Braising

I don't do educational "how-to" guides to cooking very often, because frankly I don't find myself very qualified to do so. Though I read a lot (well, with what English skills I have mastered by now) about food, I eat a lot, and I did at one point cook a lot, I think a cook could spend a lifetime mastering a single dish. Many have in fact, and it is sad that their art is dying out to the evils of mass-produced, industrialized food and even the rapidly growing restaurant business. But that's another post...

I will discuss some things about braising, though. A most wonderful technique, something that becoming proficient at will transform your cooking. Though it does take time, I'm talking more about careful preparation than actually standing over a stove for a few hours. So really, these are perfect set-it-and-forget-it kind of wonders. Kind of.

To quote a man I kind of want to be, I'm going to paraphrase Thomas Keller.

"A filet mignon is a filet mignon - there's little difference between the raw meat and the cooked meat. But short ribs, veal breast - they become completely different entities after they're cooked. They transcend themselves, developing a full, complex, satisfying taste and aroma. What we're doing here is taking cheaper, tougher cuts of meat and transforming them into beautiful, tender, exquisite dishes that are far more satisfying than filet mignon or rack of lamb. Again, to me, these dishes are what cooking is all about. It is a most powerful technique."

Okay I'm too lazy to go get my French Laundry cookbook to get the actual quote, but it goes something like that. Whether or not he says "powerful technique" is irrelevant to my considering myself a Chef Panda Street Warrior.

Braising is a fundamental and extremely useful technique. It is one of the trinity of French culinary methods (along with sauteing and roasting). Originally it meant to cook over low coals, but what you are doing in reality is cooking something over low heat partially submerged in a flavorful liquid. Anything that improves with time and slow heat can be braised with excellent results. Cabbage, mustard greens, pork bellies, ducks, almost anything. But since I'm an unabashed meat enthusiast I will discuss mainly proteins.

Let's Talk MEEEEAAAAATT

You know nowadays when you go to a bar you have to calculate some ridiculous plot to talk to a strange woman. You have to spend time, money, mental energy on a girl that is likely using you for a drink. Back in caveman days you come home with a haunch of mammoth meat and you are adored, and generally assured a mate. How I see it?

Present
"Can I buy you a drink?"
"No."

Past
"MEAAAATTT!!!"
"Yes."

The point I lost during that whole tangent was that meat is fabulous. Every animal is a complex organism. A pig offers so many varieties of textures and flavors, it is an incredibly versatile beast. But yet, you and I are not so different from them. Once you start thinking of yourself like a cut of meat, you'll understand why braising works so well.

Imagine you are a farm-raised animal. You don't do a whole lot of activity, you eat a bunch, and you tenderize your muscles by drowning them in alcohol. Pretty much your average American college student. After you get rejected by all the sororities you wanted to be in (DAMN YOU KAPPA KAPPA GAMMA!), you get depressed and gain a solid "Freshman 15." At this point in a farm animal's life (right after a pig gets rejected by the all-knowing sorority computer), it gets slaughtered. So imagine you are getting sent to the butcher.

Though you were not particularly active, your leg muscles were still used more than your abs and back. Hence the connective tissues, sinews and muscle fibers are all a bit tougher. Now your squishy belly and less used arms (think of your flabby triceps if you got 'em) are going to be nice and tender. The connective tissues have not been very developed, they're not going to put up much of a fight to the tooth.

Pretty much the same goes for livestock. The muscles the animals use most (legs, shanks, shoulders, bellies are in between) are going to be tough, and they are also loaded with all sorts of muscle fibers that do intricate work. The less used ones (tenderloins, short loins) are going to be nice and tender from the get-go. But just because something is tough to start with, doesn't mean it can't become otherwise. All those tough muscles are loaded with collagen and gelatin. That's what makes up all the connective tissue. These lovely substances melt at low and slow temperatures.

Now remember what makes a good stock have body and luscious mouth feel? Collagen and gelatin. So when you melt out the goodies from a cut of meat slowly, and then those goodies are introduced to a liquid, what do you get? A luscious braising liquid. And wait, we melted out all the tough connective tissue from the meat? What happens to the meat now? Oh right, it's fucking delicious. And tender. And succulent. And mmm... mmm ... good. (Don't sue me, Campbell's)

That's the basic idea of braising, after one or two sorority girl tangents and many expletives later. Got it? Okay, next.

