mg, and the greatest was Foster Farms at 300 mg (with Target just behind it at 280). Quite a range!

One thing I noticed is that nutrition facts published online may disagree with what’s printed on the bag. One example is noted above; another, bigger discrepancy is Safeway’s listing for store-brand frozen chicken tenderloins, which says that those contain 1,090 milligrams of sodium—five times the sodium content listed on the (differently-styled) Safeway-brand bag in my freezer now. That seems like it might be the wrong product’s nutrition facts.

Last year, I started cooking for myself rather than depending on microwaved meals and fast food.

Earlier this year, a realization dawned on me, pertaining to the basic food groups that were drilled into every kid’s head via TV when I was growing up.

Those old PSAs talked about healthy eating, and how it was Very Important to eat something from the “four basic food groups” with every meal. As a kid who greatly preferred cookies to celery, this was no sale to me—I didn’t give a rat’s ass how healthy it was or wasn’t, I wanted food that tasted good. All the droning about “healthy eating” did nothing to make me think about it when deciding what I wanted.

Fast forward 20 or so years, and it hits me: Those “four basic food groups” (the number has varied over the years, as the aforelinked article outlines) are the framework of constructing a meal.

Nearly every single meal in the American diet is some combination of those four groups.

(This is particularly true of dinner. Numerous meals for other times of day leave out some of the groups.)

Here are the groups as I was taught them:

• Meat (nowadays more generally classified as Protein)
• Grains, especially bread
• Fruit and veg
• Dairy, such as cheese

Butter seems to often get filed under “fat” and excluded, which is technically true, but whenever it makes it to the plate, I think it makes more sense to file it under dairy. (Another reason to shun margarine, the False Butter.)

Let’s look at some example meals and how they satisfy the categories.

Note: I’m not claiming that these are all healthy meals—those healthy-eating PSAs are simply where I got the “four basic food groups” from. I’m reappropriating the groups as a framework for constructing meals. Anything that checks all four boxes is automatically a complete meal.

Also, this is mostly observation, not prescription. My epiphany is that most meals, particularly nearly all dinners, already fit this framework.

Cheeseburger

• Bread/grains: Bun
• Meat: Beef patty
• Fruit/veg: Any of lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions
• Dairy: Cheese

Spaghetti and meatballs

• Bread/grains: Pasta
• Meat: Beef meatballs
• Fruit/veg: Marinara sauce
• Dairy: Cheese

Pizza

• Bread/grains: Crust
• Meat: Toppings; often pepperoni, ham, sausage, or a combination thereof
• Fruit/veg: Sauce, plus some toppings, such as pineapple
• Dairy: Cheese

Sandwich

• Bread/grains: Sliced bread, such as white, wheat, rye, or sourdough
• Meat: Sliced turkey, roast beef, or other
• Fruit/veg: Lettuce and/or tomato
• Dairy: Cheese

Dinner plate

• Bread/grains: Often potato-based, such as baked or mashed potatoes; alternatively, rice
• Meat: Steak, chicken, sliced turkey, etc.
• Fruit/veg: Varies
• Dairy: Cheese and/or butter

A meal doesn’t necessarily have to hit all four categories, though. Here are some that don’t:

Hot dog

• Bread/grains: Bun
• Meat: Meat frank, usually either beef, turkey, pork, or a mix of turkey, chicken, and pork
• Fruit/veg: Relish (diced pickles) and/or diced onions (often both omitted)
• Dairy: Omitted

Chili dog

• Bread/grains: Bun
• Meat: See hot dog
• Fruit/veg: Usually omitted, AFAIK
• Dairy: Cheese (optional)

Grilled cheese sandwich

• Bread/grains: As above for sandwich
• Meat: N/a
• Fruit/veg: N/a
• Dairy: Cheese

(On the other hand, panini are basically grilled cheese sandwiches that may include meat and/or fruit/veg.)

Bowl of cereal

• Bread/grains: Cereal
• Meat: N/a
• Fruit/veg: Some folks put chopped strawberries or bananas on theirs, at least in the commercials
• Dairy: Usually milk, but I eat mine dry

Pancakes/waffles

• Bread/grains: Pancakes/waffles
• Meat: N/a
• Fruit/veg: As above for cereal, but can also include blueberries or similar berries (which may be either whole as a topping or chopped and mixed into the batter)
• Dairy: Butter (optional)

Hamburger

• Bread/grains: Bun
• Meat: Beef patty
• Fruit/veg: As above for cheeseburger
• Dairy: N/a

A few points I want to acknowledge:

• Vegetarians will, of course, exclude the meat category. (I consider veggie meats, such as tofu burger patties, to be cheating—you don’t get to check the meat box by having fake meat.) Some vegetarians will also exclude dairy.
• Various dietary conditions, such as celiac disease, greatly restrict what sufferers can eat. I can barely imagine the problems that the tendency of American meals to fit this framework causes to sufferers of dietary restrictions that break it. (Those with celiac disease, for example, must not eat nearly all bread items—anything with gluten.)
• I know very little of cuisine outside of the US. I wonder how much cuisine outside the US fits this same template, and how much is radically different.

This insight leads me to two conclusions:

1. I can “invent” other meals that I might like simply by swapping items in the four boxes.
2. It could be a worthwhile adventure to try to break out of this framework. What would a complete meal look like that doesn’t fit into all four categories? Vegetarians will have some idea in one direction; what other possibilities are there?