Cooking with Chris

My Favorite Pots and Pans

Chris — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:55:02 +0000

My love affair with All-Clad pots and pans started years ago while working as a Chef in Keystone Colorado. When cleaned and cared for properly these cooking tools will last a lifetime.
All-Clad pots and pans are “bonded cookware” where multiple layers of metal are bonded together to create the cooking surface. This bonding brings together the positive attributes of the metals which is superior to any single-metal cookware.
The signature stay-cool handle is cast from solid stainless steel, and is ergonomically-designed for comfort during long cooking sessions. Rivets are formed from high-yield-strength stainless steel, and treated to remove trace elements of iron that could otherwise cause corrosion.

Don’t scrub your All-Clad pans and lightly oil them when not in use and you can cook anything from a fried egg to pasta in them.

With full metal construction and no Teflon surface All-Clad pans may be preheated in an oven. In the restaurant industry this is often refereed to as a bullet as its bullet fast to cook with a pan that is preheated.

Organization Tip 1

Chris — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:30:51 +0000

In the past I have taken items for example sesame seeds, removed them from their packaging, placed them in a ziplock bag before labeling the bags and placing them in their storage place. This works well but I have recently started something new. Now I open the package carefully, move the product from the original packaging to a ziplock and then I place the ziplock into the original package. This action saves me from having to label the ziplock and it make it easier to locate items as items are in unique packaging.

Christmas 2011 Menu

Chris — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:07:04 +0000

A simple Christmas this year just cooking for a couple friends.

German Stolen – This year I decided not to use the florescent colored candied fruits, instead I used raisins, craisins, golden raisins, and currants. The result was a delicious breakfast bread and the colored candied fruits were not missed at all.

Eggs Benedict – No Christmas day of mine would be complete without Eggs Benedict for Brunch. As I get older I tend to think about health a little more than I use to. With all the fats that I work into the holiday meals it is difficult to make Holindays with so much clarified butter. In order to reduce the amount of fat in my Holindays I use more wine reduction, reduce the amount of butter. To achieve the same final texture of my Holindays I use a little corn starch slurry to slightly thicken my wine reduction prior to emulsifying the clarified butter in. This is a trick used in some restaurants to reduce the cost of Holindays and to stabilize the emulsion.

Grilled Vegetables with Balsamic Port Reduction
Potato Gratin Dauphinoise with White Cheddar
Cranberry Sauce
Turkey with Bacon Stuffing

Apple Coconut Pie with Chocolate Chip Cookie Crust
Pumpkin Pie with Almond Shortbread Crust
Cherry Cheesecake with Graham Crust
Peaches and Cream Tarts

Brines and Brining

Chris — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:00:30 +0000

Brine is water saturated or strongly impregnated with common salt and can often contain flavorings. A great way to add flavor to a Holiday Turkey, Duck, Goose, Raw Ham or Roast is to brine the meat before cooking. The act of brining can be done a few hours before cooking but to get the best outcome it is suggested that meat be brined for 1-4 days.
Brining should be done under refrigeration! Some of the common containers that can be used for brining include the lettuce drawer of your refrigerator, trash bags, large pots, plastic bins. Whatever container that you choose make sure that it is food safe, clean and that it will hold water.
Brines are primarily saline water (salt water) that is often flavored with herbs and spices. The act of brining will in-part the flavor of the bring into the meat so it is important that you bring tastes good! In most cases a brine will be made from ingredients that my be tasted raw. While mixing up you brine be careful not to contaminate your brine with raw meat so that you may taste the brine and adjust the flavors accordingly.

Please note that brining is a flavor enhancing and preserving method and it not meant to be a cooking method.

Some simple brine recipes are shown below.

Brine 1
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 gallon vegetable stock or water
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
5 smashed garlic cloves
0.5 chopped onion

Brine 2
2 gallon broth or water
1 cup sea salt
1 tablespoon crushed dried rosemary
1 tablespoon dried sage
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried basil

Brine 3
3 cups Apple Juice Or Apple Cider
2 gallons Cold Water
4 Tablespoons Fresh Rosemary Leaves
5 cloves Garlic, Minced
1-1/2 cup Kosher Salt
2 cups Brown Sugar or Caramelized Cane Sugar
3 Tablespoons Peppercorns
5 whole Bay Leaves
Peel Of Three Large Oranges

Brine 4
1 c. Kosher Salt
1 gallon Water

Please excuse the delay in new posts.

