My Kitchen is Cooking

What is so interesting to me about cooking, is that the amount of time we actually spend cooking is relatively small. Most of what people think of as “cooking” is actually taken up with what I call hunting + gathering, prepping, serving, and cleaning. To my mind, cooking is only the stage of taking all the herbs, seasonings, veggies, fruit or meat that have been prepped, and combining them in a certain sequence using certain cooking methods as described by the recipe being followed.

So one of the keys to cooking is understanding the various methods used in cooking, and what they actually do to the food. The overarching categories of cooking are the application of dry heat, wet heat, or a combo of both. (I have actual articles full of ideas on each technique described and have them linked below in this post.)

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.” -Julia Child

Dry cooking is quick, provides crispiness and flavor, but to me does not really tenderize or merge flavors of any of the food being cooked.

• Baking: heating in an enclosed environment (oven) that leaves the outside of the food brownish and the inside moist. I bake chicken, fish, quick breads, cookies, biscuits, and egg bites. (Remember I am not a baker so I only do the minimal amount of baking.)
• Broiling: food is placed in the oven under dry intense heat. Broiled corn on the cob is a good example, as are broiled veggies, or meats.
• Grilling: indoor/outdoor food cooked over dry intense heat or flames. (I have read that broiling and grilling are essentially the same thing, one has its flame over the food, the other has its flame under the food. I have always equated “grilling” as BBQ.)
• Frying: food is cooked in fat. Examples are stir-fry (fast cooking in oil and wok), pan-fry (oil and skillet, cooking one side at a time), deep-fry (food submerged in oil), and sautéing (small amounts of oil in stove-top skillet). Frying is generally the quickest way to cook food.
• Roasting Meat or Veggies: a high-heat form of oven baking.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” -Virginia Woolf

Moist or Wet cooking uses liquid, usually water or stock, but could be oil or wine as well.

• Steaming: using boiling water to create hot vapor which cooks the food.
• Poaching: cooking food in simmering liquid, as in poached eggs.
• Simmering: cooking in a liquid filled pot on a stove top. I bring liquid to a boil, then turn down to simmer grains and seeds like quinoa.
• Stewing: similar to braising but the foods are cut into smaller chunks. I tend to stew in my slow cooker as the goal is slow cooking to merge flavors.
• Boiled: food submerged in hot water, cooked until tender and drained. This is a step toward making mashed potatoes, or you can make boiled beets, or cook pasta.
• Blanching: partially cooking food in hot water and then removing quickly and cooling. Often people use ice-baths to cause the quick cooling but the Chefs I know say this is not the way to do it in terms of home cooking. They recommend placing the quickly blanched foods on a rack to cool.

“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.” -Cesar Chavez

Combo of dry and wet that tenderizes food.

• Braising: food is sautéd or seared first (usually meats), and then simmered in liquid until tender.

For cooking in these various styles I have cast iron and ceramic skillets, a sauté pan (has straight sides), a wok, and a variety of steel or ceramic pots and pans, and everything has a lid. I do not need a dutch oven or stock pot as I use the slow cooker for that kind of food. A baking sheet, parchment paper, cupcake tin and silicon inserts are also on this list. A roasting pan and cooling racks and both a metal and bamboo steamers. For utensils I stick to a few that I use often: thermometer, tongs, wooden and rubber spatulas, a spider, and ladle.

Okay, we have shopped, prepped and are now cooking. Next is to serve the food we have made.

–Patty

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NEWS: 3/2019 Research has found “gluten free” restaurants are usually not. There were 5,624 tests, performed by 804 users, in the examined period. Gluten was detected in 32% of GF labeled foods. Rates of gluten detection differed by meal, with 27.2% at breakfast and 34.0% at dinner. GF labeled pizza and pasta were most likely to test positive for gluten, with gluten detected in 53.2% of pizza and 50.8% of pasta samples. On multivariate analysis, GF labeled food was less likely to test positive for gluten in the West than in the Northeast United States (odds ratio 0.80; 95% confidence interval 0.67–0.95).

Articles: Under Cooking I have listed a series of cooking techniques linked to in this post: boiling, braising, broiling, frying, grilling, roasting meat, roasting veggies, and steaming. These articles contain all sorts of hints, tricks, and comments on how to best use each cooking technique. I will continue to refine these articles as I learn more from my cooking, your comments and feedback, and the Chefs and Cooks I work with.

Recipe: I am reworking the Teriyaki Salmon recipe to use sushi rice, include some minimal veggies, and to simplify the sauce so it does not use straight alcohol (Sake). It is becoming a “bowl” dinner. I have it posted so you can give it a try and let me know what you think before I finish the recipe. As posted I think it works, just missing nutrition counts.