Learn how to fish, from a culinary school point-of-view

Posted on | October 12, 2009

I’m a big believer in the Lao Tzu quote: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” It is a large part of why I am at culinary school; I want to learn to fish.

Which brings me to today’s post.

My big goal with this blog is to bring you into my world as a culinary school student. Good, bad, fun, frustrating … I’ll let you see it all through my eyes.

But, my second goal has always been to pass on key lessons. See, if I was reading this blog, I would want to learn what culinary school was really like, sure, but I would also want to glean any juicy cooking tips I could get.

I’ve included cooking tips and techniques and even recipes where I can, but I know I can do more. In fact, I want to do more. So today’s post is me doing more.

More, more, more
I’ve given this a lot of thought and I’ve decided the best way to share more cooking techniques is to write a bunch of series drawn from key cooking lessons. The series will focus on cooking techniques you can use right now, in your own kitchen, to help you take your cooking up one very juicy notch.

First, I’m going to write a series on the cooking methods I learned at culinary school. If you know what the methods are and how to do them properly, then you can cook anything, anything at all.

Then, afterward, I want to do more series. Maybe a series on flavor. Or cooking with herbs and spices. Or building a salad. Or … well, I could use some suggestions!

And while I will continue to write about school, of course, I plan to intersperse posts on cooking techniques so you can learn what I have learned.

Does that sound good? I hope so! So let’s get started.

Let’s go fishing
Culinary school taught me that there are three types of cooking methods: dry heat, moist heat, and combination. You can argue there are other types of cooking — ceviche anyone? — and certainly food that does not require heat — such as a cold salad. Still, the bulk of what we do is cooking with heat, so this knowledge should serve you well most of the time.

Dry methods use air or fat to conduct heat, such as broiling (the air conducts the heat) or sautéing (the fat conducts the heat). Moist methods use, doh, water, either in liquid or gas (steam) form to conduct heat. And combination methods dabble in both moist and dry (or, really, dry first, then moist) heat.

Gotta get grilling
With the summer coming to a rapid close (okay, I know it is gone, but I can cling), I’d better get grilling in here before we lose daylight (unless you are reading me in Australia, in which case, G’day mate!). So let’s start with the dry heat cooking method: Grilling

Grilling is upside down broiling. In other words, the heat source is underneath the food, not on top. Now, this is an easy cooking method (another reason why I chose it first) because we have all either done it ourselves or seen dad or uncle or grandfather do it (sigh, and likely screw it up, poor dears), and because it is fairly idiot proof (if, ahem, you know what you are doing).

I won’t cover broiling in this series because, hey, we never did it at school. In fact, the only option for broiling that we had, the salamander, was used to store sauté pans. So everyone is on their own for that one, I’m afraid. (And, no, I’m not going to talk about barbecuing, either. We didn’t do that, either, and it’s probably best that I leave that to Southerners who have elevated the barbecue to heights so lofty I can’t hope to follow in their footsteps, only eat at their table.)

But I do have five steps for good grilling, so let’s launch my new cooking methods series with that.

1. Grilling zones
This is where so many dads, etc. go wrong — they only have one zone and it is scorchingly hot. So hot, in fact, that it will cook any steak into a fine piece of chewy, chewy shoe leather. The solution? Two zones, to the rescue.

Yes, boys and girls of all genders, ahem, you need at least two heat zones on your grill — hot and warm. See, the hot zone is where you (step one) sear the outside of your meat. The warm zone is where you (step two) move your seared meat to so it will cook through without become shoe leather.

So pile your charcoal in a heap on one side of your grill or turn different sections of your gas grill to different temperatures. Start your meat on the hot zone. Then, once the outside is perfect (and information on super sexy grill marks coming up), move it to the warm zone to finish cooking.

2. Ready, set …
There are three things you need to do before you grill. First, make sure your grill is spotlessly clean (no one wants to eat nasty, old charred bits). Second, make sure your grill is well-oiled (at school, we rub an onion half dipped in oil on the grill). And, third, oil and season (salt, pepper, anything else you want) your steak (or whatever meat you like) before you cook it.

Now, let’s talk about the sexy part.

3. Grill marks
I make the sexiest damn grill marks you have ever seen. Really. Men propose to me, my grill marks are so sexy. Then they go home and sob into their sleeve because they can’t replicate my grill marks. Totally.

And I am now going to give you my secret for sexy grill marks. You can send me your proposals in my comments section.

Put your meat in the searingly hot spot of your grill at a 45° angle. I always start in this configuration: Standing, facing the grill, my meat is angled so the the bottom of my meat is at my left hand and the top is at my right shoulder.

Now, here’s the cooking school tip (I learned this from my chef): Your meat will release from the grill when the surface is cooked. That’s how you know it is time to turn it.

