Cooking Slow PDF
Preview Cooking Slow
O OKI C N G · SLOW · RECIPES SLOWING DOWN for COOKING MORE and Andrew Schloss Alan Benson Photographs by Text copyright © 2013 by Andrew Schloss. Photographs copyright © 2013 by Alan Benson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-4521-2953-2 Library of Congress has previously cataloged this title under ISBN 978-1-4521-0469-0 Designed by Laura Palese and Alice Chau Typesetting by Howie Severson Chronicle Books LLC 680 Second Street San Francisco, California 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com To Xander INTRODUCTION · 9 · CHAPTER 1 SLOW ROASTING · 18 · CHAPTER 2 SLOW BAKING · 46 · CHAPTER 3 SLOW SIMMERING · 78 · CHAPTER 4 SLOW STEAMING · 112 · CHAPTER 5 SLOW GRILLING · 128 · CHAPTER 6 SLOW FRYING · 150 · CHAPTER 7 SLOW COOKER · 164 · CHAPTER 8 SOUS VIDE · 180 · CHAPTER 9 SLOW SWEETS · 192 · INDEX · 219 · 8 Cooking Slow introduction AN INVITATION roasting or a slow-baked casserole after TO RELAX morning coffee and bring it to the table at suppertime with little thought and no effort Cooking is a balance between time and tem- in between. You can be occupied elsewhere perature. Raise the heat and everything speeds while your dinner simmers lazily, and by up: flames jump, pots sizzle, grease spits. Lower turning your oven or stove top into a slow the heat, however, and the turmoil subsides. cooker you find out that you can spend all Time stretches. Tough fibers soften. Beauti- day cooking, hands-free, with no sacrifice fully complex flavors emerge. Aromas billow, of quality, and no fear of overcooking. and all you have to do is slow down and relax. That’s the magic of slow cooking. LOW-TEMPERATURE Reconsidering this balance in the kitchen suggests a simple formula that can play out COOKING in many areas of our lives. The daily task of making dinner starts to shift. Your house The term “slow cooking” captures the style transforms with heart-warming aromas, your and the principle of the process, but behind family experiences genuinely delicious home- its magical results is simply the science of cooked meals, and you learn that by allowing low-temperature cooking. Let’s use roast food to cook untended all day, your work is beef as a prime example. The doneness reduced to minutes, while the good ingredients temperature of a medium-rare rib roast is you purchased are being transformed in ways 130°F/55°C, meaning the protein in the meat that only time can accomplish. has just begun to firm, making the meat resil- In a world where convenience is synony- ient to the touch; the texture of the meat has mous with speed, slowing down to save time lost its raw slickness but it is still moist and the seems like an oxymoron . . . but that is exactly juices flow from the meat when it is cut. The what happens when you start to incorporate interior color has turned from dark to lighter slow-cooking recipes into your cooking rep- red. If the beef was roasted in a 350°F/180°C/ ertoire. You can set up a chicken for gentle gas 4 oven, the exterior of the roast would have Introduction 9 reached temperatures way above medium-rare so that the steam rising from the cooking food in order for the center to get to the perfect tem- precipitates back into water on the inside of the perature. At 400°F/200°C/gas 6, the changes cooler lid, instead of sizzling away, as it would to the outside of the roast would be even on the metal top of a Dutch oven, and drips greater, and at that temperature misjudging back into the food. timing could result in rapid overcooking. This closed moisture system ensures that But if the oven temperature is set at the heat in the cooker remains constant and the 130°F/55°C, the roast can never get any hotter ingredients stay moist, one of the great advan- than medium-rare. It is impossible to overcook tages of cooking in a slow cooker. But it is not it, even if it were left roasting for days. By mov- faultless and can be challenging to get perfect ing the cooking temperature close to the done- results, as preserving moisture inhibits flavors ness temperature, we minimize the danger from concentrating. One of the principal ways of overcooking, which allows us to extend the that flavor develops in traditional cooking is cooking time to better fit a flexible schedule. through water evaporation: As the percentage The advantage is much more than a matter of water reduces in a sauce, stew, or soup, the of convenient timing. By keeping the tempera- concentration of flavorful elements increases. ture moderate, proteins firm more gently, mak- At the same time, the percentage of solid par- ing finished meats more tender, custards softer, ticles increases and the liquid thickens. When fish moister, and casseroles creamier. The slow-cooking in a slow cooker, neither hap- textural improvements from low-temperature pens, so the only way to end up with intense, cooking are remarkable, and yet