Five Healthy Cooking Methods No One Teaches

Most of us learn to cook through trial and error, through the Food Network, or force-feed ourselves when no one else will. Naturally, no one knows how to stew chicken or blanch vegetables. Here are a few basic (but helpful) cooking techniques that chefs use every day that the rest of us rarely understand.

Cooking food

Acronym for “partial cooking” means cooking a meal partially now and finishing it later, presumably when you want to serve it. This is a time-honored method of keeping dishes that tend to dry out easily moist and flavorful, and avoiding the need to reheat them when it’s time to serve (which makes your food look like leftovers). It’s also great when you need to start a meal in one way (like baking the chops to keep them juicy) and finish in a different way (like grilled for this delicious dish, or like a curry like in the video above), or you have a lot going on at once, but everything must be ready at the same time (for example, Thanksgiving dinner).

Parking is a fairly common cooking method and it’s all about the timing and the recipe you’re making. This means how much depends on the food you are cooking and how (or when) you plan to finish it. Steaming a casserole can involve baking it, but do not allow it to be crispy or hard, which will not fall apart when you place it. On the other hand, cooking rice or pasta can involve boiling it in water until it looks a bit al dente, then finishing off in a pan full of homemade sauce. Because it is so widely applicable, it is useful for almost everything. Here are some popular examples:

• Casseroles and casseroles : Any baked food that needs to retain moisture but needs to be warm when serving. It’s also a great way to prepare casseroles ahead of time and then freeze them for later.
• Pork and Chicken : Specifically chops, ribs, chicken breasts, thighs, and anything else that cooks on the outside faster than the inside. For example, baking the ribs in the oven and finishing them off on the grill produces perfectly cooked meat without compromising on the delicious grilling flavor that comes after a few minutes over the coals. In this excellent grilled chicken recipe , baking in the oven first will ensure the chicken stays moist and juicy even after breading and re-frying in hot oil.
• Potatoes, rice, and other water-absorbing starches : The longer you cook most starches, the looser and softer they become. By pre-cooking them, you will avoid overcooking and can add them to other dishes without losing their texture. This is especially useful when grilling potatoes (so they don’t fall apart on the grill and burn on the outside until they are tender on the inside) or for other dishes such as potato pancakes, French fries, or French fries.

You can see the topic here. Just about any situation where you can cook something ahead of time, or where you can start with a little controlled heat (to develop a strong aroma) but want to finish over high heat (to brown or caramelize) is ideal for normal cooking. You can even cook vegetables before grilling or searing to preserve their texture and flavor without cooking them to death.

Blanching

When it comes to cooking vegetables, blanching is a bit like cooking in a double boiler, but shorter, faster, and specifically designed for fruits and vegetables. It’s simple, and it’s the secret weapon restaurants use to make their vegetables delicious . Here’s how it’s done:

1. Bring a pot of water (salted or unsalted, depending on your dish) to a simmer.
2. Soak fruits or vegetables in hot water for a short, set amount of time – usually just a few minutes.
3. Take out fruits or vegetables and place them in a cold water bath or ice bath to stop cooking immediately.

This method is ideal if you have something that you want to heat thoroughly but don’t want to sacrifice its texture or aroma to do so. For example, here are some popular fruits and vegetables that are best for blanching:

• Green beans, asparagus, and other long, delicate stalks of vegetables : if you’ve ever wondered why cooked green beans in restaurants are crisp and crunchy, and those you make at home are soft and brownish green, here’s why. In almost every restaurant, the chef blanches legumes and asparagus or any other vegetables that are best served hot but crisp and crispy. Sometimes that’s all they do before serving, other times they end up frying them with oil, wine, or fresh herbs.
• Carrots, Parsinp, and Other Starchy Vegetables : Whether you’re cooking raw or just don’t want the carrots to go completely tasteless when you put them on your dinner platter, blanching retains their texture without compromising on flavor (or nutritional value!) You can even blanch corn to make it easier to remove the husks and silk, or cook just enough to make it easier to remove the kernels for soup, stew, or just storage (without actually cooking the kernels all the way through.)
• Cabbage, sprouts, or other vegetables with a strong smell : One of the pleasant effects of blanching is that they remove the smell of cruciferous vegetables such as kale and broccoli. Cooking vegetables rich in sulfur compounds tastes at high temperatures, but the longer you cook them, the more trisulfides will form. It’s their fault when your kitchen smells of fart and cabbage. Blanching these vegetables, however, makes the cooking process nice and short, maximizes flavor formation, and stops before the chemistry gets out of hand.
• Peaches, tomatoes, nectarines and stone fruits : Usually fruits only blanch when you have something tender and difficult to peel, such as tomatoes or peaches , and this is necessary for cooking dishes such as peach cobbler or pie, as well as homemade tomato sauce made with fresh ingredients, not canned food.
• Thinly sliced ​​chicken, beef or pork : You might think you can’t blanch the meat, but thinly sliced ​​strips of meat cook so quickly that they work very well – in fact, when used with beef, this cooking method is called shabu shabu , and in the result is still moist cuts of meat, ideal for dipping in savory barbecues or hot sauce. Blanching meat is also great if you want to add meat to a dish that is best served cold, such as a salad or sandwich, or if you want to make a rich (but clear) soup or broth .

