Parchment paper and aluminum foil

I’m working on a cooking-related research project right now, and some questions have come up about aluminum foil and parchment paper. I’m trying to understand why people use one or both, what the pros and cons are, and if there are any specific problems that might prevent you from using them.

For me, I don’t use foil for much besides cooking packets of veggies on the grill, and baking pies, either to cover the outer edge of a pie crust to keep it from browning or to line an unfilled crust and fill with beans or rice to keep it from rising.

I really don’t use parchment paper for much anymore since I got a Silpat, though on the rare occasion I bake a cake, I cut out circles for the bottom of the pan. I’ve never cooked Salmon en Papillote or its ilk, and nothing in this thread made me feel like I was really missing out.

But am I missing something here? Does anyone feel like they should be using foil or parchment more, but aren’t because … why?

And does anyone use them (foil and parchment) together?

foil is often used as an air tight seal, generally over plastic wrap to avoid freezer burn. beware of acids though (like tomato product).

The kind of dish you're talking about like salmon en papillote has gone out of fashion, and to some extent taken parchment paper with it-- though in some ways the new fad of sous vide cooking is a modern variation on it using newer technology.

I think the main virtue of parchment cooking was simply that it gave the home cook, or the busy restaurant, a bigger margin of error with a dish like fish-- you could overcook it slightly without drying it out. Since you were going to sauce it anyway, probably pretty heavily, all you really cared about was texture, not so much appearance. Now we want a cool center and a seared, crispy exterior, so salmon which is an even, crustless pink doesn't appeal. (The seared-exterior-cool-interior kind of cooking also has a certain margin of error in it, since you can plausibly claim that anything from cool to done in the center was intentional.)

Incidentally, though your 50s Kansas farmwife probably didn't know from parchment, cooking in a paper bag was a common technique for reaching the same result, and in fact the only difference between the editions of the legendary, out of print but much-in-demand Sunflower Sampler is that a paper bag recipe in the first edition was removed after it apparently caught fire in somebody's oven.

I love the non-stick aluminum foil! I line my pans when I am making something that would be messy or crusty (chicken strips, potatoes, fries) after baking. I also use foil on top of baked pasta or enchiladas. It's really more of a convenience factor to ease the cleaning process.

The only time I ever use parchment paper is when I make rice krispie treats - again for the ease of cleaning and removing the finished squares, and also to help me press them down into the pan.

I use parchment at the bottom of my pans when I make caramels, marshmallow or pates de fruits. I brush a bit of melted cocoa butter on it (except with the marshmallow). I also use parchment when making nougat. Instead of putting it in a pan to set, I pour the nougat onto parchment and shape it into a log, using the parchment and a bowl scraper to shape.

I prefer cake rings to cake pans and cover my sheet pans with parchment.

It's also great to have around when you need to make cones to pipe chocolate and such.

In my old foodservice days, I ran a hospital kitchen for a small hospital where the average age of the patient was about 70 years old. We had a "restaurant style" menu with about 15 entrees available at every meal and daily specials. In other words, we were producing small quantities of a number of entrees each day.

When we would serve roasted meats (i.e., pork or beef), we would cook a roast to medium rare. We would slice and portion the meats. We would place 6 servings of each meat in a foil pouch separated with parchment paper. We would reheat the pouches in an oven with a little water in the bottom of the pan. The meat would turn out quite well.

When this was first suggested, it sounded pretty bad. However, it turned out very well.

I like to make fish that way (wrap it up with veggies, herbs, etc) and bake. Since I do it at home for me and DH, I use foil. If I were doing it for company I might use parchment, which would be a prettier presentation.

Use parchment for baking pizzas (frozen and home made) on a pizza stone--for convenience and it doesn't inhibit crispiness factor too much. Also use parchment with punched holes for steaming buns/dumplings.

I use parchment paper quite often -- always to line cookie sheets and cake pans. I line baking sheets with it for soda bread or scones or for any sticky dough that you bake directly on the sheet and not in a pan. I guess if I had Silpats, I wouldn't need the parchment, but so far, I haven't gotten around to buying them.

