Difference between revisions of "Cooking Guide and tips"

Latest revision as of 19:22, 15 January 2021

The main purpose of this section is to help out all the people that don't have much experience in cooking, and are trying out for the first time.
You might find useful stuff written here even if you're not new to cooking.

This is all practical advice, and it'll cover things from explaining how to cook ingredients whose preparation process is not self-intuitive (i.e. pumpkins), to giving advice on how to do things faster, and other safety advice.

Basics

Below you'll find basics explained for people that are new to cooking.

How to boil

Boiling food is one of the most common cooking methods.

To boil something:

• Choose a pot significantly larger than what you want to cook plus water.

Material can make a big difference. Stainless steel is a good option that's widely available because it's easy to clean, but it doesn't conduct heat as well and can leech nickel when new which can be an issue for people with sensitivities to the metal -- a good solution is to purchase a used stainless steel pot which will have already leeched out virtually all of the nickel it's going to release, and better yet a used stainless steel pot with another metal for the bottom such as steel or copper to distribute the heat better and help prevent localized burning on the bottom of the pot. A cast iron pot can be harder to clean and is prone to rust, but can be a good option for increasing iron content in food (particularly acidic foods like tomato sauce or soups containing tomato) if you have trouble getting enough iron. However for large pots cast iron can also be heavy and unwieldy. Vitrified glass pots (that are stovetop safe) are the safest in terms of not releasing anything into the food, but they can be heavy and expensive or difficult to find. Aluminum pots are light and cheap, but are controversial in terms of metal leeching. They're also easily scratched by cookware.

• If you're cooking soup, it's good practice to start with warming a little oil (just barely enough to cover the bottom of the pot when tilted around to spread it) on medium heat then adding in items like onion and salt (salt only if you will not be adding uncooked beans to the soup) to brown slightly to add flavor to the soup.

• Regardless of what you're cooking, according to the directions add as little water as possible. Pasta, for instance, does not expand in volume very much and only ultimately needs to be covered by about an inch of water. A larger volume of water will not help your food cook faster, but will take longer to boil and waste more energy, and will also increase the risk of the pot boiling over which can make a mess and cause burning on your stovetop if there is starch or other material in your water.

• If boiling pasta or similar materials you don't want to get soggy, add salt to the water. Contrary to the myth, this will not increase the boiling point significantly, but it does slow the absorption of water into the pasta to allow it to fully cook without becoming too soft from water absorption. On all counts avoid adding any salt when cooking beans or other foods that you *want* to become soft, because this will prevent them from softening or make it take far longer -- thus if you're precooking onions, while you would normally want to add the salt at that point with the oil, you should not add salt if uncooked beans will be added to the soup (unless you want the beans more crunchy).

• Once the water is added, initially turn the stove up to maximum heat and cover the pot with a lid, so as to bring the water to a boiling point faster. Make sure to stay near, because you will need to turn it down when it starts to boil. If you can not stay near, do not turn it up as high. Leaving the pot at any time is not recommended until you have more experience with cooking.

• Once it's boiling, add the food (i.e. pasta), and wait until it returns to a boil. If you've added pasta, stir it to break apart the pasta while you're waiting for it to boil or the pasta can become clumped together. For long spaghetti or linguini style pasta you need to be more careful both with stirring and how the pasta is added because the pasta can be broken without proper technique; fan the noodles out radially when you add them [show image here] which will help avoid clumping as they soften enough to allow them to stir, then once they begin to soften and sag into the pot you can gently break them apart where they stick in the middle and stir them into the water.

• When the water returns to a boil, lower the heat so that the water won't spill over and the water is just boiling -- this will also save energy and reduce the humidity added to your house. If you have a vent fan, turn it on low. A faster roiling boil will help stir things like pasta better on its own, but even simmering water is a great conductor of heat and as long as you don't have a hot spot on your pot the pasta is unlikely to stick and burn to the bottom. Stirring with a spoon once or twice to turn the pasta or other food during cooking is usually more than adequate.

• Putting a lid back on the pot can allow you to turn the heat down even further and further reduce the heat and humidity added to your home to the point the vent fan will likely be unnecessary, but lidded pots need to be watched carefully until you know exactly how low to turn the stove to prevent them from boiling over. The presence of the lid reduces the convection and pressure difference that normally pops bubbles which can create a foam that will rise to the top of even a large pot and spill through the lid. If foam starts to rise to the lid, remove the lid until it subsides (blowing on it can accelerate this) and reduce the heat. This tip is only recommended for people who are already comfortable with boiling the recipe normally.

