Category: Cooking Techniques and Concepts

How to Use the Oven Broiler Broiling is less of a cooking method and more of a piece of equipment. Your broiler is a heating element located on the inside of your oven, mounted to the roof. Th ink of your broiler like an upside down grill. It emits the same type of high heat […]

How to Braise Braising is a combination cooking technique. First, a food is lightly sautéed. It is then transferred to a new cooking container where it is placed in liquid. Th en a lid is added and it is finished in the oven. Commonly, a pot roast is considered a roast. But, in fact, a […]

How to Roast Roasting is a dry cooking technique in which large cuts or whole meats are cooked at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, in an oven or over an open flame. Roasting takes place for an extended period of time, usually several hours. Think about a whole turkey, a whole chicken, entire pork lion, or a […]

How to Bake Baking is a form of cooking in which dry heat is used inside of a hot oven to indirectly cook a food. Baking must be done in a closed container so that the heat can surround the food that you are trying to cook. Most often, baking is associated with breads and […]

How to Cook with an Oven The oven is an indispensable resource when you are cooking. Ovens come in 2 styles: 1 ConventionalConventional ovens have a heating element, usually at the bottom, that naturally and passively heats the air inside of the oven environment. Th is provides a hot enclosed space where indirect heat may […]

How to Make Pasta Dishes In my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, pasta is a fundamental food staple. Until writing this book, it never occurred to me that other people outside of St. Louis may not know anything about pasta. So in this section, I am going to pretend that you are space alien who […]

How to Make Stews Stews are very much like soups, except they have much less liquid in them. Think meat and vegetables swimming in gravy. Stews are extremely easy to make and are often a fantastic way to dispose of a left over roast. I, personally, use my left over pot roast in my beef […]

How to Make Soup While most culinary books begin with soups and broths, I believe that great soups are not made only by boiling ingredients together. Great soups are formed by first cooking your base ingredients and then building the flavors beyond this. Most people look at soups as a way to dispose of left […]

How to Use a Spaghetti Pot Now that we have completely covered the sauté pan. Let’s move to the second most useful tool in the beginner cooks arsenal. Th is, of course, is the stock pot. It is also more commonly known as the spaghetti pot. A spaghetti pot is typically between 1 ½ and […]

How to Make a Quick Sauce The sauté pan is actually where I create most of my sauces. Most people cook their sauces in a sauce pan. I do not because the wider and shallow shape of a sauté pan increases heat distribution and promotes quicker evaporation of water vapor. This builds bigger, bolder flavors […]

How to Quick Stew A quick stew is a combination cooking method. Very simply, a quick stew occurs over medium to high heat any time you place a lid on a pot or pan. Specifically for our purposes, a quick stew occurs as soon as a lid is placed over a sauté pan. The cooking […]

Sautéing is probably the most widely referenced, but improperly labeled cooking technique. When people say that something is sautéed, they actually mean that it has been pan fried or stir fried. But the common phrase that people understand is to refer to this food item as having been sautéed. By definition, a sauté is where […]

How to Pan Fry Pan frying is more similar to deep fat frying than it is to sautéing or stir frying. A pan fry is where you cook food in at least ½” of oil. Th is oil typically covers about half of the food you are cooking. If the food is completely submerged in […]

How to Use a Saute Pan For me, the sauté pan is an indispensable cooking utensil. You can prepare virtually anything in it. Sauté pans come in many sizes and shapes. Sauté pans are also known as skillets or frying pans. But for our purposes, we will call them sauté pans. So What Can you […]