I’ve been cooking through Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi
At first I thought it was one of those “15 minute weeknight meals” books that are focused on skipping steps and ignoring technique, but it’s the exact opposite. The recipes are fantastic and I’ve collected a nice pantry of ingredients I wouldn’t otherwise buy.
Thanks for this recommendation! I’m always looking for simple and fast recipes. 99% of the time they start with “pull out the slow cooker” or “open up a can of Campbell’s”. This looks more up my alley.
At least one cast iron skillet and or wok (try wokshop.Com) don’t spend a ton of money on these. You just don’t need to.
A nice thick bottomed stainless pan (I prefer mirror bottom) this is where you need to spend a bit of money - makes a difference, get the best you can afford.
Two to three cheap nonstick pans - more money doesn’t get you a whole lot here, these lose their nonstick properties after a few years of heavy use. I work these hard and replace every 2-3 years.
Dutch oven. Get one. Recommend lodge - similar quality to the French brand and like 1/5th the cost.
Do you mean when cooking them or eating them? When cooking them, I put enough Lawry’s Seasoned Salt to be visible, but not so much that the egg whites are all orange
Honestly, it’s probably a matter of practice, try turning out several batches with varying amounts and see how you like them.
My 12” Matfer Bourgeat carbon steel pan is by far my most used cookware. My cast iron pan has been relegated to steaks and Dutch Baby style pancakes. I use a nice stainless steel sauté pan for anything else I shouldn’t cook in the cast iron or carbon steel
I’ve made Bean and Ham soup in an enameled Dutch Oven, and a Sirloin Tip Roast in my regular Dutch Oven. Roast RecipeThis is my first comment, I hope the link works :) I had made different recipe and found that cast iron on Med High doesn’t play well with oil added to the hot pan. Thank goodness I chose my Dutch Oven, because the lid was right there to smother the flames. Yikes!
This is the only thing I have actually ever used mine for and it was still worth the money. Everything else I would cook in it ends up in a slower cooker or a pressure cooker.
By far my favorite is to have a squirt bottle of water next to my stove. It’s great to have throughout the cooking process, especially if you’ve moved on from Teflon bullshit and are using a pan you pre-heat. To start, you put the pan on the heat and squirt a little water in it. When the water evaporates, the pan is usually in the 350F-400F range. Then when the pan is dry and heated a little more, you can squirt a few more drops in to see if the Leidenfrost effect has taken, uhhh, effect. The way you tell is that the water just dances around on the pan instead of behaving like water normally does, and it’s how you know your food won’t stick, it is at this point that you add the oil.
Moving on to the actual cooking, let’s say you’ve thrown some chicken thighs in the pan and you’ve built up a lot of fond (the brown bits that form in the bottom of the pan) and the chicken is almost done, but you’re not planning on making a sauce. Deglaze the pan with little squirts of water targeted directly at the fond and rub the chicken thighs over the area where the water is deglazing and suddenly that fond is sticking to your chicken thighs, resulting in a better crust and a cleaner pan.
Speaking of cleaner pan, once you’re done cooking and plating and you have a hot dirty pan, squirt enough water in to cover the bottom of the pan and then go eat. When you come back to the kitchen to clean up, the water will have broken down the shit on the bottom of the pan and will steam the sides of the pan, so the pan will wipe clean as easy if all you did was fry an egg.
Finally, I stopped putting milk (of any variety) in my coffee, but I wanna be able to drink my coffee right away and it’s too hot when it’s made fresh, but I’ve got a bottle full of room temperature water (all the filtered water in my house comes out ice cold) sitting right there so I can cool it down that way (I brew my coffee pretty strong so watering it down isn’t a big deal).
For pan temperature: Just get an IR thermometer. Squirt a bit of oil in and you have enough that you can get a good reading. And then you don’t have to worry about making sure the oil heats up before you put the meat/whatever in. For something like a (cantonese street vendor style) stir fry you may want to superheat the pan to the point that the oil would smoke, but (regardless of what the people who hate electricity say) that is not the norm. And is generally very difficult to do indoors anyway.
Deglazing: In almost every situation, I would rather use a splash of a more flavorful liquid. Even a glug of chicken stock goes a long way. And I have definitely been known to do the “one for me, one for you” approach to booze while cooking.
Leaving an empty heated pan on the hob: Don’t do this if you at all care about your pots and pans. Or if you have pets or (stupid) kids. You are right in that “deglazing” the pan after you cook is a great idea. But I just use a glass of water to dump maybe a few tablespoons-ish in there, scrape it up with a wooden spatula, and then wash the pan. Pretty much every dish benefits from resting for a minute or two (at least) and that is really all you need to clean up.
The problem with squirting the oil into the pan as it heats is that the metal of the pan heats up a lot slower than the oil so you will burn the oil before your pan is up to temp. Also, pre heating pans will not harm them in any way at all. It sounds like you’re applying my comment to Teflon coated pans, which I excluded at the beginning of my comment.
on the pan test, I just run a bit of water onto my hand and flick droplets off my fingers. My reason is that I absolutely LOATHE having anything plastic near the stove. I’ve had far more mishaps involving errant plastic containers than any other.
Besides, If my hand bacteria can make it into the water and survive a 300+ degree pan, it deserves to outlive all of us.
I’ll echo the other comment about deglazing with other flavorful juices to make a better pan sauce (even if it’s not going to be a sauce), since I just prefer it that way. BUT, a splash of water into a pan sauce that’s simmered for too long WILL restore its glossiness and re-thin it.
cooking
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.