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How to sauté or pan fry meat
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Written by: Ágúst
26.01.2012
SAUTÉING - QUICK AND DELICIOUS
Sautéing is an excellent cooking method for people that don‘t have a lot of time but want something healthy and delicious at home. It uses far less oil than some other cooking methods and is by its nature meant to be quick. You can make a delicious dinner in less than 20 minutes, including a fantastic pan sauce, using the sauté cooking method.
Sautéing is a high-heat, pan frying cooking method. The word itself comes from French and means “to jump” which is what happens to smaller things that are fried on high heat, they start jumping around. The most important ingredient when sautéing is the meat you want to sauté. The meat mustn‘t be too thick or else you run the risk of having a perfectly done outer layer with a raw center. The frying time will differ based on the type of meat you are using and its thickness, here‘s a rough guideline:
- Salmon and other fish: 2 minutes or so on each side. Works well with butter.
- Beef: 3 minutes on each side for rare, 5 minutes for medium, 7 minutes for well done (depending on thickness). If you are cooking it for more than 3 minutes then flip the meat after the initial searing.
- Lamb: 3 minutes on each side (depending on thickness), add same amount of time as for beef for doneness.
- Chicken breasts: 2 minutes on each side, then lower the heat and continue flipping, leaving it for a minute or two on each side until the meat is cooked through which normally takes around 10 – 12 minutes of cooking in total. Works well with butter.
- Pork: 3 minutes on each side, then lower the heat and continue flipping like with chicken breasts until the meat is cooked through.
For beef, lamb and pork, pick tender, high quality meat. Soup meat and the like is not really meant to be cooked like this and will likely be very tough. Price is a good estimate of how well a cut of meat will fare when sautéed, more expensive cuts generally being better. Also, if you are cooking pork or chicken, make sure the meat is cooked through by cutting into it with a knife to check the center. There should be no red juice or meat.
When sautéing you‘ll want to pick an oil that can stand up to the heat. If you like butter you need to be careful. Butter contains ingredients that are not just fat; it also contains milk- and butter solids which can burn. If you want to use butter when sautéing you have two options; you can either use meats that don‘t need as much time (such as fish) or you can make your own clarified butter. Clarified butter is made by melting a rather large quantity of butter in a pot, then letting it stand for a while. The butter will separate into three layers. The middle layer is the one you‘ll want, that‘s the clarified, i.e. the fat ingredient of butter.
Other good oil options are sunflower oil, corn oil, peanut oil as well as rapeseed (canola) oil and olive oil although you‘ll want to avoid using extra virgin olive oil when cooking in general. It has a really strong flavor that can overpower your dish, only use it if you love the taste of it or you have strong, powerful ingredients that can stand up and harmonize well with it.
When sautéing use 1, maximum 2 table spoons of fat.
Here‘s a delicious butter sautéd chicken breast recipe including pan sauce:
Chicken:
- 2 – 3 Chicken breasts
- 1 1/2 Table spoon butter
- Salt
- Pepper
Pan Sauce:
- 1 dl / 1/2 Cup white wine
- 1/2 dl / 1/4 Cup real chicken stock
- 1/2 Table spoon fresh chopped rosemary
- 1/2 Garlic clove, crushed
- 1 Tea spoon mustard
- 2 Table spoons cold butter
1) Begin by preheating your oven to 50°C/120°F. Rinse, then pat your chicken breasts dry and rub them on both sides with salt and pepper. Put the table spoon and a half of butter into a frying pan and turn the heat to medium high or high. Put the chicken breasts, presentation side first, into the hot pan as soon as the butter has stopped sizzling.
2) Let the chicken breasts cook on each side like this, 2 minutes per side after which you should reduce the temperature a bit and continue turning the breasts, leaving them for a minute on each side. Usually this takes around 3 – 4 times per side, 10 – 12 minutes of cooking in total.
3) Make sure the chicken is properly cooked by cutting a little hole with a knife into the thicker half of the biggest breast. There should be no redness. Once the breasts are ready, keep them warm and nice by storing them in the oven. Make sure the oven is not too hot. If it is, keep the door ajar.
3) Using the same pan you fried your chicken in, turn it to high and add the white wine mixed with the chicken stock, rosemary and crushed garlic half.
