From Mediocre to Splendiferous

For those of you who are curious, no I have not embarked upon my epic homemade BLT yet. I'll keep you posted when I do, hopefully with pictures. I know I seem to be multimedially-challenged (it's a word), but hopefully I can make that happen.

But I do want to talk about cooking at home. I've lived with over 25 different people in big college houses. I've seen hopeless cooks whose ineptitude is more a result of their lack of confidence than their actual culinary skill. I've seen pretty decent home cooks who manage to scrape together some interesting dishes, despite what ingredients are available to college students, and what their diets often require (carbs upon carbs). My point is that after working in a professional kitchen for some time now, and making employee meals more than just often, I think I've learned enough about food efficiency, practical cooking and convenience of time to give you home cooks some really helpful tips. Yeah, that's right, bitches. Buckle up, it's Food Network educational time with your host, Eric Panda.

In my experience this is how college students manage their groceries.

1) They seldomly go to the store (once every 1-2 weeks), but when they do they stockpile like Skynet is about to set us up the bomb.

2) They buy simple, non-intimidating ingredients and plan to use them to their fullest. Meaning ground beef, onions and garlic get showcased in almost every meal (not really a bad thing).

3) Convenience is king. The most important thing about a college student meal is not that it be impressive and delicious, but that it be tasty enough and nourishing.

It is my belief that with some very basic culinary knowledge you could turn your home cooking from mediocre to splendiferous. I'll break it down in to several main points.

COLOR

In all cooking, with all ingredients, color = flavor. What do I mean by color? I mean that golden brown patina that perfectly sauteed vegetables get, or that dark brown crust that meat gets when it's blasted with heat. I think this is probably the biggest problem with novice cooks. They are scared of really turning up the heat and getting the proper color on their food. Grey food = listless, flavorless, boring. No matter how wonderful your jarred sauce is, it will fall flat on an unmarked piece of meat (I don't care if it's Chaka's Mmm-mmm Sauce either, Scott).

The textbook definition is kinda like this. There's something called a Maillard Reaction, and it's a fancy, complicated process that occurs when food interacts with heat. Natural sugars in the food caramelizes, browning occurs, flavors develop, yada yada. I don't know the details, but I know things need color to taste good. So let me take the most common college meal and show you how to make it better.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

I've seen almost everybody throw a cold pound of ground beef in to a pan, start stirring it madly, and letting it stew in its own fat. The beef sticks in random places, it clumps, it turns gray .. blech. It's harder to brown ground beef because of all the surface area present, but that doesn't mean it doesn't benefit from it. Next time, dice an onion and heat up your oil until it shimmers. Throw them in and let them saute for a few minutes, until they get a slight coloration themselves. You should ideally use a steel pan, but if you have non-stick that's fine. I say use a steel pan because then you will get fond. Fond is French for foundation. When you saute something, the high heat forces liquid out of the food and on to the hot steel surface. The water evaporates and all that is left are the solid sugars and proteins on the pan surface. Those brown crispy bits that you see sometimes? Culinary gold. So if you have a steel pan and it is hot enough, and you give your onions some time, you will start to get some fond.

Next, you will deglaze your pan. Deglazing is pretty much my favorite thing ever. You take something acidic (wine, apple juice, vinegar, beer, literally anything acidic) and pour it in to the hot pan. The liquid should sizzle violently, but it will magically clean all the fond off the bottom of your pan. What it actually does is break all that flavor off the pan and introduce it into the liquid. It's beautifully efficient. It cleans, it conserves all flavors, it bolsters your sauce, it does everything but please you sexually. So what that means is after you saute your beef and onions on high heat (and you dropped in your garlic just as your beef was finishing, right? Because garlic burns quickly, and burned garlic ruins a dish instantly), drain off the fat, drop in a scant half cup of dry white wine to clean up all that delicious crispiness. Scrape around with a wooden spoon to make sure you got everything. I assure you, it's surprisingly fun.

Then just add your tomato sauce, some dried herbs (oregano, basil, bay leaf ... all good. I know almost none of you keep fresh herbs, so dried is okay), and let that baby simmer. Tomato sauce is not hard to make, it's just hard to make spectacular. Simmer for a while, the longer the better. Just make sure you watch it and stir often. Tomato sauce is sugary and will scorch very quickly, leaving the bottom of your pan covered in a black carbon sheet that is not tasty nor easy to remove. If it's too acidic you can add a little milk or butter to mollify the tang. If you find this a consistent problem (maybe your tomatoes aren't perfectly ripe yet), saute carrots along with your onions. The natural sweetness of the carrots will help balance the flavor profile. If you like your sauce on the sweeter side, you can do this always. If it's too watery, let it reduce. All that steam rising out of your sauce is just water, and as it leaves, the flavors concentrate. Let it reduce to a consistency you like. If you like chunky tomato sauce, leave it be. If you like smooth, puree it in a blender and then add it to the browned beef. I promise you, your tomato sauces will start becoming more robust in flavor and texture. As long as you season properly.