• Stir occasionally with a spoon (long enough not to burn yourself) so the food won't stick to the bottom if the type of food you're using is likely to stick (i.e. pasta). The higher the heat and the less water in the pot the more frequent stirring will be needed.

• In the meantime, prepare a strainer on the sink or over a much larger bowl or pot if you are making pasta or rice, to be ready to drain the food - this is only needed if you have to drain the food, if you don't (i.e. soup), there's no need to strain anything.

• Test the firmness of the food by removing one or two with a spoon or fork, blow on them gently to cool them then taste. Some foods will firm up more when cooled further (such as bean or rice based pastas) while others will not (such as wheat based pastas or potatoes). You will learn what firmness out of the pot corresponds to the desired finished firmness, but generally speaking cook bean or rice based pastas to as soft as you can tolerate because they will firm up to some degree, while wheat and potatoes are usually preferred more "al dente" and firmer but won't change firmness much when drained and plated (or may even continue to soften slightly from remaining warm).

• Once the food is ready (i.e. pasta), turn off the stove, and grab the pot by the handles being careful not to burn your hands - the handles of the pot might be hot, if that's the case, use kitchen mittens.

• Bring the pot near the strainer, and pour everything in the strainer slowly, so as not to splash boiling water on yourself, slosh the food out of the strainer, or knock the strainer over entirely. Be careful not to put your face over the pot or strainer because steam could burn you, extend your arms away from you with the pot, and try to face the pot away from you or to the side to avoid the risk of sloshing it onto yourself in case it comes out faster than expected.

Alternatively, you can use a ladle to transfer the contents of the pot into the strainer more carefully -- this is particularly useful if the pot it too heavy for you to handle safely, but may not work with spaghetti style noodles. There are specialized slotted fork pronged ladles called pasta ladles or pasta spoons that can be used for transferring long pasta. [image and link]

• Put the empty pot aside, being careful not to set it on a heat sensitive surface. Don't put it back on the same warm burner which may continue to cook the bottom of the pot despite being off; this can burn starch residue onto the pot and make cleaning difficult.

• Help the rest of the water drain from the pasta or other food by gently raising the strainer up and down or shaking lightly.

• If serving, the pasta can be left in the strainer over a bowl or pot to serve from, or you can transfer it to another bowl. You can also reuse the pot you cooked the pasta in if it is cool enough, or rinse the pot out with cold water to cool it down faster. Do not put the food back in a hot pot, because without the water the pasta might burn or stick to the bottom if it still holds enough heat.

Thing to note/pay attention to:

• If you have a modern food safe water heater, you can fill the pot with water that's as hot as possible at the beginning to reduce time to boil. However, this is not always the case particularly in older homes where hot water is not potable, so if you don't know you might want to avoid using hot water from the hot sink tap if your plumbing or water heater may be old, as there could be lead residue and other contaminants - in which case, just use cold water to be safe.
• Pay even more attention when boiling starchy foods, such as pasta, potatoes, or rice, as starch will make the water bubble up into foam and spill over faster - this is particularly prevalent with cooking chickpeas where the unique fibers in them that make aquafaba work as an egg replacer create a foam that can be difficult to deal with. So when dealing with starchy foods or beans, control the heat and stay close when cooking until you achieve a stable simmer and have more experience with cooking that item. As mentioned before, using as little water as possible can also help, and lowering the heat as much as possible while still maintaining a steady simmer. For chickpeas in particular it may be impossible to fully cover the pot, but a lid can be placed on the pot tilted to allow some steam out.
• When straining the food, a lot of steam might come up. Do NOT have your face above the pouring water while you're straining something, it's very easy to burn yourself - leave your face pulled back while bringing forward just your hands to slowly tilt the pot, and have the pot face away from you, not towards you.
• Until you've boiled a certain food enough times to know for sure, don't leave the cooking station to only return at a later date, as the food might stick and/or the water might spill over while you're away.

