I did promise this post in my Thursday chat, so here you go. I apologize if some of the formatting doesn’t work, but I’m posting this between flights from O’Hare and I’ll clean it up later on.
1. Salt. The food police have everyone running scared of good old sodium chloride, but it’s incredibly important from a culinary perspective as a flavor in and of itself and as a flavor enhancer. Salt intensifies other flavors in every dish by hitting the fifth taste known as umami; without salt, most foods will taste bland, flat, or even stale. Salting foods early in the process allows you to use less salt in total because you can often infuse your foods with salt by dissolving salt in the cooking liquid. Pasta water should always be heavily salted, and the cooking liquids for small grains like rice, barley, or quinoa should also have salt. Seasoning the exterior of meats helps prepare the surface for the Maillard reaction that occurs during the application of direct heat on a grill or on a stovetop pan, producing that brown crust that, for me, is the #1 argument against vegetarianism. I prefer kosher salt for most applications because it doesn’t dissolve too quickly and is easily pinched due to the coarse grain size, but I use table salt for baking because kosher salt will not integrate evenly in most doughs and batters.
Someone asked in chat what I would recommend for someone with high blood pressure who has to limit his salt intake. The best answer is an unfortunate one, but the reason that monosodium glutamate originally became popular is that it’s a tremendous flavor enhancer that delivers that same umami hit that salt does, perhaps even more powerfully. MSG has a nasty reputation and can trigger a fatal reaction in a person allergic to it (a close friend of our maid of honor’s sister died of anaphylaxis after eating MSG), so it’s not for everyone, and I personally don’t use it because I don’t need to, but it will do the job. Failing that, there are some potassium-salt products that can be used in moderation as salt replacements, and using acids like lemon juice, vinegar, onions, and citrus fruits can also help fill the no-salt gap.
EDIT: A few commenters have said that salt and umami hit different receptors on the tongue. I remember reading in a technology magazine – might have been Red Herring seven or eight years ago about umami, where the writer identified salt as the primary flavor enhancer and thus primary umami delivery mechanism in our diets.
2. A real knife. You can do a lot with a good chef’s knife, and you can’t do shit without one. It doesn’t have to be an expensive model; America’s Test Kitchen has recommended this Victorinox 8″ chef’s knife
3. Cooking by temperature. Most recipes say “bake for 20 minutes” or “grill for 15 minutes,” but those directions assume a median size and shape for the food being cooked and a degree of consistency in ovens and grills that simply doesn’t exist. The food you’re cooking is dead – even lobster dies when it hits the boiling water if you haven’t already killed it – and doesn’t know when the timer goes off. Your roasted chicken breast is done at 161 degrees, whenever it gets there, and you’re not going to know when it gets there unless you check it with a thermometer. I keep two in the house: A cheap instant-read thermometer (also useful for checking the temperature of water for green tea, which is best brewed at 160 degrees) and a probe thermometer
4. Using fresher spices. If you’ve got a cheap $10 coffee grinder with a rotating blade, I have two things to say to you: It’s useless for grinding coffee, and it’s great for grinding whole spices. Buying spices whole and grinding them yourself is cheaper two ways and maybe three. One, the whole spices tend to be cheaper per unit of weight. Two, they’ll last far longer than ground spices, which go stale in six months to a year; a whole nutmeg will last for several years, while ground nutmeg is sawdust in a few months. And three, if you’re buying your ground spices at a regular grocery store, there’s a chance you’re getting fillers in addition to your chile powder or allspice. Buy your spices whole, toast some before grinding (cumin, coriander, and fennel seeds in particular), and grind them as you need them. I recommend Penzey’s for mail-order spices, although I may be biased because I have one near my house. I’ve been very happy with their quality and prices on almost everything they sell. A corollary to this rule is to use fresh herbs when you can, especially in season. A $1.29 package of thyme from my local farmstand will keep for two weeks if left in its plastic box in my vegetable crisper drawer, and the volatile oils in fresh herbs give them a deeper, richer flavor than dried herbs can provide. This also means that those spice mixes you buy in stores are a particularly bad deal – they often contain fillers, they nearly always contain salt as the first ingredient, and they take the control out of your hands. Make your own spice mixes in small batches as you need them.
5. Fry – or, as Alton Brown’s plastic chicken once said, “fry some more.” Everyone’s afraid of frying just as they’re afraid of salt, but if you fry right, the fried food will absorb very little of the cooking oil and will amaze you with its texture and moisture. When you keep the oil hot and remove the food before it’s overcooked, the food’s exterior (usually a batter or breading) won’t absorb the fat in which it’s being cooked. The keys to frying are simple:
* Use a huge pot of oil or fill your electric fryer. The more oil you use, the faster the oil temperature will rebound after you add your cold food, which can easily knock a small pot of oil down fifty degrees.
