My Mind's Ink

I often notice home cooks that are afraid of heat. The burners on their stove have never been turned all the way up. Everything they produce tends to be done on med-high heat and cooked to within an inch of its life. Vegetables are soggy and limp, meats are dry and flavorless.

Professional chefs cook on equipment capable of producing significantly more heat than your home stove, and they use every BTU available. Good cooks know a simple fact: mediocre heat and overcooking produces bland tastes and unappealing textures. Heat is your friend. Get comfortable with it. You can turn the dial up to ten for more than boiling water.

Most vegetables retain a lot more flavor, color, and a better texture if you don’t cook the hell out of them. Your vegetables should retain some crispness.

Meat dries out the more that you cook it. There are methods that are exceptions to this of course, but generally you want to cook meat quickly and retain its natural juices and tenderness. Turn your burner, oven, or BBQ up high, sear the outside and monitor for doneness.

This goes double for seafood. People really tend to brutally overcook seafood of all types. Fish should just flake apart. Clams, mussels, and other shellfish are done almost as soon as they open up (a couple of minutes). Prawns and shrimp should just turn pink and opaque (a couple of minutes). Turning tasty looking prawns into rubber by cooking them for 15 minutes over medium heat is a crime and you should be ashamed.

For you to try

Turn your burners up to Max and your oven past 350¬∞F. Don’t be such a wussy.

Try a stir fry. Have everything prepared. Cook in small batches and separate vegetables and meat. Turn your burner up to high. Get the pan hot. Cook meat just until done, remove. Get the pan hot again. Cook vegetables until crisp tender, remove. If you are making a sauce now is your time. If you are using some kind of packaged sauce then we will talk about correcting that abominable behavior another time. Combine everything back in the pan just long enough to coat with sauce and heat throughout. A stir fry should take less than 10 minutes to cook.

Try medium rare fish fillets. A fresh piece of salmon is lovely just barely done at the center. A nice piece of tuna is rare and wonderful with just some salt and cracked pepper on the outside and seared on high heat a minute each side.

For roasts and foul try and turn your oven up higher (450°F) initially. This helps to produce good color on the outside and seals in the juices, you can then turn the heat down to finish off the cooking. Do not be afraid of modifiying a recipe. Use a meat thermometer to judge when the meat or chicken is done.

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