Cooking tips, tricks, and advice from professional kitchens
Baking and Pastry
The restaurant secret to clear consomme: Gelatin Clarification
Aug 21st
How do fancy restaurants get their consomme so clear? Well, there is the old school egg white and raft technique, which adds flavour as well as clarifying. There is also a much newer method called gelatin clarification. Gelatin clarification can be done with any liquid that you want to come out clear.
You add blommed gelatine to your hot liquid, which will melt it. Set it solid in the fridge. Freeze it solid. Remove from the freezer, place the block over a cheesecloth lined strainer or perferated pan, over another solid pan. Once it is fully defrosted. All the gelatine will have kept the solids above the cheesecloth, and your clear, gelatine free liquid will be at the bottom. This can be used to make all kinds of cool things, such as clear chocolate water, and clear soups.
If you intend on doing this with a true consomme, I would recommend that you make a proper raft and cook it out as well as doing the gelatin clarification.
How to make clear fruit juice or fruit consomme
Aug 15th
Lately at work I’ve found myself making a lot of clear fruit juices. We use them for a variety of purposes: to make a clear flavoured syrup, to add some more flavour to a fruit broth/consomme, or to make a clear fruit gelee (like jello, but nice). It’s also a good way of using up fruit that is not moldy yet, but isn’t to happy and fresh either. There are a two different methods to making your own clarified fruit juices but they do both take about two days.
Method one:
Take your fruit, cut it into small pieces, and freeze it on a sheet pan 1 layer thick. The pieces of fruit should be as small as you are comfortable cutting – no smaller than a brunoise, but not large dice either. Once the fruit is fully frozen, take it out and defrost it over a perferated pan or in a strainer over a container to collect the juice. This will take a while, about a day or so.
Method 2:
Make a puree with your fruit, the smoother, the better, and hang the puree in a cheesecoth pouch. To make the pouch, take a nice big piece of cheesecloth and fold it over a few times so it’s about 4-6 ply, tie it well, and hang in the fridge over a bowl for a day or so. Resist the urge to squeeze the bag too mcuh as this may stop the juice from being clear. The better you made the pouch, the more you can squeeze. This technique is very similar to how you make yogurt cheese, and is used by some chefs still stuck in 2002 to make ‘tomato consomme’.
I Love my Black and Decker B2500C Bread Machine
May 30th
I love my Black and Decker B2500C bread machine. Chris’ parents bought one ages ago, and we used it from time to time, but for some reason it took us ages to get our own. Since we got ours six months ago, we now use it at least once a week. We shilled out about $100, but given that we haven’t bought bread for 6 months and now make a loaf for as little as 50 cents that hundred dollars doesn’t seem like such an expense now that we’ve saved three dollars a loaf over half a year. Plus, the flavour and smell of just baked bread is undeniably intoxicating.
The newer bread machines on the market do all kinds of things other than just regular bread. They have dough settings if you want to shape the final loaf, they make muffins and batter breads and even jams. A typical setting takes about 3 hours from start to finish, but once the ingredients are in, the machine is doing all the work. It even has a delay setting so you can have fresh bread waiting for you when you wake up.
The Cons:
Unless you get one of the few machines that make ‘regular’ loaf shaped loaves, it will make an elongated squared loaf quite different than the standard shape you’re used to. You can’t leave the finished loaf in the pan for too long after its done or it will get squishy since the moisture can’t evaporate properly. Plus, since fresh bread lacks the preservatives that keep store bought bread shelf stable, your bread may go stale or moldy sooner than you’re used to. Natural additives such as lecithin will keep your home baked bread fresh for much longer, though. With this particular machine, you’ll need to follow the recipes included in the recipe booklet, and some of those recipes are silly and complicated. Plus, occasionally the bread will rise too high and stick onto the glass – this would be due to user error such as too much yeast, and having the wrong temperature ingredients.
Pros – that fresh bread smell. No weird chemicals in your bread. Fully customizable. No more bread squashed on the way home from the store. It also makes pizza dough. You can select the size of loaf you want.
Overall:
The Black and Decker B2500C is a good home bread machine for an affordable price. It makes bread, and really isn’t complicated to use if you follow the recipes. It isn’t a Breadman or a Zojirushi, but it’s less than a third of the price. As a dough mixer alone, I believe this machine is worth the price.