The Basics

So you need low heat, flavorful liquid, and a tough cut of meat. That's the basics. To meet all of those needs you should have a good braising container, an oven, stock and a tough cut of meat.

A good braising container has to be ovenproof. You can braise on the stovetop, but the results are less than ideal. You should braise in an oven. The constant, low-heat environment is exactly what you're looking for. A sauteuse, a cast-iron skillet, a Dutch oven, or a roasting pan are all good containers.

Stock. How many times I got to tell you, you should keep good, homemade stock on hand? Well fine, don't listen to me. The results you will get with good, homemade stock are going to be spectacular. Store-bought stock, the results will still be pretty good. So I guess if you're past the "I have to impress my mate to get laid" phase, you can just use store-bought.

And a tough cut of meat. Just because restaurants shell out a little more for heritage breeds, heirloom animals doesn't mean you can't. Find a good butcher (admittedly rare), buy online, or do what you can with what Whole Foods will offer you. When you make a dish your starring ingredient needs to be of the highest quality. You'd be amazed at what a difference it makes. Some restaurants focus their entire menus on the virtue that they have stellar produce. So don't go cheap on the goods.

Now that you have everything, you can get down to business.

The Basics Part 2

Now the actual cooking requirement of braising is pretty straight forward. You sear the outside of your meat in hot, hot fat. Obviously the crispy component will be taken away by the liquid, but the point here is to get the flavor from searing your meat. Maillard reactions, browning, basically coloring meat = flavor. It seems insignificant but it will pay big dividends later. Just do it.

Then you set up some aromatic vegetables in your pan of choice, you put your meat in, you pour in enough of your flavorful liquid medium to come up about 2/3 of your protein, and you put it in a low oven. A few hours later, voila, braised meat.

It's that simple, and it's that hard. There are a few pitfalls to avoid, and a few ways to improve upon the bare minimum requirements. I'll break it down in to a To-Do list.

How-To-Do-Braising-Good

1) Marinate your meat
2) Protect your meat (optional)
3) Flour and sear your meat
4) Set up your aromatic vegetables and/or herbs
5) Set up your braise
6) Put it in the oven
7) Watch it carefully
8) Let it rest overnight

1) Marination is important. The common myth is that marinades, which always have an acidic component that differentiates them from brines, tenderize meats. This is not really the case. But they do impart flavor and the acidity will do wonders to brighten the flavor profile of your dish. And supposedly, the acids get your salivary glands and amylases working so as to tenderize the meat for you. In your mouth. Yeahhhhhh ... (That was supposed to be creepily suggestive Chris "yeahhhh")

Wine makes an excellent marinating medium. So many ingredients, aspects of time and complexity go in to wine production. One bottle represents a lot of time and effort, and it will do wonders for your food. But alcohol does not do anything good for food. Almost anytime you use alcohol in a dish, you have to cook the raw alcohol off. Raw alcohol affects the surface of proteins and meat, and prevents full absorption of flavors. If you're making a wine or any alcohol based marinade, cook off the alcohol first with your aromatics (remember the risotto lesson? Smell your food, once the vapors don't burn the back of your throat, you know the alcohol's gone). Let the mixture cool to room temperature, and then marinate your meat for 24 hours.

Save your marinade. We're gonna use it.

2) Okay, next. Protect your meat (hehe). Remember this is all optional, but it can really help keep your braise perfectly succulent. Back in the day it was expected to lard your meat. And yes, it is what it sounds like. You take a larding needle, basically a big, fat, hollow needle and sew your meat with lard. The end result is the meat looks like a porcupine laden with fat. As it cooked, the lard melted and basted your meat, ensuring juiciness.

That technique is falling out of favor. It's incredibly time-consuming, arduous and tedious. Something that is easier is to wrap the meat in caul fat. Caul fat is the layer of fat that surrounds a pig's intestines. It looks like a big spider web of delicious, fat. It sticks to itself, it's large, and seems almost custom designed for encasing meats. It's not easy to find, but if you can get some, you can wrap cuts of meat prone to drying out in caul fat, and get fantastic results.

Barring that you can observantly baste your meat, or use thinly sliced back or belly fat from a pig to protect your braise in the oven.

