RF360's Basic Cooking Tips

Posted on /ck/ by  RF360 !!s1shuD45usb

Part 1: If You Can't Take the Heat
First thing you need to do is develop respect for two things. Heat, and edges.

You'll be around both all the time. They are the parts of cooking that can hurt you.

You'll be starting with a stovetop. Don't touch the sides of a heated pan without an oven mitt. Pan handles get hot. Keep them back, over the stove, so someone doesn't knock the pot off. Attend your food constantly.

Respect heat, no problems.

When working with knives, be patient. Never go faster than you can control. Keep your fingertips back. Don't be fancy - just cut your food. Gently sawing motions, not pushing. Serrated knives help newbies some.

Respect the two dangers of the kitchen and you have nothing to fear from the most complex recipes.

So! With that said, let's get started.

Part 2: The First Weapon of the Kitchen
For a food to be considered "cooked", it usually has to be heated and/or treated. You can cut up raw vegetables pretty, and some people will call it cooked, but not people I know. Doesn't mean they taste bad, doesn't mean they are unhealthy.

Let's get cooking. You won't be using a microwave. Anyone can use those.

Your first tool, will be a pot of boiling water.

Boiling water is easy to control - to keep it boiling, keep the heat on. To stop the boiling, take it off the heat (AND TURN OFF THE STOVETOP). It maintains a fast and steady cooking temperature. Boiled food often has less flavor, but comes out finished and safe every time.

Our first dish will be close to home - we're gonna make pasta.

A common spaghetti will take 10-12 minutes to cook. Here's what you'll need.

- A boiling pot - Tongs - A strainer - Salt - Some spaghetti (If you wrap your thumb and finger around it, a pack of strands about the size of a quarter will give you a full and hearty meal) - Canned sauce. We can make our own sauce later. - Oven mitts. Vets can do without these for this recipe, but I want you to be careful. - An empty, clean sink.

Check to make sure you have what you need before you continue.

Examine the package of spaghetti you are using. Double check the recommended cooking time. Spaghetti isn't all the same - every manufacturer has recommended times, and they always know their product best. So adjust the plan as you need to.

Once you're confident you're ready, you have gathered the ingredients, and you're getting hungry, it's time to start.

Usually, cooking is a precise series of actions. It involves exact measuring, time and patience.

However this is an excellent training exercise that will help with kitchen confidence. Nothing here needs to be exact. However you do need to be using a large pot. If your four fingers, side by side, are wide enough to cover half the pot, you'll need a bigger pot.

Take one spoonful of salt - it doesn't matter which spoon or how full you get it, exactly - and dump it into your dry, empty pot. Adding SALT to pasta is a complex action with many arguments. For now, just do what you're told and dump in a spoonful of salt.

Add cold water into the pot until the pot's pretty full. Leave about 1-2 fingerwidths of space from the top - boiling water goes all over.

Deep breath.

Turn the stove burner up to high. Soon you'll feel the heat. But that water isn't going to boil right away.

Make sure what you want to use for sauce. Have your tongs ready. Get the dry spaghetti measured and ready to add.

Put the strainer in the clean sink. And wait.

Once the water's surface starts to get broken by bubbles, it's hot enough. At first it's not actually boiling but "simmering" - but for a first try, it's good enough.

Check the time. Put in the pasta. Grip it with the TONGS, while in the pot, and gradually bend it down so that it fits in the pot entirely.

Stir it around with the tongs. Feel the steam and the heat. The water will soon boil fiercely, harder than when you added the pasta. That's fine. Let it boil hard. If some water splashes out and sizzles on the burner, it's not the end of the world, but be careful for your hands. Watch the time.

As the time gets close, you can try to Tong out a piece of spaghetti, blow on it a lot to cool it down, and give it a taste.

It will go from crunchy and starchy in the middle, to just a hint of crunchy, to even textured, to softer, to loose limp and gloppy.

The even textured state is correct - with just a hint of pressure to the teeth, that is AL DENTE, considered the godpoint of pasta making.

But you must understand THIS IS YOUR FOOD. If that's not soft enough, KEEP COOKING IT.

Cook it until you like it. Chefs must never be afraid to taste what they are making.