I use foil to cover baking dishes that don't have lids, and to wrap foods to keep them warm while I'm finishing the rest of the meal. Oh, and to wrap vegetables for cooking on the grill.

For pans that need lining, I generally use foil -- mainly because it's cheaper and more readily available than parchment. If the purpose of lining the pan is to make cleanup easier, foil is leakproof, too.

I also use foil for wrapping leftovers that are going to be reheated in the oven (although now that I reheat most things in the microwave I'm more likely to use plastic wrap or plastic bags). Foil is also the covering of choice for foods that have browned sufficiently but need more oven time to cook through.

I line pans with parchment for certain kinds of baking, mainly because the recipes call for it. Meringues, for example. I haven't tried those on a Silpat.

I have done a certain amount of cooking en papillote; the advantages I see are that it frees you from basting and keeps the food moist without making the finished product too wet. Paper is porous, so you don't get that steamed effect. The Julia Child quotation cited by Hammond in the thread damning papillote was actually about a specific recipe, "cotelettes de veau en surprise," and Child was agitated about it because she failed a question about its ingredients on a cooking test at the Cordon Bleu. She was not opposed to the concept of cooking in paper in general and offered a number of recipes for the technique over the years.

My grandmother was one of those housewives who swore by roasting turkeys in a brown-paper grocery bag. I ate too many of her delectable golden fowls to ever disagree with her. After grocery bags started being made of recycled paper with a high metal content, my mother tried oven bags, but they really steam the turkey.

When I experimented with roasting turkeys in parchment, I found that not only did it work just as well, but gift-wrapping one's turkey is loads easier than trying to shove a greased-up 22-pound bird into a brown-paper sack.

The paper-wrapped turkey can be cooked at a relatively high temperature without drying out and browns beautifully with a crisp skin. It's perhaps not so picture-perfect as open roasting -- if you're not careful, the paper can stick -- but it produces a more Norman Rockwellian product than many other speedy turkey roasting methods.

Aaron Deacon wrote:But am I missing something here? Does anyone feel like they should be using foil or parchment more, but aren’t because … why?

And does anyone use them (foil and parchment) together?

I just realized I didn't answer your question very well. I don't use foil as much any more because it doesn't go into the microwave oven and I use parchment for specific uses -- it's a little more available than it used to be so I do in fact use it a bit more often.

I can't imagine anything that would require using them together.

I've always had parchment paper on hand, but had no regular use for it until the LTH pizza-making thread of a few months back: when I saw the pics of pizzas sans pizza stone(pizza on parchment paper...paper directly on oven rack) there was no turning back. Now...another issue is regular parchment paper vs. "unbleached/organ-ick"). I happened upon a SLuT sale of the unbleached awhile back so bought a plethora cheap...but...does anyone really discern a difference...or is it merely ideological?

Thanks, all, for the replies...this is both interesting and helpful.

jazzfood wrote:foil is often used as an air tight seal, generally over plastic wrap to avoid freezer burn. beware of acids though (like tomato product).

Are you saying that you wouldn't freeze acidic substances, like tomatoes, in foil, even with an intervening layer of plastic wrap? I find it interesting that you used foil for freezing...I almost always use either a plastic container (e.g., Tupperware) or plastic wrap/Zip-loc bags. What sorts of things do you freeze in foil?

Pucca wrote:I love the non-stick aluminum foil!

Good call...this product somehow was completely off my radar, though do you find it a lot more effective than spraying regular foil with non-stick cooking spray?

Een wrote:I prefer cake rings to cake pans and cover my sheet pans with parchment.

It's also great to have around when you need to make cones to pipe chocolate and such.

You know, I've always been intrigued by the idea of cake rings...can you really just set them on a baking sheet and not worry about batter seeping out through the bottom?

