10 Cooking Skills I Wish I Had Known (part 2)

cooking is a learned skill no one is great at it right off the bat you got to get in the kitchen and you got to put in the work you got to learn things over time and in the last video i showed you the 10 most influential skills that i've learned over the years that have turned me into a better cook and in that video i asked you guys what were the most influential skills for you and it was pretty cool to see the responses because i think cooking is a very similar journey for most people we're all learning the same skills because everything you wrote in those were skills that i've learned over the years as well so for today's video i'm picking one dish to break down your 10 most influential skills that you've learned over the years that have turned you into a much better cook so skill number one coming in from sunflower baby she mentions quality pants here which we'll be getting into later but if you really want to develop your cooking skills and if you're ever feeling stuck in the kitchen the best way to learn new things is just to study different cuisines pick a region from around the world and just go in on it which was something when i was getting into cooking i didn't quite understand i was staying on the surface level of cuisines maybe picking one recipe and making that and then just moving on but the best way to enhance your skills to learn new techniques to understand new flavor profiles and different combinations of ingredients is to really go deep and study different cuisines so how do you learn a new cuisine well for me what i like to do is one taste the food if you can find a restaurant around you that's serving up the traditional style food that's a great way to understand the flavors before you cook it number two is find cookbooks on that cuisine experts that are writing about it showing you recipes i found a great oaxacan cookbook that i've been loving that i've been learning a lot from and then of course youtube videos probably my biggest source of culinary information and my favorite mexican food personality is rick bayless i've learned so much from that guy so today's dish i decided to make lamb barbacoa and barbacoa is actually a cooking technique where you're taking usually a whole animal and you're burying it underground to slow cook it so today i'm going to show you how to do that on a much smaller scale in your house plus make perfect corn tortillas and really tie together with some of those traditional mexican flavors coming in from gal five six five the importance of fresh ingredients which has really become the story of how i cook over the last few years and it's amazing how little i cared about quality ingredients when i started cooking because the beautiful thing about being a home cook is that you're in control of your own ingredients and quality ingredients are not only going to make your food taste better but also you're going to feel better when you're putting fresh ingredients into your body so what i do is i go to my local farmer's markets whatever local market you have that's going to be a great source of fresh ingredients and recently i've been ordering meat from a local farm around me and i'll just get a bunch of different cuts at one time and then i'll go into the freezer and pull out whatever i'm inspired by whatever i want to cook so for this meal i've got some lamb shoulder and generally any shoulder cut on the animal is going to be a tougher cut of meat because of doing a lot of activity so you're going to want to slow cook it to get it nice and tender which is the perfect cut of meat for a barbacoa but first we're gonna spice up this lamb so i'm getting out some spices sticking with the mexican flavor profiles but also some spices that work great with lamb so i've got some cumin seeds some coriander seeds some mustard seeds a bay leaf some dried oregano but you can use fresh if you have it and then a few cloves of garlic and i'm just gonna grind that up into a nice spice mix for the lamb and this lamb shoulder is bone out so you can see it's butterflied open which gives me a lot of surface area to season up this lamb but if you have the bone in you're gonna get a little more flavor that way but you can just season the outside of it and then once the spice mix is rubbed in i'm gonna wrap the lamb shoulder in some tin foil to mimic that barbacoa cooking style where we're containing all of that flavor all of those juices and then i'll put that on a roasting tray and throw that in the oven at 300 degrees for a few hours which brings me to your next skill which is properly learning how to use your oven and the best way to think about your oven is that it's very similar to your stovetop or your burner where you can control the temperature but instead of direct heat going into your pan and heating up something you're using convection heat which surrounds your food with heat giving it a much more even cooking compared to a direct heat source that's just going to be cooking on one side i'm going to slow cook it for a few hours at a lower temperature around 300 degrees fahrenheit and that lower temperature will ensure that this meat will get nice and tender without drying out and then i'll check back in on it after a few hours to see if it's nice and tender and if it's good to go that's when i'm going to increase the temperature and create a convection environment where i can start browning the exterior of the meat and getting a nice crust on this meat the next skill coming in from nick was having a breakthrough with doe feel which is something that i've gotten very familiar with over the years because i bake so much bread but i really appreciate how nick mentioned things outside of bread like pie crust because understanding dough and the feel of it outside of just relying on a recipe is important for any dough and today i'm making corn tortillas and it's very valuable to understand dough feel when it comes to making