Essential Cooking And Baking Equipment
Mar 4th
So, the other week, while browsing the food books at my local library, I found this book that seemed kind of cool: Sur La Table: Things Cooks Love. I immediately thought, Hey! I’m a cook! I love things! Maybe this will just be a love-in of all my favorite things in handy book form with glossy pictures comemerating their awesomeness. I was wrong. It was more or less a list of cookware and bakeware such as saute pans, crepe pans, fish poachers each accompanied by a couple of recipes that used that tool.
My main problem with this book was the title. Things Cooks Love maybe isn’t the best way to describe this collection. Maybe “Tools Cooks Have Been Known To Use: Some More Than Others.” Maybe that’s not so catchy, but at least it’s more accurate. A large number of the items in the book, I would probably never own and have never seen at use in a professional kitchen. A fish poacher! Really? A Bisteeya Pan. What is that even! Oh, it’s for making Bisteeya, thanks Wikipedia. This all got me thinking, why don’t I make a list of equipment that’s actually you know, useful. If your kitchen is a little sparse, or you’re looking for gift ideas, this is definitely a list to browse through.
If you have $100-200 (Your first apartment/college dorm)
Silicone spatula – I use mine for everything from making scrambled eggs to scraping the bowl of muffin batter. Buy a nice one. I’ve never used it less than once a day. Don’t spend an arm and a leg though, as with everything, silicone wears out. Heat stresses it and it becomes brittle, and bits will fall off. When you notice it start losing chunks, get a new one. Nobody wants to bite down on a piece of silicone in their risotto.
Wooden Spoon – Choose one that’s treated (the only place I’ve seen ones that aren’t are at the dollar store), and that’s got a handle longer than your deepest pot.
Medium Sauce pan with lid – The ones with thick metal bases are great, but can be pricey. We bought all of ours in a set on clearance at Sears, and despite being Rachel Ray brand, are pretty freaking cool. Chris manages to repeatedly burn the silicone handles by ignoring the warning that they are only oven safe to 325ºF, though.
Medium fry pan – Again, a nice thick base is good.
Baking sheet – Make sure it fits in your oven. Our tiny oven won’t even hold a lot of so called “small” pans you can find.
Mixing bowls – Stainless steel mixing bowls are best. Choose a decently thick one that you can’t bend with your hands. Make sure it’s big enough for a big salad or a cake mix. Plastic mixing bowls will tend to hold on to fats and oils even if you don’t notice them, so you may have trouble whipping up those egg whites. Plus plastics will absorb smells easily.
Flipper / Spatula – you can buy one at the dollar store, and it will probably eventually melt, but all plastic ones do. Only buy one that’s metal if you don’t have non-stick pans, or else your pans won’t be non-stick for very long. If you have the budget, you can buy an Exoglass spatula that is nonstick friendly and heat proof up to 220ºC.
Box grater – again you can get this at the dollar store. I prefer ones with some silicone on the base to stop it sliding everywhere, but it’s not essential. Most do, but try to get one that has more than one texture on it; small grater, large grater, slicer.
Can Opener – pretty self explanatory. I love my Starfrit can opener, but that’s me.
Colander – The new snazzy silicone colanders are nice and more space efficient, but unless you have two people they can be hazardous. If you’re just buying one, I’d stick with the tried and tested metal ones. Unenameled is best so you don’t get paint chips.
Cutting Board – again self explanatory. One large one is better than a bunch of small ones. Also thicker is better. Wood is nice, but it requires more maintenance than plastic and is more costly. If you don’t buy one that’s non-slip, just stick a rubber mat or a wet towel underneath. The plastic boards with silicone nonslip sides are nice if you can find them. Plastic boards are disposable. When they get cuts in them, get rid of them. The nicks and dents can harbor food particles and bacteria. If you paid a lot for your NSF certified plastic board, you may choose to get it resurfaced.
Peeler - I can’t say enough about my offset Victorinox peeler that cost me $5. Anyone who’s ever borrowed it from me, or seen me peel apples, can attest to its awesomeness, and generally goes out and buys one. It’s more ergonomic than either of the other standard kinds, and has a nice sharp edge on it, but they are harder to find. If you can’t get it, go with the triangular ones, rather than the straight ones.
