What does it mean to temper when cooking?
In cooking, tempering refers to techniques used to stabilize ingredients by carefully heating and cooling them. For example, tempering eggs means that you are combining room-temperature eggs with hot liquid in a controlled manner to create a stable base for recipes like pastry cream.
Tempering chocolate is an advanced technique that requires skill, concentration and a good thermometer. It involves slowly heating and then slowly cooling the chocolate so that the fats crystallise uniformly and the chocolate 'snaps' rather than crumbles when broken.
Tempering is a method of combining two ingredients that are at two different temperatures, one hot and one room temperature or cold. It's used when one ingredient (usually eggs, but sometimes chocolate) cooks at a low temperature or curdles easily. Imagine pouring hot milk or cream into a bowl of egg yolks.
Ingredients typically used in tempering include cumin seeds, black mustard seeds, fennel seeds, kalonji, fresh green chilis, dried red chilis, fenugreek seeds, asafoetida, cassia, cloves, urad dal, curry leaves, chopped onion, garlic, or tejpat leaves.
In the tempering process, melted chocolate is first cooled, causing the fatty acid crystals to form nuclei around which the other fatty acids will crystallize. Once the crystals connect, the temperature is then raised to keep them from solidifying.
The maximum hardness of a steel grade, which is obtained by hardening, gives the material a low toughness. Tempering reduces the hardness in the material and increases the toughness. Through tempering you can adapt materials properties (hardness/toughness ratio) to a specified application.
As a result of the previous work on tempering carbon steels by Cohen and his colleagues [1][2][3], the tempering process can be divided with three stages: stage (1) formation of transition carbides; stage (2) decomposition of retained austenite; stage (3) replacement by final microstructure of ferrite and cementite.
Seasoning/tempering is a technique in which whole or ground spices are briefly roasted in hot oil or ghee in order to extract and release their essential oils thus making their flavour more aromatic.
When chocolate is melted, the molecules separate. When you temper the chocolate, you bond those molecules back together so your chocolate will harden with a glossy, crisp finish.
When you temper something, you mix it with some balancing quality or substance so as to avoid anything extreme. Thus, it's often said that a judge must temper justice with mercy.
How do you temper meat?
Warm tempering is ideal between 75 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit. If your kitchen's ambient temperature rests much lower than that, there are plenty of ways to cheat centers to the right range. My preference is to heat an oven to 150 degrees, turn it off, then leave the defrosted steaks in there for about 30 minutes.