* Use a frying or candy thermometer and monitor it. Too low and you’ll get greasy, undercooked food. Too hot and you’ll get smoke and eventually fire.
* Keep an eye on the food. If it stops sizzling or emitting steam, it’s probably starting to overcook. The force of the food’s internal moisture escaping as steam prevents oil from seeping in, but when the steam stops escaping, the food is dry and will start to suck up oil from the pot.
* Use a fire extinguisher. Duh.
6. Brine. I’ve preached the brining gospel here plenty of times, but here it is in condensed form: Brine lean meats before cooking them. That includes most pork, chicken, and turkey, and you can brine shrimp as well. Brining infuses water and some salt into the meat, helping prevent the meat from drying out as it cooks, which lean meat does tend to do, especially if you like to push your pork past medium.
7. Using proper heat. You need to learn your stove over the course of many meals to understand where “medium-high” really lies. On medium-high, a chicken breast seared in a hot pan in a little bit of oil should develop a nice brown exterior in under three minutes, but more than two. A chicken cutlet (sliced and/or pounded to ¼” thick) should cook through in two minutes per side, and a properly seasoned piece of salmon should have a slightly crispy brown crust in about two and a half minutes. Cooking over heat set too high will result in uneven cooking, with a raw interior and a perfectly-cooked exterior, or a perfectly-cooked interior surrounded by leather.
When the recipe says “simmer,” that doesn’t mean “boil the shit out of it.” Turn the heat down until the bubbles are small and aren’t coming too quickly. When the recipe says “sweat,” don’t sauté. Stir the cut aromatics in the hot oil, sprinkle with salt to draw out moisture, and let the mixture sit over medium to medium-low heat for six or seven minutes until the onions are translucent and golden.
When pan-frying, use plenty of oil and add the food when the oil starts to shimmer, which may mean starting on high or medium-high heat and backing it off as the oil heats. If it smokes, it’s too hot – and yes, I know ATK likes to talk about wisps of smoke, but they’re wrong, because smoke means the oil is breaking down. You might consider a splatter-screen if you pan-fry often, and always remember to turn the gas off or take the pan off the burner before adding any alcohol to a hot pan. (I have, in fact, ignited a few pans, and am fortunate that alcohol burns at a pretty low temperature.)
Remember that long cooking times typically mean indirect heat. On a grill, that means putting the food on a part of the grate that isn’t directly over the heat source.
8. Buy better ingredients. It depresses me to walk into the local Stop and Shop and see the sad excuses for fruits and vegetables offered in that section of the store, especially since a mile away is one of the best farmstands in the area (Wilson Farms), selling superior-quality produce at comparable prices. Food is no different than anything else in life: garbage in, garbage out. If you start with bad produce, no amount of cooking skill or seasoning is going to create a great salad or pie or contorno. Some basic rules of thumb when shopping for fresh produce, meats, fish, and cheeses:
* Produce should be brightly colored and, with a few exceptions like basil, stored in a cool area. Leafy things shouldn’t be wilted or have brown spots, and if any part of a leaf has started to break down into a slightly oozy green substance, then it’s gone bad. Solid fruits and vegetables should be heavy for their sizes, indicating the presence of plenty of moisture in the fruit. Buy whole when you can, as it lasts longer and avoids risk of cross-contamination at the store. Carrots with the leaf stems on top are better than trimmed carrots, which are better than peeled carrots, which are better than the fake “baby carrots” sold in bags (nothing more than peeled, cut full-sized carrots tumbled to give them smooth, rounded exteriors). Fresh beats frozen, and the only acceptable foods in cans are beans and, if the quality is high enough, pears, which are nearly impossible to get out of season because they store and travel poorly.
* Fish shouldn’t smell fishy; if it does, it has already gone bad, and no amount of seasoning will get rid of that taste. Don’t be afraid to ask the monger to let you smell the fish before you buy it. Fish should be stored on ice, and the monger should provide ice for the trip home if you ask for it. In warm weather, bring a small cooler to the store. Color is not an indicator of quality in salmon, since salmon farms can alter the fish’s coloring by changing the feed. Shellfish can make you extremely sick if it’s not handled properly, and salmon can even carry a rare but dangerous parasite that’s killed in cooking.