4) Let the wine/stock mixture boil down until it looks rather syrupy. Make sure to taste it as you‘ll want to reduce the liquid to a taste you are happy with. You can add some stock to the sauce if it’s too thick or strong.
5) Mix in the mustard and stir thoroughly. If the liquid is too thick add some more chicken stock. Turn off the heat and whisk in cold butter until all of it has melted and has been incorporated into the sauce. You’ll need to whisk constantly while the butter is melting. Use cold butter instead of warm to slow down the melting of the butter. This will make it easier for you to emulsify the butter into the liquid.
6) Season with salt and pepper until you think the pan sauce tastes just right. Use the sauce sparingly (like in restaurants) with the chicken.
7) Serve with steamed and buttered string beans and some fried small potatoes. Bon appetite!
The pan sauce recipe is flexible and can accommodate different meats. You can substitute the white wine with rosé or red wine and the herbs and mustard with a range of other herbs and spices that fit the meat you are preparing or your interests. This combination of sautéing and creating a pan sauce can be done with virtually all meat and vegetables. The combination of possible outcomes is immense.
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How to cook tender whole chicken
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Written by: Ágúst
10.01.2012
HOW TO COMBINE COOKING METHODS
How to cook tender whole chicken
Cooking chicken can be tricky. Cooking it for too long results in dry meat yet cooking it too little can be outright dangerous. What’s the best way to get a tender, delicious chicken?
One excellent cooking method for meat that results in tender, juicy meat is braising. Braising can be considered a sort of opposite to roasting. Both take place in an oven but while roasting is a hot, dry quick cooking method, braising is a slow, moist, lower temperature method. Braising meat results in very succulent, flavorful dishes because the flavors and the juices have time to combine and concentrate. The best thing about it though is that you can combine the two methods to get the best of both of them which is what I will be doing in the example recipe in a minute.
To braise a chicken you need at least two things, a casserole pot with a lid and something that will keep up the humidity inside the pot. An excellent way to keep up the humidity and also give flavor to the dish is to use cut up vegetables. A special classic mix of vegetables; onions, carrots and celery (this combination even has its own name: mirepoix) is a very good choice. You can also experiment with any hearty vegetables you want for flavor nuances but those three will keep their own no matter what.
Additional ingredients you may want to consider are fresh herbs and a stuffing. Sage, rosemary and thyme go really well with mirepoix and chicken, they can even be considered the herb relatives to the classic mirepoix vegetables. If you want to add even more layers of flavor to the chicken, as well as some more moisture you’ll want to consider including a stuffing. I’ll be using a traditional bread crumbs stuffing that I soak in butter and stock for the example recipe.
Now on to the recipe, here’s what you need:
Chicken Casserole:
1 whole chicken
2 carrots
1 small yellow onion
2 celery stalks
80g / 1/3 cup butter
1.2dl / 1/2 cup chicken stock
3 garlic cloves (halved)
1 table spoon chopped fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
Stuffing:
0.8dl / 1/3 cup chicken stock
80g / 1/3 cup butter
1 table spoon fresh parsley chopped fine
1/2 table spoon fresh thyme chopped fine
1 table spoon rosemary chopped fine
1 bay leaf
1 tea spoon peppercorns
1 garlic clove smashed
4 toasted whole wheat bread slices
Salt and pepper to taste
Start by turning your oven on 160°C/320°F.
Begin the recipe by making the chicken stuffing. Put the smaller amount of chicken stock, bay leaf, garlic, parsley, thyme and pepper into a small pot and let simmer for around 10 - 15 minutes to infuse the stock with the delicious taste of the herbs. Once done, drop the butter in the pot and put the lid on.
While the butter is melting, toast the slices of bread and then tear them into small chunks and put them into a bowl. Pour the stock through a strainer and into the bowl, separating all the herbs out. Add the rosemary at this stage and mix in with the bread and the liquid. Season with salt and pepper until you like the outcome.
Rinse and pat the chicken dry. Season it with salt and pepper and lay it in a casserole pot. There should not be a large amount of extra space. Stuff the chicken with the bread mixture.
Cut the carrots, onion and celery into rather large chunks and arrange them around the chicken in the casserole pot along with chopped up thyme, garlic cloves cut in half and the larger amount of chicken stock. Lay thick slices of butter on top of the chicken, put the lid on the casserole pot and place it in the oven.