So, what I do is, gently (gently, so you don’t tear the meat and release the juices) lift up a corner of the steak with my tongs. If the meat won’t let me, I leave it for another minute or two to cook some more. If it will, I peek underneath to check those grill marks. If they aren’t nice and dark, I give it another minute or so. If they are, I flip the meat.

Now, different chef’s have different ways of flipping the meat. There are all sorts of combinations, but the chef’s tend to split into one of two camps. Some go:

1. side one 45° to the right
2. side two 45° to the right
3. side one 45° to the left
4. side two 45° to the left

And some go:

1. side one 45° to the right
2. side one 45° to the left
3. side two 45° to the right
4. side two 45° to the left

I don’t know if it makes a difference. But I do know, if you cook both sides at both angles — left hand to right shoulder and right hand to left shoulder — then you will get the most incredibly sexy crisscross grill marks, ever.

(And, if you want to know, I tend to follow the first camp: right, right, left, left.)

4. Is it done, yet?
One of the chef’s at school taught us that thing where you touch fingers and feel the meaty part of your hand to tell if the meat is done (another chef scoffed at this). I think it’s brilliant. But it totally does not work for me.

Sigh.

Here’s how I tell when meat is done. First, I touch it. And I encourage you to touch it, too. Just give it a poke with your forefinger. First, do this when it is raw so you know what raw meat feels like. See how it feels squishy? That’s because the proteins have not coagulated. Then give meat a poke when it is cooked. See how it is feels more solid, not so squishy? You can thank those coagulated proteins.

So, when I am cooking, when I think the meat might be done, I poke it with my finger. Not hard (and not with the tongs). Just enough to gage the consistency. And, when it feels less, squishy, more firm, then it is ready.

But I do have another way to tell.

Look at the surface of your meat. See the juices pooling on the surface? That, too, is an indication that it is done.

(We are trained not to need a thermometer, but if you do use one, take your meat off the heat a few degrees shy of where you want it to be. You’ll get something called carry-over cooking. This means the residual heat in your food will continue to cook it for a few minutes longer. If you take your meat off when it is perfect, it will be overcooked by the time the carry-over heat is done with it.)

5. The need to wait, the way to carve, and how to fix it, if need be
You have to let your meat sit for a few minutes so the juices can redistribute themselves into the inside of your meat. Otherwise, your meat will be dry.

Waited a few minutes? Okay, if you have a chop, go ahead and serve it. But if you have the sort of cut that you need to carve, there are only three tricks you need to know.

First, use a sharp knife and cut with a long, smooth stroke for nice, clean slices. Second, cut thin slices. And, third, cut against the grain. This will give you the most tender meat.

And, oops, if your meat is not quite ready (it happens), then what I do is cut thick slices (about an inch thick) and pop them back on the grill, raw side down. Quick sear, then turn over, and quick sear on the other raw side. You have to move quickly because meat this thin is prone to overcooking, but this will solve your raw problem and no one will be any wiser (it’s supposed to look like that!).

A few last tips for perfectly grilled food …

• Avoid the cross contamination nightmare by having plates and utensils for raw food and plates and utensils for cooked food and never, ever, letting the twain meet.
• You shouldn’t need a spatula (your food will release, remember), but you do need the best tongs you can find. They do not have to be expensive, but sturdy. Oh, and don’t get the tongs that lock closed. That’s what I have, and every time I am grilling and my husband gets hold of them, in an effort to be helpful, he locks them closed so when I grab for them I don’t realize they are locked and try to use them and can’t without opening them and this has to happen at least a million times every time I grill something and I know he is being nice but if it happens one more time I am going to chase him around the place, waving those damn tongs at him. So there.
• Have a landing spot for cooked food. There is nothing sillier than standing there, holding a perfectly cooked steak in your tongs, screaming, “I need a plate, NOW!” Not that I have ever done that. Or not that I would admit it if I have.

Now, was that good to know? In my next post, I’ll go back to talking about school, but in the post after that, I’m planning to go back to this culinary school cooking series. I’m thinking of covering roasting (Thanksgiving is coming up, so this is a good one to do next). Then back to talking about school and so on. S’right? S’right!

Comments

Subscribe to my feed

Follow me on Twitter

Recently Written

• Thanks are due
• Should I go to culinary school from someone who has been
• Let me answer your questions
• So what happens to me now?
• And the culinary school student goes on externship
• It’s a new day!

Archives

• July 2010
• June 2010
• May 2010
• April 2010
• March 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• July 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009

Search

About

I'm a writer turned cooking school student. And writing about it. You follow?

Culinary Resources

Food glossary: All the terms you don't understand ... in plain language you will.

Kitchen measurements: All the measurements and conversions you will ever need.

Knife cuts: The professional knife cuts the real chefs use.