Sheldon wrote:
> Sarah wrote:
>>> About the tented with foil thing:
>>>
>>> I've always done this. But I was reading "Heat" by Bill Buford and he
>>> describes Mario Batali telling him that "only an idiot would use foil on
>>> cooling meat". Does anyone have any idea why this would be bad? Just
>>> curious.
>>>
>> Apparently, roast beef should be 'dry' cooked, by tenting in foil it steams,
>> and so the crusty outside goes soggy.
>
> Nothing steams and nothing goes soggy (roast meat is not a loaf of
> bread).

If the meat surface is over about 185F, it's steaming from
the juices migrating to the surface. If there's a Maillard
crust on the surface of the meat, the steamy environment
will soften it.

> The tent slows the rate of cooling so juices can more readily
> be reabsorbed rather than they drip into the pan,

Meat juices once lost are never *never* reabsorbed. Fats
rendered are fats now outside the meat. They don't go back
in, as a moment's glance at a cold roast pan can attest.
Water-based juices are in the pan because the proteins that
once held them have released them. Cooked meats don't
reabsorb those juices because the proteins are permanently
changed by cooking. If meats did reabsorb juices, there
would never need to be a dry roast or a dry bird.

> and the tent
> increases humidity so the meat surface does not become tough...

Nah. The meat surface doesn't "become tough" if not tented.
It's as tough as it's going to get when taken out of the
oven, and that is determined by the degree of doneness - the
absolute temperature - it is. Any crust that might be there
softens a bit because of the moisture in the air - the water
vapor.

> humidity ain't steam, were it we'd all be dead...

<LOL> Steam is a variant of humidity. Water vapor is another
word for it. Humidity is a measure of how much water vapor
is in air. Poor Cookie Katz can't get past his navy
definition of steam from 40 years ago

> no steam is produced,
> not inside the oven, not outside the oven, no steam is created from
> tenting.

<LOL> So when a person wearing glasses opens the oven and
their glasses fog, there's no steam? Moron.

Let's get all technical here. Steam is generally thought of
as different than the wisps of water vapor we can clearly
see evaporating from every roast ever done, every pan any
roast has ever sat in, and every foil tent that has rivers
of condensation inside it. Most common usage says that steam
is invisible and under pressure, but the simple fact is that
steam is the vapor product of boiling water, under pressure
or not.

So steam is indeed created in ovens. Every time we cook in
an oven, there's steam as a product. It's exactly what
happens in a loaf of bread, a meat roast, a braise, or
anything else. No steam is *created* by tenting; but steam
is most certainly restricted in movement by tenting.

> I've watched Mario Bertali's shows enough to learn he's about
> the dumbest embarrassment to humanity of all foodtv personalities, he's
> your typical ignorant dago pasta bender, can barely speak without
> constantly stumbling over his own greasy WOP tongue... Mario Buffooni
> has a serious speech impediment or he's sucking some thing.

I always rely on degenerate, sex-besotted, too-old,
drug-addled, ex-navy shipboard butt targets for critical
analyses of...<LOL> anything. Right. Anything. I find it
instructive when the critic can't spell that which he's
criticizing. Adds, credibility.

Did I say credibility? I meant blowholeness.

Pastorio