good corn tortillas so the grain you want to use for corn tortillas is called masa and you can follow the instructions on the package of your masa and it will give you a rough estimate for a good dough but what i like to do is feel it out a bit so i'm going to start off with two cups of masa and add in a nice pinch of salt to bring out the flavor in these corn tortillas and i just start to pour in the water into the dough and slowly mix it around until it comes together and at first it's going to be a bit crumbly but i keep adding water until the entire dough comes together and you're looking for a nice soft play-doh type texture something that can easily be pushed apart in your hands it has some nice moisture content to it but it's not sticky now here's where understanding dough really comes into play because a lot of people would feel this dough and they would say okay good to go we're moving on but all grains take time to hydrate so as we let this dough rest for the next 30 minutes the masa is going to continue to soak up that water and it's going to start to dry out a little bit and this goes for all dough so what i've learned over the years is just to add a little more water than you think to hydrate it just a little bit more to counteract some of that hydration process that's going to take place so i'm just going to add a little bit more water and i'm going to knead that dough for around five minutes until everything is nicely incorporated so 30 minutes later dough fully hydrated still moist that's the key a moist play-doh ready to deformed [Music] so if you made a tortilla you flip it on that final side or back to the original side and give it a push right in the middle still puffs up there that's a good sign that you've made a perfect tortilla [Music] i want to take a minute to tell you about today's sponsor misen a company that's providing you with all the essential kitchen gear that you need to really get started in the kitchen but they're doing it in a very accessible way 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and that brings me to tip number five which is you have to have patience it's so important especially when you're cooking a big piece of meat like this and i remember many years back i was cooking short ribs over a campfire with my friend john and it was taking a while the short ribs just weren't getting tender and his mom was getting pissed because it was getting late and she was hungry and john turns over his shoulder and yells mom you can't rush perfection and that's when i realized you can't rush perfection all meat is going to cook differently and it might not cook accordingly to the exact recipe so you want to make sure you check it assess the situation and go on from there so when i get into this meat if i take off a chunk here you could totally eat it at this point but for me it's not perfection you can see some of that connective tissue if you look closely has not melted away and i don't want it completely melting away but i think another half hour in the oven will be perfection so i wrapped the lamb shoulder back up put it in the oven for another 30 minutes and that little bit of patience equaled perfection perfectly tender lamb and now i'm ready to move on to that second phase of roasting where i increase the temperature of my oven to get a crust but before i do that i'm gonna chop up a few ingredients to double up on this roasting process so i got some tomatillos here that i'm gonna cut up into pieces and some red onion and just a little bit of cilantro stem so maybe you're picking up on some hints here but you'll see what i'm doing with that in just a second so i coated those in a little bit of oil and placed those around the lamb and this time the lamb is going in uncovered at 450 degrees fahrenheit using that higher intense convection heat for just around 15 to 20 minutes until it's nice and browned and caramelized and we have a beautiful crust to provide some texture with this roasted lamb this really came out nice you can see by taking advantage of that higher convection heat it almost got this bark on it it looks like it's smoked lamb but then it's super tender and super moist on the inside so i'm just gonna shred all of this up for some tacos the next skill is coming in from evil red dog which i couldn't agree with more sauce making will change your food forever because sauces equal flavor and like he said it is one of the best ways to save a dish but every pro home cook should know how to make a proper sauce and today of course we're making salsa because that is the king of mexican sauce and to really understand mexican salsa's proper salsas you've gotta get some knowledge around dried chilies which i've been learning a lot about because i've been studying mexican cuisine now for my salsa i'm going to use a variety of chilies you can mix and match these chilies to blend different flavor profiles so i'm going to use cimancho guajillo pasilla and chipotle and the first step to preparing these dried chilies is you cut them open and you take out the seeds and the veins because the flavor you want is in that flesh is in that skin and also the heat is contained in those veins so by taking those veins out your salsa won't be extremely spicy but if you like the intense spice feel free to leave them in now the next step is toasting our chilies which is so important because it's really going to wake up those flavors and it's very simple to do you take some type of skillet or pan you can do this dry in the pan or you can drizzle in a little bit of oil and on a medium heat just put in those chilies and just press them into the pan giving them a nice toast and this will happen in 15 to 30 seconds and you'll see a really intense transformation in a short period of time then finally once your chilies have been toasted you're going to pour over some hot water to rehydrate those chilies so they will blend up nicely in your salsa [Music] that brings me to number