The 5 Best Food Blogs for Cooking Science
5. Jet City Gastrophysics
The Story
Jet City Gastrophysics is a team venture, powered by three guys living in Seattle. They share a passion for food and exploration of new cooking techniques, and they also all see modernist cuisine as “an excuse to blow up stuff”. Eric Rivera has been cooking for a while now and also has his own cooking blog, independent of JC Gastrophysics. Jeth Rollins Odom discovered he had a thing for cooking through Annick Giroux’s Hellbent for Cooking, which brought together his passions for music and food. Scott Heimendinger also runs his own cooking blog (see below) and is the famous inventor of the DIY $75 sous vide immersion circulator.
The Blog
The blog is precisely about what the byline says it is about: “exploring modernist cuisine in the Northwest”. It’s based on the Modernist Cuisine book, which includes a whopping 1522 recipes, of which 54 have already been presented on the blog. This brings the project at a 3.5 per cent rate of completion. You can find the entire list of completed recipes, including book page numbers and components on the blog. However, the blog also offers a host of other resources, such as recipes replicated after the Ideas in Food blog, product and restaurant reviews, recommendations, as well as the daily serving of tales from the crew’s day-to-day life (like that one time they applied for a food patent). It also has a handy list of other modernist/molecular gastronomy blogs which you might want to follow, if you’re interested in this style of cooking. But perhaps the coolest thing about this blog is that it provides very detailed explanations and photos of each step in the cooking process, with observations on the original recipe.
Blog Metrics
PR – 3/10
DA – 30
Alexa Rank – 1,745,731
Fans & Followers – We found the JC Gastrophysics team on Twitter, with some 900 followers.
Foodie Philosophy
“Jet City Gastrophysics is a group of guys in Seattle passionate about food, exploring the cutting edge developments in cooking to find new ways of thinking about cuisine. And an excuse to blow up stuff.”
Simple, to the point, and also just a tad tongue-in-cheek funny: that’s what Jet City Gastrophysics is all about. Check out their experiments below (and be understanding about the quality of the photos).
Signature Recipes
4. The Alinea Project
The Story
Allen is not exactly the type of guy one would imagine taking up a cooking project, yet that’s exactly what he’s doing with The Alinea Project. He is originally from Kentucky, but has been living in San Francisco for a while now. He works as a visual effects artist – and confesses that a single meal all but changed his life. He ate at the Alinea in Chicago in 2008; that same year, his girlfriend Sarah gifted him their “fantastically-amazing cookbook that appeals exactly to my obsessive-compulsive nature” (Allen’s words, not ours). He found it hard to believe that the chefs at the Alinea restaurant would just freely give away their secrets like that, in a cookbook, so he set out to see if he could replicate their meal concepts. Make note of the fact that Hemberger’s day job, as it were, is all about understanding how stuff works, in a very thorough sense.
The Blog
The blog was born out of Allen’s encounter with the Alinea cookbook; he has decided to maintain it, in order to chronicle his experiences with the book, make note of the corrections he needed to make while progressing through it, and share his hobby with his friends. He does his own photography, which he confesses is another one of his passions – and we have to hand it to him, the photos look impeccable. The blog also includes an errata to the cookbook itself, for all those who might want to follow in Allen’s footsteps. He has also included a progress section, which he updates as he moves from one recipe to the next, as well as a list of ingredients used thus far. Of the 107 recipes in the book, Allen has already gone through 105, now sorted by seasonality, which means he’s just about done with the project. We’re curious to see what he comes up with next!
Blog Metrics
PR – 3/10
DA – 32
Alexa Rank – 1,432,169
Fans & Followers – We haven’t found the project on any social network, but you can get in touch with Allen himself via email or Facebook.
Foodie Philosophy
“This project is providing me with lots of excuses to buy exotic kitchen equipment and ingredients and avoid doing my laundry. I also enjoy photography, so I wanted to turn an attempt to work my way through the Alinea cookbook into a cooking project, a photo project, and a writing project all in one.”
What The Alinea Project does, essentially, is to show that, with a certain degree of both artistic and technical skills, molecular gastronomy can be replicated at home. Of course, one does need to have the right tools and gadgets for it, but it’s by no means impossible to enjoy modern restaurant fare made in one’s kitchen. Check out the photos below to see for yourself.
Signature Recipes
3. Seattle Food Geek
The Story
Scott Heimendinger is something of a personality in the (modern) cooking world. He lectures on the subject of contemporary cooking, has been featured on popular site All Recipes, the New York Times ran a piece on his DIY sous vide machine, writes for the Seattle Weekly, for the Fearless Critic Seattle Restaurant Guide and has had several recipes published in cook books. But how did it all start for him? According to his own rendition of the story, he discovered cooking after leaving home to attend Carnegie Mellon, as he was looking for a way to cope with the stress of programming and homework. Though he was strapped for space, he still managed to provide an alternative to eating on campus. Then, as he moved to New York to work for IBM he discovered dinner parties will help him make friends in the new city. When he moved to Seattle in 2006, cooking helped him find his wife Rachel – but he only discovered sous vide cooking a bit later. He had an egg at a local restaurant and decided it was unlike anything he had ever tasted before. So he delved into the world of molecular gastronomy, its recipes, and accessories.