3) Here we go, its cooking time. You don't want to cook your meat at all in the high heat environment of a saute process. You just want to brown it. Dust your meat with flour, season it heavily with salt and pepper, and hit it hot and hard in some canola or grapeseed oil. The high cooking temperature of those oils will serve you better than olive oil, butter or an olive oil-butter combo. There's going to be plenty of cooking coming up but none of it is going to be the high heat needed to brown proteins. You'll need that now, and the meat will give off plenty of fat and flavor. You won't need the butter. Remember basic searing techniques - very high heat, don't move it around in the pan, let the crust develop in the heat.

4) Now take your marinade that you saved. The liquid is going to have some meat proteins in it, specifically albumins, from marinating in the fridge. There will be some solids in your marinade as a result of this. They are impurities, you should remove them. Now separate your liquid and the vegetables. Saute the vegetables in the pan that you browned the meat in, just a little bit to get some caramelization on them. Now you're ready to set up the braise.

5) Take your ovenproof container and lay the meat down in a single layer. Scatter your veggies and herbs around the meat, and pour in your marinade. Now pour in enough chicken or veal stock to just barely cover the meat. If you've been seasoning every part of the way (as you should have been), there should be no need to salt now. Since you're going to adjust the consistency of everything after it's finished, you should be all set to go for now.

6) Now we can talk lids. I've tried a few lids while working in a professional kitchen. I've tried a matching, fitting steel lid. I've tried aluminum foil lids. And I've tried a parchment lid. Generally I agree that the latter two produce the best results. You want some evaporation of the water in your braise, but you also want to be able to protect your meats from the raw heat of the oven. An aluminum foil lid is pretty straight forward. You wrap the top of the vessel with aluminum foil (shiny side up) and poke a few holes in it. But aluminum foil still allows vapors to condense on them and return to the braise, the only virtue being the few holes you poked in it. A parchment lid is a little more complicated, and requires an understanding of geometry I don't necessarily possess. It is Thomas Keller's preferred method and allows free evaporation while offering complete protection to the meats inside. In his words "It's like having lid, but without a lid." It's kind of like making a paper snowflake. A very simple one.

Parchment paper is cheap. Buy some once, and you'll have it for a variety of applications forever. Now get yourself a big square of parchment just bigger than the pot. Fold it in to a triangle. Fold this triangle in to a smaller triangle, as if you were making a paper airplane. Do so again. You'll end up making about 5 or 6 folds. Place the tip of your triangle in the center of the pot as if it were a radius (whoa ho! MATH!) and then snip the tip. When you unfurl the lid you should have a crinkly, papery lid with a hole in the center that fits your braise. You can nestle it right on top of whatever you're working with.

7) Now watch it. It's kind of a set-it-and-forget-it procedure, as I mentioned before, but there are a few things to look for. You should check in on your braise at least once every half hour for a 5-6 hour braise. If it's drying on top, baste a little braising liquid over top. If it's boiling, you need to turn the heat down. It should start at a lazy simmer, and then when the braising liquid begins to thicken, become sort of a thick, slow bubbling. There is nothing sexier than pulling a braise out of the oven and see bubbles struggling to break the surface of a thick, unctuous braising liquid.

8) Alright it's done, just a few more things. Well, how can you tell? Take a nibble. It should be melt-in-your-mouth tender and succulent. It should be so fall-apart-delicious that you have to handle it like a baby when you take it out of the braise. Every cut of meat is different, so if you're following a recipe see what they say. Otherwise you're going to have to check yourself.

So take out your braised meats, set them aside in a separate container, something that's going in your fridge. Strain your braising liquid through a fine-mesh sieve. The herbs, the vegetables, the stray bits of meat are spent, their flavor exhausted. You can munch as you like, but they would be unacceptable for the table in a restaurant. Cook another side of vegetables and starches to go with your braise.

Now braises improve with time after they cook. The flavors have more time to marry in the fridge, and everything will taste better a day later. What's happening are aromatic molecules are being further distributed and combined throughout the mixture. But it's happier and easier to say they are marrying. You can store your meats as they are, or in the braising liquid. I prefer storing them in the liquid, and then the next day the fat will solidify on top. The meat will stay moist, and then you can do what you like with the fat. You can saute some veg in it, you can emulsify it in to the sauce you make with the braise. It's potently flavorful and useful.