Do you use parchment alone for piping? It seems like it might be too flimsy to give you the control you'd want. Do you tape it at the bottom to control the size of the hole?

jlawrence01 wrote:We would place 6 servings of each meat in a foil pouch separated with parchment paper. We would reheat the pouches in an oven with a little water in the bottom of the pan.

Would you seal the foil pouches when reheating?

leek wrote:I like to make fish that way (wrap it up with veggies, herbs, etc) and bake. Since I do it at home for me and DH, I use foil. If I were doing it for company I might use parchment, which would be a prettier presentation.

This I may have to try...I don't cook enough fish, and it's still hit and miss for me. Do you use the 10 minutes/inch method? Do you wrap loosely with foil, or seal tightly? Do you ever get any foil-taste transferred to your food?

LAZ wrote:For pans that need lining, I generally use foil...

Do you use the non-stick foil mentioned above, or do you just grease the foil with butter or Crisco or Pam? Or are you thinking of non-baking applications...are there any times you'd line a pan with foil and not want it non-stick?

(As an aside, your turkey-cooking comments (combined with this thread on brining) have me thinking about Thanksgiving...we're hosting both sides of the family this year. Now I've only cooked a handful of holiday turkeys, and I admit to liking to mix it up a little bit...mole poblano one year, Thompson's turkey (not this variation, but you get the idea) another, sometimes a straightforward brine. I can't imagine having a standby, go to, "this is how I cook a turkey" method down until maybe 20 years from now. Have others experimented that much, do you cook turkeys other times throughout the year, or do you tend to find something that works and stick with it?)

do you cook turkeys other times throughout the year, or do you tend to find something that works and stick with it?

I like my traditions traditional, so I pretty much do the classic T-day dinner every year-- the only item that gets varied much is the sweet potato dish (this is the only one I've ever been happy enough with to make repeatedly). So a brine, and the traditional roast a la Cook's Illustrated's instructions, is standard for me. But I usually buy a couple of birds on sale after T-Day and make them by other recipes (usually just smoking). It may just be a failure of imagination, but turkey just doesn't do much for me dressed up with mole or whatever-- it doesn't gain as much from the other flavors as beef or pork would, and it loses turkeyness.

Most of all, in my wife's mind the point of roast or smoked turkey is sandwiches the next day-- so I interfere with that flavor at my peril.

Aaron Deacon wrote:

leek wrote:I like to make fish that way (wrap it up with veggies, herbs, etc) and bake. Since I do it at home for me and DH, I use foil. If I were doing it for company I might use parchment, which would be a prettier presentation.

This I may have to try...I don't cook enough fish, and it's still hit and miss for me. Do you use the 10 minutes/inch method? Do you wrap loosely with foil, or seal tightly? Do you ever get any foil-taste transferred to your food?

I usually do it for 15 mins, because I load it up with lots of raw veggies and want them more cooked. I tend to use salmon, too, which wants longer cooking. I used to use tilapia, but it seems more and more muddy tasting.

Aaron Deacon wrote:

(As an aside, your turkey-cooking comments (combined with this thread on brining) have me thinking about Thanksgiving...we're hosting both sides of the family this year. Now I've only cooked a handful of holiday turkeys, and I admit to liking to mix it up a little bit...mole poblano one year, Thompson's turkey (not this variation, but you get the idea) another, sometimes a straightforward brine. I can't imagine having a standby, go to, "this is how I cook a turkey" method down until maybe 20 years from now. Have others experimented that much, do you cook turkeys other times throughout the year, or do you tend to find something that works and stick with it?)

A few years back I tried something I read (no idea where) and cut out the bone from the back, flattened the bird, and that makes cooking so much faster! The breast doesn't dry out, it's really marvelous. I put onions, garlic, celery and carrot underneath into the pan to roast that will become part of the gravy. Separately, I make a stock from the back, giblets, onion, etc. I normally serve some sort of sweet potato, some sort of green bean, some sort of stuffing (sometimes 2 if I am ambitious), salad, cranberry relish, pies. Unless someone attending MUST have a particular preparation, any of the sides can be different from year to year.