Now for the braising/roasting combination method: First cook the chicken for one hour on 160°C/320°F with the lid on the casserole pot. Next, take the lid off and cook for another 50 minutes on 160°C/320°C. Finally, increase the temperature to 220°C/430°F with the fan setting (convection) turned on and cook for 30 minutes. To make sure the chicken is done, use a meat thermometer, chicken should reach 70°C/160°F when you take it out.
You can use this braising/roasting combination method for all sorts of chicken recipes. I encourage you to experiment with different vegetables, herbs, spices and stuffing ingredients.
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The wonderful world of sauces
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Written by: Ágúst
01.01.2012
PROFESSIONAL SAUCES AT HOME
Classical, or French, cuisine defines a set of basic sauces called the five mother sauces, or in French, Sauces Grandes (grand sauces). These five basic sauces are used all over professional kitchens either on their own or as a base ingredient for more elaborate sauces. The five basic sauces do not include a set of sauces called pan sauces which I’m also going to include in this article. Pan sauces are delicious and easy to make sauces that utilize a raw material that most people simply throw away while cooking without ever realizing what can be done with it.
The mother sauces in French cuisines were formally defined by two great French chefs, the earlier one, Antonin Carême, is best known for creating an extensive recipe list of sauces in the early 19th century. Towards the end of the century, his countryman Auguste Escoffier consolidated Carême‘s list of classical sauces into the five mother sauces that we know today. Here’s a list of all the mother sauces with the easier-to-make sauces at the beginning:
Sauce Velouté, white stock based sauce, thickened with a blond roux.
Sauce Béchamel, milk based sauce, thickened with a white roux.
Sauce Tomate, tomato based sauce.
Sauce Espagnole, a fortified brown stock sauce, often using veal or beef stock.
Sauce Hollandaise, an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon.
There are a few terms in there that need clarification. First, three of these sauces use stock. To make a good sauce you really either need to buy top quality stock or (much cheaper) make it yourself. There‘s no getting around this, using cheap store bought stock or worse, bullion, will result in a bland, disappointing sauce. Click here to read my article on stock.
The other ingredient mentioned is roux. Roux is a French word (pronounced “roo”), that is simply a 1-to-1 of fat (such as butter, lard, vegetable oil etc.) and flour by weight. For a typical sauce that amounts to 3 table spoons of butter and 5 table spoons of flour. Roux is an interesting ingredient; it comes in several different variations and has different names based on how long you cook the flour and the fat together. Cooking it for a very short amount of time (around a minute) yields white roux, then blond roux (3 minutes or so), peanut-butter roux, brown roux and finally chocolate roux. The longer a roux is cooked, the less of a thickening power it has.
Here’s a recipe for Velouté sauce, the simplest of the mother sauces:
1) Put 3 table spoons of butter (40 grams) into a small sauce pan on medium heat and let it melt.
2) Add 5 table spoons (40 grams) of flour into the pan and whisk constantly with the flour for around 3 minutes. If the roux starts to turn a darker yellow color before the time is up then stop.
3) Add any type of white stock you like. A white stock is a stock where the bones or vegetables were not browned (fried) before making the stock. Make sure the stock is room temperature or warmer. If it is too cold it might seize the roux.
4) Mix the stock and the roux together thoroughly and then add some herbs; one smashed garlic clove, one tea spoon of cracked pepper corns, a sprig of thyme, a leaf of sage and bay leaf. You can experiment with the herbs you put into this sauce.
5) Increase the heat until the sauce boils and then reduce the heat to low and let the sauce simmer for 30 minutes. Once done, strain it to remove all the herbs. You’re ready to serve your Velouté sauce.
Note that Velouté sauce is not usually served in restaurants as such but is rather used as a base ingredient to make more elaborate sauces such as Sauce Parisienne, Albufera Sauce, Normandy Sauce and so on. Pan sauce on the other hand is a deliciously flavorful sauce that is even easier to make than Velouté and is indeed served in restaurants. Pan sauce gets its name from the way it’s made. When pan frying, or sautéing, meat, you usually get some bits stuck to the pan after the meat is done. Instead of spending half an hour scrubbing it off after the meal, it’s better (and more effective at removing crust, especially with cast iron pans) to make a sauce using these stuck caramelized pieces of meat as flavoring agents in pan sauce. Here’s how you make a pan sauce:
1) First you need to pan fry (sauté) some meat, any meat you can think of on high heat.
