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1. Prep your ingredients. Have everything ready to roll before you actually start cooking. It will make you more efficient. It will make your cooking more enjoyable. And you won’t have that pesky, last-minute “oh damn, I’m completely out of (insert vital product here)!” which always seems to occur ¾ of the way through the recipe.
2. Use your sense of touch to determine the doneness of cuts of meat. Sticking a thermometer, a fork, a knife, etc. into them just causes all the lovely juices to run out into the dirtied pan. You want them in the meat.
3. Use coarse salt. Kosher salt and sea salt have a much better flavour than ordinary table salt. Kosher salt dissolves most swiftly, so if you’re looking for expediency in finishing a sauce, there’s your choice for you. Sea salts have the best flavours, so if you’re not in a hurry or you’re palatte is exceptionally discriminating, that’s your best option.
4. Start with the best ingredients you can find. Imported parmigiano reggiano is so much better than American domestic Parmesan that the two can’t even be compared; excellent chocolate with the proper ratio of fats will make the difference in cakes and pastries; and USDA prime will yield a moist and flavourful roast even if a few small things go horribly wrong.
5. Pay attention to how ingredients are measured. “One cup flour, sifted” is not the same as “one cup sifted flour.”
6. Have a really good chef’s knife. Stop chopping garlic with a paring knife or one of those gimmicky little garlic presses. Once you get used to a chef’s knife (also called a French knife), it’s longer, wider blade will give you speed, control and confidence.
7. Choke up on your chef’s knife. For better control, choke up on the handle even to the point of putting your thumb and the side of your index finger onto the side of the blade right above the hilt.
8. Keep your knives sharp. A sharp knife makes slicing and chopping easier, neater, and quicker. Dull knives are dangerous, - and they make cooking a chore.
9. Cook your onions more. Burn the bottoms a little. Go on, get some colour on them, it softens and sweetens and renders complex the flavours. Leave ‘em crisp or under-transluced and they actually sting the palatte. Transluce them only and they’ve got almost nothing to offer your dish.
10. Cook your garlic less. It actually burns quite easily and adds an unpleasant flavour to a dish if it’s added too early or cooked at too high a heat for too long a period of time. It needs to be sautéed to infuse properly, but keep it brief. No longer than the time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday."
11. Remove excess grease from soups, sauces and stews. It’s bothersome and it takes a few minutes, but the cleaner flavour is worth it.
12. Reduce liquids to concentrate flavour. If you’ve braised meat or vegetables, take the main ingredient out when it’s done and reduce the sauce a bit more before serving. When you deglaze a pan, be sure to reduce the added liquid by boiling it over high heat. Reduce homemade stocks before use, too. Just remember not to salt or season until after you’ve finished the reduction.
12. Let roasted meats rest before carving. Many roast will continue cooking for a full ten minutes after they’ve been removed from the oven. It’s called “carry-over” cooking, the heat from the exterior is still travelling toward the center of the roast. But the major reason to allow a roast to rest is that after it’s been removed from the heat source, the juices redistribute. Carve too soon and it’ll be dried out.
13. Invest in a few heavy-based pans with absolutely flat bottoms. Flat bottoms deliver the most even heat. The handles should be sturdy, comfortable and heatproof so the pot can go from the stove to the oven.
14. Don’t be afraid of fat. Use a small bit of good quality butter, cream or olive oil. It adds richness and flavour. Forget margarine entirely. The stuff is awful for you and it’ll do nothing for your cooking.
15. Grind your own spices. Spices have the most flavour when ground just before use.
16. Toast your spices before grinding. You can accomplish this most easily by placing them in a dry pan over high heat and shuffling the spices from time to time. Toast your nuts and your coconut, too. It brings the oils that carry the flavours out.
17. Use stock instead of water in everything from rice and pasta to deglazing pans for quick sauces. Stock adds remarkable depth and richness to the simplest foods.
18. Begin checking for doneness well before the given times on a recipe. You can always keep cooking, but you can’t undo overcooking.
19. Bake pie and tart crusts longer than you think you should. Pastry doughs taste much better when cooked long enough for the sugars in the crust to caramelise. You’re after brown, not pale blonde.
20. Take your oven’s temperature. Ovens can vary by as much as 50º F, especially as they age and develop thermals. So buy an oven thermometer and get a handle on whether yours runs hot, cool or dead-on.
21. Always have fresh parsley and at least one other fresh herb on hand. You’ll be surprised at how fresh herbs lift the flavours of everyday foods.
22. Add a final splash of acid (vinegar, ver jus, citrus juice…) to almost any vegetable or meat dish, or fruit dessert at the last minute to perk up the flavour.
23. But add wine to a dish early in the cooking and cook off the harsh tastes of the alcohol. Adding raw wines to a dish just makes it winy.
24. Warm your plates and bowls before serving hot food. Chill your plates and bowls before serving cold food. Even a simple bowl of stew seems a luxury in a toasty warm bowl, and a plain spinach salad takes on an efficient crispness with served on a chilled plate.
25. Perfect your sauté. A well-browned exterior adds tons of flavour, as well as an appealing colour, and other methods of cooking (braising and roasting, etc.) often begin with a competent sauté.
26. Turn up the heat. The most important factor for a good sauté is heat and lots of it. (Put your non-stick coated pans away for this. The coat will disintegrate in a month of use if you’re sautéing properly). Put the food in the pan only when the pan and the fat in it is searingly hot, - just beginning to smoke - if you’re using canola oil.
27. Don’t crowd the pan. Whether your cooking mushrooms and bacon or pan-searing chicken breasts be sure you can see the bottom of the pan between the pieces of food. Too much food will lower the temperature of the pan, creating steam, wich means you won’t get good browning.
