Timm[ie]'s Top 5 Tips: Cooking

I've come a long, long way since I started first making use of a stovetop back in 2011 ("oh, you need to use OIL to stir-fry things??  you don't just dump it all in the pan and..."), and a lot of that has come from accumulated knowledge gleaned over the years.  A lot of this knowledge comes from great resources such as Kenji Lopez-Alt's more scientifically-minded columns and various "mythbuster"-type articles (and trust me there are WAY more myths than truths about cooking floating around out there), and other portions of it come from more practical home kitchen experience.

I personally very much rely on a blend of science and experience to inform my cooking.  I need to understand the theory behind why something works in order to apply it to more than just a single recipe, but at the same time a lot of cooking resources are tailored to amazing thumbnails and ASMR-tingling videos where noodles are hand-pulled, beef is pushed through your own meat grinder, and everything is perfectly plated with little bits of hand-chopped freshly-picked herbs as garnishes and girl, I love attention to detail but sometimes we just ain't got the TIME for that, you know what I mean?  So the home kitchen is where a lot more of the "practical"-minded advice comes from, things like "reuse the same pan for these 3 steps so you have to wash less" or "while this is sauteing is a great time to peel and cut the next veggies so you can multitask".

That's already a pretty lengthy intro, so let's just get on with it, shall we?

1) Wash mushrooms with water, saute them separately

Contrary to what you might have heard, mushrooms don't "absorb a ton of water" when you rinse them under water.  They absorb about 2% of their weight at most, which really isn't a big deal, so go ahead and use water to clean your mushrooms since it's just easier (but make sure you give them a good scrub and rub at the same time to get out the little dirt chunks).  However, mushrooms are made up of a lot of water in the first place (92%!) and end up releasing a lot more water than say, onions or carrots.

This is important because all that water needs to evaporate out before any yummy tasty Maillard reaction browning can occur.  So if you're doing a simple saute of mushrooms, onions, and carrots all together, the amount of moisture in the mushrooms will end up dominating the saute and you'll end up with wimpy steamed veggies.  Instead, cook the mushrooms through first (really give them time to develop a nice brown color), remove from your skillet, throw in the other veggies, and add the mushrooms back at the end.  This will result in awesome caramelized veggies.

Is this more effort?  Yes, it is, and I admit sometimes when I'm EXTRA lazy I just go for my wimpy steamed veggies.  But mushrooms are the one case where 95% of the time I take the effort because they really do release a lot of water during the cooking process.  Of course this also applies to other "watery" veggies such as lettuce, celery, cucumbers, etc. which I will often cook together with the mushrooms to get all the watery veggies out of the way first.

2) Reuse plates or bowls for both temporary storage and final plating

One of those more practical home kitchen tips, and should be an extremely "duh" one for many people already, but I thought I'd still include it since it's so practical and beginner cooks (i.e. me in 2011) might not have a handle on efficient kitchen management.

So let's say you've got your mushrooms all nicely sliced or diced or whatever, but now you've got no more room on your chopping board for onions so you...pull out a bowl to temporarily put all those sliced raw mushrooms into.

Fast-forward a short while (or maybe you were smart and sauted the mushrooms while slicing your onions), you've got your mushrooms all nicely sauted and need to remove them from the skillet to start cooking your onions so you...pull out a plate to dump the mushrooms on.

You can see where I'm going with this.  With a simple saute it's not too bad but at the end of a fancy recipe you end up with fifteen million little bowls and plates that you need to clean. (one for minced garlic, one for minced scallions, one for minced ginger, one for raw mushrooms, another for carrots, ...)  I get it, mise en place is great and sometimes when you are doing a furious chinese-style stir fry over a jet burner, you NEED to have all of those ingredients prepared in separate bowls for the sake of speed.  But if you aren't doing some crazy high heat stir-fry, for the love of god reuse your bowls and plates throughout the cooking process.

That plate that you used to hold your raw mushrooms?  Reuse it for the cooked mushrooms -- no reason not to!  And after you toss your mushrooms back into the skillet with everything else, just give it a quick rinse and it's ready to be used as your final plate!  I strive to make most of my recipes use ZERO extra plates and bowls if at all possible for maximum efficiency, and yes, sometimes that means I can't chop all of my ingredients ahead of time -- chop them as you go, and multitask!