seven the most essential tip is a pro home cook you see that good work there tasting as you go especially when it comes to sauces because sauce making is all about balance and it's all about letting your palate do the thinking you gotta taste to see what you need wow oh my oh you gotta get into the dried chili game my friends that is earthy just a little bit of kick pretty good acidity i'm not looking for the salsa to be super acidic i can add other acidic elements to the tacos later salt levels pretty spot on there i think i might have nailed it on this first try skill number eight coming in from florent florent contrasting flavors and when it comes to a taco i really don't think there could be a better platform for contrasting flavors and texture so we have this base tortilla then we have this rich lamb meat that we load up on top and then that fruity savory salsa coming in there with a whole lot of flavor now when i look at this this is great but i think it could go a little further with the contrast and i love creamy elements on my tacos so i'm gonna add a little bit of fresh avocado but for me it's still missing a little bit of texture so just a sprinkle of some yellow onion to add that bite plus that crunchy texture and boom that's a great taco but for me with my taco game i'm always ready to take it to the next level so how can i enhance that a little bit well let's take the creamy element of an avocado and turn that into a really simple avocado crema blend that up and now you have dueling sauces on your taco a lot of contrast there but how can we enhance that onion well the simplest way would just be to make some pickled onions by taking some red onions adding your pickling mixture letting those sit popping those on your taco now we have this acidic element that's still providing crunch but also cutting through the richness of that meat and really bringing this taco together skill number nine coming in from evan clean as you go and yes cleaning is a very important skill in the kitchen to master and the thing is i didn't have a dishwasher for years i always wanted a dishwasher thinking that you know it would change the whole game and to some degree dishwashers are nice they get things very clean and they're great for the end of the night when you can just load up the dishwasher and run it but when you're serious home cooked there's a lot of turnover with equipment like your bowls and your knives and your cutting boards and you don't have time to dishwash it and wait for a whole cycle to finish you need it right away so it's important to stay clean in the kitchen do the dishes clean your work surface so you've got a clear mind and you can just focus on the task at hand and finally skill number 10 and i'm so glad alex mentioned this which is adopting a zero waste mentality so more of a mindset shift than a skill but adopting a zero waste mentality transforming into this new kind of cook putting a boundary on the kitchen where you have to use up what you have that is by far the best way and also just the easiest way to find more creativity in the kitchen just use what you have so i'm going to be taking advantage of these leftovers and mexican leftovers are just the best because you can do so many things with the corn tortilla and then having salsas on hand many options so the obvious option would be something like a quesadilla get your corn tortillas into a hot pan add that leftover lamb hit it with some cheese another corn tortilla on top fry it up until it's crispy and then dip it in that salsa great use of leftovers but what i like to do is go a little deeper into this zero waste mentality and start looking around my pantry and my fridge to see what has been neglected what is probably going to get thrown away if i don't use it so i found some pinto beans in my pantry i found some sun-dried tomatoes in my fridge and also some leftover tomato sauce so i decided to make a tortilla soup so i chopped up some aromatics i have some poblano peppers some carrot and some red onion and i added some of that oil loaded up with garlic from the sun-dried tomatoes and fried that up for about 15 minutes until it was nice and soft in the meantime i put those pinto beans in the pressure cooker set it for 30 minutes and let that cook away until they were tender now i forgot to press record but to the soup i added some sun-dried tomatoes a few scoops of tomato sauce and that leftover chili water which is basically just a chili broth a great way to season your soup then i went in with my corn tortillas and let that cook for five minutes and when we blend up this soup the tortillas really thicken it up and give it a great corn flavor and then i put it back into the pot added my pinto beans added some of that leftover lamb cooked it for a few more minutes and then to plate it up i fried up some tortilla strips sprinkled those on top and hit it with some fresh cilantro and that's what i'm talking about that is zero waste mentality really using up what you have before you make that little trip because you think you need a certain ingredient believe me you don't need a certain ingredient you can get creative with what you have and that's the video 10 more skills from all of you if you have more skills please write in with more of the skills you've learned over the years below if you want more skill based videos in the cooking game right here check out the link below too if you want a discount on your me send products and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 433,508

Keywords: cooking skills, barbacoa, homemade tacos, corn tortillas, perfect tortillas, how to make tortillas, lamb barbacoa, how to roast meat, roasting meat, how to use oven, salsa roja, make Mexican food, beginners Mexican, traditional Mexican food, taco party, tortilla soup, become a better cook, pro home cooks, lifebymikeg, mike g, mike greenfield, misen, new

Id: cV5G-kqGL1o

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020