However, both stages of this process are important. While “blanching” usually refers to super-fast cooking, a cold bath is also important to shock the cooked food and prevent it from cooking. Otherwise, it will just sit and continue cooking thanks to its own heat, which can turn those crunchy, green beans or carrot sticks soft and soft, or those now easily peeled, hard boiled eggs that are difficult to work with.

Portable cooking

When referring to “cooking with your own heat”, this process is called “ transfer cooking ”. You may already rely on it, but it’s actually a really powerful tool that you might not even think about using. When you take a roast or chicken out of the oven a few degrees below the recommended safe temperature , or when you remove steaks from the grill and then let them rest, you are actually relying on conserved cooking to finish the meal. And that’s not bad!

Think about it: when you remove a dish from the stove or from the oven, it stays hot for a while, right? The same processes that you started by adding heat to the food itself will continue as long as it is warm enough. That is why “perfectly cooked” should almost always be “taken out of the oven at (safe temperature minus X degrees) and let it rest”. Food stays warm and continues to cook well after being removed from the heat source. The larger, denser, and richer the food, the more cooking will affect it. Here are some examples:

• Your Thanksgiving Turkey : You know how the best recipes suggest you take your Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven at around 150+ degrees Fahrenheit (65+ degrees Celsius) depending on weight and let it rise to a safe temperature for the bird. 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) and rest before serving it? Portable cooking at its best.
• Meat with bones and thick, dense meats : The folks at Amazing Ribs point out that for thinner cuts of meat, you simply don’t get the heat inside the meat to carry over cooking. However, for bone-in meats such as ribs and thick, large roasts such as brisket and pork shoulder, you have the size, thickness, and density, and the high temperatures needed for extended cooking. Shorten the cookbook time (or lower the temperature) and you’ll still end up with moist and perfectly cooked meat.
• Eggs and other protein-rich foods cooked over high heat : If the omelet is always too spongy, or if you want a creamier and softer taste but don’t know how, try next time: beat them and let them cook in a skillet while they are. will not be ready. Then take them off the fire – don’t wait for them to be the way you like them. By the time you’re ready to eat, they’ll be just perfect. Protein chains shrink the longer they are exposed to heat, and eggs are essentially all protein (with some fat content). Cook them longer and they will become spongy and dense so they never let go. Let the residual heat do the job for you.

We mentioned this in our guide to cooking with science : preparing a transfer – your best weapon to avoid digesting everything from quick egg dish to London Broil which is roasted for several hours. If you pay attention to these temperatures (and buy a good thermometer , you can use it to make sure your Thanksgiving turkey or grilled steaks are juicy and tasty (and also, you don’t need a hacksaw to cut).

Toasting and blooming spices

Hopefully you’re not the type to shy away from seasoning, but when you’re ready to take your seasoning to the next level, it’s time to get familiar with toasting raw spices (like the video below) in front of you. add them to food and blooming ground spices in oil (like in the video above) before you start cooking. You may have seen recipes that ask you to roast nuts (such as pine nuts) or seeds (such as fennel or anise seeds) to reveal their flavor before adding them to a dish or chopping them and using them as a seasoning.

We have briefly touched on this topic in the past, and the truth is that it is a time-honored tradition in many different forms of cooking. So while it’s not entirely uncommon, it’s rarely practiced in many home kitchens, and it’s a shame because it’s so damn delicious. Here are some situations you really need to consider:

• Whenever you rely on oil for aroma : Almost every time you use oil or fry at low temperatures, this is a good time to consider adding your spices to the oil. Butter has a tremendous flavor whether you fry an egg or spinach or kale in it. Next time, add a few spices to the pan in advance, with which you plan to season the herbs (or this egg), even if it’s just freshly ground pepper. Let them sit in oil for a minute or two before adding the food to be cooked and stirring. Thank you later.
• When you need to add whole spices to a larger dish : If you’re making a large pot of chicken soup or beef stew, making homemade broth, or even making punch or mulled wine, your recipe probably calls for whole spices. Maybe a cinnamon and clove stick or star anise. Maybe fennel seeds or cardamom pods. On a case-by-case basis, if you are going to add whole spices to another dish and let it absorb that spicy flavor, you can fry them before doing so.
• When your spices are a little dated: blooming and toasting is especially beneficial if you have old spices in your pantry – and let’s be honest, even though we warned you about their expiration date in the past , you probably have a few pantry that has seen the best time. Yes, of course, and whether you’re toasting dry spices or blooming ground spices in oil, the added heat can give them new life.

