Cooking methods: boil, steam, sauté

Here’s a dialogue I keep having with myself:

You haven’t given them any recipes

Who needs recipes?

Your readers might like one or two. You know, that’s why people come to a cooking blog. For recipes.

They shouldn’t.

No?

No. Besides, I’m not very good with recipes. Mine are always slap-dash and imprecise.

Then why should they bother?

They should bother so they can learn how to cook.

So what are you waiting for?

If I?m being honest, I can say I?m a descent cook. I make food good enough to win a departmental cooking contest, but I?m certainly no Grant Achatz. I?m not even an experienced line cook. But I?ve been fortunate to have a patient wife who?s willing to encourage my cooking, even when it doesn?t go well, and I know enough to pay attention so I can learn from my mistakes. A big one I run into time and again? Cooking cold chicken thighs too fast so they?re under-done in the center.

I know what the problem is: cold chicken thighs take longer to heat through than even cool chicken does. And they have that cold bone in the center, acting like a heat sink. So I put them in the pan, sear them, and when the skin?s nearly perfect they?re still raw in the center.

Bummer.

What?s the secret? Start with chicken thighs that have been allowed to come closer to room temperature, or finish them off in the oven. Either one works all right, though starting closer to room temperature gets better results.

And I?ll get to some recipes, I swear. I just think it?s important to mention a few things before we go there.

Heat, Moisture and Time

For me, cooking comes down to these three elements. When cooking, you’re trying to heat food without losing all its moisture. At least I am. Don’t heat enough, though, and it’s raw. Heat too much and it’s burnt. Proteins cooked too high and too long end up rubbery and tough. Vegetables cooked too long and too dry become leathery or brittle. Pasta cooked too long disintegrates. Cakes and breads turn to carbon. They have for me, at least.

The thing is, knowing the various cooking methods can pull you back from the brink of a bitter disaster, and just might salvage an otherwise inedible dinner.

Cooking methods: wet and dry

If you pay attention to recipes, you’ll see the same cooking methods come up over and over again. You?ll see some of them stand alone, and others you’ll see used in conjunction with one another. The important thing is to notice. Notice when a high, dry cooking method is paired with a long, low wet one, or vice-versa. Pay attention to how people use bake and roast (in my experience, it?s mostly about temperature, but I am probably dead wrong about that). When you?re working with food, figure out how sturdy it is. Brussels sprouts are going to stand up to a par-boil much better than Ritz crackers could ever hope. But bagel dough? Boil away.

Because I cook when I get home from work, and because I want my family to eat closer to 6:30 than 8:00, I tend to rely on fast cooking methods. For the most part that means lots of cooking energy or very high heat: boil, steam, grill/broil, sauté.

Boil

I hope you know what it means to boil. If you don?t, go fill a pot with water, put it on high heat on the stove and don?t look at it. If you watch the pot, it?ll never boil.

And old wife told me that.

Anyway, boiling can be a remarkably fast cooking method because the water currents and constant motion mean hot water molecules are smashing into cool food molecules, imparting some of their energy, then racing off to gather more energy. It?s also an incredibly violent process and only hardiest foods can stand up to it. Think beans, sturdy vegetables, starches and dry pastas. Boiling won?t brown food, though, because it?s not hot enough. For browning, you need to go with direct heat and a little fat.

Steam

Heat water until it evaporates and then don?t let it escape. Steaming is a quick, efficient method of cooking delicate foods like fish. It?s also great for imparting even heat pretty quickly because a lot of hot molecules are coming in contact with the food. Steaming heats a little quicker than boiling because condensing water vapor releases some energy in the form of heat (it?s an exothermic reaction).

Steaming doesn?t get hot enough to brown food either.

Sauté

Sauté comes from the French, and means, literally, to jump. The idea here is that food comes into contact with a pan so hot the surface water in the food immediately steams away and causes the food to ?jump? in the pan. It?s the European equivalent of a stir fry. To sauté, make sure you have some fat in the pan (oil, butter, etc.), get the pan piping hot, and toss in the ingredients. The key here is to make sure the ingredients have enough room to let the steam escape. If they?re too crowded, they?ll end up steaming, not sautéing, and you won?t get the wonderful caramelization of sugars or the browning of amino acids.

When sautéing vegetables, it?s important to keep them moving. When searing meat, poultry or fish, you?ll want to let it sit on the pan long enough to get a good crust on it.

So now what?

