Mini-revolutions (or not-so-mini) in your food preparation. Times when, in a good way, that dish hasn’t been the same since. You discovered or learned a better way, perhaps saying to yourself “Why didn’t I think of this or try this before?”
Last week I learned to cut the backbone out of a chicken and then roast it on a rack in a 500° (or so) oven. The chicken cooked more evenly than I was ever able to get it before, as well as being done a lot faster, with all the meat very good and all the skin nice and crispy. I’m not doing “the old way” again, if I can help it.
Learning about the Maillard reaction from a foodie/chemist friend was my moment: “THAT’S why toast > bread! And why it tastes so much better when I sear my salmon, or my steaks.”
I found a McCormick grill-mate that isn’t terribly salty and is actually amazing. I know, these things are typically crappy. This one impacted us so much, we only grill chicken with it now.
Not so much for cooking, per se. But my first time at a bar, I ordered a drink…AND THEY BROUGHT IT TO ME! Ah HA! I know see why this is better than sitting at home drinking.
For the last three years I have been cooking on an offsett smoker, commonly called a “stick burner.” There is a mountain of information out there on how to go about this. for example: the 3-2-1 method for pork spare ribs says to smoke them for 3 hours, then wrap them in tin foil(some say pink butcher paper) for two hours, then unwrapped for another hour. These ribs are overdone and mushy. I have learned to just trust my instincts and my ribs are almost perfect. I am working out the rub recipe…
I’ve been thinking hard about this, and “trust your instincts” has been the biggest lesson for me. I wish I could have something less vague and subjective to impart for this thread, though. Another lesson was learning to keep things simple and that it doesn’t take a mountain of herbs and spices and other ingredients to make things taste good (although I do like highly-spiced cuisines, too.)
I believe very often it’s knowing and using the actual right one, rather than (as I’ve done) throwing in some of everything I had that day and hoping one of them turned out to be close enough.
That is, indeed, much of it. And starting with good technique and good ingredients. I know, vague, but the biggest lesson I had was working as a kitchen porter (basically, a clean-up boy) when I was 20 in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Scotland. It was my first exposure to high-brow food, and it was all (mostly) prepared very simply. Naively, I asked the chef what the secret of cooking was, as if it could be distilled down to a pithy sentence, but he did advise me with something that has long rang true, basically to keep it simple, but start with good ingredients and good technique.
And then a couple months later, I found myself in a shitty hotel in Paris enjoying a continental breakfast of baguettes and butter, expecting nothing because, hey, it’s just fuckin’ bread and butter, and being blown away by how great a simple dish can be when you start with good ingredients. And that really changed my philosophy of cooking completely around. I used to think if my food tasted like crap, it was because I didn’t throw enough shit into it. No. It was because I didn’t prepare it properly, or I used inferior/wrong ingredients. A hamburger patty needs nothing more than meat and salt (and pepper for me) to taste delicious. A pasta sauce can be great from just tomatoes, salt, and a bit of grated cheese. You don’t need to dump half your spice rack into the food to make it taste good.
That’s not vague at all, it just means “If you don’t already use good technique and you don’t already know how to choose good ingredients, then it would really help to learn more about them”. Which certainly sounds reasonable and right to me.
Agree 100%. On a recent trip to Australia, we ate at plenty of restaurants. My favorite meal - the one I still think about? A simple breakfast that consisted of a thick, whole grain piece of toast, avocado smashed onto that, a few spinach leaves, some pine nuts, topped with feta.
Not only was it fresh and delicious, it’s simplicity made an impression on me as well.
mmm
I had a delicious dish of green beans cooked in a wood biting oven. I asked the chef what he added to make it so good: “heat”. I think a mistake a lot of people make is cooking at too low a temperature.
Keep it simple. The fewer ingredients that taste good together, the better.
Most everything ends up good if you start by sauteing an onion in olive oil in a big pan.
Brown stuff first. Brown the veggies and meat prior to adding broth, sauces, the rice/noodles, etc. I assume this is the Maillard stuff you guys are talking about.
Regional cooking is modular:
> A fat - olive oil, sesame oil, butter, etc.
> Starter stuff - an onion, celery, carrots that go in first
> The protein
> The veggie
> The carb - rice, noodles, thai noodles, tortillas (or over a salad, or a frittata…)
> The spices/sauces that define the recipe
If you mix and match that stuff, you can create pretty much anything in about 30 minutes for a Wednesday night dinner when 1 kid has a study group and the other has soccer practice, and your wife just grabbed a train home, but you want to sit down in that 20-minute window you are all together
That is another good one. Don’t be afraid of high heat. In many cases, high heat is essential, as it creates that browning reaction (Maillard and caramelization previously mentioned.) My stove generally is set to two settings: full blast, and lowest flame. (This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but the vast majority of time, you’ll see me using a 9/10 or 10/10 flame and a 1/10 or 2/10 flame.)
I do like long, slow cooked green beans (we’re talking like 2-3 hours, turn-into-delicious-mush type green beans–their flavor also transforms over time in a different way to high heat), but I’ve recently starting to love blistered/charred green beans, as it gets rid of some of that “green” flavor I’m not particularly fond of in steamed green beans, and there’s an extra layer of flavor with the charring.
I don’t know if this is an a-ha moment, but I figured out a couple years ago that the tuna-macaroni salad that is a family staple handed down from my maternal grandmother is LOADS better if you over-salt the water you boil the macaroni in. I always throw a handful of salt into pasta water, but for whatever reason, this time I put in a lot more than normal. It made the pasta salad a ton better.
Another not-quite-aha moment, but important nevertheless: bland food can be saved with salt and/or acid. Most folks know about salt; but a squirt of lemon juice or vinegar can be just as important.
When preparing ribs for cooking, let them come to room temperature before attempting to remove the backing membrane. Comes off much easier (just like in the videos).
Using sugar as a spice was one for me - just a pinch or two will boost the taste of so many things. Chalk that up to medieval cooking and poudre douce.
Seasonal eating was another big thing. Everything fresh and local
Varying the source of key taste components was a revelation - usually make this with lemon juice for acidity? Try verjuice, or cider vinegar, or yuzu. Usually using a hit of soy for umami? Try garum, or worchestershire, or Marmite. Using cane sugar for sweetness? Use honey, or jaggery, or maple syrup. It’ll be different, and maybe better (maybe not, but that’s the fun!)
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