Competent Cooking School

About author / Lauren Braun Costello

The competent cook; food stylist; cooking instructor; graduate French Culinary Institute. To die for dish? Maple glazed bacon wrapped roast turkey. Yep, bacon wrapped.

There are so many different ways to cook. It is essential to learn and understand the basics in order to be a competent cook, which will make cooking efficient and fun. There are six key methods of cooking meats: grilling, broiling, sautéing, roasting, poaching and braising. With a mastery of these techniques, you will widen your repertoire and improve your cooking skills.

Concentration v. Extraction
There are two general ways we cook meat: concentration or extraction. Concentration is the method of cooking in which you lock in, or concentrate, the juices by coagulating the surface protein. Examples of this are grilling, broiling, sautéing and roasting. Extraction is the method by which juices are drawn out of the product during cooking, such as poaching.

Grilling is the method of cooking food on a metal grate set over hot coals outdoors. However, this can be done indoors using a cast iron or lined pan with ridges much like an outdoor grill. In either case, the grill must be thoroughly clean and hot. Both the item to be grilled and the grill itself should be lightly oiled. Doneness of meat can be tested by thermometer or to the touch. The rarer the meat is, the softer it will be to the touch.

Broiling differs from grilling in that the food is placed below the heat source, as opposed to above it as in grilling. To broil food, place it at a measured distance below direct, dry heat. Most ovens have a broiler section that is used to cook meats, fish and poultry or melt or brown foods. The broiling pan should be hot before the food is placed on it.

Sauté literally means "to jump" in French. In this cooking method, food is cooked quickly in a small amount of fat or oil, until brown, in a skillet or sauté pan over direct heat (uncovered). The sauté pan and fat must be hot before the food is added, otherwise the food may absorb oil and become soggy, or stick to the pan. The food must be dry and ideally room temperature. Never crowd the pan when you sauté, otherwise the food will steam instead of sear. Do not shake or move the pan--allow the food to respond to the heat.

In roasting, the food is generally uncovered and exposed to dry, high heat in the oven, which produces a well-browned surface and seals in the juices. Sautéing involves direct heat on the surface of the food, whereas roasting applies indirect heat to the food. Reasonably tender pieces of meat or poultry should be used for roasting. Food that is going to be roasted for a particularly long time may be tented to prevent drying out, such as the Thanksgiving turkey. After any meat is roasted, it is important to allow it to rest for about 10 minutes so that the internal juices redistribute evenly before carving. If carved immediately from the oven, all the concentrated juices will run from the meat, making what could have been very juicy meat dry and tough.

Poaching, unlike the aforementioned methods, is a form of extraction. To poach is to cook food by gently simmering in liquid at or just below the boiling point. The amount of the liquid and poaching temperature depends on the food being poached. The food being poached should always start off cold in order to allow the natural juices to extract into the cooking liquid, ultimately flavoring the cooking liquid. Fish and poultry are ideal candidates for poaching.

The Mixed Method
There is one great technique that both concentrates and then extracts flavors: braising. This is the quintessential "slow and low" cooking technique. Food is cooked for a long time over a low flame. Generally tougher, second cuts of meat are used in this method. Usually the meat is browned first to concentrate the juices then submerged partially in liquid to slowly extract those same juices.

Braising is a form of cooking that can be executed either on the stovetop or in the oven. The basic technique is cooking by wet heat--the food is partially immersed in hot liquid in a cooking vessel (as opposed to dry heat cooking, such as roasting). The chief principle of this method is the exchange of flavors and juices. The item being cooked gives off juices to the liquid which in turn imparts flavor to the food item. This is one of the reasons that fattier cuts of meat braise well--the fat renders, giving off flavor to the liquid, which then returns flavor the meat. Cooking the food slowly over a low heat also helps to tenderize meat that otherwise would be to tough to consume if cooked quickly by grilling or sautéing.

Look for recipes that employ each one of these techniques and put your cooking skills to the test. You will learn a lot and expand your culinary horizons with competence.