As my son is learning more and more about cooking, I’m realizing how useless most recipes are for really newbie cooks. I’ve got three and a half lessons I’m always trying to get through to people that will transform your cooking from “what happened?” to “lovely.”
Simmer…um, okay…but most people call little bubbles constantly breaking the surface a simmer. It’s not. That’s a boil - a low one, but a boil nonetheless. A simmer is when one or two bubbles every 5-6 seconds breaks the surface, and the rest is still. Much cooler, actually, and absolutely vital if you want, say, a clear broth, or a soup that’s not mush. Bubbles break stuff up, and that chicken will pulverize itself into dust if you boil it.
Sautée- most people say sautée when they mean sweat. A sautée is done at a relatively high heat, and includes some, but not total, carmelization of the foodstuff in question. A sweat means lower heat, don’t brown it, but soften it in fat. When you cook onions in oil until they’re translucent, that’s a sweat, not a sautée. I’m all for descriptive, not proscriptive, linguistics, but this one is important, people! If you want to call a sweat a sautée, we need a new word for sweat!
A close kin: sautée onions and garlic. First, of course, is the sautée v. sweat issue. This almost always means sweat. Next is the burn problem - even over lower heat, onions take a lot longer to cook than garlic. If you put them in the hot pan at the same time, the garlic will burn before the onion is done. If you’re going for translucent, put the onions in first, and only when they go translucent add your garlic. The garlic only needs a quick swish and it’s done.
Heat your pan first. Heat your pan first. No, really, heat your pan first, and keep it at the temperature you want to cook at for a good 3 minutes before you start cooking. Yes, even a nonstick pan. And do NOT turn the heat way up high to get the pan hot and then turn it down when you put the food it. Heat it, at the temp you want, for 3 minutes. Before you put the oil or any food it. Heat it, empty, at the temp you want, for 3 minutes. Am I clear here? Seriously, this will go so much further than any nonstick hardware to preventing stick. Even brand new nonstick pans have microscopic bumps and valleys and scratches that will catch food - especially sticky foods like eggs - and stick. Heating it first causes the metal to expand which closes up a lot of these gaps - even a thin ol’ aluminum pot is nonstick if you heat it first. Simple. But never mentioned and so hard for people to believe