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Cooking techniques

Blanching

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Blanching is a technique mostly for green vegetables. When you want your broccoli florettes to be bright green and have a little snap or crunch to them. Perhaps on top of a pizza or a Ramen or pho soup. 

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Pro tip: EZPOT

 

When cooking dishes loaded with veggies (like a ratatouille), just remember EZPOT (eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, onions, tomatoes). This is the order of when to add veggies to a dish — from longest cooking (eggplant) to shortest.

Prevent food from sticking to pan

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When cooking a protein like chicken or fish, bring the item out of the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for 15 to 30 minutes. Cold protein  more likely to stick to pan. Also, it's a good opportunity to season the fish or meat while it's coming up to room temperature.

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Next tip, make sure the pan is hot before putting proteins in. Otherwise it's not properly searing.

Next tip. After pan is hot don't use olive oil as it has a low smoke point use a vegetable oil or canola oil.

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Par boiling

is to partially cook a vegetable to be used later in the day to finish the cooking process

Blanching

is immersed in boiling water for a very short period of time somewhere between 45 seconds in a minute or even a minute and a half. It's about bringing out the color of the vegetable along with getting impurities off the outer skin. It allows the vegetable to be used with a certain level of crunch in your finished product. Let's say like a pho soup or Ramen, or perhaps on top of a pizza.

How Long to Sauté Vegetables

 

To avoid overcooking and undercooking, the order of cooking vegetables is:

  • Vegetables with longer sauté time: carrots, onions, and potatoes

  • Vegetables with medium sauté time: broccoli, cauliflower, and bell peppers

  • Vegetables with short sauté time: mushrooms, tomatoes, and leafy greens (some hearty vegetables, like kale, might need to go in with the broccoli and cauliflower items)

Corn starch, slurry instructions

Pork only needs to be cooked to 145°. It's not the same as poultry, which needs to go to 160° 

Add dry herbs early in the cooking process, where as fresh herbs get added at the end to prevent them from becoming bitter.

 

Dried herbs are added during the cooking process to infuse their flavor into the dish. If you added them at the end, you would hardly be able to taste them. Fresh herbs, on the other hand, are added at the end of cooking and can become bitter if overcooked — so keep this in mind as you begin cooking without recipes.

Thickening with Beurre Manie

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Instead of making a roux, you can thicken gravy with a beurre manie, which, despite its fancy French name, is nothing more than a paste made with flour and butter. You won't use the fat you separated from your roast's juices (discard it or reserve it for another use), but the beurre manie approach is a little easier than making a roux. It can be made ahead and offers you more control over the thickness of your gravy, because you can add it slowly in increments. To make a beurre manie, combine equal parts butter and flour and use the back of a fork to work them into a smooth paste, then gradually whisk the paste, about 1 teaspoon as a time, into the already deglazed gravy base simmering on the stove. Continue whisking until the gravy is thick. You can make a beurre manie a day ahead and keep it in the refrigerator until ready to use.

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