For people that cook at home, but aren’t trying to be superstar chefs:
As above, plus -
Ladle – I know Henckles make them, and that’s still silly to me, no matter how nice they look. Mine is plastic and from the dollar store and works fine.
Whisk - Choose a medium sized fully metal whisk. If you can bend the loops with your hand, it won’t be too good for whisking anything much firmer than an egg white, so try to look for one that has thicker loops.
Small and Medium mixing bowls – it’s a good idea to have more than one mixing bowl especially if you’re going to be baking anything as lots of recipes call for the dry ingredients to be mixed in one and then the wet in another.
Stock Pot - It’s not just for stock! A stock pot is essential for making large batches of anything, or for making more than 2 portions of pasta. We have 2 they’re so useful. Besides, why aren’t you making stock?
Small sauce pan with lid – Great for warming up sauces or soups.
Baking dish/pyrex. – Vital for lasagnas, casseroles and most importantly, bread puddings! I like to have a couple of different sizes, so I got a Pyrex set that was cheap because it was the “Storage” set (which meant it had lids), and is still oven and freezer safe.
Spider - It’s a wide holed strainer on a long handle. Useful for blanching peas, or other veg and I even use it to pull non-strand pasta from the cooking water when I’m too lazy to drain the whole pot or need to save the water.
Tongs - Chris likes the ones that don’t lock, I like the ones that do, so there’s probably not much in it. They make them with silicone tips now, to prevent scratching your non-stick pans. Make sure you can’t twist them too much when you close them, and that they close tightly. The silicone tips make it harder to pick up slippery things, and the seams can trap food particles.
Chris says: I need 12 inch or longer tongs for when I’m working the grill, so I bought a pair with a yellow silicone grip for $4.30 at My Local Restaurant Supply Store.
Microplane - I’ve extolled the virtues of microplanes in other posts, so I won’t go into their stupendousness again. Suffice it to say they rock.
Multiple baking sheets – You’ll often find yourself needing more than one. If you’re freezing something and decide you need to bake, you’ll need at least two.
Roasting Pan – A roasting pan is basically a baking sheet with much higher sides. Like baking sheets they don’t last forever, so no need to spend big. Choose one with good handles. Silicone is great but isn’t oven safe over 350F so old fashioned solid metal handles are better. Some even have fold down handles to save space.
Brush – It’s a small item, so buy a proper one, but I’ve heard you can get one from the hardware store and not have too much trouble. Silicone works well for thicker sauces like basting BBQ sauce, but I prefer the regular nylon ones for most applications. To be totally foodsafe, you can get one with blue hairs/strands so you can tell if you lose one into your food.
Citrus Reamer – a useful tool with a funny name. You can juice citrus without one, but I don’t know why you’d want to.
Measuring cups/spoons – Probably something you might want to spend a little more on. If you get flimsy ones they are likely to bend and eventually break when you scoop something heavy or dense with them. Plus, when it comes to accuracy, not all measuring spoons and cups are created equally. There may be as much as a 20% margin of error in your measurements. There’s a reason that professionals prefer to do things by weight.
Masher - It’s either a masher or a ricer for mashed potatoes etc and a masher is cheaper by far. Your mash won’t be as smooth, but for 1% of the cost of a ricer, you’ll be happy anyway.
Steamer Basket – I like the standard collapsible metal ones that you can pick up easily and at a good price. The only thing I can think of to watch out for is that it won’t rust.
Things to get if you entertain a lot, are trying to be a pro cook, or have money to burn:
All of the above plus -
Grill Pan – We even use a version of this at work. One of the best ways I know to get sear marks on something. Substitute: a George Forman Grill.
Ricer - As I mentioned with the masher above, a ricer will give you the smoothest mash you’ve ever tasted that didn’t come out of a box. It’s also great for making gnocchi, baby food and tomato sauces. Martha Stewart Everyday makes a great one with 3 different sized blades.
Mandolin - A staple in many cook’s knife wraps is a mandolin slicer, Japanese slicer, or Benriner. A slicer is handy for making scalloped potatoes, rostis, lemon slices, and when you need to bruinoise or julienne something. No matter how good your knife skills are, you’ll never be as perfectly even or fast as you can be with a slicer. You don’t have to spend $100, but don’t buy the cheapest one you can find. Everyone I know uses the Benriner , but that might just be what we can get. Choose one with at least 3 different blades, and that doesn’t feel flimsy. If you’re buying it used, make sure the blade is sharp, as with all knives the duller the blade, the more likely you are to seriously hurt yourself, and that it has the hand-guard. Otherwise you’re likely to lose a fingertip or four.