* Meats and chicken are easier to pick out, as long as they’re stored properly in a cold case and there’s good turnover at the meat counter. As with produce, the more it’s been handled, the greater the risk of cross-contamination, and the less you know about what’s in the product. If you’ve got a good knife, especially a sharp boning knife, buy whole chickens and butcher them yourself; you’ll get more bang for your buck and can save the bones (and wings, if like me you find them to be a waste of time for eating) to make stock. Remember that seasoned or marinated meats rob you of your chance to give the meat a visual inspection before buying. When buying steak, more marbling will mean a more tender end product (and higher cost, but it’s worth it). And try duck. Not only is the meat delicious, if you render the subcutaneous fat, you get one of the greatest cooking fats on the planet.
* The flavor of cheese is entirely determined by what the cow, goat, sheep, or water buffalo eats, so that “Parmesan” cheese from Argentina or Wisconsin isn’t going to rival the Parmiggiano-Reggiano from Italy. Buy cheeses from the right places, looking for an official seal if it’s from Europe (Denominación de Origen from Spain, for example). A good cheesemonger should be willing to give you a taste of any cheese you want, and be willing to cut to any size you’d like. Buy in small quantities that you expect to use in a few days; soft cheeses go bad quickly, hard cheeses can become too hard to eat out of hand, and all cheeses are prone to absorbing other flavors in the fridge. Wrap your cheese in waxed paper to give it some room to breathe, then plastic wrap to keep off flavors out. Shredded or grated cheese is halfway to stale when you buy it, and any cheese can be dismantled quickly with the use of a good box grater
9. Sauce. I’m not suggesting that you whip up a hollandaise every time you poach an egg or steam some asparagus, but any time you sear meat in a pan, you’re halfway to a pan sauce. Deglaze the pan with some wine, beer, chicken stock, or chicken broth, then return to the pan to the heat and simmer most of the liquid away, scraping the pan bottom to dissolve the brown bits (known as fond) into the liquid as it thickens. Boost the sauce with a little cognac, some chopped shallot, some Dijon mustard, and chopped fresh herbs (or a pinch of dried); you can add a few tablespoons of heavy cream if you’d like, or even full-fat coconut milk. Remove from the heat and mount it with two tablespoons of cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes, and season with salt and pepper. I’ve also shown you how easy it is to make a beurre blanc, which is great on fish, white-meat chicken, and many vegetables. Hoisin is one of the few jarred sauces I’ll use, but you can build a simple pseudo-Asian sauce with soy sauce, honey, a pinch of dried chili flakes, some cornstarch dissolved in water (which will thicken the sauce when heated, so add this to the pan with the vegetables still in it), and a shot of toasted sesame oil right before serving. You can get a lot of extra mileage out of a simple dish like sear-roasted fish or steamed broccoli by saucing it properly.
10. Play with your food. I know it’s trite advice, but it’s true. You may not feel up to experimenting right away, but there are little things even the novice cook can do, like altering or adding herbs and/or spices to dishes, or adding extra flavors when the food is off the heat, like the toasted sesame oil I mentioned above or some toasted sesame seeds, or a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, or some slivered toasted almonds or ground peanuts. There are, unfortunately, some bad combinations of foods, but it won’t take you long to understand what foods play nicely together to encourage you to experiment more, until you get to the point where you can devise your own recipes from scratch or recreate something you ate in a restaurant just by figuring out the ingredients as you eat it.
Keith, do you have a rule of thumb regarding the ratio of cups (or quarts or gallons) of brine to pounds of meat? Thanks for these tidbits, especially the sauce one.
Thanks for the info. Quite informtive.
I was the one who asked for this in the Thursday chat, and I’m delighted by this entry! Last month I broke down and bought a chef’s knife worth owning – a Shun Ken Onion – and this gives me a number of other things to work on. Thank you so much for the post!
Keith – this was linked to in a great food blog that I read (Michael Ruhlman’s, which is located at http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/), and I’ve found the tips very useful. If it’s any indication, of how right your list was, many of them repeat. Here’s another 10 easy ways to improve your cooking: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/11/10_easy_ways_to_3.html
Keith, this really is a wonderful post.
Robert – got me excited, at first I thought Ruhlman had linked to me!
Aaron – enough to fully cover the meat. Typically I make a brine, combine it with a roughly equal volume of ice, then add the meat.
Glad everyone’s enjoying it. It’s not easy to distill what is essentially ten years of self-teaching into short essays.
I think another helpful tip is to read and observe as much as you can about cooking. A lot of the better cook books will include explanations about the origins of recipes as well as explanations for why the recipe calls for things to be done a certain way.
