Cooking Myths (Part 3)

It sometimes surprises people to know that a tightly-packed refrigerator or freezer is actually much more energy efficient than a loosely-packed one.

It shouldn't be so surprising. Air has almost no thermal capacity. We've discussed that in the context of an oven but the same principle applies to a freezer.

The things that keep the insides cold are actually the walls and the food and beverage items.

That's why a packed freezer will stay cold for a long time during a power outage.

So if you have a packed fridge like the CC, you can pat yourself for being more energy-efficient.

An Ode to Fried Onions

They are brilliant of course, particularly on topping rice as many a mujaddara-fan probably knows.

They are a bit of a pain to make so the CC decided to do some scientific tinkering around. He quickly realized that if you could have the onions lose moisture naturally before frying then the frying would be faster, and there'd be less splattering (both worthy goals to pursue.)

Naturally, that brought the humble refrigerator into light since modern refrigerators are dessicators. The fridge is a natural dehydrating agent since they dry out the main cavity to prevent growth of bacteria and mold. Sticking the onions sliced up thinly overnight in the refrigerator tends to dry them out which is not a good thing normally but it's brilliant for fried onions!