Raw beef short ribs go into a clear bag and the air is sucked out, encasing them in sealed plastic. The bag is immersed in a 54°C water bath; three days later the meat is deboned, blowtorched, and smoked. This is scientist/chef Chris Young’s idea of barbeque. The recipe is just one of many that celebrate the scientific side of fine cuisine in a $625, 2400-page cookbook of which he is a coauthor.
In 2001, Young was planning to study biomolecular structure in graduate school at the University of Washington, but decided academia wasn’t for him. He’d always enjoyed cooking, so he decided to work as a chef, making money and planning his next career move. “Wow, was that naive,” he now admits. A typical entry-level cook neither makes more money nor has more spare time than the average ...
