Culinary Classroom Lesson 4: Cooking Methods

[Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back the culinary classroom I'm chef Carrie Leonard today we're gonna work with a few different cooking methods and we're gonna start off with saute I've got my saute pan that we talked about on the previous episode it's got the nice sloped sides this one's made of copper so it really takes a good heat on the bottom takes a while to heat up so you want to make sure that your pan is nice and hot you want a good saute you start with a hot pan if it's almost smoking and it's about perfect so it still is heating up pretty good here I'm gonna put a little bit of fat in the bottom now that could be butter it could be olive oil element put a little butter in here alright hear the sizzle that's what we're looking for all right now I'm ready to put these in I've salted and peppered them butter all over a nice hot pan skin side down and this is the saute part keeping them moving keeping a movement to saute means to jump that's what they're talking about in the classical French to jump if I had something small in here like beans or peas or something I could move them around flipping like this with something large like a chicken breast I'm just gonna keep it moving making sure that it is moving at all times a little bit of fat that's a saute now that we've got our saute go and we're gonna be looking at a couple of other methods the big issue here is heat what I've got going in my pan right now is what you call a rolling boil there's a difference between a rolling boil a boil a simmer and a poach and I want to show you what those look like a rolling boil is where I cannot dissipate the bubbles even if I stir I stir bubbles are not going away that is a rolling boil that is the enemy of protein you do not want to boil protein so I'm gonna take this out and just either this just turns into a piece of leather over here so let me turn down this heat and show you where we're going with this all right I'm gonna turn my heat way down see it immediately calms down now I've got just a slight boil just a few places are breaking open with the bubbles that means I'm really at about 212 now which is actual boiling point this would absolutely dissipate with a spoon I can make it stop boiling for a second with my spoon and that's about 212 if I want to cook a protein then I want to get this even lower I've got to be really delicate with the protein you can boil the heck out of some things but not others so let me take this down even further to where we just see wisps of steam alright now I want to get this to where there is no bubbles breaking the surface okay now I've got no bubbles breaking the surface you see quite a bit of steam coming off of this yet so I am still simmering at this point okay and the simmer is great for soups stews things that I need to allow to just cook down a little bit on the back burner I'm gonna reduce a saw something like that it's not boiling but it's going to leak going on there and I got quite a bit of the wispy vapor up here now in order to poach now this is what I really want to do is I want to poach my chicken I want to make sure that it's super tender on the outside and done on the inside and I'm gonna use a poaching liquid to do that now this poaching liquid could be water it could be stock it could be wine I could add flavorings to this herbs and a variety of other things to get the flavors that I want and it will delicately poach in this water so now that I've got this temperature down even further there's no breaking and you can see the whispies are a lot less they're really just circling in the pan that tells me I'm getting down to the poaching temperature of about 180 degrees remember boiling is 212 poaching is about 180 so I'm ready to take my delicate chicken breasts and put them in my flavorful liquid by the way that's called court bouillon if I'm working with a flavorful liquid and I'm gonna poach my chicken arrests here and these guys are gonna come out tender and beautiful in about ten minutes it doesn't take very long not burning anything you just have to make sure that your temperature when it does come back up because right now I'm putting cold food in here when your temperature comes back up it does not hit a boil you make sure that we just have a little bit of wispies going on here any wait about 8 to 10 minutes and you're ready to take it out I want to help you braise something all right so I want to feel my pan I want to make sure that it's nice and hot again I want to get a good sear on this I put a little butter in there and it should just really sizzle I want that nice hot sizzle tear this up careful yeah I'm gonna leave that alone for just a few minutes so that I can steer hard I'm gonna flip it over sear it on the other side okay now I want to check for his doneness the sear on this other side when the pan releases the meat then you know that your sear is ready to go is it loose good I'm ready to turn it over if it's stuck I'm not ready yet all right here we go here we go look at that nice sear i'ma let it sear on that side too before I do anything else all righty now that he is seared on the other side I check up make sure he's loose and leave him in there I just want to make sure he's loose and now I'm ready to cover him with a liquid now this could be water this could be stock stock that makes a great quart Boyan quart booyah means a flavorful liquid that you're gonna be cooking your your items in so I'm gonna go to pour water in I wanted to be right about half covering my meat just about half I can add anything extra that I wanted to add a wine or flavoring if I wanted to don't add any vegetables or anything at this point it's too early they would turn to mush because this little puppy's gonna cook for like four or five hours remember this this is my bouquet garni this is the item that had all of these great things in it to flavor our food and I'm just gonna go ahead and tuck him down in there all right so we're gonna bring this to a simmer and you know what it's Simar means and we're going to let this just sit make sure it's covered and you're gonna let it go for four or five hours depending depending on the kind of meat that you're gonna be using but it cooks down and the juices are so good okay okay alrighty so this is ready you want to bring it to a simmer you know what a simmer is put a lid on it and you're gonna let it go four or five hours this is gonna make the best tasting meat ever all the juices the gravy the Corporal yon the bouquet garni your brazen now alright so we've worked on some cooking methods next week we're gonna be working on some flavor balances so your homework is twofold I want you to braise something or saute something try it out see if you can do it and then also go back to that pantry episode of make sure you have the things ready for that sweet salty bitter and sour that we need to work on I'm chef Kerry Leonard join us next time for culinary classroom [Music] you

Channel: Dave Hegnauer

Views: 191,099

Rating: 4.8180342 out of 5

Keywords: basics, french, cooking, culinary, cuisine, mise en place, roux, stock, instruction, school.1st, food, Johson & Wales, saute, fry, boil, bake, broil

Id: _QuU6rs-n5Q

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2011