Overrated cooking methods?

Cafe Society
41

Charcoal grilling just for the result is so often a waste of time. You can make steaks that are just as good on a stove top or using an over broiler. If you really love the real smoke flavor and the searing at higher temperatures it could be worth the extra time and cost to you.

OTOH most people use their charcoal grills for more than just the way the food comes out. You may not want to smoke up your kitchen to get the same result. You can make more of mess outside altogether instead of in your kitchen, and eat outside with family or friends, not to mention cooking in quantity for a large party. The cook gets to wear a funny apron (it’s always a man who rarely cooks otherwise as can be seen on TV) and use special cooking tools. Most propane stoves aren’t going produce the same results as charcoal but can still deliver that cookout flavor without the time spent to get coals started.

You can even achieve similar pyrotechnic effects from gas and charcoal grills. With gas you just have to keep to turn on the gas and close the lid after not noticing that you had no flame, or just forget to ignite the gas, and then of course after a while when you realize it’s no getting hot try to light it again. With charcoal just use too much lighter fluid and don’t ignite it immediately. Or for more fun when you run out of fluid find a convenient liquid fuel alternative because after all the lighter fluid and gasoline are both petroleum distillates right? Sometime in the past I posted how to properly use one of those propane turkey fryers to burn your house down.

42

Well, my first pizza looked like it had been dug up from Pompeii…

but I have now learned to respect the heat.

43

If it works for you and produces the results you want, then it obviously isn’t bad. But, it’s definitely fussier and the resulting veggies are bland and less likely to be uniformly cooked. I used to think that boiling was bad because it drained out the nutrients, but apparently the use of salt keeps the nutrients from leaching out and also adds flavor (but not too much sodium since most of it drains off with the water).

While the car radio was playing, I was parking and heading off, appropriately enough, to the local farmers’ market, so I didn’t hear the full response from the guest chef. But they were starting to say that you really need a sauce of some sort for steamed veggies to give them taste.

44

Hell, I just nuke 'em in a covered dish with a bit of water (provided you can fit all the veggies you want in a dish). Least fussy of all and pretty much the one thing a microwave excels at.

45

Rice cookers are awesome. They cost $20 and last for years. If you make rice you just measure it out and push a button.

Its like saying nobody needs a toaster since you can just hold a piece of bread over an open flame.

When I make indian food, I just let the rice cooker do its thing while I focus on all the other things that need to be cooked and prepared.

46

Which is of high value when camping… particularly if you don’t have processes figured out, or are not great at managing time/fire.

No arguments about the drawbacks, but one benefit I’ve experienced is that you can actually get maillard reaction while steaming at the same time, as long as the fire is hot.

One of the best camp meals I’ve ever had was a foil packet wrapped tightly with:

1 large local herbed sausage
tender kale
fresh asparagus
garlic scapes
two onion quarters
fresh dill
6 or so small potatoes
generous dollup (maybe 1-2 Tb) of herbed butter

… set on a low grate over a hot fire until I felt like they were probably done. The potatoes came out tender and flavorful, and they and the sausage had a nice sweet/savory caramelization on the bottom side. Being in the packet helped prevent anything from actually burning. And lots of fat from the sausage and butter. Yum!

47

Perhaps not “overrated” since I don’t see it much these days but I’ve never had a fondue experience that didn’t quickly turn into people munching on the raw ingredients because cooking your food one bite at a time is stupid.

48

Yep, I do that a lot as well. Drizzle with a little olive oil or stir in a smudge of butter, sprinkle with salt and some freshly ground pepper or a tasty Penzey’s spice mix, and it’s easy and yum.

That’s why I’m a fan - at the beginning of your cooking, you throw in rice and water, hit a button, and forget about it. No worries about over/under cooking or burning, or making sure the rice finishes cooking at the same time everything else does. It’ll cook up nice and sit there warm and fresh without drying out for as long as you need.

49

The only things I need to think about for regular methods is turn it down all the way when it starts to boil. Then turn it off after 20 minutes (“Alexa, set timer to twenty minutes!”) Then it keeps warm covered for at least an hour. Or warm enough for me. Yes, the rice cooker is even easier, but stovetop is not some arduous task that requires all your attention, either. Just set a timer and you’re good. I mean, use the rice cooker, of course, if you have one (I certainly would if someone gave me one and I had the countertop space), but the amount of effort is just being exaggerated here for stovetop methods.

50

Not really. I get the good things being said about rice cookers, such as the timer aspect, and if others like their rice cookers, more power to them. But as far as I’m concerned, cooking rice in a saucepan is just as easy as in a rice cooker. Not so much for holding bread over a flame to toast it.

Also, we had a fondue restaurant nearby when the fondue thing was popular again for awhile (very early 2000s?) and went a few times. We even had a home fondue cooker at one point-- shrimp tempura is delicious. But cooking everything in hot oil and batter or melted cheese is tasty at first, but it becomes too much fried fatty crap all at once, and sits in your stomach like a rock afterward.

51

I had some on a Cub Scout campout that were made with Italian sausage, onions, bell peppers and potatoes, and they were surprisingly good. I think there might have been some butter in there as well, but I don’t recall exactly.

The usual cheapo pot-roast style with hamburger, carrots, potatoes and onions desperately needs a lot of seasoning- something like the commercial Creole seasoning blends like Tony Chachere’s works well.