Chris — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 10:37:50 +0000

I am currently having some staffing problems with one of our companies so keeping things going and training has taken up all of my time. If all goes well I will resume my weekly posts in a . . . → Read More: Please excuse the delay in new posts.

No sharp items in the sink

Chris — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:03:20 +0000

Sharp things and glass in a sink
In my kitchens people are not allowed to place sharp items in sinks unless they are in the process of cleaning them. Furthermore glass is washed separately from china, metals and plastics.
Why no sharp items – It is easy for items to get piled up in a sink. When a knife or something sharp gets lost or forgotten in the bottom of a sink it is really easy for the person cleaning to get cut. (Trust me on this… one of my index fingers looks a little different than the other from an instance where I was helping my staff pull cut lettuce from a sink only to find a razor sharp knife hiding under the lettuce.)
Why I don’t mix glass with other items – When glass is mixed with other dirty dishes it can often be broken or chipped. As the glass is likely clear or at least translucent it can also be hard to see in the bottom of a sink.
Be safe even if you have great medical coverage a visit to the Emergency room can run a few hundred dollars…. money better spent on nice cheese and a couple bottles of wine!

Plastic Bags and Disposable Food Trays

Chris — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:55:40 +0000

What about those plastic bags, Styrofoam trays and plastic containers that many of our fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy often come in. Although I don’t like the fact that there is so much packing involved in our food chain there is only so much that I can do. I can recycle what is possible both directly and indirectly. I consider indirect recycling when a product departs my home to a recycling center or to someone that will use it again. I consider direct recycling when someone in my home re-uses a product. Let’s look at some examples:
Plastic bags that are used to bring home fruits and vegetables. Bags that you find on rolls in the supermarket come from sanitary production facilities and the internal portions of the bags are not handled by humans until you put your hand into it. On the flip side the fruits and vegetables that go into the bags have been handled by numerous hands before they are on display in the market and have been exposed to air and contaminants for days. With this in mind I often wash my fruits and vegetables in the bag. This does a couple things, first it cleans my produce and the bag and second it saves me the time of having to get a bowl and strainer. Now I have clean produce and a clean bag! Take the bag to the cutting board chop up the vegetables and put it into the bag… saves time water and in the end resources. The same goes for Styrofoam trays that are used for meats put the meat on the cutting board, turn around and rinse the tray, return to the cutting board, cut the meat and put it on the tray.
Ok maybe it does not look sophisticated to wash produce in a bag. It may not look like a TV cooking show if you place your cut meat back onto the tray it was purchased on. However I don’t care what it looks like. I want to make my life easy; I want more time to plate and eat a dish than washing up.

Any time that you use something for multiple uses you may be saving your self time and money.

Use Fewer Tools.

Chris — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 07:16:16 +0000

What are the best tools to use? What tools can you use for multiple purposes? Can you use tools for cooking and dining? By thinking about these questions before you start cooking you may save yourself time later when cleaning. The more time that you spend in the kitchen the easier these questions will be to answer. In time it will not be necessary to consider these questions as it will all become second nature.

Examples:

Let’s say that a recipe uses garlic and onions that are to be browned in a pan before use. If you add the garlic to the pan first then you will need to remove it later to brown the onions because onions take longer to brown than garlic. The suggested way to do it would then be to start the onions and then when they start to become translucent add the garlic.

Look at the way that I do my Mis Em Plas, I cut vegetables before meat so that I can use the same knife and cutting board without having to wash them.

One of my favorite things to cook when camping is fresh tomato sauce for pasta.
1. Dice tomatoes and then place them in a bowl.
2. Cut up onions and garlic and place them in a second bowl
3. Sauté onions and garlic in a pot that is large enough to boil pasta in. when the garlic and onions are done place them in the bowl with the diced tomato.
4. Cut any vegetables that are going into the sauce and place in the bowl that the onions and garlic were in before they were cooked.
6. Cut any meat that is going into the sauce and then brown it in the pot.
7. Add tomato, garlic and onion
8. Cook down and add flavorings
9. When the tomato sauce almost ready add the other vegetables.
10. Remove the sauce and place it in one of the bowls.
11. Cook pasta in the pot that the sauce was in (does it really need to be washed before you boil pasta in it?)
12. Strain the pasta, (using the top of the pot as a strainer, and then mix the sauce into it.
13. Serve into the two bowls.
- Assuming that you used a fork or spoon to cook the sauce and the top of the pot to strain the pasta here is what you have wash later:
cutting board, knife, pot, lid, forks, spoons, and two bowls