Now you can cook. Seriously. Don?t believe me? Try these simple dinners:

Rosemary and sage-scented pork roast with potatoes and carrots

This is a variation on the pork roast from the salt post. See how this stuff fits together? (You?ll also see now what I meant when I called my recipes slap-dash).

Ingredients

Pork loin
6 Yukon gold potatoes
5 carrots
Kosher salt
Rosemary
Sage
Butter
Olive oil

Supplies

A large skillet
A large roasting pan
A splatter guard

Take the roast out of the fridge, salt it, and set it aside in a container on the counter. Begin preheating the oven to 300 degrees F. While the pork sits and the oven comes to temperature, cut up the six potatoes and break apart the carrots. Toss them into the roasting dish, sprinkle them with a couple pinches of salt and set it aside.

Place the pan on the oven over high heat and add about a teaspoon of olive oil. When it gets hot (the olive oil will look a little shimmery), lay the roast in the pan, cover with the splatter guard, and leave it alone for about a minute. Turn and sear each side about 60 seconds, then transfer it to the roasting pan. Make sure the roast is down in the potatoes and touches the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle in a few pats of butter (two tablespoons, total), a couple sprigs of rosemary, and a few sage leaves. Cover in aluminum foil and slide it into the oven for two hours.

The next night you can use the leftover pork to make pulled-pork sandwiches. Delicious and amazingly easy, especially if someone?s in the middle of painting your kitchen.

Notice how in that example we used high, dry heat to brown the meat and then steam to finish cooking it? In this next dish, we do just the opposite.

Skirt steak with collard greens, potatoes and carrots

Skirt steak with collard greens and seared potatoes

Ingredients

Skirt steak
16oz collard greens
½ medium onion
A few strips of bacon
Kosher salt
Red pepper flakes
Leftover potatoes and carrots from the roast

Supplies

Large skillet
Large stock pot
Splatter guard

Again, take the meat out of the fridge and salt it. Set it on the counter so it?ll come to room temperature. Dice the onion and chop the bacon. Put the big stock pot on a big burner and turn the heat to medium. Add the bacon to the cool pot._1

Once the bacon has just begun to brown, add the onion. Stir it around a couple times and then let it sit.

While it sits, microwave the leftover potatoes and carrots a couple times. I used 1 minute, 15 seconds, twice.

Now, add the collard greens to the pot, give them a stir and then add enough water to just cover the greens. Increase the heat to high and bring the pot to a boil. Once it?s boiling, reduce the heat to medium and toss in a couple tablespoons of kosher salt and a few shakes of red pepper flakes. Cover the greens with a tight fitting lid and let them boil away about 10 minutes.

When the 10 minutes it up, remove the lid, but don?t do anything else.

Place the skillet on another burner over medium-high heat. Add a pat of butter. When the butter begins to brown, gently lay the skirt steak into the pan, cover with the splatter guard and let it sear for about 2 minutes. When that?s done, turn it over and let the other side sear about 2 minutes. When that?s done, move the steak to a plate and let it rest.

Now add the potatoes and carrots right into the skillet with the beef juices and browned butter. You can stir them a couple times to mix everything together, but we?re really looking for a good crust on some of the potatoes and carrots to lend some texture and taste variety, bite to bite. So just let them sit there in the pan a few minutes, then bring them off the heat.

Plate the collard greens using a slotted spoon, pile on the potatoes, and finally cut the skirt steak against the grain and place a few pieces on top.

Congratulations

You just seared potatoes that had been steamed to cook them through (the opposite of what we did with the pork roast before), boiled a hardy vegetable and seared a steak to perfection.

You have just used sautéing, boiling and steaming to cook a couple really delicious meals.

Oh?.you want substitutions? Fine. You could use the same method to cook a beef roast instead of a pork roast. Or to steam potatoes on their own. If you boil other greens, like kale, don?t let them go as long. Boiling kale takes about five minutes. Instead of skirt steak you could sear chicken breasts. Or, you remember those chicken thighs from the very beginning?

Salt the chicken thighs and let them come very close to room temperature. Add a couple table spoons of olive oil to a pan, get it piping hot (medium-high should do it), and set the thighs in the pan, skin-side down. Let them sear about four minutes, then flip them over and let them sear another four minutes. Then add a half cup of white wine and a couple bay leaves. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer for about 10 minutes. Serve with some crusty bread and Spanish rice.

Congratulations, you?ve just added another cooking method to your repertoire: braising.

1. Adding the bacon to a cool pot and letting it cook as it also comes to temperature will render more fat out of the bacon. The fat will lend its flavor to the collard greens. Plus, the bacon will end up good and crispy, if you let it cook long enough.