My lunches with the queen of cookbooks
tastecooking.com
tastecooking.com
The description of the authors cooking with Judith is both intimate and distant. Personal and communal. And yet while silent, speaks to a deep friendship built on years of experience and taste and creativity.
My favorite aspect of the article is the lack of recipes. Meals can be whimsical and unexpected and memorable when the ingredients are there but the plan is not.
I’m sure I’ll be thinking of this article for years to come.
Personally, for everyday cooking I find that way of cooking much more engaging – and much less like drudgery – than cooking from recipes. In my case, it also made food waste go down quite a bit.
> The best instruction I've read for how long to cook beans comes from a collection of recipes called "The Best in American Cooking" by Clementine Paddleford. The book instructs to simmer "until beans have gorged themselves with fat and water and swelled like the fat boy in his prime."
The main dish I tried was her
Boeuf Bourguignon.
It turns out, some long notes on a version of Child's dish now are at
https://cafedelites.com/beef-bourguignon/
That recipe starts with:
"Tender fall apart chunks of beef simmered"
Right, that's the goal and expected result. Right. No doubt.
Well, I tried: Over and over and over, off and on for 10+ years. Devoted a lot of time, money, and effort. Nope, it was a LOT-LOT-LOT and more than that.
Results: All the same. Disaster. Shouldn't just pour it down a drain since that might create expensive plumbing problems.
Then to study the issue, talked with some chefs, read some Escoffier, talked with a US beef industry group, read some materials on science and chemistry of cooking.
The problem was that first description at the beginning of the notes with the URL above, the
"Tender fall apart chunks of beef simmered"
Didn't get that. That's right on target of what I NEVER got. Instead, always the same, for the beef, got only hard, brittle, dry chunks.
Why? It was one word: "Simmer". Don't do that. Never, never, ever simmer beef or any meat. No way. Don't do that. Put the stew in a 350 F oven for some hours? Never do that either. Use a pressure cooker? In a sense, a pressure cooker, to get temperature over 212 F boiling, is the worst possible approach.
Instead, the solution is simple, dirt simple, in just a few words: Need an actual, clear, meaningful definition of simmer. To be clear, never let the stew get over, say, 180 F. For food safety, 165+ F is a common recommendation. Collagen melts starting at ~160 F. So, for hours of cooking, 180 F risks being too high.
That is, in simple terms, use a thermometer.
Why???? Well, some food chemistry discussions explain that get meat much over 180 F, the proteins will "unwind" and expel their water, and the meat chunks will shrink and become brittle and dry, something like charcoal, nothing like the claim
"Tender fall apart chunks of beef simmered"
And until I learned about some Food Chemistry 101, have a good definition of simmer and use a thermometer, the charcoal-like chunks are what I always got.
The easy way to regulate the temperature is just to use a pot on the stove top where can keep taking measurements with the thermometer.
In simple terms, what "cooking" beef, or any meat, is all about is melting collagen. With the collagen melted out, what is left are the meat fibers, and they are "always" (as I recall from one of the food chemistry sources) tender. Again, collagen starts to melt at ~160 F. If melt the collagen and are at 165 F for food safety, you are DONE.
There is another point: The mention to use beef stock. Yup, should do that. For this, for better flavor, to follow Escoffier, get meat from relatively old cattle. Tough, old, lean meat will have more collagen, and once melted that is desirable although now can buy collagen as dry sheets in a box at the grocery.
As part of the work I did, looked into getting such meat. Finally some packing house people explained that such meat mostly goes to fast food.
So, define simmer as 180- F and get a thermometer. That's the solution.
Finally there is a third point: For soups and stews, onions, carrots, and celery are a classic combination, a "trilogy".
I am going to assume you were not exposed enough to parents and family cooking while growing up. And therefore you haven't built much intuition around it.
Happy cooking!
A thermometer is a key tool which was not used when I grew up. I even commented to an aunt that my mother was a better cook because she did not use one for her roast. I have since learned my lesson.
It is a golden kitchen tool. You can up your baking game by using it. Understand proofing temperatures and time. And now our Rye bread comes out perfectly every time as we know to pull it at 97 C.
Cooking is not hard. But good cooking can be achieved without years of learned intuition.
Cooking (meat, veggies, soup, roasts, quiche, etc), is much more forgiving and works well free hand.
With that said, I certainly use a thermometer whenever I want to be sure, I wouldn't want it any other way.
Just to say that you can get nice things for your home without going the route of the Breville Control Freak.
In practice I often find it easier to use the oven.
For other who is new to proper simmering/braising have a look at: https://www.ricardocuisine.com/en/articles/food-chemistry/64...
> "A very slow boil, when the liquid is hardly moving except for a bubble at one point, is called to simmer, mijoter."