One Final Check

Chris — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 04:53:31 +0000

Before you start cooking double check your prep list and or recipe. It is quite a hassle when you get half way through something, only to find that you are missing a critical ingredient. The main reason that we produce a prep list and go through the process of, Mis En Plas, putting everything in place it to make things as hassle free and easy as possible. Great cooks make things look easy by having good cooking skills and making sure that they have everything they are going to need prior to starting. In addition to the hassle of having to look for or prep an ingredient, or set up a tool, the time that the process takes can throw off your timing resulting in things being over cooked or served at an imperfect temperature.
Usually when I am planning a large dinner I will do this final check of my prep and tools and then I will take a break. During this break I will relax, have something to eat, drink some water, and change out my chefs coat and apron. At the end of my break I will quickly go over what I am going to do one last time.
It seams that you can never be prepared for everything that may come up but being prepped and prepared for what you know is needed puts you ahead so when something unexpected comes up you can handle it with grace and look like a pro!

Whole Leg Ham Producion, Prague powder, Parma and Jamón

Chris — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:03:23 +0000

Ralph: I want to try to make ham with a whole ham leg or legs and the recipes are calling for Prague powder.
Questions – Is Prague powder absolutely necessary? Is there a substitute for Prague powder if necessary?

Prague powder is not absolutely necessary but there are risks and color issues that need to be considered when making a ham without the chemicals that are found in Prague powder. In order to understand the risks and color issues of not using Prague powder in ham production, you first need to understand what Prague powder is and generally what it does in ham.

Prague powder is usually sold and formulated as follows:
Prague powder #1 contains 6.25% sodium nitrite and 93.75% salt.
Uses: All cured meats and sausages other than the dry type.

Prague powder #2 contains 6.25% sodium nitrite, 4.0% sodium nitrate and 89.75 % salt.
*TAKE CARE* Prague powder #2 should never be used on any product that will be fried at high temperature because of the formation of nitrosamines which are known to be carcinogenic (causes cancer). Evidence for this claim can be found in the review articles of the AMI, 1977; CAST, 1978; and the RMC, 1980.

Nitrite and Nitrate in cured meat react with components of the meat or additives such as vitamin C. The chemical reaction produces antioxidants, pigment retainers, and stabilizers that give the product a resistance to going bad and in most cases give the products a characteristic red color.

Now to answer your second question “is there a substitute for Prague powder”. I do not know of any substitutes for Nitrite and Nitrate that will give the same affect of these chemicals.

Parma ham from Itally and Jamón from Spain are examples of dry aged hams that have no added Nitrite or Nitrate. Although the exact chemical reactions that happens in these specific hams are not known I believe that it is also from Nitrites and Nitrates that are naturally found in the special salts found in parts of Italy and Spain.

The salt used in curing meat has not always been pure. In the 1800’s (Polenske, 1891) the use of contaminated salt was common and studies where performed that pointed toward nitrate and nitrite in the salts that helped impart a red color to the meat.

If you would like to produce a ham without the use of Nitrate or Nitrite there are two methods that I know of. The first methods is to use salt to reduce the water activity in the product. The second is to marinate the hams for a short period of time and then hot smoke the leg.

When salting a ham you are more or less drying it out to a point that bad things cant grown on it. The problem with salting a ham is that the meat needs to be soaked in water prior to use to remove excess salt.

Short curing and smoking of hams will give you a fantastic flavor but without the nitrate and nitrate to aid in color production and retention the center of your hams will be gray.

Personally I understand that a piece of ham cured without nitrate and nitrite will naturally be gray. As this is natural I don’t have a problem with it. I make bacon twice a year without the use of Nitrate and Nitrite and yes the result is a golden smoky color around the edge with a grayish center. However once you take the bacon and fry it up it has a beautiful golden color on all of its sides so it does not matter to me that it does not have a red color before its cooked.