2) Once done, you will be left with small encrusted bits of meat stuck to the pan which are called fond. Less so if you use a non stick pan though.
3) Cut 2 shallot onions and a clove of garlic and fry them in the pan until the garlic starts to brown. This does not take a long time, garlic has a tendency to brown quickly and if you are not careful, burn.
4) Turn the heat to high and add 1/3 cup/80 ml of a wine you think would go well with the meat you were frying. Don’t worry too much about the exact amount of wine you add. Scrape the pan with a wooden spatula to loosen the fond.
5) Let the wine mixture boil down to around a third of its original volume, it should look somewhat syrupy. It is important though that you taste the mixture constantly. If you think it has reduced sufficiently, based on the taste, then stop. If you reduce the mixture too much you might end up with a pan sauce that is too intense to your taste.
6) Turn off the heat and whisk in 2 table spoons of cold butter until all the butter is melted and incorporated. Warm butter is more difficult to incorporate into the sauce and it might break which means that the fat separates from the liquid and you can see it.
7) Season with salt and pepper until you think it tastes right. Your pan sauce is ready to serve.
You can experiment with step 3 and 4 a lot. Try adding a tea spoon of mustard, some cut up fresh thyme, sage, rosemary, lemon juice etc. There are a lot of possibilities for variations when making pan sauce. That applies to step 7 as well, try seasoning it with other spices and see if you can create your very own pan sauce masterpiece to write about.
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How to make your own candied peel
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Written by: Ágúst
27.12.2011
ADDING A TOUCH OF HOME MADE
Candying your own fruit peel is fun and results in a far superior product to the small plastic cartons available in most grocery stores. The citrus flavor is much more intense and recognizable as the fruit it comes from. You can also candy in bulk because properly candied fruit peel will last for months in the fridge.
To start, buy good looking oranges, limes, lemons, or whatever citrus you enjoy the most. Choose fruits with no bruises and beautiful flesh. Wash them well to remove wax and pesticide residue, as you will be using only the most external part. Pat dry and you’re ready to start.
Grab a knife, a cutting board, and if you have it, a citrus peeler. This makes things easier as it scores only the peel, leaving the fruit uncut. You can do this with a knife, but you’ll have to be careful not to go too deep, or the fruit will pull apart when it comes time to remove the peel. Use the citrus peeler or knife to cut the peel into quarters, like the poles of a globe.
Peel off the quarters, slice each quarter lengthwise into quarters so you’re left with 16 long thin slices. Now comes the tricky part. You need to cut as much of the white pith off the inside of the peel as you can. I find it helps to lay the fruit peel side down, pith side up, and using a sharp knife, slowly sliver off the pith. You can leave it on if you must, but you’ll get a more bitter, less citrus flavored end result if you do.
Once all pith is removed, make a pot of 4 1/4 cups/10 dl sugar, and 2 1/2 cups/6 dl water (you can fit around two medium oranges, two small lemons, and two small limes into this amount if liquid). Bring it to a boil for five minutes, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar in the water, leave the pot uncovered for the duration of this cooking procedure.
Add all your chopped citrus peel to this sugar syrup. You’ll need to boil it for about two hours, uncovered, without stirring, till the water is reduced to about a quarter its original volume. The reason you don’t stir is to prevent the formation of sugar crystals, and the reason for why you need to leave it uncovered is to let the water evaporate.
Remove the liquid from the heat and allow it to cool down. Once cool enough to handle, heat your oven to 195° Fahrenheit/90° Celsius. Line a baking tray with wax or parchment paper. Pour the citrus peel and syrup mixture through a colander and drain well. You can spread the citrus peel on the paper as is, or roll it in sugar crystals beforehand for a sweeter taste and more candy-like presentation (it’s best if you are not using them for cooking, but presenting them as actual candy or dipping them in chocolate). Bake for around an hour, but check often to make sure they are not burning.
After taking them out, spread them onto a wire rack to cool down completely. Once the peels have cooled down, chop them up with a sharp knife to the size you prefer. Store in the fridge in an airtight container or in a freezer for next to eternity.