Now that you know when to do it, here’s how to do it:

1. Take an empty skillet and place over medium to high heat.
2. If the dish you plan to cook requires oil or fat over time, you are blooming the desired spices in the oil. Add butter or fat (such as ghee or butter) to the skillet.
3. When the oil starts to shimmer, take the spices – whole or ground (although this method works best with ground spices) and add them to the skillet.
4. Let them bloom until you can smell them. They should start to smell fresh, nutty and slightly toasty. That’s when you know how to cut down on the heat. Do not leave them on for too long or they will burn out. Now you can extract the spices and reuse the oil in the dish you intend to cook, or use the spices and oil together, you decide. If you only use oil, this technique is called baghaar and is common in Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian cooking (as well as a few other places) to produce aromatic oils. Chaank , on the other hand, is a term for using it all – spices and oils together – in your dish.
5. If you are going to add the spices whole and dry to something water-soluble, such as soup, gravy, or sauce for stewing, fry them without oil . Add them to the skillet when hot and reduce heat.
6. Stir the spices periodically to prevent them from burning or overcooking on one side. Again, you’ll know they’re ready to leave the fire when you smell a nutty, smoky, roasted scent. Remove from heat and set aside.
7. At this point, you can add them whole or chop and use in place of chopped spices.

Don’t be limited by our suggestions. This technique is useful for almost any dish , be it frying, baking, or even dessert. Serious Eats even has a pound of cardamom fried cake recipe that sounds delicious.

Stewing, stewing, frying: all the ways to “fry” food

Most people know that there is a difference between “browning” and “roasting”, but it is difficult to understand exactly what the difference is. The same goes for “browning” and “braising” or “stir frying” and “pan frying”. All of this may seem like “put the pan on the fire and add food”, but there are real differences:

• Frying is a general term for cooking any kind of food in oil or fat. It’s all-encompassing.
• Frying involves cooking food in a shallow skillet with a little oil or fat over high heat. Typically, you only fry thinly sliced ​​or sliced ​​food, with little to no liquid and for relatively short periods of time. Have you ever added a little oil to a skillet and then added onions or garlic? It’s stewing.
• Searing is similar, but only refers to the process of toasting the surface of food. This means that you can work with any kitchen tool and any cooking method, be it braising, grilling, roasting or whatever. When you put a steak in a very hot skillet and try to get that tasty crust on the outside, you burn.
• Melting at slow fire – is the process of preparation of liquid meals on the fire below the boiling point. To do this, you specifically bring the liquid – be it water, soup, or sauce – to a boil, and then reduce the heat until it stops (or almost stops) bubbling, and leave the fire at that level. You can simmer in any type of pot, but if you’ve ever made a skillet sauce or pot of soup, you know how to simmer.
• Stir frying traditionally involves a wok (although it is used in any process involving high-sided pans) and involves cooking food in very hot oil while constantly moving food to ensure even cooking. Stir frying is similar to broiling, but traditionally refers to cooking more food and constantly moving it around to make sure it is browning without browning or scorching.
• Roasting and deep-frying are general terms and mainly refer to the amount of oil that was used to cook food. For example, you can swap sauté and fine frying, but because frying refers to cooking with a little fat or oil, deep-frying is different because it involves dipping food in hot fat or oil.
• The frying pan uses enough oil to grease the pan during the cooking process. With fatty foods that produce their own oil or fat, such as bacon, you may not need to use oil at all. This also generally applies to using shallow pans with low walls as opposed to deep-frying or stir-frying.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is the most common type of “frying” you will find in most cookbooks and recipes. The bottom line here is that there is a difference between each method that you will need to consider when running a recipe. For example, if you see a recipe for sautéing chopped onions in butter, you know you will need a little butter and a relatively high heat. If you see a recipe that asks you to “fry” the sausages, skip the oil and possibly lower the heat so they don’t burn or overcook the outside before they are completely cooked.

For seasoned home chefs (and fans of culinary TV shows), they may already be in your repertoire, but if you’ve never experimented with them, they can be the difference between soft brown green beans and crunchy, green, delicious ones. or dried roast and juicy, moist. Try it the next time you plan on making something new, and don’t shy away from the recipes they involve. You will be much more happy with the results when your food reaches the table.

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