How to steam

To steam something:

• Grab a pot big enough to fit what you want to steam.
• Put only a little bit of water in the pot (try 1/6 of a cup, and adjust from there), being careful not to put too much - you can always increase the amount of water by simply adding more, but if there's too much the food will be soggy and full of water, and removing the excess water after steaming would remove taste and nutrients.
• Drop the food you want to steam in the pot.
• Turn on the stove to maximum heat to get it to steaming temperature faster, and place the pot on top.
• Once the liquid starts boiling/water starts evaporating, lower the heat to low to not burn the food/dry the water too fast.
• Stir occasionally so that the food won't stick, add more water if the pot is too dry at the bottom, and regulate the heat to make the water evaporate faster or slower depending if there's too much of it left or not.
• You can also cover the pot with a lid and turn the heat to low to maintain everything moist inside, so that you won't have to worry about the food sticking/too much water evaporating if you're cooking something else in the meantime, and by doing that you'll only have to check occasionally.
• Once the food is ready, simply turn off the heat and serve, as the vast majority of the water should be gone by now.

Things to note/pay attention to:

• Consider that the food you're going to steam will release water, especially in the case of frozen stuff and mushrooms (when using those, sometimes it's not even necessary to add extra water), so regulate the amount of water you're going to put initially accordingly - this is mostly a trial and error process, and remember that if there's too much water left, you can always increase the heat to make it evaporate faster.
• Add ingredients at the right time according to their cooking times - bell peppers, for example, cook faster, so add them towards the end, while onions/garlic take some time, so add them at the beginning.
• You can check if the food is ready by simply tasting a piece/part of it, being careful not to burn yourself, or you can check how cooked the food is by poking it with a fork (i.e. if you can barely get the fork through a carrot piece, it's not ready yet, if it's very easy for the fork to go through, it's overcooked, and if it's somewhat crunchy, it's ready).

How to stir fry

Stir frying is very similar to steaming.

To stir fry something:

• Grab a pot big enough to fit what you want to stir fry.
• Put only as much oil as needed to coat the bottom of the pot (usually no more than 2 tsp), with a bit in excess depending how much food you're going to stir fry - if there is a lot of food you're stir frying, you'll have to put a little bit more oil to make sure that there will be enough to lightly coat the food as well.
• Drop the food you want to stir fry in the pot.
• Turn on the stove, but keep it on medium/low heat so as not to burn the oil - oil heats up fast, so it'll get to high temperature quicker than steaming.
• Stir frequently so that the food won't stick, mixing in an extra dash of oil if the food is sticking too easily.
• Once the food is ready, simply turn off the heat and serve.

Things to note/pay attention to:

• If you want to add liquid to the mix, do NOT just drop liquid in hot oil, as it'll cause a small explosion - the water would expand rapidly because of the oil temperature, displacing the oil. Instead, take the stove off the heat for a little bit, and slowly add the liquid to the mix. Ideally, you would want to add the liquid/sauce initially, avoiding the problem.
• Stir frying is quicker than steaming, but also requires more focus, as the oil can quickly overheat - check often to see if you should lower the heat and/or stir.
• You can check if the food is ready by simply tasting a piece/part of it, being careful not to burn yourself, or you can check how cooked the food is by poking it with a fork (i.e. if you can barely get the fork through a carrot piece, it's not ready yet, if it's very easy for the fork to go through, it's overcooked, and if it's somewhat crunchy, it's ready). To taste something, you'll have to wait longer and blow on the food more than what you would have to do with steaming, since the oil can easily burn your tongue.
• Extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil are usually the best ones to cook with, with the former adding good flavor and the latter being the safest to cook with. High oleic sunflower oil is another good option. Do not cook with flaxseed oil and any oil that is high in unsaturated fats if you can avoid it, as unsaturated fats will turn into trans-fats when heated enough - trans-fats are much worse health-wise than saturated fats (oils low in saturated fats are instead best used not cooked, such as dressing in salads).
• Stir fry at low temperatures, not only for safety to avoid oil sprinkles jumping at your face, but also to avoid the oil from becoming more unhealthy (the higher the temperature, the more the oil is damaged and trans-fats are produced).
• Consider using spray oils if you have them, as they'll coat things more easily and reduce the amount of oil you'll have to use.

How to blend

To blend something, simply place the ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth.

Things to note/pay attention to:

• Be careful when dealing with blades, blander blades are really sharp and can easily cut deeply.
• Break the fruits that are big in 2 or 3 parts, such as bananas, so that there won't be fitting issues.
• If the consistency is too thick, you can add extra liquid and blend a bit more to smoothen it down.

How to prepare/cook ingredients

Pumpkins