Now you have decided the pasta is ready. Put on oven mitts. Take the pot with both hands by the handle.

(LEAVE THE BURNER ON a moment.)

Lift the pot off the burner, and carry it to the sink. Lean away a bit - STEAM! - and dump the whole mess into the strainer.

Now if you can manage the pot safely with one hand, take the tongs, and pick out any spaghetti sticking to the pot. If that sounds hard, forget it and escort the pot back, to a cold burner.

Give your pasta a shake to get off some excess water.

Open your can of sauce and pour about 1/8 to 1/4 the can (enough sauce for YOU, is how you should be thinking) into the pot. Put the pot back on the heat. Get a spoon (the salt spoon if possible) and stir the sauce. Watch for steam.

As the sauce bubbles, stir it more. Once it bubbles even though you are stirring it, SHUT OFF THE BURNER and remove the sauce from the heat.

Put the pasta from the sink, into a bowl or onto a plate.

Spoon sauce from the pan, carefully, onto your pasta.

Now you get to play Mr. Chef - if you want Parmesan cheese or anything like that on your food, go right ahead.

Throw away or eat your pasta. Use or wash out your sauce. Be careful of the burner and pan until they're cool.

If you're serious, wash your pot before the sauce sticks to it. That's it. Time to eat it.

REVIEW: Basic Spaghetti
Pasta, a classic Italian tradition, should be cooked and then immediately, eaten. Don't prepare it ahead of time or the texture suffers. Cook, sauce, eat, in that order.

A typical batch of pasta requires 6 quarts of water and 1 tablespoon salt per each pound of pasta cooked.

Larger or softer pastas need 9 to 12 quarts per pound.

The debate on using salt or oil rages on, I'm not going to bring it up to a newbie. Involve yourself if you want.

Pasta must be fiercely boiled and stirred often. TASTE for doneness.

Immediately drain pasta after it's done. Combine with sauce as soon as possible.

Do NOT rinse pasta unless it's going to be baked or served cold (pasta salad, drool) The starch on the surface of pasta helps it bond so magically with sauce.

For this lesson, you used: - Guesstimation - Taste Testing - Boiling Water

Good start.

Part 3: Precision is Delicious
We'll start by throwing together a satisfying drink to help us focus. Take a big cup, Fill it a little less than halfway with yogurt (any flavor). Then fill it nearly full with milk. Add a spoonful of sugar and stir thoroughly until smooth.

You've now made Lassi, a drink which is popular in some countries. It helps digestion and is a smooth, cool side to any meal.

But it didn't feel very much like cooking did it? All cooking is balanced by careful PROPORTION - the ingredients must remain in balance to one another.

Lassi works via the proportion of milk to yogurt to sugar. It's another form of measurement.

But when it gets down to fine seasonings and flavors, guessing is not an option if you want excellent taste.

You have probably seen this sort of thing before:

4 pieces bread (rye is best) 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 teaspoon mustard powder 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 6 ounces (approximately 1 1/2 cups) shredded Cheddar Cayenne Pepper (Pinch)

This arcane list of ingredients is supposed to be a recipe list. It tells you how much, of what, you're going to need.

What the heck is six ounces? How much is a cup and a half? A PINCH? What are you pinching???

Getting comfortable with monstrosities like this, will help you immensely in your journey.


 * Teaspoon: The smallest exacting measure of any substance used. It's a small amount and most people use a measuring spoon to get it right. But technically, if you level off a small spoonful - not MOUNDED, but LEVEL - you'll be close to a teaspoon.


 * TABLESPOON: The bigger spoon. 3 Teaspoons. People also use measuring things.


 * Often, butter is measured in tablespoons. This is one scary proposition - how do you scoop cold butter? ... but looking at the top of a stick of butter, you'll see it's MARKED so you can simply cut the cold butter to get 2 tablespoons off, etc.


 * A CUP doesn't mean just any cup (though most small cups actually DO hold one cup, by design, not all do) Most chefs use measuring cups. Large mugs and such, tend to hold 2 cups.


 * An OUNCE and a POUND are some of the most confusing factors. They are not measurements by VOLUME but rather by WEIGHT. That is to say, it's not what sort of measuring spoon or cup, but the specific heaviness of the ingredients.