The Blog
The first thing you notice about the Seattle Food Geek blog is the great whimsical design of its category menu, modeled after the periodic chart of elements. That’s where you find quick access links to all the relevant pages on the blog: instructional videos, information on sous vide cooking, reviews of books and restaurant, blog entries on modernist cuisine, recipes, gadgets, and all sorts of cool DIY home cooking ideas, the modern way. The blog’s photography section is also a must-see, since it’s incredibly informative for beginner food bloggers and photogs: it comes in handy with simple, clear-cut tips, such as the fact that “light is the most important part of food photography”. The blog also includes a useful list of Food Geek-approved gadgets that a modernist chef might be interested in owning, such as grills, barbecue accessories, and sous vides. According to Scott, the mission of the blog is to explore the techniques used in modernist cooking, experiment with them, and make them easier to sample for regular people.
Blog Metrics
PR – 5/10
DA – 48
Alexa Rank – 765,530
Fans & Followers – The niche website has got some 900 Facebook fans, but the extent of Scott’s popularity can be better gauged on Twitter, where he’s rapidly approaching the 6k follower mark.
Foodie Philosophy
“We are on the verge of a new world of food, led by a handful of genius chefs and mad scientists, and I plan to revel in every new taste, texture, ingredient, thought, consequence they have to offer.”
One look at Scott’s photos and you’ll know he is enjoying every second of his cooking and dining experiences. He is creative, yet accessible, humorous and creative, and an invaluable resource for those who want to try their hand at modernist cooking. Check out some samples below.
Signature Recipes
2. Khymos
The Story
Martin Lersch holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry and lives in Norway. His topics of research at work involve platinum complexes, which one day could be used to turn natural gas into methanol. Martin is currently a researcher at a privately owned company and dedicates some of his spare time to molecular cooking. It all started with his discovery of the connection between food and chemistry in the late ‘90s, via Harold McGee’s now seminal book On Food and Cooking – The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. As he became more and more educated in the topic, he started lecturing in it and is now a rather well-known figure on the molecular gastronomy scene. The references which he initially used as departure points for his lectures became the groundwork for his present day blog.
The Blog
Khymos, the word which lends the blog its title comes from ancient Greek, in which it meant ‘juice’ – a word that relates both to the medieval concept of alchemy, as well as to the science of chemistry. In Greek, it’s also connected with ‘khein’ and ‘khymatos’ (‘to pour’ and respectively ‘that which is poured out’). According to the blog’s author, this means khymos is a sort of link between chemistry and food, much like molecular gastronomy. The blog is very information rich, as well as appropriate for anyone, irrespective of their previous knowledge on molecular gastronomy. There are academic articles, experiments, podcasts, and book review, but he’s also got more accessible features, such as flavor pairing and ‘Fun with Food’. If you’re curious about sous vide cooking, make sure to check out that section as well. The blog has recently been featured in the November issue of prestigious geek culture magazine Wired, for its author’s à la carte recipe for DIY mineral water, which includes a mineral water calculator, too.
Blog Metrics
PR – 5/10
DA – 52
Alexa Rank – 888,381
Fans & Followers – You can follow Martin and his “tasty molecules” on Twitter, along with his other 2k fans.
Foodie Philosophy
“Since I enjoy cooking and eating, this naturally led me to ask many questions in the kitchen. Why didn’t that recipe work? Do I really have to mix the ingredients in the given order? What happens if I heat this a little more? Luckily, being a chemist, I could also answer some of questions.”
That’s molecular gastronomy for you, in a nutshell, and that’s also the inquisitive nature that Martin displays, in his articles, podcasts, lecture, how-tos and recipes. Check out some of his work in the small gallery below.
Signature Recipes
1. Ideas in Food
The Story
Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot met back in 1997, in the kitchen of Clio, a Boston restaurant. They’ve been cooking and blogging together since. Other than that, Aki and Alex also run a culinary consulting business, through which they hold workshops for gastronomy professionals, which they promise are tailored to the audience’s tastes. They’ve worked with chefs, restaurants, art institutes, and major commercial brands. They’ve released several books so far: Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook, Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work, and Ideas in Food – The Photographs – Book One.
The Blog
Ideas in Food is at once one of the more complex molecular gastronomy blogs out there, as well as one of the most accessible for newbies. The blog got off the ground in 2004, when the team behind it realized they needed a sort of ‘digital notebook’ to record their kitchen work at the restaurant they were both employed at. Since then, it has come to include numerous other things, such as books, restaurants, posts that talk about their lives, and, most of all, tales from their kitchen. The website has become iconic in the molecular gastronomy world, because it manages to focus on information and creativity to the same extent, all the while pairing them with great pictures. The multiple award winning blog is maintained by two authors who have accolades in academic writing, several books to their name, as well as TV appearances. You can check out the books and other writings by them, as well as press links, information about their classes, and an amazing food photography section on the website.
Blog Metrics
PR – 6/10
DA – 54
Alexa Rank – 405,046
Fans & Followers – Unfortunately, Ideas in Food doesn’t seem to be present in social media, but be sure to let us know if you find them!
Foodie Philosophy
“A solid understanding of science and technique coupled with high quality ingredients, modern equipment, and innovative approaches to cooking makes anything possible.”
Indeed, Aki and Alex are all about science, but their main goal in teaching people the principles of that science is to help them express their own ‘voice’ and style through cuisine.
Signature Recipes
Get a buzz with our best blogs for drinks on the next and final page of the article!