3) For better browning (i.e. better flavor), dry your meats, fish, and everything else before searing

Remember what I said about water needing to evaporate before mushrooms can undergo any awesome browning reactions?  Well, same thing applies to meat, fish fillets, and everything else you're trying to sear or pan fry or saute.  If you thoroughly pat dry your steaks, salmon fillets, and everything else before you cook them it will really help you get that nice tasty outer caramelization that we all love.

A lot of people (myself included) might intuitively think that the more "wet" meat or veggies are, the juicier they will be once they're done cooking.  Unfortunately things don't actually work that way at all.  A steak is not a sponge -- you can't "add moisture to it" by submerging it in water.  There's a reason we grill and pan-sear steaks and fish fillets instead of eating "boiled steak" all the time!  So make sure the exterior of your piece of protein is completely dry before going to cook it. (don't worry, the interior will still be juicy!)

Along the same lines, you might be tempted to put a cover on your skillet in order to "help keep the moisture in".  This results in "steamed steak" which again is not nearly as appetizing.  Putting a lid over your skillet or pot is great for braised/saucy dishes (or actual steamed veggies), but for searing and sauteing you need all that water to evaporate so you can start to develop delicious browning flavor.  And of course, if you're ever worried about things getting too dry in the pan, don't add water -- instead, add more oil.  Or if you're feeling unhealthy, bacon fat.  Delicious bacon fat....

4) Keep frozen bacon in the freezer

Speaking of bacon fat, is there a dish it won't make better?  Apologies to any vegetarian or pescetarian readers, but adding some chopped up bacon pieces can add some extra deliciousness to pretty much anything.  Roasted brussel sprouts turn from boring to unhealthily delicious.  Kale suddenly becomes something you're actually excited to eat (actually, I like kale on its own, but many don't!)  And who doesn't like some extra bacon bits with their potatoes, tater tots, or even cauliflower soup?  Pretty much any time you're roasting or sauteing anything you can just add some extra bacon in there and get some extra delicious flavor.

Of course I don't go super ham (ha ha ha...) with the bacon with every meal I ever eat, so it takes me a while to get through a package of bacon.  There's two solutions to this -- option A, buy your bacon in individual strips from your butcher.  Option B is buy bacon in bulk but keep in the freezer so it lasts forever.  As an added bonus, frozen bacon is way easier to work with on the chopping board because it's not all greasy and slippery!  Frozen bacon is a breeze to work with and cooks great too.

5) Cook fish fillets with the broiler because it's freakin delicious

How many of you have never even understood the "broil" function on your oven?  If you've been baking your fish fillets your whole life, you really ought to try broiling them instead.  Baked fish is "okay", but the end result is always going to lack the extra flavor of broiled fish because baking simply doesn't give you the intense heat required for any delicious surface browning (and yes, browning really is THAT important).  Broiling is essentially "upside-down grilling" -- it cooks via intense radiant heat that happens to be perfect for fish fillets.  (Yes, you can also pan-fry fish fillets and that can be wonderful too, but takes a bit more skill to really get right)

You might have to get a feel for it the first few times as every broiler reaches a different temperature and the distance to the heating element can be important.  For fish, it's important to do most (not all, but most) of your cooking with the skin side up for broiling since the skin will act as a nice insulator, protecting the rest of the fish from getting overcooked.  Oh, and if you do that, you get a nice, crispy, delicious fish skin that is totally unlike the floppy slimy fish skins you'd get with baked or steamed fish.  Since fish overcooks quite quickly, I'd recommend testing for your ideal doneness very often until you get a good feel for it.  You can test for doneness by trying to flake the fillet with a fork and/or checking the color of the inner part of the fillet.  I prefer my fillets "medium" but you may even prefer "medium rare" with some translucent flesh in the middle (which is perfectly safe to eat).  But for the love of god please do not overcook your fish fillets and turn them into dry cardboard lumps like 90% of all restaurants do.

Got a toaster oven?  Even easier -- just pop your fish fillet in there and use the broil setting and you've got a quick and easy route to delicious fish, without having to wait around for your entire oven to heat up to temperature.  Hooray!

Broiling is also great, by the way, for other proteins, such as lamb chops, or anything else you'd think about grilling (but don't want to go through all the effort to set up the grill for).