3 ms·
Let's raise the level of abstraction a bit. 1. Heat oil in pan (until oil is hot; should flow like water) 2. Add vegetables (almost always including onion); c
by cduan 17y ago
Let's raise the level of abstraction a bit.
1. Heat oil in pan (until oil is hot; should flow like water)
2. Add vegetables (almost always including onion); cook, while stirring, until soft.
3. Add seasonings (salt, pepper, spices, garlic, etc.)
4. Add in a protein; continue stirring, until everything is cooked through.
5. Optionally, add a liquid and simmer.
This process is the basis for cooking a lot of foods, and it pays to get it down really well. Consider:
- Protein is ground meat; liquid is a can of tomatoes. This is pasta bolognese sauce.
- Lots of vegetables; liquid is soy sauce and optionally a slurry of cold water and cornstarch. This is a basic Chinese stir fry.
- Protein is ground meat; liquid is mixture of beef stock, crushed tomatoes, and a can of beans. This is chili.
- Vegetables are bell peppers and onions; meat is andouille sausage; season heavily with Cajun spices; liquid is chicken stock and long-grain rice. This is jambalaya.
Sure, these aren't real recipes, but once you have the above procedure down, it's just a matter of developing an intuition for taste and some knowledge of how ingredients work (e.g., 2.5 cups liquid per cup rice), and most basic cooking is pretty simple.
- dejb 17y agoYou stole my 'recipe'. The only difference is that I usually use tofu or similar for protein (vego) and I add it first to get a just little of that tasty-but-probably-carcinogenic browning on it. Anyway I'd like to see a book of other 'Cooking Patterns' laid out like this.
- cduan 17y agoTofu is a protein too! The great thing is that all these things are easily interchangeable, so you use whatever you like. Your post did remind me of an advanced technique. If you are cooking chunks of protein, the best method is to first fry the protein, then take it out, and then follow the original recipe. Why? Because you want to get that browning, and you only get that with direct contact between the protein and the pan. (This is known as the Maillard reaction.) But if you leave the protein in the whole time, it dries up faster than the vegetables (they have cell walls that are hard to soften).
- rlm 17y agoAnyway I'd like to see a book of other 'Cooking Patterns' laid out like this. That would truly be a "hacker's" cookbook. I'd like to see that too!
- olefoo 17y agoIt's not a book (yet) but it's a blog http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ a delicious blog indeed.
- joshwa 17y agoMichael Ruhlman - The Elements of Cooking http://books.google.com/books?id=iX55tiQfXIgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=iX55tiQfXIgC&lpg=PP1... Michael Ruhlman - Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking http://books.google.com/books?id=zGaRpi4YdIQC&lpg=PP1&dq=ruhlman%20ratio&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=zGaRpi4YdIQC&lpg=PP1...
- edu 17y agommm... I work with 2 cups of liquid per cup of rice!