I've already written about the value of a good knife, how to buy one without spending a fortune, and the basic technique to using a French or Chef's knife.
So let me expand on how to put that knife to good use, to make your cooking easier. As I stood at my work station today at the hotel, prepping vegetables for Thursday's minestrone (by decree of the owner, Thursday's soup must be Minestrone, just as Friday's must be Clam Chowder, a mandate which I find tiresome, but, hey, he signs my paycheck), it occured to me how often the simplest things that seem so obvious to me after 30 years of cooking are quite often a revelation to the home cook.
For instance I always tell my cooks to cut tomatoes with a good serrated knife rather than a conventional blade, and even some who cook for a living have never thought about this. Unless you have a super sharp knife, a Chef's knife will usually crush a tomato rather than slice it cleanly, hardly desirable if you're slicing tomatoes to garnish a sandwich. At home, consistent attractive slices may not be at a premium, but in a good restaurant professional standards demand that your slices are smooth and of even thickness. Now, there is a useful device for slicing tomatoes quickly and evenly, a Tomato King or similar brand names, but these are bulky and expensive and hardly suitable for the home kitchen.
That led me to thinking about slicing bell peppers and similar vegetables with tough skins. It's obvious to me, but perhaps not to everyone, that, once you have opened a pepper up it's much easier to cut it from the inside fleshy part out, rather than from the outer skin. You will find much less resistance to your knife blade that way. And, speaking of bell peppers, most of the bitterness in bell peppers resides in the seeds and the pithy ribs that line the inside. So always remove these before cooking. My standard method for dealing with a bell pepper is to slice off the top and bottom, then reach in and remove as much of the seed core as I can. I set the pepper on end and slice it into 2 equal halves, then lay each half flat, skin side down, and with my knife turned side ways, trim off the ribs. Then you are free to julienne, dice, chop, whatever.
A couple of weeks ago we were making devilled eggs for 100 people and I left the task in the hands of a prep cook and a dishwasher. When I checked on them I discovered that they had been slicing the eggs across the shortest circumference rather than lengthwise. When I asked them how the eggs were supposed to stand up for service I got nothing but blank looks. So I had to demonstrate the best way to slice an egg in half. Again a serrated blade works best, with a gentle rocking motion and not too much downward pressure. TIP: For perfect hard-boiled eggs, start with eggs in cold water, bring the water to a boil, then turn the water off. Wait exactly 8 minutes and you will have a perfect hard-boiled egg! If you are using them in a cold dish, shock them in ice water to cool as quickly as possible to prevent that dark ring from forming. And if you wonder why hard-boiled eggs are sometimes so hard to peel and other times the shell just about slides off, it all has to do with the age off the egg. As a raw egg sits in the refrigerator, over time a layer of gas forms between the shell and its contents and it's t
hat layer that makes an egg so easy to peel. So, the freshest eggs are the hardest to peel.
So let me expand on how to put that knife to good use, to make your cooking easier. As I stood at my work station today at the hotel, prepping vegetables for Thursday's minestrone (by decree of the owner, Thursday's soup must be Minestrone, just as Friday's must be Clam Chowder, a mandate which I find tiresome, but, hey, he signs my paycheck), it occured to me how often the simplest things that seem so obvious to me after 30 years of cooking are quite often a revelation to the home cook.
For instance I always tell my cooks to cut tomatoes with a good serrated knife rather than a conventional blade, and even some who cook for a living have never thought about this. Unless you have a super sharp knife, a Chef's knife will usually crush a tomato rather than slice it cleanly, hardly desirable if you're slicing tomatoes to garnish a sandwich. At home, consistent attractive slices may not be at a premium, but in a good restaurant professional standards demand that your slices are smooth and of even thickness. Now, there is a useful device for slicing tomatoes quickly and evenly, a Tomato King or similar brand names, but these are bulky and expensive and hardly suitable for the home kitchen.
That led me to thinking about slicing bell peppers and similar vegetables with tough skins. It's obvious to me, but perhaps not to everyone, that, once you have opened a pepper up it's much easier to cut it from the inside fleshy part out, rather than from the outer skin. You will find much less resistance to your knife blade that way. And, speaking of bell peppers, most of the bitterness in bell peppers resides in the seeds and the pithy ribs that line the inside. So always remove these before cooking. My standard method for dealing with a bell pepper is to slice off the top and bottom, then reach in and remove as much of the seed core as I can. I set the pepper on end and slice it into 2 equal halves, then lay each half flat, skin side down, and with my knife turned side ways, trim off the ribs. Then you are free to julienne, dice, chop, whatever.
A couple of weeks ago we were making devilled eggs for 100 people and I left the task in the hands of a prep cook and a dishwasher. When I checked on them I discovered that they had been slicing the eggs across the shortest circumference rather than lengthwise. When I asked them how the eggs were supposed to stand up for service I got nothing but blank looks. So I had to demonstrate the best way to slice an egg in half. Again a serrated blade works best, with a gentle rocking motion and not too much downward pressure. TIP: For perfect hard-boiled eggs, start with eggs in cold water, bring the water to a boil, then turn the water off. Wait exactly 8 minutes and you will have a perfect hard-boiled egg! If you are using them in a cold dish, shock them in ice water to cool as quickly as possible to prevent that dark ring from forming. And if you wonder why hard-boiled eggs are sometimes so hard to peel and other times the shell just about slides off, it all has to do with the age off the egg. As a raw egg sits in the refrigerator, over time a layer of gas forms between the shell and its contents and it's t
hat layer that makes an egg so easy to peel. So, the freshest eggs are the hardest to peel.
1 comment:
Thanks for the explanation re the freshest eggs being hardest to peel - I had wondered about that!
Cheers
DB
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