There are only a few simple things to understand about cooking. If you care about the science, you can look up details on things like caramelization, sucrose inversion and related topics, but that’s secondary to the basic principals.
In order for most raw ingredients to taste good you need a certain amount of heat. The trick is in the timing. Some things are ok with overcooking, but most things have a “Sweet spot”, once they’re cooked “enough”, then you’re done. While overcooking (I’m not talking about BURNING) is not bad for most things, it does tend to reduce the flavor over time.
So, let’s give a couple examples, from difficult to easy:
Milk – when you cook milk with too much temperature, it “curdles”, this is bad. Most dairy products are somewhat sensitive to heat, so you cook dairy either for a short time at somewhat high temperatures, or you cook them longer at lower temperatures. An easy milk-based recipe is rice pudding. At it turns out, milk and butter interact in an interesting way which makes them thicken over time. Cook rice (I’ll explain that below) until it’s sticky, add a bunch of milk to it, say a quarter gallon and a quarter cup of butter. Cook this over medium to medium high heat for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly. What happens is that the butter and milk thicken slowly (you must stir constantly) as the heat and milk and butter react to each other. The rice should also shed some and this adds to the thickness, add some chopped up raisins and I bet a mashed bananna would probably be good as well to add sweetness. Add nuts if you want some crunchy chunks and some additional healthy fats and protein.
Note, there’s no sugar in there but natural fruit sugars. To prepare rice, I’d recommend a cooker. I had always done it in a pan, but after I got a cooker, there’s no looking back. If you must prepare it in a pan it’s like this: 1 cup of rice (rinse it off first), 2 cups of water, put it in a pan and put it on a temperature that’s just enough to make the water boil. Let it boil down until the water is just above the level of the rice and then put a cover on the pan with a small crack to let a small amount of steam escape. Cook like this for about ten minutes – basically you want the steam to be captured in the pan and you cook it until there’s no more water. Timing is important. Also, do NOT stir the rice, resist the urge!
Different vegetables cook at different rates, we’re talking basic physics here, density and all that. Cauliflower and broccoli cook quickly, carrots cook somewhat slowly, potatoes are in between. All of them can be most easily prepared by cooking them in water, or in a steamer (pan with holes in the bottom that sits in another pan – put the water in the pan and the vegetables in the steamer tray, cook until tender.
The best way to tell is to test, if it’s still bitter and tough, it’s not cooked enough! This is especially true for beans! I usually buy all my beans in their dried bulk form. To make them eadible there’s a few different approaches, but generally you want “reconstitute” the beans first, which is put them in a bowl of water for about eight hours (overnight) and then you can cook them by boiling them in water (no steaming for beans generally) for however long it takes, some beans cook more quickly than others, for example, kidney beans cook more quickly than garbanzo beans. The way to tell is when they’ve just become soft (remember what I said at the top about timing and cooking too much?). You can cook them longer, but they start to lose flavor.
Spices are a totally different beast altogether, but most dishes are done with one primary spice and one complimentary spice, when you read recipies you’ll usually see this trend. Indian dishes are much more difficult to cook because they use multiple spices and the ratio is much deterministic of the final flavor – that is to say, most Indian dishes use all of the same spices, it’s just a matter of which one dominates by being a larger ratio compared to the others. I won’t go into more detail about that, but suffice it to say the most common spice blends are salt + something else. Garlic/salt. Oregano/salt. etc.
A slight variation on spice flavoring is also when dairy is used as a primary flavor. Let’s talk sauce – Before I reduced my dairy intake I used to make the most fantastic alfredo sauce ever, and it’s so totally simple it’ll make you cry:
Cook your pasta by boiling in water for 10 minutes or so (you know, do I have to say it again? Until soft!) and in your other pan do the following:
Half a stick of butter, on medium heat until it’s melted. Add about a tablespoon of flour to it (there are many alternatives, but the point is this is a thickening agent, you could use, for example corn starch) and then add about a cup of milk to start. Whisk it so that the milk and butter and flour are all nicely homogenized (sounds almost like the rice pudding, doesn’t it? Stir constantly!). Grab a brick of nice parmesean cheese and grate it all in, stirring as needed. The cheese melts into the thick milk/butter/flour base and you’ll start to see a nice alfredo sauce. Add more milk as needed! Add some parsley or oregano or cilantro for a complementary spice. That’s really up to your whim more than anything, and after a few attempts with different amounts you’ll start to see how it all works out.
I used to make alfredo with three cheese tortellini and I’d cook up some ground jimmy dean’s breakfast sausage (has rosemary in it) and add that at the very end. It’s one of the only things I truly miss about becoming a vegetarian!
Cooking meat is fairly easy, and follows many of the same principals, ground dishes need to be chopped up with a wooden spoon or equivalent while cooking for – can you guess how long? The idea is to use as much heat as needed, so medium high or high depending on how quickly you need it to cook. The higher the heat the more likely it is to burn, but with meats you really want the temperature to be higher. Meats are dense, to cook them, you need more temperature, again, basic physics, right? To cook a steak, you might not want to use high heat because you need it to sit on one side for longer without charring too badly before you flip it, the thickness of the steak determines the time and temperature. Thinner steaks can be cooked at higher temperature for shorter time than thicker steaks, but again you always want at least med-high for meat cooking, so it’s not a huge difference.
