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How to Cook a Steak

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:41:54 +0000

When it comes to cooking a steak, I guess the two main places where people often go wrong is they either don't get the grill hot enough, or they don't season the steak enough. Or both.

How to cook a steak.
Photo © Lara Hata / Getty Images

Sure, there's more to cooking a steak than these two factors, but they're the biggies. Obviously there are other factors as well. For instance, you have to choose the right steak to begin with. And by the way, I mentioned the grill, but it doesn't literally have to be a grill. You can cook a great steak in a pan on the stovetop. You just have to make sure it's really hot.

Check out these four simple steps for How to Cook a Steak. And here's more on cooking the perfect steak:

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Make the Perfect Vinaigrette

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:07:29 +0000

Oil and vinegar salad dressing is one of the rare culinary preparations whose name also happens to be its recipe: oil and vinegar.

Make the perfect vinaigrette.
Photo © Danilo Alfaro

That's not the whole recipe, of course. In addition to the oil and the vinegar, a typical vinaigrette recipe can include ingredients as varied as mustard, honey, fruit juice, buttermilk — there's truly no limit. But the common denominator is the oil and vinegar.

Check out these simple tips for Making the Perfect Vinaigrette. And here's more about making salads and salad dressings:

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How to Make Roux

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:08:16 +0000

Roux (pronounced "roo") is a mixture of equal parts flour and fat that's used for thickening sauces and soups. It's the starch in the flour that actually does the thickening, but binding it with a fat allows it to dissolve smoothly into your stock, soup or other liquid, whereas adding raw flour would just make a lumpy mess.

How to make roux.
Photo © Danilo Alfaro

Roux pops up everywhere in the culinary arts, and while it's typically made with clarified butter, as with this basic white sauce, it can be made with any sort of fat. Like in this potato chowder recipe, where it's made with bacon fat. Or in the classic pan gravy, where it's made with chicken fat. Or even in this braised beef pot roast, where — well, you get the idea.

Here's a simple (as in, only three steps) tutorial on how to make roux. And here's more about making sauces:

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Crème Brûlée Recipe

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:56:49 +0000

If you're wondering about what sort of romantic dessert to make for Valentine's Day, crème brûlée is the one and only. Crème brûlée (pronounced "krem broo-LAY") is one of the most amazing, elegant desserts, and it's surprisingly easy to make. It takes about four hours to properly chill a crème brûlée, so it's not a quick process, but it's definitely worth the wait.

Crème brûlée with fresh berries.
Photo © Danilo Alfaro

Crème brûlée is a simple custard, made with nothing but eggs, cream and sugar, along with a little vanilla. I like to use equal parts heavy cream and half-and-half. For a richer crème brûlée, use all heavy cream. For a lighter one, you can use all half-and-half.

To make crème brûlée, you'll need some heatproof dishes called ramekins. You'll also need a crème brûlée torch to caramelize the tops of the crème brûlées when you're ready to serve them. You can even get a crème brûlée set that includes the torch and the ramekins. But for some extra Valentine's Day romance, make your crème brûlées in heart-shaped ramekins. Enjoy this crème brûlée recipe.

And here's more about crème brûlée:

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How to Poach Chicken Breasts

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:35:19 +0000

As I mentioned yesterday, poaching chicken breasts is something you may have done before, or maybe not. Poaching happens to be a great way to cook chicken breasts for using in other recipes, like soups, enchiladas, pot pies and all kinds of pasta recipes. If you ever bought fresh chicken breasts but didn't use them right away, you can poach them and keep them in the fridge for another few days.

How to poach chicken breasts.
Photo © Lisa Hubbard / Getty Images

The great thing about poaching chicken breasts is that the meat comes out moist and tender and succulent. It's impossible to dry out a chicken breast when you poach it. Moreover, you can poach a chicken breast on the stovetop or in the oven. Here are two easy techniques for How to Poach Chicken Breasts.