Funnel – A cheap funnel is fine. Ones with narrower tips are better unless you’re canning with it.
Ice Cream Scoop – see other post
Thermometer - Depending on what you’re going to be doing, you might want to get more than one thermometer. If you’re going to be deep-frying or boiling sugar an old-school candy thermometer works well and isn’t going to break the bank. For testing the doneness of a roast, you can pick up a thermometer that only measures common meat temperatures for reasonably cheap. Cheaper digital tend to be slower to read, and still many times more expensive than ‘analog’ thermometers, so if timing is an issue, go with the analog variety, or buy a nice digital thermometer.
Wok – A wok is a great item if you have a gas stove, but they tend not to work too well on electric or flat surfaces. Chose one that feels nice in your hand, isn’t too heavy to flip, and comes with a ring stand (for those with gas).
Ramekins - Ideal for holding your measured mise en place, or if you have a lot of sides at the table (make your own taco night!), or making individual baked desserts, pot de creme, creme brulee…
Pasta Roller – Ours just broke, so I won’t say too much good about it. If you’re buying it to use as opposed to using once, get a good one. It will be a pretty penny, but there’s not a lot of cheap ones out there that work well, it’s just too complicated a device.
Melon Baller - For melons or soft fruits, you can cheap out, but if you’re going to be balling carrots all the time (don’t ask), you’ll need one that has the cup and the handle made of one piece of metal not welded together or onto a plastic handle.
Cheesecloth - sort of not really equipment, but it’s going on the list anyway. Great for making yogurt cheese or for pulling the liquid out of something (olive puree, carrot juice…). If you’re rich, buy a Superbag.
Mortar and Pestle – Which one’s the mortar and which one’s the pestle? The mortar is the bowl bit. The pestle is the bit that looks like a pen…cil. If you’re going to be making a lot of rubs for meat, or crushing your own spices for curries, or if you’re cooking from a Jamie Oliver book, you’ll need this. They’re never cheap, but you can find them every now and then at yard sales as unwanted wedding gifts I guess. They’re always heavy and that’s basically the only thing that can go wrong. I’ve heard the stainless steel ones aren’t so good because they are too smooth to get much friction going, but I’ve never actually seen one myself, so I wouldn’t know.
Salad Spinner – Pretty self explanatory too, I like the ones with the push down handle, but they are pricey. Chris thinks salad spinners are stupid.
Scale - for everyday use, go with a “nutritional scale” from your department store without too many bells and whistles. For more precision, buy a ‘jewelers scale’ on eBay.
Pizza Stone - Alton Brown says you can use a roofing tile, but that remains untested by me. Chris broke our last one by baking it at over 500F, and I’ve heard of it happening other times if it isn’t put in the oven before it’s turned on, so don’t spend too much.
Macerated Fruit
Jan 19th
Some summer fruits are still around at this time of year, but they don’t always have the most flavour for eating out of hand. That’s not to say they won’t be good, but what to do if you get stuck with bland or sour fruit? Macerate it.
Macerating fruit could be seen as something akin to artificially ripening it. You’re drawing moisture out of the fruit, and sweetening it.
To mascerate, clean and take any inedible parts out of the fruit. Then sprinkle it with a little granulated or icing sugar. Cover the fruit with saran wrap, and it leave for about half an hour. The sugar will draw some of the moisture out of the fruit, and the resulting liquid can be drained off. You may wish to save it for another use. The longer you let the fruit and sugar sit together, the softer your fruit will become.
Related Blogs
Use lecithin to keep your bread fresh longer
Jan 8th
Have you found that your home made bread just doesn’t stay fresh as long as the loaves you buy from the store?
It is typical for home made bread to stale faster than the store bought stuff. Commercially produced breads have many shelf life extenders added to them to keep them nice until the end of the week. These chemicals have all kinds of chemical and trademarked product names to go into, but if your bread is still soft a week after you bought it, at least a couple of them are in there.