SEASONING

Seasoning is not throwing Old Bay or generic BBQ spices on to your food. Seasoning food in the traditional sense means adding salt and pepper. The biggest difference between restaurant and home cooks is the amount of salt used. Salt develops all flavors, and you need much more than you think to perfectly season food. But alas, this is probably one of the hardest skills to develop. I am having trouble with it myself working on the pasta station. The key is to constantly taste, to be bold, use kosher salt. Add in increments until something tastes to your liking. Once you actually can taste the salt, that's when you've gone too far. It will be a little bit of trial and error, but when cookbooks tell you to "Season to taste," that's what they mean.

Now for those of you who have sodium related blood pressure issues, I would say be careful. Otherwise if you have no genetic disposition towards a poor sodium-blood pressure relationship, have two healthy kidneys, and drink enough water every day, adding more salt will not do any harm to you. I promise you, I've researched this. Jiwon, you'll be just fine as you have the most overactive kidneys and bladder I've ever seen. 10 bathroom breaks on the New York-Chicago road trip!? TEN!?! I digress...

Pepper is important too. It's not hot in the traditional sense, but it makes flavors pop and is essential to developing a proper flavor profile. Fresh-ground black pepper is ideal. You can always season food at the table, but really you get the best results when you season perfectly before you plate.

Some other helpful tips; it's almost impossible to over-salt a big cut of meat. A good steak needs nothing more than a beautiful char from a rocket-hot pan, and a very generous helping of salt/pepper. True French culinarians will even brush the steak with a little clarified butter as it finishes. If you have a date to impress, I suggest you sneak it in. Makes a world of difference.

DINNER REMIXES

Now you've run out of Easy Mac, tomato sauce, and Hamburger Helper (which I have a deep guilty pleasure for by the way) and you want to keep meals interesting. Having one of those cookbooks from such TV personalities like Rachael Ray, and Robin Miller may help you stretch 2-3 meals out of one, but where would your self-respect be then? JK! Lolz! Use em if you like.

Seriously though, there are a few simple ways to stretch meals out, and they just need one basic ingredient and a little bold creativity. Let me read you this excerpt from Michael Ruhlman's, Ratio.

"If there's one preparation that separates a great home cook's food from a good home cook's food, it's stock. Stock is the ingredient that most distinguishes restaurant cooking from home cooking. Stocks are simply infused water, but they're a preparation that couldn't be more valuable to the home cook."

From the big man himself. Stock is intimidating to most home cooks, but it really shouldn't be. It's incredibly simple and can be made in small quantities. You can do nearly anything with them. A good way to start is to roast a chicken once a week. Roasting a chicken is such a simple and delectable dish, I wish I made them more myself. Rub salt/pepper all over a bird, in the cavity and on the skin. I like to rub dijon mustard under the skin everywhere up to 2 days in advance. Put some vegetables down in a pan, onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, mushrooms, whatever, put the bird on top, roast for about an hour at 450. Take it out and let it rest for 15 minutes, boom ... done. A fantastic dish that can be stretched endlessly and you don't even need to have good butchering skills.

Eat what you like of the chicken with rice or potatoes, then pull off all the good meat still on the carcass. Then you can use this carcass to make stock. Throw it in cold water with onions/carrots/celery/garlic/peppercorns, and heat it up. No salt and heat it gently. It should never boil, it should barely simmer. You don't even need to stir it, just set it on medium-low heat for 2-3 hours. Your kitchen will smell delicious and in just a few hours you'll have a gallon or so of culinary gold (I realize I used that term already ... I wanted to use it again). Just make sure you strain it through a fine mesh strainer. Ideally you strain it through a cheesecloth or handkerchief and a chinois, but a mesh strainer will suffice for a home cook. Thomas Keller at The French Laundry will have his cooks strain a stock 20 times through a chinois lined with cheesecloth to make it perfect. Obviously, unnecessary for your purposes but you get the point.

Now what do you do with it? ANYTHING! Stocks have collagen/gelatin in them that are gently extracted by the water. So when you reduce them (down to about a 1/3 of their volume) you have a thick, velvety sauce ready to go. Whisk in a little butter, salt/pepper, herbs of your choice and put it on anything. It's delicious.

Pull the chicken off the carcass, add it to a pan with your stock, add chili powder/paprika/cumin/garlic and a squeeze of lime juice. Best chicken tacos you've ever had, I promise.

Add whatever spices or herbs you want to it and reduce it and it will be a good sauce. Use it as gravy for mashed potatoes, cook broccoli or bok choy in it, add butter/parmesan cheese/lemon juice/parsley and toss pasta in it, cook rice in it, make soup out of it. Millions of soups use chicken stock as a base. It is an incredibly versatile ingredient.

You can use store-bought stock. I'd prefer you use store-bought vs. nothing at all, but a note of caution when you reduce store-bought stock nothing really happens because there isn't a lot of collagen/gelatin in it. But the important thing is that stock will enhance flavors whereas water will rob flavors. Water is a solvent, but this same property allows you to infuse it with chickeny goodness.

Don't be intimidated by stock, it really is very simple and will do wonders for your home cooking if you are willing to experiment a little bit. It will also freeze for several months without any ill effect.

Okay that's all for now, folks. Be bold. A little home cooking practice will take you far. I hope some of you dudes can impress some ladies with your new-found knowledge.

EP #6