many dishes dynamic flavors and smooth, creamy textures cooked in a slow cooker come out mushy rather is to make sure they’re there before the slow than succulent. The culprit is the water. cooker ever gets turned on. This is why slow- cooker recipes usually contain very little liquid and a generous amount of seasoning. SLOW COOKERS VS. All of these drawbacks are eliminated by SLOW COOKING switching to slow cooking on a stove top or in an oven. Because ovens have lots of hot air between The biggest difference between slow cooking the food and the heating element, there is ample in a slow cooker and any other piece of cooking space for evaporation, so ingredients that are equipment is water. There is much less evapo- slow-roasted or slow-baked in an oven develop ration from a slow cooker than there is from better flavor and richer textures than in a slow a saucepan or a skillet simmering on a stove cooker. top. The heat of a slow cooker is separated The difference between roasting and bak- from the cooking vessel by a cushion of air, so ing (whether slow or fast) is largely semantic the heat in a slow cooker is much more diffuse these days. At one time, roasting meant hang- than the heat on a stove top; the liquid inside ing a haunch of meat on a spit over an open therefore transforms into steam more gradu- fire. By keeping the meat at a distance from the ally. In addition, slow-cooker lids are usually flame, you could control the temperature and made of glass, designed to stay relatively cool avoid burning it before it cooked through. By 10 Cooking Slow contrast, baking was done in metal or ceramic can cook all day without losing moisture and vessels placed to one side of the fire or buried without overcooking—the temperature of the in the smoldering coals. Food was placed in liquid never gets hotter than you want the meat the pot, where it was protected from flame and to be when it is done. Braising or simmering could cook through without fear of scorching. tougher cuts of muscled meats at these lower In time, ovens became large, freestanding temperatures produces far more tender results units that could fit whole roasts, and eventu- than traditional braising temperatures. ally they took preference over the fireplace Steaming and frying are less common for roasting meat, largely because ovens did slow-cooking techniques, mostly because their not require constant tending. Since then, the timing can’t be stretched indefinitely, and terms “roasting” and “baking” have become therefore you have to be more attentive to keep confused. For my purposes (aside from doughs, ingredients from overcooking. However, by batters, and casseroles, all of which I “bake”), slowing them down, you get the same textural I “roast” whole meats and “bake” smaller cuts. benefits that happen with other slow-cooking For instance I would call the method for cook- techniques. ing a whole chicken “roasting” but refer to the method of cooking chicken parts as “baking.” HOW TO USE But these distinctions are barely consistent. Like many other people, I “roast” vegetables THIS BOOK even though they are almost always cut up, probably because they are cooked at a high The chapters are divided by slow cooking enough temperature to scorch the edges, a method: roasting, baking, simmering, traditional mark of roasting rather than baking. steaming, grilling, and frying, followed The other common technique for slow by two chapters on cooking in slow-cooking cooking is simmering or braising, which can appliances (slow cookers and sous vide), and be done either on a stove top or in an oven. a chapter on desserts. Specific tips and advice Both cook food in liquid, which helps to keep for each type of slow-cooking method are it moist, but more important, the presence covered in recipes and in each chapter intro- of liquid controls temperature and timing. duction. I recognize that most people think The maximum temperature of boiling water slow cooking can only be done in a slow is 212˚F/100˚C, no matter how much heat is cooker, and though this book emphasizes applied to the pan; that is, as long as there is foods that can be cooked in a slow cooker, water present, submerged food can’t get hotter the recipes either improve or match the than 212˚F/100˚C. The technique just requires results achieved in a slow cooker by cooking vigilance at the boiling point, when water is in a low oven or gently on a stove top. These rapidly evaporating into steam and must be include slow-cooking recipes for roasts, egg replenished regularly. In slow braising and dishes, and sweets that would be ruined simmering, the temperatures are kept far by a slow cooker. When appropriate, I have below a boil, so, for example, a brisket or pork included separate instructions for cooking shoulder simmering at 160 to 180˚F/71 to 82˚C many of the recipes in a slow cooker. Introduction 11
The list of books you might like