I know that since I have gotten more into cooking reading food blogs, books by authors like Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman, and even watching certain Food Network shows has helped improve my cooking tremendously.
On the subject of salt, I have had problems with high blood pressure (but it’s normal now). Do I use salt? Yes! Salting your food isn’t nearly as bad as you might think, and you’ll use much less than you probably realize.
Having read numerous books/articles/etc. on the subject (since I’ve had high bp for years), the majority of sodium (70% according to a couple of books I read) in the average diet doesn’t come from salting your food; it comes from prepared food. This runs the gamut from frozen (or canned) stuff you buy at the store all the way to dinner at your favorite restaurant (chain places and fast food are bad, but good independent restaurants aren’t innocent either).
Check your labels! However, if you’re making food at home, you should be able to season it to taste without worrying too much.
It’s amazing what a stupid VORPy can teach you. 😉 Great work, Keith!
“If you’ve got a cheap $10 coffee grinder with a rotating blade, I have two things to say to you: It’s useless for grinding coffee”
Keith, could you elaborate on this? I now feel like I’m guilty of some basic coffee sin, so I need to know why my cheap grinder is useless and what I should be using instead.
You scared me with the section “Play with your food” because I thought you were referring to that while cooking. I think a big mistake is that people play too much with their food while it is cooking. Just let it to it’s thing and stop poking and turning it. Thanks for the great list!
I second the question about the coffee grinder. I’ve been using a ten dollar one with a rotating blade for several years now. Enlighten me!
Blade grinders destroy the beans more than grinding them – they produce an uneven grind, which means uneven extraction, and they get hot quickly, which can actually restart the roasting process and slightly burn the beans. The finer the grind, the more noticeable it is.
I used a very inexpensive Capresso burr grinder for a few years, but the model has been discontinued. The least expensive one I could find was this basic burr grinder
, which seems to get mostly positive reviews, and should be more than adequate for drip or French-pressed coffee.
If you’re making espresso, or Turkish coffee, or some other coffee that requires a fine and precise grind, I wouldn’t use anything cheaper than the Capresso Infinity Burr Grinder
, which I’ve had for about four years and have been happy with. You can get really nuts with grinders of $300-500, but obviously those are for obsessives.
Good stuff Keith. Very Alton Brown of you. One thing I see non-experienced cooks do is put the meat or whatever they are cooking on the pan before its heated up, rather than throwing on the food when the pan is hot.
Thanks, Keith. I’ve been French pressing my coffee for a few years now. I was not aware of the evils of my coffee grinder.
Also, another one I see often is people defrosting their meats in hot water, which common sense would say its the right move, but could promote bacteria growth. I defrost my meats in a ziplock, submerged in cold water.
I think the fastest defrost is actually under cold running water, which may be what you meant (Jason). AB did an experiment on a Good Eats episode of four methods – I think they were under cold water, under cold running water, in the fridge, and maybe on the counter? – and under cold running water won.
Alton did the experiment with cold water, cold running water, in the fridge and in the oven. The cold running water beat out even the oven (I forget what temp it was set on)
Can you explain what it means to “brine” meat. I can sort of guess, but some directions would be nice.
Lisa – The quick answer is that brining meat means soaking it in a saline solution to impart moisture and flavor to the meat. It’s particularly important for lean meats that tend to try out during cooking, like pork and the breast meats of poultry.
You might also check out this All About Brining page, or the Good Eats recipe that got me hooked on brining.
Running cold water is the best, and even beats out the oven because convection>conduction as far as heat transfer goes, at least according to some simple physics labs I’ve been subjected to. Same reason frying in oil is so much faster than roasting in the oven.
Thanks.
As an amature cook, I appreciate almost everything you shared, especially the salt…the one that makes me cringe is duck.
I have a fear of cooking duck since it seems so hard to get right…I have had it made by some top chefs and had to send it back. Don’t know if I am ready to cook it properly.
Alton Brown did a whole show just on Duck, and you can find it on you tube.
Keith, great list. I usually have dinner around 8pm and can’t experiment as much as I’d like, but I do enjoy it. No salad dressing around today, so I made a French dressing and snuck in some homemade hot sauce – fantastic. Do you ever cook with actual (not cooking) wine? I’ve tried some recipes I found online, but they’ve ranged from decent to horrible.
I have a frying question. What do you do with the oil after? Down the drain? That doesn’t sound very good for your plumbing. I live in an apartment, so I don’t really have access to draining it outside.
Would you recommend brining red meats? Lean ones like London Broil or other Roasts? Thanks!
