Food Blogger Alex Snodgrass Visits Culinary Science Class
October 29, 2024
New York Times bestselling food blogger Alex Snodgrass visited ESD Upper School students in their culinary science class to teach them about emulsions in cooking. This chemistry concept entails combining two liquids that don’t usually mix, such as oil and water, to create sauces, dressings, and other combinations in the everyday cooking process.
When teaching students how to make salad dressings while scaling recipes for mass production, Alex detailed precisely how she managed to create her custom-made dressings, which are now sold in Central Market. One primary action is the process of emulsification, which can be utilized as a thickening agent to make sauces creamier, a flavoring additive in combination with extracts and spices, or as a measure of consistency used in drinks like eggnog to prevent separation. In her lesson, Alex demonstrated how fats can be dissolved in liquids that would typically be insoluble by mixing them with an immersion blender and adding an acidic component to stabilize the mixture.
Alex is one of a handful of guest speakers from which culinary science students will have the chance to learn, allowing them to see how the science of cooking is applied in the industry. Most known for her The Defined Dish cookbook series, which includes The Comfortable Kitchen and her most recent editorial venture, Dinner Tonight, Alex has made a name for herself in the foodie world. The Texas native now lives in Dallas with her partner and two children, continuing the pursuit of her culinary ambitions in the industry and shedding light on how she got to where she is with our students.
This immersive experience will be followed by lessons on fats' use as drivers of flavor in dishes, fats' interactions with starches, and the chemical properties of fats that have implications for health.
It was an honor to welcome Alex Snodgrass to our campus for this immersive experience. Thank you to Alex for sharing her expertise with our aspiring cooks; these lessons add a layer of understanding that is beyond beneficial for our students.