And here's more about poaching:

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How to Poach a Chicken

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:55:38 +0000

You've probably poached chicken breasts before, but did you know you can poach a whole chicken? It's true. And one of the great things about poaching a chicken is that you end up with a delicious chicken broth that you can use for making soups, sauces and all kinds of other recipes.

How to poach a chicken.
Photo © Brian Hagiwara / Getty Images

Poaching a chicken involves covering the chicken with water, along with some aromatic vegetables, and cooking it slowly, at a low temperature, for about an hour and twenty minutes. A poached chicken will be moist, juicy and heavenly — even the white meat. Read about How to Poach a Chicken.

And here's more about cooking chicken:

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Pan-Seared Sea Scallops

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:16:02 +0000

Pan-seared sea scallops are among the most popular seafood preparations out there, and one of my favorite dishes to cook. With flesh firm enough to withstand the high heats needed to form a caramelized "crust" on the surface, but with none of the claws, heads and other weird appendages that lobsters and crabs insist on having, these simple bivalves are truly a "no-muss, no-fuss" shellfish.

Pan-seared sea scallops.
Photo © Danilo Alfaro

This tutorial shows you, step-by-step, how to make pan-seared sea scallops. You can also learn more about shopping for fresh scallops, like what kind of scallops are the best for pan-searing, and how to avoid buying scallops that taste like soap.

Also, you can check out these two videos on sea scallops. The first one demonstrates how to sear sea scallops. And the second one discusses what to look for when you're buying sea scallops.

Finally, there's the matter of sauces. A great sauce to serve with seared scallops is a simple beurre blanc sauce, which is made with butter and wine and a few other ingredients. For more sauce ideas, check out these sauces for fish and seafood.

And here's more about cooking fish and seafood:

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How to Measure Flour

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:33:35 +0000

If you want to make sure that your breads and other baked goods turn out right (or at least give them a fighting chance), the first thing to do is make sure you're measuring out the flour properly.

Most of the recipes that you, the home baker, are likely to encounter, call for flour to be measured in cups. And therein lies the problem — because a cup is not always a cup.

Let's say you take your measuring cup and scoop it into the bag of flour. Is that a cup of flour? In a way, yes.

But now, let's say you sifted out a pile of flour and then carefully spooned the sifted flour into a measuring cup until it reached the 1-cup line. That's a cup, too, right? Well, yes — it's certainly closer to a cup than what you got by scooping the flour out with your measuring cup. But let's be honest: isn't all that sifting and spooning just way too much trouble? (Hint: Yes, it is.)

The solution is frighteningly simple: Weigh your flour. Get yourself a digital scale, and the next time a recipe calls for a cup of flour, just weigh out 125 grams. You'll be right every time. One cup of all-purpose flour weighs 125 grams.

Nice, right? No more worrying about sifting, scooping or spooning. Plus, a digital scale is much more useful than that old flour sifter, which you can now happily donate to the Smithsonian Museum of Antiquated Baking Tools.

Update: As a couple of the commenters below correctly point out, not only does sifting aerate your flour, but it can also help remove impurities, and break up little clods of flour, or baking powder, or cocoa powder, or whatever. So you should probably hang on to your sifter after all. But if you already gave it to the Smithsonian, you could just use a wire mesh sieve.

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Chocolate Chip Muffins

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:43:26 +0000

We've been talking about muffins lately, and the other day I featured a great recipe for chocolate chocolate muffins.

But what if you're looking for a muffin recipe that doesn't defy the laws of chocolate physics? For you, try this regular chocolate chip muffins recipe.

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Chocolate Chocolate Muffins

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:38:44 +0000

A chocolate muffin is a wonderful thing. Even more wonderful is a chocolate chocolate muffin. The way I see it, if you're going to make chocolate muffins, you should go all out, which means adding chocolate chips to your chocolate muffins.

Sure, you could leave the chocolate chips out and just make chocolate muffins. But where's the fun in that? In fact, not only do we add chocolate chips to the muffin batter, we sprinkle more chocolate chips on top of the muffins before baking them. Here's the recipe for chocolate chocolate muffins.

And here are a few more muffin recipes, plus more about making quickbreads:

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