Re:Make Dinner: A Home Cooking Manifesto
by munificent on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @04:01PM
(#8363770)
I agree completely. The article's principle is great, but the specific recipe they describe is a disaster waiting for happen for a newcomer.
I found chicken to be the hardest meat to learn to cook: underdo it and you have salmonella, overdo it and it's cardboard. A well-cooked chicken is a delight, but it's a pretty narrow range. I found beef and fish to be much less scary meats as a novice since undercooking them is less of a risk. You can't undercook salmon, you can just end up with surprise sushi.
Likewise, I love making rouxs, but it took a number of tries before I had an intuition of the cook time/temp before and after adding the fat.
> - how to properly season something (how do you know how much salt and pepper to put on)
It's hard to have precise rules for that because every piece of food is different. Chickens aren't made in a factory (yet), so each bird will be a bit bigger or smaller. You kind of just have to learn it by taste and practice.
> - knife handling and care
I find youtube videos are really great for technique. Just search for "how to chop/prepare <ingredient>". I can cut a bunch of fruits, vegetables, and animals now with confidence.
Taking care of knives is harder. Video doesn't do a good job of showing tactile details like how much force to use on a honing rod.
> - classic flavour combinations
What I do whenever I'm in the mood for something is look up a bunch of recipes for it. If you compare them all, you can kind of get a feel for the ur-recipe that underlies them. Look at a few of those and you'll quickly get a feel for what things go together.
> - what you should always have in your kitchen (stock, garlic, chilli, etc.)
This depends a lot on what cuisines you favor. I think the absolute basics are salt, pepper, oil, butter, flour, and a few aliums (garlic, onion, green onion, etc.). If you have those, you can take damn near any vegetable, throw it in a skillet, and sauté up something tasty.
I'm always surprised by how far "add to pan on medium heat with butter, salt, pepper, and garlic" gets you.
I found chicken to be the hardest meat to learn to cook: underdo it and you have salmonella, overdo it and it's cardboard. A well-cooked chicken is a delight, but it's a pretty narrow range. I found beef and fish to be much less scary meats as a novice since undercooking them is less of a risk. You can't undercook salmon, you can just end up with surprise sushi.
Likewise, I love making rouxs, but it took a number of tries before I had an intuition of the cook time/temp before and after adding the fat.
> - how to properly season something (how do you know how much salt and pepper to put on)
It's hard to have precise rules for that because every piece of food is different. Chickens aren't made in a factory (yet), so each bird will be a bit bigger or smaller. You kind of just have to learn it by taste and practice.
> - knife handling and care
I find youtube videos are really great for technique. Just search for "how to chop/prepare <ingredient>". I can cut a bunch of fruits, vegetables, and animals now with confidence.
Taking care of knives is harder. Video doesn't do a good job of showing tactile details like how much force to use on a honing rod.
> - classic flavour combinations
What I do whenever I'm in the mood for something is look up a bunch of recipes for it. If you compare them all, you can kind of get a feel for the ur-recipe that underlies them. Look at a few of those and you'll quickly get a feel for what things go together.
> - what you should always have in your kitchen (stock, garlic, chilli, etc.)
This depends a lot on what cuisines you favor. I think the absolute basics are salt, pepper, oil, butter, flour, and a few aliums (garlic, onion, green onion, etc.). If you have those, you can take damn near any vegetable, throw it in a skillet, and sauté up something tasty.
I'm always surprised by how far "add to pan on medium heat with butter, salt, pepper, and garlic" gets you.