Technique
- Salty & Clever
- Kitchen Systems
- Kitchen Method
123 published pieces
Kitchen Method
Technique that travels: heat, texture, emulsions, seasoning, doneness, holding, recovery, and the reasons a method works.
- Heat
- Texture
- Seasoning
- Recovery
Today's three
Where to start in Kitchen Method.
Technique
Technique
Cabbage and Its Relatives Punish the Middle and Reward Both Ends
The smell of boiled cabbage is a chemical event with a timer on it, not a memory of bad cooking.
Technique
A Home Stir Fry Fails for Three Reasons and All Three Are Water
The restaurant version is dry-edged and faintly smoky. Yours is grey and swimming. The burner is only part of it, and the parts you can control are worth more than the part you cannot.Newest first
Everything in this group.
Technique
Two Roast Chickens, Three Dinners, and No Rotisserie-Chicken Déjà Vu
Roast enough chicken to create a real cooked-meat reserve, then stop asking the same chicken to be the same dinner.
Technique
Browning Is Two Completely Different Reactions and Only One of Them Is Caramel
Recipes use caramelize for everything. Caramelize the onions. Caramelize the crust. Caramelized edges on the cauliflower.
Technique
Sourdough Starter That Fits a Normal Schedule
A practical sourdough starter guide for people with jobs, sleep schedules, and limited interest in feeding flour twice a day forever.
Technique
Halving a Recipe Changes Four Things and Only One of Them Is the Amount
Halve every number on the list, use the same pan, follow the same method, and the dish arrives wrong in a way that is hard to name.Reduction Is Not Just Concentration. Three Other Things Are Happening and One of Them Will Ruin Dinner.
Reduce a sauce and the description everybody uses is that the flavor concentrates.
Technique
The Order You Put Things in the Pan Is Most of the Recipe, and It Follows One Rule
Almost every savory dish that starts in a pan follows the same sequence, and once you can see the sequence you stop needing the recipe to tell you it.
Technique
Every Recipe Assumes a Pan Diameter and Almost None of Them Tell You Which One
Brown in a single layer. Reduce until thickened. Cook until the liquid has nearly evaporated.
Technique
A Lid Is a Decision About Evaporation and Almost No Recipe Explains It
Cover and simmer. Simmer uncovered. Cover partially. Three instructions that appear with no reason attached, and swapping one for another changes a dish more than most ingredient substitutions do.An Air Fryer Is a Small Convection Oven, and Knowing That Tells You Exactly What It Can Do
It does not fry. There is no oil bath, nothing is submerged, and the name is the most successful piece of marketing in modern kitchen equipment.
Technique