You'll typically find that when a water-based liquid is bubbling like described it's somewhere between 160-180 F. Stews can typically be simmered in an oven at anywhere from 250-300 depending on your oven - so a simple way is to use your oven to keep it simmering. The key is to mind it - pay it some attention to make sure that it doesn't start boiling.
Glad you were able to find that temp definition through other means though!
Yup, I remember reading that definition of simmer, and I tried to use that. I omitted that definition from my post to save space; besides, I can't give an exact quote because I lost my copy of Child's book in a disaster. Net, using her definition about quivering water or some such, the results were as I described, chunks of charcoal -- in my experience that definition of simmer was TOO HOT, over 200 F, which is TOO HOT.
> A very slow boil
That word, "boil", that's close to 212 F. The beef chunks are small enough that quickly they will be at the temperature of the liquid so will be well above 170 F or so. Anything like "boil" is just way too hot.
The solution both then and now was a thermometer and a definition of simmer in terms of TEMPERATURE as measured by a thermometer.
I use the same approach with pork: Pork Picnic shoulder, skin side down, on a V-rack, in a roasting pan, uncovered, in an oven at 210 F to an internal temperature of 179 F. Use a fork or some tongs and separate the cooked, lean meat from the bone, fat, and skin. Nearly all the fat is next to the skin. The resulting pork falls apart.
For sandwiches, 4 ounces per sandwich is generous. Maybe add some salt and red pepper flakes. Add ~2 ounces of BBQ sauce. If have the cooked pork cold, in a bowl, covered, warm it in microwave. Then using, say, two forks, separate the meat chunks into fibers (no knife needed) and mix in the sauce. When it's cold, it's too stiff to separate into fibers; warmed, it falls apart. 210 F oven and 179 F internal temperature. "Low and slow".
"A very slow boil" does _not_ mean the _entire_ mass of liquid is near 212 F.
It means that _one very small sector_ of the liquid is near 212 (hence the 'bubble at one point'), and the vast majority of the liquid is considerably colder.
A thermometer is unnecessary.
Sometimes it's the person who bakes is what makes food extra special.
My grandmother would always be the one to make fancy prepared sandwiches with all kinds of fillings, for all kinds of events - birthdays, anniversaries, church events, funerals... - when she passed a couple decades ago, something unseen and unspoken changed. Even though we try to keep family traditions around, things just don't feel quite the same as they once did.
Watching, trying, failing, trying again and taking many mental notes, some written notes but written not for a stranger to simply pick up and do, but for someone who is in the flow of learning.
The reason it likely doesn't feel the same is the time, effort, and knowledge. Purely focused on this process of making. Most of us now have split time, fractured against a lot of things.
I say this as someone who has watched her grandmother cook, her mother cook, and now finds her own time quickly diminishing. Making all of the items from scratch seems like an impossible feat given the limited amount of time and access to all the right goods.
However, occasionally they use the word "caramelize" loosely, using it to just mean "soften" or "color." On other occasions, people simply assume they ought to caramelize the onions. In either case, people see that the cookbook only tells them to saute the onion for five or ten minutes and they say "another cookbook that lies about how long it takes to saute an onion."
In truth, in regular Italian and French cooking it is extremely rare to saute an onion for more than five or ten minutes, unless you are explicitly cooking something that requires caramelized onions like French onion soup. And if you are cooking French onion soup, a good cookbook won't tell you to saute for ten minutes.
I feel like this is some weird misunderstanding that entered people's heads because of some misuses of the word "caramelize," and as a result of this there's a generation of home cooks that now believes you need to saute for 45 minutes every time you cook an onion.
1. Slice very thinly (you also don't need a good knife in a kitchen, but a sharp knife is easily attainable for most people and saves a lot of frustration -- can comment more if you're interested)
2. Start in water
3. Start with a bit (maybe 1/2 tsp per several onions? it's better to underdo it and cook a little longer than to risk off flavors) of baking soda
3a. Don't forget to neutralize that soda. That's easier in naturally acidic dishes, but even in something like french onion soup just use a more acidic wine than you otherwise would.
The steps roughly all contribute to the idea of caramelization not happening till the cell walls break down. Step (1) breaks most of them down manually. Step (2) allows you to apply your highest heat setting to break them down more quickly without fear of burning. Step (3) chemically breaks them down.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038796
E.g. ex TFA:
> Add the onions to the skillet and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook until they begin to turn dark brown and somewhat soft, about 5 minutes. Add the oil and a pinch of the fine sea salt; continue cooking until the onions are soft and caramelized, about 5 minutes longer.
But the error isn't with the amount of time to cook them. It's with the use of the word. Stick to the recipe's time guidelines.
(Also, funnily-enough, the second (highly-upvoted) answer in that thread is me. I guess I've had this discussion before...)