They are different measuring scales. Nothing in this recipe is By-Weight, so you can worry about your first "Pound of meat" later.

It's time to get re-acquainted with our old friend the stovetop. Last time, we cranked it up to high and let it have its way with a pot of boiling water,

This time, we're gonna keep the heat to LOW. We want to melt cheese - but we don't want to SCALD that cheese. Controlling the heat from a stovetop is pretty easy.

Most stovetops have a LOW setting clearly marked. This is usually just enough to keep food warm, and not enough to instigate a simmer or boil at all.

A notch or two above LOW, is the point where water starts to simmer. Then by MEDIUM, the water is well good and boiling. A stove can get hotter and hotter than this - but water won't go past a certain temperature in liquid form - and it also renders burning most things impossible.

This is why boiling is a generally safe cooking method. The temperature can't get too hot and nothing catches fire or chars.

There's a whole lot of cross-static in terms of lessons (thank god for tripcodes) and even worse, people are arguing about lessons. This is the last thing a newbie needs - NITPICKING OVER TASTE.

Nitpicking about the taste of the final product is the pasttime of a practiced chef who has no better use for his skill and familiarity with the kitchen. It's a fine, fine way to hone the arts.

But for a beginner... NONE OF THAT MATTERS.

Technically in the recipe we are about to make, you can replace the teaspoon of ground dry mustard with 1 teaspoon of prepared 'liquid' dijon mustard. It will taste totally different. One is better than the other. And that doesn't matter.

What matters about this dish... is NOT burning the cheese.

Remember when we used the width of our four fingers together, to find a big enough pot for the pasta? We'll use the same trick to find a pot small enough for the cheese. If your four fingers set together cover ABOUT HALF OR MORE of the pot, it's small enough. A pot that is too large will waste cheese on the bottom of the pot, make the pot difficult to manage, and essentially work - but not as well. Try to use the right size tool for the job.

It's time to GRATE the cheese. For this you need a cheese grater. Cooking often involves repetitive motions and you will need strong elbows and shoulders to lift, stir, shift, grate, chop, pour and knead.

Grating cheese is essentially a very soft warmup. Set the grater up over a large-enough plate or bowl, settle in, and grate up the cheese.

How much?

Cheese is sold in POUNDS - uh oh! Pounds and cups don't mix!

You want about one THIRD of a 1 pound container of cheese. This should fill about a cup and a half.

In essence, pounds break down into ounces and we want SIX ounces of cheese. We also want about a Cup and a half of cheese.

One of those is a weight measurement. One of those is a volume measurement.

We can only do this, because we are measuring a single definite substance - which is pretty consistent in its volume to weight ratio. That substance is Cheddar Cheese.

How close do we need to be?

Well, if we are short an ounce (exactly 1/3rd of a pound of cheese, 5 ounces) the dish won't die. And if we have an extra ounce, it won't be over either.

If we have half as much as we need, 3 ounces... the spices will be TWICE AS STRONG relatively. And there'll be HALF AS MUCH cheese to go with the toast, not enough for an appetizing coating.

What if we accidentally the whole thing?? 16 ounces of cheese is three times as much as we need. There'll be too much to go on the bread - too much to use period. The spices will be exceptionally WEAK. (one third the required strength)

Experts insist on this or that perfect balance, but the truth is, measurements exist to give you a STRONG IDEA of CORRECT.

The -right proportion- is the goal. Now that the cheese is grated and ready... cut the butter. Measure all the dry spices, spoon by spoon, into a bowl and stir them together.

Toast 4 slices of bread in a toaster, on the LIGHT setting.

It's time to work with the heat.

Put the stove to low, add the butter into your pot, and put the pot on the heat. It's fine that you can't resist the urge to swirl that butter around. Go right ahead. It's a good impulse; butter is often used as a coating to keep food from sticking.

Butter and oil both serve as food lubricants. It's the job butter is doing today, too. Knowing the ROLES of ingredients, can help you successfully master them.

Carefully measure a teaspoon of worstershire and add it to the butter, while the butter melts.

