cookcabulary - food words starting with e

Love eating Chinese so you can order the #4? You’re not alone. All of us have “food moments” when we’re stumped as to how to pronounce something, be it wine, an ethnic dish, or an exotic ingredient or food. Cookcabulary includes definitions of food terms, ingredients and dishes so you can become a smarter, savvier eater and impress all your friends. We even have pronunciation guides for those particularly strange words.

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edamame

listen to how edamame is pronounced

edamame (eh-dah-MAH-meh) The Japanese name for green, immature soybeans.

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edamame

edamame (eh-dah-MAH-meh)
Edamame is the Japanese name for green, immature soybeans. But while the Japanese may claim the name, they certainly can’t claim the bean. Soybeans have been cultivated in China since at least 3000 BCE, where they’re revered as one of the “five sacred grains.”

“Sacred” seems appropriate, because, nutritionally speaking, soybeans are nothing short of a miracle. The soybean is 35 percent protein, far outstripping anything else in the plant world. It’s rich in heart-healthy isoflavones. And according to nutritionists, a half-cup of shelled edamame contains as much fiber as four slices of whole-wheat bread, no cholesterol and no saturated fat.

Since mature dried soybeans remain hard and bitter even after long cooking, Westerners pretty much snubbed them until modern science discovered their extraordinary nutritional value. Today some 75 percent of the total world production comes from the United States.

Although they’re in season from late July to September, they’re available in the freezer section year-round. Use them in soups and casseroles. If you’re lucky enough to find fresh edamame, boil them in their pods for about 20 minutes in salted water. Traditionally the Japanese eat edamame by pulling the pods through their teeth to remove the beans and enjoy them with a beer, saying they contain an enzyme that helps break down alcohol. Seems like a theory worth testing.

—Jo Marshall

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eggs

Although we eat them every day (in one form or another), we bet you really don’t know eggs. All sorts of eggs—quail, sturgeon, goose—are delicious, but here’s the skinny on those produced by chickens.

A chicken takes about 26 hours to produce an egg; after a 30-minute rest, she starts the process again. Fertilized eggs are no more nutritious than unfertilized eggs.
Egg shell color is determined by the chicken’s breed.
Always refrigerate eggs; they lose more nutrition in a day at room temperature than a week of refrigeration. But do bring eggs to room temperature to achieve maximum volume in baking.
Eggs are generally edible for about a month. If your recipe calls only for egg whites and you’d like to save the yolks, cover them in water in a tight container, and refrigerate for up to three days. Egg whites can be stored in a tight container for four days.
On average, only 1 in 20,000 eggs might contain the bacteria for salmonella (so you might encounter a contaminated egg every 84 years).
All the fat in eggs (5g) is found in the yolks. Whites provide protein and riboflavin. And while eggs contain protein, iron, phosphorous, and vitamins A, D and E, they have been demonized because of their high cholesterol content (213mg)—one egg pretty much chews up the maximum daily intake that’s often recommended. But it’s saturated fat, not dietary cholesterol, that is the big culprit in raising blood cholesterol levels, and eggs weigh in with only 1.6g of the saturated kind.

—Jo Marshall

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