28. Let the food sit in the hot pan before tossing or turning it. To promote browning, leave the food alone -- for as long as a few minutes for some foods, -- before you move it or flip it.
29. Taste often and don’t forget a final adjustment to the salt and seasoning. The human palatte has a range of 5 and sometimes 6 taste sensations it recognises. Salty, sweet, sour, bitter, spicey, and debatedly: umami. (Umami is a Japanese word which has no ideal translation into English.) But for these purposes, let’s concentrate on the 5.
When seasoning a sauce, strive for a rounding of all 5 elements. A homemade marinara sauce is good, but add a pinch of sweetness, a dash of bitter, a trace of sea salts, the barest hint of a spice and suggestion of acid, and the same sauce garner’s comments like “wow,” and “Holy shit, that’s good!” Engage the entire palatte. It elevates your cooking to legendary status.
30. Use a mirepoix. The classical French mirepoix is 1 part celery, 1 part carrot, and 2 parts onion. The “Cajun” mirepoix omit’s the carrot and replaces it with sweet bell pepper. White mirepoix uses parsnip in place of the carrot and adds plain white mushrooms.
Even if the vegetable mix is strained out of the finished sauce they release such flavour into the dish while cooking you’ll wonder why you ever thought you could cook without them.
31. If you want to deep-fry, … fried chicken, fish and chips, samosas, …whatever… use peanut oil. It produces the most crisp, least greasy, most flavourful product. Canola oil is a close second, and the only choice of those with allergies.
32. Fry only at between 350º -375º F, no lower, no higher. Lower and the fried item absorbs too much oil while cooking. Higher and the exterior will be beautifully browned with the center is still raw. (Though, an old caterer’s trick is to fry all the chicken at about 400ºF until the coat is beautifully browned, then load it onto paper towels to drain, pack it onto a sheet pan and finish it in the oven at about 350º.)
33. Brine your lean meats and cook them quickly at a very, very high temperature. A boneless, skinless chicken breast will come out perfectly moist and tender, brown and full of flavour every time if you brine it and cook it hot and fast.
34. Choose a well-marbled roast, marinate and rub for flavour, and cook in a very slow oven for a long, long, long time. The longer and slower the cooking for a large, fatty cut of meat, the greater the tendency for the finished product to “cut with a spoon” and melt in one’s mouth.
35. Beans. Salt aids in softening, so a good soaking of dried beans in salted water can fix a hard-to-cook batch of beans.
36. Sugar inhibits beans from softening, so adding a sugar such as molasses or treacle to long-cooking beans prevents mushiness.
37. Acids prevent beans from softening. Add acids ingredients like tomato sauce or a squeeze of lemon once the beans are already tender.
38. When beating egg whites to stiff peaks, - make sure your beater, your bowl and any utensils you use are scrupulously clean and free of even the slightest trace of oils. Add a pinch of some acidic material like salt or cream of tartar, even a drop of vinegar if all else is unlikely; and start with eggs that are room temperature, they inflate and emulsify better than do cold eggs.
39. You can make a crumbly feta cheese creamy by storing it in milk for a few days. Gives it a spreadable consistency, and can be used in quiche, souffle and a variety of dishes where a smoothness is desireable.
40. Crystallisation has no effect on honey’s nutritional content, taste or usability. Once a honey has crystalised it can only be liquefied again temporarily and will eventually revert to it’s crystalised form. To liquefy a crystallised honey, take the cap off and place the jar in a warm water bath, or microwave on high for 2 or 3 minutes, just until liquefied.
41. To produce brilliantly coloured, creamy smooth pestos and herb sauces, blanch the herbs briefly before preparing the recipe.
42. The fastest, easiest way to cut cheeses, other than a professional slicer is with a wire designed for the task. If you don’t have one, use dental floss or fishing line. If you absolutely must use a knife, spray it with a pan release before slicing.
43. Never put food in a cold pan. To avoid having your meats stick to the pan when you’re searing or pan-frying, heat the pan first, then add the oil, and only once the pan is oil is hot should you add the food. When a good sear has formed on the bottom of the meat, it will release easily from the pan surface.
44. If you enjoy pan-smoking, or adding a few smoker chips to your barbeque, soak the chips before hand in fruit juice to add an interesting flavour to the finished menu item.
45. Green vegetables are meant to be served a brilliant, vibrant green. If they’ve become olive drab, you’ve expertly tortured all of the colour, most of the flavour and good deal of the nutritional value out of them. To get perfect texture and colour, parboil the vegetables ahead of time and at the last minute sauté them and dress or season.
46. Cut up your own chickens. You’ll save a great deal of money and your pieces will be more akin in size and thus cook up evenly. Not to mention you’ll have some lovely scraps and bones to enhance a homemade chicken stock.
47. For beautiful skin-on potato dishes made from those nifty little fingerling red potatoes… Slice the potatoes (skin on) before you cook them. If you boil them whole in their skins they just look a mess when you cut them. And besides, they cook faster this way.
48. When roasting red peppers, never run them under water to remove the charred peel. It washes all the flavour off. Scrap them with a knife to remove the char.
49. The magic number for custards and custard-based sauces is 170º F.
50. Making pies and pastries in hot, humid weather can be tricky. Work in the cooler hours of the early-morning; chill everything, including your bowls and your work surface; instead of cutting in butter, freeze your butter and grate it into the flour; when you roll out the dough keep a sheet pan in the freezer and slide it under the dough for a quick chill if it softens; handle the dough as little as possible.
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