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Making your own stock
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Written by: Ágúst
18.12.2011
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ADEQUATE AND AMAZING
First off, why make your own stock? Well, to begin with, it’s fun! On a more practical note though, a stock you make yourself is much more flavorful than one of those canned or bottled stocks you can buy at the grocery store and will also be completely free of additives and preservatives. Just pick up a can or bottle of stock next time you go to the grocery store and note all the extra stuff besides "stock" that is put into these products. The compressed stock cubes are even worse, there’s hardly any stock in them at all, it’s mostly salt (real stock should not have any salt in it) and corn starch! Making your own stock gives you control over one of the most important base ingredient in a range of dishes such as soups, sauces, stews, all kinds of oven dishes and much more.
A quick note on the difference between a stock and a broth; the two are very similar but the main difference is that stock is a clear liquid that has nothing in it whereas a broth, while consisting mostly of the same liquid as stock, can include additional ingredients such as vegetables and meat, making it in fact a type of clear soup.
The stocks I am about to talk about are the ones used in the French cuisine. There are two main types of stocks, white stock and brown stock. The main difference between the two is that the bones (or vegetables in vegetable stock) in white stock are not fried (browned) before adding water whereas the bones in a brown stock are fried and caramelized before adding water. It does not matter what kind of bones you use, you can have beef white stock and chicken brown stock.
The basic ingredients in every stock is a combination of three special aromatic vegetables, namely carrots, celery and onions. This vegetable combination is so good that it even has a special name in many languages such as mirepoix (French), refogado (Portuguese), sofrito (Spanish), suppengrün (German) and "holy trinity" (Creole cuisine). It is a classic combination that just can’t go wrong. In fact, you can use this combination in many other dishes such as pot roasts, stews and braised oven dishes.
The second very important ingredient in stock is a combination of herbs, called bouquet garni (garnished bouquet). Although there is no generic recipe for what is included in a bouquet garni it is usually some combination of sprigs of parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage and bay leaf tied together into a bundle with a bit of string. Sometimes garlic and peppercorns are included as well but then it’s not possible to tie all the ingredients together so a little pouch of cheesecloth or coffee filter is used instead. These herbs are always pulled out after the stock has been cooked but since stock is always strained at the end, it’s not strictly necessary to tie them together or put them into a cheesecloth pouch.
The third important ingredient in stock is bones. I put them last because bones are not used in vegetable stock. When making vegetable stock, you substitute bones for some more aromatic vegetables such as peppers, leeks, radishes and so on. You can use any bones you can lay your hands on but the cooking time of the stock you are preparing will vary significantly based on the bones you are using. This is because different types of bones need different cooking times to extract their full flavor potential. Here’s the cooking times for commonly used bone types:
Fish Bones: 30 - 45 minutes, any longer and you’ll ruin the taste!
Chicken Bones: 3 - 4 hours
Lamb Bones: 4 hours
Pork Bones: 4 hours
Beef and Veal bones: 7 - 8 hours
You can also use meat in your stock, either already cooked (leftover) or fresh. This is a great way to get every last bit out of whole chicken once it’s served its purpose on the dinner table. Fresh meat will produce a superior taste though and meat rich in connective tissue such as chuck, shin or shoulder (beef or veal), or chicken thighs and so on is recommended.
Here’s a basic chicken white stock recipe:
Stock:
900 gr/2 lb Chicken Bones
1 Piece Onion
2 Pieces Carrots
2 Pieces Celery
1 Piece Leek
3.7 l/4 qt Water
Herb bundle:
1 Piece Garlic Clove (Smashed)
4 Pieces Parsley Stems
1 Tea Spoon Peppercorns (Black)
1 Piece Thyme (Fresh Sprig)
1 Piece Bay Leaf
Cut the vegetables into rather large chunks (they will be cooking for a long time). Then put all the ingredients into a large pot (you can put the herbs into a cheesecloth sachet if you want). Turn on high heat and let it come to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let simmer gently for 3 - 4 hours (because we are using chicken bones, cooking times depend on the type of bones you use). If any foam forms, remove it. If you leave it, it might incorporate itself back into the stock, resulting in murky stock. Once the stock is done cooking, strain it through a fine meshed strainer and then pour it into a container and refrigerate. Once cool, skim the hardened fat off the top. You can freeze stock for a very long time. It’s a good idea to create a little stockpile of frozen stock for when you need it.
The recipe for brown stock is almost the same except you fry the bones and brown them first. Don’t move them around much at all when frying, just let them sit for a few minutes on each side. Then add the vegetables and fry with the bones for a little bit. Next add the water and follow white stock recipe.
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