How to cool food quickly – Kau Kau Kitchen

Two things about cooking a big batch of something. You need to get it in the fridge, and you need it to be cold when you put it in, otherwise the warm food will over-work your fridge and everything else will get warm.

Last night, while getting ready to pack up the tripe stew I made, I stumbled on a quick and easy way to do it!

I put the stew in baggies and set them back in the (now washed) pot. Between the baggies of stew I slid frozen gel-packs—the same kind you use to chill food when camping.

Then, remembering that air is an insulator and water is a conductor. This is why Jack died and Rose lived – the cold water lowered Jack’s core temperature quickly. Yes! There was room on the door! If he’s gotten out of that cold water he would have lived!

But we do not want anything to live in the food we are chilling, so faster is better. The water allows for faster equalizing of the temperature differential between the frozen gel-packs and the food, so the food drops to a refrigerator-able temperature nice and fast.

Instead of taking all night, the pot of tripe stew took a little over an hour.

Celebrating Hawaiʻi Foods and Lifestyles since 1983

Kau kau (pronounced “cow cow”) means “food,” or “meal” in Hawaiian pidgin. It is also used to mean “to eat,” as in “let’s go kau kau” – “let’s go eat.”

The Kau Kau Kitchen cooking column started in 1983 in the Hawaiʻi Tribune Herald. Then-editor Sherm Frederick was looking for a new cooking column. I suggested my mother. Sherm was excited, and said he’d love to have a local person write the column. I eplained that my mother actually lives in California. Ok, that would not do. So I asked if he minded if I wrote the column, myself. He invited me to submit some columns, and thus my writing career began.

The first column was on the Kona Coffee Festival. I’ve still got a copy of it somewhere. As soon as I find it, I’ll post it.

After writing it for a year or so, I self-syndicated and it began appearing in the Maui Sun newspaper, a small magazine in Las Vegas, and a few other publications catering to HawaiÊ»i expats. It also grew into a radio show on KHLO, and a short-lived TV show on Hilo’s old Channel 2. Diamond Papaya did a Kau Kau Kitchen special on Papayas, and the brand was featured in some local cooking events created to promote local agriculture and food products. Some cookbooks and kitchen products also spun off the original column.

I was fortunate to be invited to lots of great foodie events I never would have otherwise seen, and I got to meet many wonderful folks in the industry. But juggling all of that was a lot of work. I ended up putting Kau Kau Kitchen on “autopilot” for a few years and returned to school, seeking a degree in journalism.

After a number of career twists and turns, with Kau Kau Kitchen cruising along, primarily existing as books and occasional event or media appearances, the Internet was born. Kau Kau Kitchen went on-line.

I’d already been producing Kaʻahele Hawaiʻi (by now the world’s oldest Hawaiian culture and arts website), for a few years. Konabob Stoffer of KonaWeb had helped me to set it up. So putting Kau Kau Kitchen online seemed quite doable. It was much more cost effective than paper publishing, and I could reach far more people.

Now, after 40 years of covering Hawaiʻi’s mixed-plate food and culture, I am looking forward to what the future will bring!

A hui hou!
~Leilehua