Chemistry of Food & Cooking: Pan Seared Salmon with Lemon Garlic Butter Sauce
Reflection Questions
In this project we were asked to find a food that we wanted to experiment cooking with. I chose to do salmon because I had a connection with it because I fish for it in the summers on my family's fishing boat. The experiment that I chose to do with the salmon was cooking it in different methods and figuring out which cooking made the salmon lose the most moisture.
I started with four equal weight portions of salmon, all freshly thawed, rinsed and patted dry. I enclosed each of these in a container that was safe for the heat source used. With the exception of the microwave salmon, I wrapped each salmon in tin foil. For the microwave I used a microwave safe container. What I was looking to discover was the mass (moisture) lost with each type of cooking, and then I wanted to determine if one way of cooking made the salmon taste better or worse than another. I brought each piece of salmon to a temperature of 145 degrees and with each different type of heat source that created different cook times. Then I asked some peers to taste test each piece to see what they think.
Cooking and science are similar in that both use reactants to make products. This is the basics of the Chemical equation, for example H2+ O ----> H2O. On the reactant side we have H (hydrogen) and O (oxygen). to make the product of water (also known as H2O). In cooking, the reactants are the ingredients of the recipe, and the product is the food / meal that is made and eaten. Cooking and science are different in that cooking is intended to create a meal to eat, and science intends to create something new or useful for learning or more science.
“A food scientist studies the deterioration and processing of foods by using microbiology, engineering, and chemistry. They determine nutrient levels of food by analyzing its content. They look for new nutritional food sources and investigate avenues for making processed foods taste good, safe, and healthy. They also find the best way to distribute, process, preserve and package the food.” https://www.yourfreecareertest.com/food-scientist/
A cook isn’t usually quite as scientific as a food scientist - they are working through similar processes, but are not being quite as analytical. They care more about taste and presentation than the breakdown of the foods, nutrients and nutritional content.
I started with four equal weight portions of salmon, all freshly thawed, rinsed and patted dry. I enclosed each of these in a container that was safe for the heat source used. With the exception of the microwave salmon, I wrapped each salmon in tin foil. For the microwave I used a microwave safe container. What I was looking to discover was the mass (moisture) lost with each type of cooking, and then I wanted to determine if one way of cooking made the salmon taste better or worse than another. I brought each piece of salmon to a temperature of 145 degrees and with each different type of heat source that created different cook times. Then I asked some peers to taste test each piece to see what they think.
Cooking and science are similar in that both use reactants to make products. This is the basics of the Chemical equation, for example H2+ O ----> H2O. On the reactant side we have H (hydrogen) and O (oxygen). to make the product of water (also known as H2O). In cooking, the reactants are the ingredients of the recipe, and the product is the food / meal that is made and eaten. Cooking and science are different in that cooking is intended to create a meal to eat, and science intends to create something new or useful for learning or more science.
“A food scientist studies the deterioration and processing of foods by using microbiology, engineering, and chemistry. They determine nutrient levels of food by analyzing its content. They look for new nutritional food sources and investigate avenues for making processed foods taste good, safe, and healthy. They also find the best way to distribute, process, preserve and package the food.” https://www.yourfreecareertest.com/food-scientist/
A cook isn’t usually quite as scientific as a food scientist - they are working through similar processes, but are not being quite as analytical. They care more about taste and presentation than the breakdown of the foods, nutrients and nutritional content.
Community Meal
The Chemistry & Sustainability of Construction
Reflection
- Question 1: What new information did you learn through doing this project? I am interested in 1-2 paragraphs summarizing your new understanding of your topic. I am particularly interested in your new understanding about the two Essential Questions(located at the bottom of this document)
I learned about green cleaning. That means a type of cleaning that uses sustainable resources as it’s ingredients that do not harm the environment or the people using them. This works by substituting one chemical for another - an example is bleach which is harmful from the environment, but cleans really well and sanitizes. A substitute for this is vinegar which can biodegrade and doesn’t emit toxic fumes. When each of these substances touches a bacteria it will destroy the cell wall and therefore stops the chance someone can get infected with the bacteria, but one is healthier for the environment than the other.
Question 2: What new skills, dispositions, or lessons did you learn from this project?
This could include learning a new software program or new skills in a program you were familiar with, learning how to work better in a group or how you can avoid certain pitfalls of group work in the future, learning how to budget time or money on a project etc. Be specific and show the growth you made as a person/student through the work you’ve done.
The growth I have had through this project was learned by the experience of working in a group that was not in my actual class period. This was a lot more difficult than working with a group in my class. The problem was that transferring information from the other two in my group (who had their class prior to mine each day) was challenging. At one point they decided, without telling me that they were going to change the entire project to a different topic. I learned about the change from Steve and had to go discuss it with my group ALOT! This just seemed to take up more time, I wasted a lot of time being told what happened earlier in the day. I would try and work with a group in my actual class in the future.
Question 3: Next year I intend to repeat this project, with a major difference being that several student projects will actually be permanently installed in the new building. As part of the project, I intend to have this year’s juniors (aka YOU) present their prototypes to next year’s juniors as a starting point for the project. As I begin planning for next year’s fall semester and project work, what can I do to make the learning experience as engaging and meaningful as possible for those students?
I value hearing about the aspects of the semester and project you felt were engaging and meaningful as well as aspects of the semester or project that you felt were uninteresting, confusing, or could otherwise be improved.
Specific feedback with concrete suggestions for improvement or about what aspects of the course to keep unchanged are most valuable to me. You are not being assessed on whether you say you liked this project. You are being assessed on the depth of thought your response displays, your specific claims and how you support them.
To engage the class next year I would recommend that you increase the scope of the project - include the community and its needs by interviewing them for concerns that they have. Find a problem, then brainstorm a solution, then actually make the project instead of just an infographic. It would have been cool for us to research how to make green cleaning products and then actually make them - then implement these in our actual school so we could be healthier. Another idea for our project would have been interesting to have testing abilities to see how well the green cleaning products that are available in stores actually work or compare to each other. I would say more hands on, less research would have been more engaging.