This is the last of five skills needed for developing an intuitive ability to cook. If you missed the reason why these skills are necessary for becoming an intuitive cook, you may want to READ THIS first.
It seems like every day there are more new ways to cook food… air frying is my new personal favorite. Historically, here are the four most common options for cooking food:
- Frying
- Boiling
- Baking
- Grilling
The kind of heat you choose for each food will make a radical difference in its final taste and texture. Think of the difference between grilled asparagus vs. boiled asparagus. Both are cooked, but one has a smokey, nutty flavor and a firm texture, and the other is… blech.
Not to give boiling foods a bad name. Good luck grilling pasta.
Not long ago, I was making Chicken Veggie Masala and running a little short on time. I figured I’d just skip the step where you broil the marinated chicken (in the oven) to sear the outer layer before you chop it up and add it to the veggies and sauce. I simply chopped up the raw marinated chicken and added it in. Ugh. Mushy chicken in a delicious sauce. I’m glad it wasn’t the first time I’d made that recipe, or I never would have made it again. All that to say, HOW you cook foods definitely matters.
Crash Course in Heat
If you want another crash cooking course idea, try cutting up a potato in long strips – like for french fries. Then try cooking a few in each of the four ways:
- Fried: put a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick frying pan, and fry them over medium heat until they’re golden brown.
- Baked: toss them in a little oil in a bowl, then spread them on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees until golden brown (turn them once after about 15 minutes).
- Grilled: toss them in a little oil, then place them on a high heat grill until they start to brown (keep a close eye on them so they don’t burn).
- Boiled: Place them in a saucepan of water and bring to a boil. Boil them until they’re soft enough to easily stab with a fork.
Now, place all the options on a plate and sprinkle a little salt over them all. Which do you like best?
Try the exact same experiment with a variety of foods – try some raw chicken strips if you want to see how various heat affects meat, or as mentioned above, asparagus.
You’ll notice in some recipes you’ll use multiple means to cook foods, like searing (frying on high heat) just the outside surface of raw meat, then slow cooking it in the oven. The searing seals in the juices of the meat and gives the surface a firmer texture, and the slow cooking makes it more tender. This is what happened when I skipped the broiling step with the chicken masala… without the seared outer layer, the meat became mushy.
The more new recipes you try, the more you’ll learn about both the art and mechanics of cooking food – as well as what you like and don’t like on your plate. Each new recipe has something to teach, a new flavor or texture or nutrient that you can apply to some other dish on another day.
This is the intuitive cooking that I hope you’ll develop as you venture into your kitchen regularly.