Well, being a bit of a hobbyist cook myself, I’ve been told off/corrected for pizza, barbecue, sous-vide, and meat curing. I’ve discovered that there’s a rather weird element of religious fervor and attaching one’s identity to various methods/styles, and as a result, there’s a weird element of investment for many people in how it’s done.

I mean, there are people out there who’ll tell you that it’s physically impossible to make good barbecue on a pellet smoker, and there are people who are going to tell you that anything but Tipo 00 flour cooked in a wood fired oven isn’t “real” pizza.

52

Simmering. I ain’t got time for that, boil it up and git 'er done!

Smoking. Mrs. Cheesesteak is always talking about investing in a smoker, saying “we should get a smoker” which means “I should buy a smoker and YOU should spend hours outside in the cold smoking the Thanksgiving Turkey”.

We also have an Ooni, which I’ve used multiple times to make pizzas that Mrs. C. hates. I desperately do want to make fine artisan pizza in a wood fired oven, I just suck at it.

53

Agreed. That would probably make a good thread on its own, something like ‘great debates in cooking techniques’. Not for me to start though, at least not now, since it’s too similar to this thread.

My BIL and I have a friendly rivalry over BBQ techniques-- for example, he prefers BBQ ribs that stick to the bone and have a little bit of ‘chew’ to them, so you have to gnaw the bone-- the experience is kind of like eating corn on the cob. I do allow that in BBQ circles I have heard that many do prefer that method, but as one who likes to render collagen, I prefer my rib meat falling off the bone. Just something about taking a bite and pulling a clean bone out with the meat in your teeth. Makes for easy rib sandwiches the next day, too.

54

And gross! Either melted cheese everywhere or frying oil. Who wants to sit over a fry vat and cook one French Fry at a time? They were popular around the same time and fell from popularity just as fast as Jell-O molds and that tells you everything you need to know.

55

This being my very first thought on reading the OP, I’m glad it was addressed!

For the thread overall, I think most people are agreed that specific cooking methods are rarely “overrated”, but they’re VERY often incredibly situational. Sure, it might do one or two things well, but it requires special equipment/tools, or is great as a “hack” but not for general cooking, or is a nice work-around if you’re in the field, or it is unsuited in terms of time/expertise, or what have you.

Another issue is that some cooking options have several of the above issues. I think I’ll pick on smoking, even though I love the finished product (note, I do not own a smoker, but have borrowed my Father-in-Law’s electric on several occasions). So there’s the specialty gear, the time (I cheated by smoking and finishing in a low and slow oven, but still), and the final results were very good, but not better than I could have gotten commercially.

Not to mention, I’m the only meat eater in the house (though the wife did like the smoked russet potatoes!). So the economy of scale is entirely against me.

All that said, one thing that is IMHO overrated in most wooden (often cedar) planked dishes. I don’t always blame the cooking method for this, but the marketing. Because you’ll see the planks sold (at a damn high price) with flimsy, often low quality wood, or worse, an “all in one” set with fish included, and you and I know damn well that all the included are the cheapest they can get away with. Combine that with uncertain skills of the home chef in question, and they turn out something that is almost always over or under cooked, and the flavor applied by the plank is either minimal, overwhelmed by the charring of the plank, or otherwise superfluous.

Aside on the kebabs - I’ve done pork, chicken and shrimp done as kebabs on a rigid skewer made from whole lemongrass stalks and it’s freaking amazing if you’re doing an Asian style dish.

56

Stranger

57

Good point, agreed.

Also agreed. I’ve tried this multiple times over the years, I believe I did it properly, and never noticed much, if any, flavor difference imparted by the cedar.

Another overrated BBQ-related technique, which the mention of cedar plank cooking reminded me of, is in the case of water-cooled smokers, such as bullet-style smokers: many people (including me in the very early days) would add stuff like apple juice or even wine to the water pans in order to impart more flavor to the meat. Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. The only reason for the water pan to exist is to create a heat sink for the smoker. I don’t even use water any more in the pan-- I use sand covered in heavy-duty foil. Much easier cleanup.

This sounds very interesting. Do you use ordinary lemongrass stalks, as in right from the produce section of an Asian market, or are they specially dried or processed in some way to be ‘skewer-like’ tough enough?

58

The ones I get from my Asian market are quite stiff, so I normally treated them by pulling off one or two of the outermost layers (needing the smaller diameter, and they’re also a bit rough, though I of course saved them for other applications), and gave them a brief soak. They were more than rigid enough for skewering the marinated meats, though just in case I used a paring knife to pre-puncture the chicken and pork. They aren’t quite as rigid after the cooking process as metal or bamboo skewers, but still did well by me, as long as I didn’t overload them prior to cooking.

Which, as a further aside, is a problem with the prepackaged and some home-made skewers - we tend to overload them, because open space can mean burn direct heat applied to metal skewers or even burning on bamboo, but overloading them can lead to uneven doneness. So I like a quick sear for color and flavor, and finish on lower, indirect heat which is much more forgiving.

59

The ones I’ve gotten out of the package from Asian markets are quite stiff right out of the package as well, though I never thought to use them for skewers. Great idea, and I will have to try this soon! Thanks.

60

You’re welcome, though I’m 100% certain I picked it up from a cooking show (East Meets West maybe?) years ago, so not original to me. :wink: