Go to the Article: Mastering the Maillard Reaction
"Combining these ideas, try making a wash that's 1–4% reducing sugar and 0.25% baking soda and brushing it on your meat before browning."
Please, I do not understand. What does the percentage means here? Thank you!
What (in non-chemist speak) can I use as a reducing sugar?
Take 100% weight water and add 1-4% reducing sugar, such as corn syrup, and 0.25% baking soda. Mix well. Brush the wash onto the meat and then brown with your favorite heat source.
Corn syrup is mainly glucose and fructose, which are both reducing sugars. Butter has milk solids that contain the reducing sugar lactose. Or check the fun table comparing sweeteners at Opusculum and order a sweetener online that promotes the Maillard reaction and has the other properties that you want.
This only really works because of the low amount of sugar and baking soda. In reality you would want to know how much you're making and go from there. If you have 100g of water and added 1-4 grams of sugar and .25 grams of baking soda, you would get, at best, a 101.25 gram solution. This causes the water solution to be a bit more diluted than expected. If you were to make a solution that's, 40% solute, you would not want to add "100%" water. You would only want 60%. 100% is your final weight. Always calculate based on what your target weight is. If I know I want a 60 gram solution, multiply that by the percentages you want.
Hmmmmm? Drat - isn't there another way of explaining this for us lunk heads? Can I just sprinkle some baking powder (or is it soda) - on what I'm preparing......
can the same baking soda technique be use for. browning the toppings of a cassava cake, need help on this cause we are still on hit or miss for. the browning of the toppings and its causing inefficineffies on our process
Came her to find a recipe and ended up with math homework. How did that happen?!
Im trying to hack the pretzel wash without having to boil them in a basic solution. so im kinda wondering the same thing. I want that mahogany brown surface on my buns.
This reply helps tremendously. Worth an edit to the original text above so we don't scramble.
I was hoping to combine this spray with my flavor profile Peking style roasted on theBb Q Turkey for me Christmas dinner - will that affect the outcome?
Can someone translate this into cups and teaspoons?
Please trust me, your cooking will improve remarkably when you get rid of cups and teaspoons and start weighing all your ingredients.
As far as making a wash to increase the Maillard reaction, the recipe above calls for using water. Doesnt water slow the Maillard reaction down? Why not just make a solution of reducing sugars (i.e. glucose) and baking soda using the ratios above? It looks like the wash would be 4 to 16 parts reducing sugar to 1 part baking soda (by weight).
Or am I missing something?
Thank you,