How to finish it? Reheat the meat in the liquid until it just becomes warm. Don't cook it, it's pretty much taken as much cooking as it can. Once it's warm you can use reserve braising liquid to make a sauce. It's pretty simple, just reduce it. If it needs richness add some cream or butter, or braised fat. Learn to use your palate to adjust a sauce. If it doesn't quite taste as it should, most of the time it needs a little salt. If it is kind of dull on the palate you're going to need a little acid, and maybe a little fresh ground pepper. If it's too watery you can find a few different ways to thicken it; roux, butter, cream, corn starch. Keep experimenting, keep tasting.

Voila. Braising. It's not so hard, but like with all cooking techniques and pretty much everything in life, it takes a bit of experimentation and practice. The summer months are coming up, so the heavy, luscious feel of a braise may not be what you're craving right now, but that doesn't mean you can't practice for the next Chicago winter. Or that you can't master BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. This is an ancient cooking technique, something that developed from eating out of necessity. Don't call it stewing (completely submerged in liquid, generally small cuts of meat), don't rush it, don't fuck it up. It's pretty hard to, anyway.

Love!

EP6

A New Kitchen

Kind of like "A New Hope" but minus the space smugglers and whiny bitch protagonists.

Boy, we're already starting this one off on a nerdy note.

Anyway, don't let the title fool you. I haven't gotten a new job yet. But I did asked to brave the crucible known as the "stage" (pronounced stAHge, since people keep asking).

Sometimes a stage is much like the kind I did at Oceanique and Va Pensiero. An extended period of employment in which it is understood that you work unpaid in exchange for an education. I worked part-time at Oceanique for about 6 months. I worked part-time at Va Pensiero for about 4 months before I got a job.

Sometimes people consider a stage a short tryout that lasts maybe 1-3 days, and the intent is that it is an unpaid trial period that is meant to assess your viability as an employee. It's a trail where you hang around a kitchen, work and hope for a job. That is what we'll be talking about today.

A stage is part athletic tryout, part audition. You work longer and harder than the rest of the staff, you do everything they don't want to do themselves, you have to prove you're fast and competent, and that you're a personable enough human being that the brigade would enjoy being around you 10-12 hours a day. It's unpaid, punishing and doesn't bear any tangible rewards over the course of the day. That is, unless you get the job. (Well they were kind enough to treat me to as many PBRs I could want. Which is not that many.)

I've only worked in a few kitchens, and they all have followed a fairly similar pattern. You do your prep on the line with a few cooks, dry goods in the back, perishables in the big walk-in cooler, maybe some soft music in the background for morale purposes and a little fun (more often than not, traditional Mexican folk music and polka).

So I was pretty shocked when I was thrown in to the kitchen at Lula. I was introduced to the sous-chef, a wiry guy with patchy facial hair and a Southern twang on his voice, who gave me the grand tour. He's a very nice guy, he clearly gets stages fairly often and has a rehearsed means of crash-coursing them on the kitchen. He leads me downstairs and my brain is having issues taking everything in and processing it. Like many city kitchens, the line and the prep kitchen are separate. All the prep is done in the basement where there are an array of stainless steel tables, and then prepped produce is brought upstairs to be cooked during service. He leads me to the locker room to get me suited up and on the way I pass a whole variety of faces. There's Modest Mouse blasting off an iPod dock and I can barely hear people's names as they introduce themselves, and there are people running around everywhere with ice, vacuum packed goodies, and big pots of braised pork. It is alive, this kitchen is buzzing and I know I'm about to HALO-jump onto a breakneck, no-stop prep train. (In this instance I don't mean the video game Halo, I mean a High Altitude Low Open parachute jump that is used in the military to quickly and quietly insert yourself into a situation from the air. See, I'm not always a nerd.)

So Hunter (the sous-chef) leads me to the locker room (did I mention that the basement kitchen is just about 6'1" high, meaning I bump in to every ceiling fixture along the way? Yeah, way to make myself look clumsy already) and points,

"Jackets, pants, put your shit down where there's space, grab a knife, suit up, get rollin'."

And I do exactly that. Except I probably take 10 min. too long to get dressed. Why? A couple of reasons.

1) I have yet to need to use my own knives in a kitchen, so it takes me a while to decide what I should take, and get them ready to slice and dice. I decide on a chef's knife and a paring knife. Guns up, let's do this.