Jonathan: I’ve never seen a recipe that called for brining beef, and haven’t done it myself. My guess is that even lean cuts still have enough fat in them to stay moist through cooking.
Brad: You can filter the oil through cheesecloth and reuse it a few times, unless it smokes during cooking, or unless it starts to smell of the food you cooked in it. When it’s time to toss it, you can pour it on the ground – it’s biodegradable – or you might find a company in your area willing to take it for resale as fuel.
Jason: I cook with wine all the time – never cooking wine, which is spiked with salt. I keep a bottle of vermouth in the house at all times for recipes that call for white wine, like risotto.
Bogart: Brad’s right about the Good Eats “What’s Up Duck?” episode – although if it’s on Youtube, that’s a copyright violation, and the uploader should be arrested and shot – which has one pretty solid technique for cooking duck. The two keys are to render out the subcutaneous fat, and to be careful not to cook the breast meat past medium, since even brined it’ll dry out.
They are all on Youtube, look up the user LikeTheHat, he has every episode divided into seasons. Apparently only MLB is really into taking stuff off of YouTube.
keith — great stuff. one thing i’d add, especially when cooking italian food: taste as you go (but don’t make yourself sick).
Great list shorter: Watch Good Eats. 🙂
One big correction: salt doesn’t hit the umami flavor receptors (glutamate does). Salt hits the salt receptors.
What about non-stick pans, which completely kill any opportunity for making pan sauces (and other fun things)?
Scott – I’m going back to something I read several years ago, but in one of the popular science magazines, they wrote that salt and glutamate both provide the umami “taste.” Probably in Red Herring or Wired.
Ari: I’m not a big fan of non-stick except for specific applications where fond isn’t needed.
Uh salt actually goes for one of the first four – well known tastes, called…salty. Umami as you correctly say is stimulated by Glutamic acid or Glutamate.
Good post and sensible advice.
Tomatoes are often recommended as another acceptable canned product, since unless you can get good quality ones in-season, the stuff available in the supermarket can be pretty dismal. I get them whole, with as little seasoning or additional processing as possible. Still kind of searching for the best readily and locally available brand though.
Interesting information. I discovered the benefits of brining quite by accident. I left the meat soaking too long in a salty mixture. Just a word of caution regarding the potassium-based salt substitutes: persos with renal issues, on water pills or certain blood pressure meds should consult their medical provider or avoid the potassium salts. You’re right, lemon, fresh thyme and other spices are great. I also find fresh crushed garlic, fresh ground black pepper and a touch of jalapeno work really well.
What would be the best way to prepare salmon on the stove top? My method is sometimes successful, but most times the flesh dries out and the skin shrivels and burns.
Thanks for a very informative post
Carol:
I’ve become a devotee of the “sear-roast” method for cooking thick cuts of meat, fish, or poultry indoors. It works best if you use an oven-safe skillet or saute pan. Sear it for roughly two minutes per side on the stovetop over medium-high heat to get a nice brown crust, then transfer it to the oven for 5-10 minutes at 350-375 F to cook it through. If this still overcooks the skin, reduce the searing time for the skin side to one minute and let it finish in the oven, since the pan will still be stovetop-hot even after you’ve taken it off the burner. When the meat/fish is done, drain the fat, deglaze the pan, add some minced shallots and fresh herbs and mount with butter for a quick pan sauce. And please let me know if this works for you.
Merci beaucoup… and I will certainly let you know.
I was somewhat disappointed to read this and realize that nearly all of the advice had to do with cooking meat.
Why wouldn’t it? I eat meat.
The salting advice applies to any grains cooked in liquid. The knife advice is completely universal. Sauces apply to vegetables as well as meats. Buying better ingredients includes produce and grains. The point on spices also applies universally. I love broccoli, but frying it is absolutely the best way to showcase its flavor while keeping its texture.
So I guess I’m not seeing it. Plenty of advice here for meat-objectors.
A good strong blade grinder is fine for making coffee by drip or french press (which are the only two good methods for making hot coffee). You just might have to run it a little longer. I use one every day and my coffee is as good as Stumptown’s (or any other legendary coffee Portland coffee house). By far the most important things about making coffee are, in order:
1) quality of bean (including the roast)
2) freshness of bean (no freezer, grind right before making, no more than 2 weeks from roast)
3) method of preparation (drip or french press depending on your taste)
4) ratio of water to bean (depends on how strong you like it)
Everything else is of vanishingly small importance in comparison.
Really cheap-ass grinders: bad, sure. But a nice blade grinder is fine, I think.