Tips and Tricks from the Professionals
Chicken
Preparing chicken dishes in the 21st century is easy, Especially with chicken pieces and chicken stock readily available in grocery stores. So why bother cutting up your own chicken? Two reasons, according to Paul Bringas, a chef instructor at Joliet Junior College’s culinary arts program. It’s cheaper to buy an entire chicken and cut it …
As a retired chef (13 good restaurants over 3 global sites)..with no illusions, I have an ‘essential’ view. It’s easy. Save ALL cut-offs from vegetables except cucumber, celery leaves (bitter), potato peels (rot) , or anything you don’t want to ‘enhance’ you flavor with….say, cinnamon. Save ALL bones, no matter what carcass – they will …
Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s trick to making his famous Red Rooster fried chicken is to simply brine it before cooking it. This easy step of soaking it in cold salt water adds a ton of flavor and makes the meat perfectly tender. Learn how to do it here.
White striping is becoming more common in chicken – and it’s not a good thing. If you’ve ever seen white stripes on your raw chicken breast and just ignored it, you may want to give it a little more thought next time.Compassion in World Farming According to a new video by Compassion in World Farming …
Julia Child did it religiously, and plenty of recipe books call for chicken to be washed before cooking. But rinsing in plain water does nothing, according to the US Department of Agriculture, except help spread bacteria across the kitchen sink, counter and yourself, raising your chances of food poisoning.
If you ever buy chicken and freeze some to use later, here’s a simple trick that’s better than brining for turning out juicier meat: Salt the chicken before you freeze it. Cook’s Illustrated conducted an experiment comparing moisture loss before and after freezing. Without salting or brining, the chicken lost 22% of its moisture when …
Chris Skelton/Fairfax NZ Shama Lee, chief executive of Sunfed Meats, the Auckland-based company developing ‘meat analogues’ from vegetable proteins. It looks like chicken and it tastes like chicken, but the “meat” in this stir-fry comes from Canadian yellow peas – and it could be in supermarket butchery aisles by July. Auckland businesswoman Shama Lee wants …
“Short of turning chicken on a spit over live wood embers, I know of no better process for cooking chicken, nor one that delivers more satisfying or true flavors,” Paul Bertolli wrote of this technique, which he calls “bottom-up cooking,” in Cooking by Hand. You don’t sear, and you don’t roast, and you don’t grill—you …
If you just put a chicken in the oven, it’s cooked before it’s brown. In my restaurants I had sous-viding machines, but you can do the same thing at home by wrapping the bird in plastic wrap until it’s perfectly sealed and then poaching it for twenty minutes. The beautiful juices will collect in the …
Stuffing is an important part of roasting fowl, and when I was a boy, it was traditional to stuff ducks and geese and then sew up the arse before roasting. Why were they stuffed? To slow down the cooking so the bird cooked from the outside in. If you don’t stuff it, the heat gets …
Dry Brining is about salting for flavor and moisture retention ahead of cooking instead of wet brining and the sort of diluted flavour some perceive from that technique. This technique is best used on cuts of meat that have not been pre-salted, either with a salt solution, or koshering. You need to be in complete control of …
http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-video-tip-how-to-cut-up-a-chicken-and-14-recipes-20150112-story.html#
Why roast a chicken for over an hour when you can get it out of the oven in just 30 minutes? My “secret” to cooking chicken as quickly as possible is to roast it in a preheated frying pan in the oven. The hot pan jump-starts the cooking process by letting the bottom of the …
Lemongrass. Just a couple stalks. Fish em out afterwards. Makes the stock more aromatic. Johnathan Law, Restaurateur
Poach chicken in chicken stock to add flavour.
If you need to truss (tie up) a chicken so it cooks evenly, but you realize you’re out of kitchen twine, you can poke holes in the rearmost fat and stick the legs through the holes so they’re crossed, then fold the wings underneath.
Nothing wet goes on your cutting boards. Use a paper towel to dry off fish, chicken, etc. Moist objects slide, and we don’t want to chop off those pretty little fingers.
Brine, baby, brine! Ya gotta brine that poultry to really give it the super flavour.Guy Fieri – Diners, Drive-ins and Dives
Remember schmaltz? Your mom and grandmother probably used a lot of it in their home cooking. Schmaltz, or chicken fat, has a great flavor and richness; it has a deeper flavor than duck fat and can be used on nearly everything. I also love poaching fish in it.Tony Maws – Craigie On Main, Cambridge, MA
Instead of placing a chicken on a roasting rack, cut thick slices of onion, put them in an oiled pan, then place the chicken on top. The onion will absorb the chicken juices. After roasting, let the chicken rest while you make a sauce with the onions by adding a little stock or water to …