My curries these days are made in several different ways, I’ll spare you the spice details, but basically I made a tomato and onion based sauce using either butter or oil, add chopped up peppers (I like anaheims and pablanos for flavor) with garic and ginger and my spice blends (cumin, turmeric, chili powder, corander, and for some dishes garam masala which is actually a blend of like 10 other spices) — Ok, forget all that about the spices, what I was going to talk about is the things you add afterwards. In my curries, I add different vegtables, sometimes green beans, peas, carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, etc… This really depends on what I’m trying to make, sometimes the dish uses beans of various types instead and the spices shift depending on the theme. Stupid tangents… Depending on how much time I have and how prepared I am, I may cook the vegetables either IN the curry or separately and add them to the curry base. When you do it the first way, you lose a lot of flavor, but it’s much easier. Basically, add a ton of water to your sauce base, add the vegetables and cook until it’s all done.
The RIGHT way to do that is cook your vegetables in a steamer until they’re tender, then add them once the sauce is finished. Again, it’s a laziness or preparedness thing for me. Sometimes I want to try a new spice blend and I get ahead of myself cooking the curry sauce and then I’m like … oh, right, I need vegetables cooked, F it – add like four cups of water dump the veggies in and let it roll on medium-low for an hour. This somewhat compensates for the loss of flavor, but also has the added benefit of letting the veggies soak up a bit of the flavor. Always a give and take.
Next there’s different stir fry variations, these are pretty easy overall, as it’s just chop up a bunch of shit into smallish pieces (1/4″ max) add some oil to your pan (3-4 tablespoons), add the veggies and fry for – you’ll never guess how long. The smaller pieces can cook quickly, and soak up and spices you might add like black pepper or chili powder, etc. There’s an Indian dish called “Alu Gobi” which literally means “Potato Cauliflower” which is much like a stir fry, but you add larger chunks of potatos (1″ cubes) and cauliflower florets after you’ve fried up your chopped peppers and onions and garlic/ginger in the oil or butter. You also add a lot of turmeric to this to give it that fruity Indian flavor, and make sure the alu and gobi are well covered on the outside. It’s required to cook the potatoes and califlower before on this because as a stir-fry you can’t add a ton of water like you would with a curry sauce based dish. This dish is also prepared with a slightly higher salt ratio and with many seeds in their raw form rather than powder. It’s one of my favorites, and easy to make.
Um, I could get into deep fry methods, but I think the above should keep you busy for a while. I don’t really have any special tools, I use big spoons, a wisk, and various sizes of pots and pans. For specialty items, I have a food processor (black and decker, $30 from Fred Meyer) and a rice cooker ($30 at Cosco) and a food grater and peeler. For staple items I keep frozen peas (must be cooked) and frozen beans, canned tomato puree (like thinner tomato paste, but not as thin as tomato sauce), a bag of potatoes (I put them in just about everything), and various bulk beans: masoor (red lentil) is used to thicken certain kinds of bean dishes, black and green urid (another kind of lentil), garbanzos, kidney beans, and I keep some carrots, califlower and other things in the fridge to use as desired. I also keep garlic and ginger (raw forms) on hand with a ton of different spices. All those spices are pretty secondary, though, you can buy them in small quantities and try them out one at a time in simple dishes, eventually, you’ll have a respectable collection of spices that you know how to use and everyone will call you a master chef!
Special note on garlic and ginger, I keep both raw ginger root which is grated using the small grind side of the food grater. Alternatively, you can scrape the skin off using a serrated steak knife and then just keep grinding at it with the knife, this produces much the same effect. I also have a peeler for taking the skin off the ginger root, potatoes or carrots if needed. For example, when I make hummus and I serve it with carrots, I skin them because you eat the carrots raw, but when I cook, I usually leave the skin on for the extra vitamins!
Two simple recipies to start you with because they’re easy as hell and people pay retarded amounts for them:
Hummus – 1 cup dried garbanzo beans (or two cans), 1/2 cup lemon juice, half a small jar (8oz/1cup approx) in a food processor – add water to keep it from getting too thick. Add spices as desired. Seriously, that’s it. I typically put garlic, paprika, cumin, olive oil and jalapenos in my hummus. Serve with bread, crackers, vegetables, whatever.
Chai (Tea) – 1 quart of water, 4-6 tea bags, 6-8 cloves, 4-6 GREEN cardamoms (popped – you want the little beads inside to come out), and an inch of ground up ginger root. Bring to a boil, add 1 quart of milk, bring to a boil again and IMMEDIATELY remove from heat. Pour through a strainer into another container (like a serving caraffe) to remove all the floaty stuff. Sugar to taste. Easy as hell and super tasty! Any black tea will work, I use either English Breakfast or Orange Pekoe.