A home baker probably couldn’t easily get their hands on them even if they wanted to, but there is one additive you you might want to use when baking your bread.
Lecithin is an extremely common and very useful substance derived from soy and found in egg yolks. It is an emulsifier, which is a substance that allows fat and water to mix. In a chocolate bar, lecithin keeps the cocoa butter and solids together. It is also what allows oil and water to mix when making mayonnaise.
Adding it to bread will keep the fats in a stable emulsion with water and keep the moisture in the crumb of the bread, thus postponing the staling. Lecithin is also a surfactant and lubricant, so it will make the dough easier to work, allow ingredients to disperse more easily, and relaxes the gluten for a chewier loaf.
To use lecithin to improve your bread dough (rather than buying some expensive dough improver product), use about 3/4 tablespoons of lecithin granules per cup of flour, and mix it in with the dry ingredients. If you have liquid lecithin, 1/2 tablespoon per cup of flour, added with the moist ingredients should do the trick.
This and other molecular gastronomy ingredients are available at Le Sanctuaire. Lecithin can also be found at GNC, as well as other nutrition and health food shops.
If you find your newly shelf stable bread is going mouldy too fast, let it cool THOROUGHLY before packing it away in any type of airtight container. Warm bread is still giving off small amounts of moisture, which if trapped in an airtight container will settle on the bread and provide the perfect breeding ground for airborne spores.
Simple technique for great nut or seed brittle
Jan 3rd
Nut or seed brittle can be a wonderful accompaniment to many dishes. I love a piece of pumpkin pie with pumpkin seed brittle as a garnish as it adds a great crunch. Pumpkin seed brittle sprinkled with sea salt is also nice with coleslaw.
Pecan brittle broken up into little pieces is great in a green salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries.
Brittles are quite simple, but they can be go so very wrong. Too sweet, grainy, too hard… there’s so much room for badness.
A simple technique for brittle is:
- Make a simple syrup (1 part sugar, 1 part water, brought to a boil).
- Wait for the syrup to cool a little, and simply toss your seeds or nuts in the syrup. There shouldn’t be too much extra syrup – just enough to coat the nuts and hold them together.
- Spread the mix on a cookie sheet lined with a piece of parchment or a silpat, then bake at 325ºF for aprox. 15 minutes, or until the nuts around the edges start to brown. The brittle will set up once cool. If it’s too soft, put it back in the oven for a few minutes.
If stored in an airtight container, they should keep for a week or so, but I’ve never had any around that long.
My New Favourite Thing: Super Quick Fresh Pizzas
Dec 6th
Fresh home-made pizza is one of the best things ever. But who can be bothered to make a dough, let it proof, punch it, let it proof again only to still have to make everything you want on the thing?!
The solution I’ve found, (sad that it took me so long to implement even though we’ve been doing this at work since long before I started a year ago) is to make all the components separately and freeze them in individual portions.
For the base, simply make the dough as you would regularly, make enough for however many pizzas you want, and after rolling, freeze.
A sub-tip here is to freeze them all on a baking sheet with a piece of wax paper in between and once frozen, wrap individually in saran wrap to prevent freezer burn.
For the sauce and the toppings, make as per the recipes you like, and freeze in small zip lock baggies. I’ve found this works brilliantly for garlic mushrooms, caramelized onions and sauce so far, and from work I know this also works with sausages (cut to size first).
When you want a pizza, simply pull one bag each of whatever you want on it from the freezer, let them defrost in the fridge (or in the microwave) and there you are home-made from scratch pizza any time you like.
Scaling Ingredients
Dec 4th
When scaling multiple ingredients into a bowl (for example a bowl full of flour that sugar is being scaled into), mound your second ingredient into a tall pile in the middle of the bowl. If you pour too much into the bowl, it’s easier to pull some out if it’s in a deep pile rather than scattered all around.
When flouring a pan, try using cocoa powder
Nov 29th
When a recipe calls for the pan of a chocolate cake or cupcakes to be buttered and floured to prevent sticking you will often get a final product covered in dusty, crusty white bits rather than having something deep brown and tasty looking.
To prevent this try using cocoa powder alone or a combination of flour and cocoa. Cocoa powder does have fat and less starch than flour so there is a slight risk of sticking, but it’s never been a problem for me. If you’re really worried, try the combo first.