Once the heat is on, you can not slow or stop the cooking process without harming it. Recipes are designed for specific constant heats, start to finish. True, if you want to slow things down you can remove a pot from the heat - this will alter textures and can even fail a recipe. What's more, many foods KEEP COOKING even taken from the heat. An ice water bath isn't practical all the time, -- so get used to being PREPARED. --

The next part is adding the grated cheese You read this whole post in advance, right? The cheese is grated? You'll do this when the butter is fully melted?

OK. On to the next step. Time to add the cheese...

Set the toast out on a plate. Check the dry spices, make sure they are measured out and ready.

If the butter is refusing to melt in a timely fashion, you may have a cool stovetop. Turn it up one notch and just be patient. You do NOT want the stove anywhere near medium, or that cheese is gonna burn.

Cheese is a very DELICATE substance - and it doesn't always take to direct heat well. Usually to cook cheese, you will use a Double Boiler or a Fondue Pot - to soften cheese without scorching it.

Today, we'll keep the stove heat to low, use a small batch, and take our time. Everything will turn out all right.

Dump in the dry spices that you already measured and stir them in well.

If you didn't have them measured and in a bowl already, this is gonna get complicated... because the whole recipe will be -DONE- in the next five minutes.

Add the grated cheese to the hot pot - and start stirring it.

Keep stirring it, scraping at the bottom. Stir the cheese into the butter. Make it smooth, that's all you are going for. The heat is low, so it will take its sweet time going from grated to lumpy to sloshy to smooth. Perfect. Keep stirring all over the pan bottom, -don't let it burn-. Keep the pan bottom firmly against the burner.

Watch, watch, watch. The minute that cheese looks like a single, smooth, silky-ish SAUCE

-SAUCE-

take it off the heat, shut off the burner and IMMEDIATELY spoon it onto the waiting toast. Glorious.

It's almost done.

Wash the extra cheese out of the pot - you don't want to scrub that loose, trust me.

Now it's time for finishing touches. You're supposed to sprinkle a "pinch" of Cayenne Pepper over the top.

A technical "pinch" is a grab of spices between the thumb and fore-finger. However in this case, a tastey "shake" from the dotted dispenser side of your average Cayenne Pepper container will do just as well.

Overdo it, and you've got some hot toast on the old town tonight. It's your toast. You can also salt and pepper it more if you like.

Your snack is finished. Well done. Some people cut the toast in half diagonally. I don't care if you cram the whole thing in your mouth and call it a "bite."

Good work.

Oh yes. And if you have parsley, you can put that on there. It's part of the recipe. (Pffft. Parsley. . .)

REVIEW: Lassi and Welsh Rarebit
Lassi is a punjab drink, a mix of Yogurt and Milk. It's extremely popular in India and the surrounding areas, and it's a great example of how just a little knowledge of proportion, can produce a fabulous drink.

Lassi can be flavored with virtually anything sweet or fruity. You can use any type of yogurt you wish, but you don't have to stop yourself there. Mint and Mango Lassi are popular in Pakistan. India sells Lassi flavored with marijuana.

The lesson to take from this: Simplicity and flexibility are hallmarks of many of the best recipes in the world.

Welsh Rarebit is also called Welsh Rabbit. It has nothing to do with Rabbits at all. The food is actually from Great Britain, and has little to do with Wales. It might be inferred that in the 18th century, a poor man from Wales could go rabbit hunting and eat this cheese-and-toast for his supper.

Rarebit has many competing recipes from cookbooks the world round. Some add flour. Some do not. The spices and substances differ, but one core design is the same - it's cheese on toast.

When you follow a recipe, the proportion is the important part. Full teaspoons are easy for novices to measure. Once you can do quarter-teaspoons, and correctly guess how much cheese you need for a toast, you can make single servings of this or any Rarebit recipe.

You may decide the 10 minute effort that goes into making a SINGLE toast a bit too much, though, and find yourself making slices 2 or 4 at a time.

As your knowledge of your own personal taste gets sharper and sharper, you may tune this recipe in your own way, changing the spice balance, adding and removing ingredients. Eggs and tomatoes are both popular.

For this lesson you used: - Measuring cups - A cheese grater - The low setting of a stove burner - A toaster - Eyeballed proportion (Lassi)