Aaron Deacon wrote:

jlawrence01 wrote:We would place 6 servings of each meat in a foil pouch separated with parchment paper. We would reheat the pouches in an oven with a little water in the bottom of the pan.

Would you seal the foil pouches when reheating?[/quote

Yes, we would seal the foil pouches on the ends.

no. what i'm saying is that you do need the intervening layer of plastic between the foil and the acid. otherwise, the acid in the tomato product eats through the foil.

in pro food service i may use plastic and then foil especially for reheating or longer term freezing. what you don't want is air. i'd also wrap w/plastic and then w/foil if it's an individual order such as racks of lamb or shrimp... or i may make several lasagnas and freeze for later use. then i'd cover the hotel pan w/plastic and then foil for reheat.

HI,

I use parchment to cover baking pans, because it 100% assures me I will be taking it out in one piece. Buying it in the small rolls is pretty expensive and I keep all scraps because sometimes all I need is a small piece.

As others have stated before, I will use foil for lining pans where the cleaning will be especially intense. I also use foil to wrap the waterpan on the WSM for cleaning convenience. I will use it on racks holding a turkey, though I have to remember to punch holes in it to release the juices as it cooks.

Is there a source for buying volume parchment on a roller akin to buying foil and plastic wrap at Costco?

Regards,

A good source of parchment paper would be GFS Marketplace. They sell in a higher quantity than you would get in a grocery store.

Still looking for raw peanuts?

You know, I've always been intrigued by the idea of cake rings...can you really just set them on a baking sheet and not worry about batter seeping out through the bottom?

If it's a biscuit-type batter with a good amount of whipped egg whites, it's perfect. If you overwhip the whites, you will have seapage but usually not too much. A creamed-batter wouldn't work with the rings.

Do you use parchment alone for piping? It seems like it might be too flimsy to give you the control you'd want. Do you tape it at the bottom to control the size of the hole?

I only use the parchment when I pipe chocolate but would use it for other things if nothing else was available. If you make a tight enough cone, you just cut the tip as much as you need. For control, you roll the top down, kind of like a tube of toothpaste.

Aaron Deacon wrote:Do you use the non-stick foil mentioned above, or do you just grease the foil with butter or Crisco or Pam? Or are you thinking of non-baking applications...are there any times you'd line a pan with foil and not want it non-stick?

I've never tried the nonstick foil. It doesn't seem like something I'd buy unless it costs no more than the regular kind. I did try the foil cooking bags and found them kind of silly -- you can make your own with very little trouble.

I use foil for all kinds of nonbaking applications. Most of the cooking ones have to do with easy clean-up options. Sometimes I crumble it to make an impromptu oven rack. Sometimes I form it into a makeshift baking pan for something light. Another frequent application is freezer wrap, especially for food that's going straight from the freezer to the oven.

I have also been known to use it for emergency gift wrap.

Aaron Deacon wrote:I can't imagine having a standby, go to, "this is how I cook a turkey" method down until maybe 20 years from now. Have others experimented that much, do you cook turkeys other times throughout the year, or do you tend to find something that works and stick with it?)

Well, the first time I made Thanksgiving dinner all on my own was in 1986, and I'd been helping out with the family turkey for quite a few years before that.

These days I don't usually get to do the big holiday cooking thing, because other family members' child-sharing arrangements mean that if we want to spend the holidays with them, we have to go there. So I cook turkeys at other times.

LAZ wrote:I have also been known to use it for emergency gift wrap.

My emergency gift wrap is the comics preferably the Sunday section, though the weekday variant will work as well.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:My emergency gift wrap is the comics preferably the Sunday section, though the weekday variant will work as well.

Yes, I've used all sections of the newspaper, and once I even wrapped a gift in greenbar computer printout paper, but foil works when you're out of tape.

As I mentioned in the first post here, this thread was prompted by a research project I've been working on, some new product testing actually.

A little more info...the stuff is called Chef's Wrap, and it's basically aluminum foil fused with parchment paper. It's one of those products that seems sort of cool to me, but I'm really not sure how people are going to use it (which, ultimately, is the goal of the research, I guess) and what the benefit is.