2) On the way in to the kitchen I acknowledge that for the first time I will be working with women. A lot of small women. Every jacket I seem to find is a tiny garb that would barely cover my thigh in chef whites. Without a mirror, I am self-conscious that my rippling biceps are probably too accentuated by the small jacket. But I risk looking awesome for service and get down to business.

And away we go! Prep time. Whatcha need, chef? Let's do this!

I look over at the white board and I am struck with both awe and fear. It's a beautifully organized board with print-out templates checking prep statuses of items between lunch and dinner, every cook's to-do list, any 86'd items. Everything is accounted for. And I even have a cute little section dedicated to me. Under the word "Stage" is a laundry list of to-do items that I know are going to suck. The words "Shell green almonds" and "Clean stinging nettles" pop out at me. Oh, balls.

Green almonds are under-ripe almonds. They come in compact, fuzzy green shells and need to be cut away with a paring knife, but be careful to not damage the tender nut (actually stone fruit seed) inside. They need a quart of them. I see two sheet trays (big, rectangular metal trays that probably measure about 36x24) in the walk-in loaded with green almonds. Well this should be fun. Too bad I drank a hipster cup of coffee and am jittery with caffeine and nicotine. Coupled with my slightly rusty knife skills, I murder a handful of green almonds before I start shelling them cleanly. Oh what I would do to cut some onions.

And then stinging nettles. Without going to Wikipedia, what I know about stinging nettles is that they are a North American plant that does exactly what its name implies. Sting you. It's covered in hairs and irritating oils that give you a painful case of the minor burn-sies and powerfully itchies. You need to double up on latex gloves to clean them. But once they are washed and cooked, the poison is inoculated and they are a hearty, tasty green vegetable. But staring at a giant box of them, and the possibility of a wicked case of hives, I am a little disheartened.

But prep work is refreshing. It's been awhile since working with food. The basement is hot, there's a huge staff of young, fun-loving restaurant workers joking around, but getting down to business (culinarily). The sous-chef is taunting people with a butchered lamb's head. A 5 foot Mexican woman is tending to a most delicious pot of braised pork shoulder, and is making quesadillas for staff meal. The very attractive intern from culinary school is making chef's whites look good (I guess a fairly passive action), and sharing the workload with me. And a whole slew of cooks are bustling around, and I am shaking hands and smiling a lot, dodging hot pots of stock, and banging my head on the fridge door.

It's good to be back. Back in a kitchen, experiencing new things, talking, learning, thinking about nothing except expertly extracting an almond from its furry pod (alliterations, high school English!). Being in a place where the clock blurs away, and the application of manual labor releases stress. Focusing on nothing except trying to absorb every smell, taste, sound, and sight of the kitchen.

Yes, it's good and what a wonderful kitchen to experience! Two staff meals a day. A staff meal, as I've described before, is usually an amalgamation of scraps and a meaningful application of economy, but here it just seems so good! Quesadillas with pork trimmings, black beans and rice with cilantro. For after-service meal some leftover BLTs, turkey sandwiches, guacamole and a fantastic chicken and black eyed pea soup, and a mediocre potato salad made by yours truly. There's PBR cases stacked to the ceiling, staff enjoying a smoke and a drink after scrubbing down the kitchen. This place has a reputation as being a place cooks love to cook in, and I can see why. It's foreign for me to work with people my age, speak English, to work with women (only kind of distracting), in a casual environment that really puts out great food. It only reinforces my desires to open casual restaurants, places minus pretension but plus great food, great wine.

It is an eye opening experience. Even if I don't get the job I think I need to start setting aside my weekends to work in kitchens again. I forgot how much I missed it. Perhaps I can spend my time doing just that. Being a mercenary cook whose price tag is just a little education, a chance to work, a chance to practice. Maybe it's possible to do a little time in a lot of restaurants, collecting experience and compiling an education from the whole city of Chicago.

So what did I learn? The importance of staff. The universally integral, absolutely essential importance of having good staff and treating them well. I could go on and on, but basically if you have good staff, you treat them well, you hold on to them, they are more valuable than anything else your restaurant has. And if they love to show up to work, if they have the energy and passion to put in their best day after day, then that is the hallmark of a great restaurant, a great chef. Someone who can lead, create an environment both welcoming and challenging.

It's also nice to have plenty of beer on hand.

Even if it's dirty hipster wine.

Sorry, Brendo, no offense.

Mua haha!

EP6