The genesis of the product had something to do with neutralizing the reactive properties of red wine and foil (not really ever a problem in my own cooking), but there are a lot of potential applications. The question is, are they any better than just foil or just parchment?

I gave a few people some product samples when I was in town last month, though haven't gotten any feedback ( ), but we're about to get a lot of rolls of the stuff in and thought I'd offer a roll to anyone else who wants to give it a shot.

Send me a PM if you're interested.

Aaron

Funny - just found this post, and I was going to comment that I use them differently for similar purposes because of their different qualities (your product would kind of negate that for me)

For instance, to make a round circle that fits in my cake pan, I fold a square into quarters, then into a triangle starting at the center point, then once or twice more and cut off the outside edge the length of the radius of my cake pan (boy, that sounds complicated! It's literally simple as pie!) Perfect shape liner - can't do that with aluminum foil, as you can't spread it out again.

Aluminum foil has the property of being able to form to a shape and stay that way, and deflects heat (piecrust edges, tenting your turkey breast, sealing a package to go directly on the coals) Can't do that with parchment.

Here's one reason to use them together: cheesemakers recommend taking store-bought cheeses out of their plastic wrap and storing them in your refrigerator wrapped first in parchment paper, then in foil. This less-than-skin-tight wrapping lets the cheese breathe a little without drying out, and the parchment paper keeps the surface of the cheese from getting clammy, and out of contact with the foil. I don't know if aluminum foil really would impart any off taste to cheese; I'm just reporting what I've read.

For cooking fish, rather than parchment (or foil which I think affects the taste badly) I like this clear product:

http://www.jbprince.com/index.asp?PageA ... rodID=3583

You can see the fish cooking which makes it less risky to be overdone.

bibi rose wrote:For cooking fish, rather than parchment (or foil which I think affects the taste badly) I like this clear product:

http://www.jbprince.com/index.asp?PageA ... rodID=3583

You can see the fish cooking which makes it less risky to be overdone.

Interesting...thanks for that, I'd never seen that stuff before. I know the foil affecting taste was a big motivator behind this stuff, though truthfully I've not used foil enough for cooking, for example, fish, to ever notice.

where does wax paper fit in this discussion? I always thought that wax paper and parchment were pretty much interchangable (in fact for a long time I thought they were the same thing), but after a couple of sticking experiences, and being called an idiot, I have been disabused of that notion. Supposedly the parchment is infused with silicon which has a higher temperature threshold as well as different sticking properties. I have a couple of rolls of both and am now too scared to use either of them.

-Will

WillG wrote:where does wax paper fit in this discussion? I always thought that wax paper and parchment were pretty much interchangable (in fact for a long time I thought they were the same thing), but after a couple of sticking experiences, and being called an idiot, I have been disabused of that notion. Supposedly the parchment is infused with silicon which has a higher temperature threshold as well as different sticking properties. I have a couple of rolls of both and am now too scared to use either of them.

-Will

Wax paper should not be exposed in an oven. It can be used in baking application to line the bottom of a cake pan, but it should not be exposed. I don't use wax paper for much besides maybe wrapping up a piece of cheese.

Parchment paper does indeed have a silicone application to it. It can be exposed to high heat. You can cook on it or inside it (en papillote). I use it constantly.

Best,
Michael

Funny that this thread should resurface to the top of the board at this moment. "En papillote" recipes are featured in the new issues of MSL's Everyday Food (April 07) and Cooking Light (April 07).

Both magazines have good how-to articles, EF being a quickie and CL having an extensive feature.

Fish seems to be a really common theme. EF does Salmon and CL does mahi-mahi, salmon, shrimp, lobster tails, trout and halibut as well as several kinds of chicken, eight recipes in all in both foil and parchment.

So if you are a happy recipient of one of Aaron's experimental foil-parchment rolls, you might want to stop at the magazine rack to pick up some ideas and inspiration!

--Joy