This often happens – you open a book or website and find many abstruse and unfamiliar words. And then, when you gather your courage and tune in to study them all, you suddenly realize that all this has been familiar to you for a long time! This happens not only in the sciences, and it can even happen in your kitchen. World-famous chefs use most culinary techniques with complex names. We decided to tell you about them in simple language because you have mastered many culinary techniques for a long time, and perhaps you don’t even know about them!
The art of cooking is available to everyone, and you need to learn a little from professionals. You will be surprised how simple things you make at home are used by professionals in a restaurant kitchen.
Sous Vide or Vacuum Cooking
This slow cooking technique was first described by Benjamin Rumfoord in 1799 when he used heated air instead of a water bath to achieve the result. Then in the 1960s, the method was improved by French engineers and used to store food. The sous-vide method cooks at 55-60 degrees, and higher temperatures are used for vegetables. Food is heated for a long time, up to 96 hours, which ensures uniform readiness throughout the thickness of the dish. A similar vacuum cooking was used by the French chef Georges Pralu when in 1974, he cooked foie gras in a vacuum that did not lose its fatness and texture for three days. After the experiments of Pralu and another pioneer in this cooking method, Bruno Gusso, sous-vide began to be used in many restaurants. Since the beginning of the 21st century, dishes can be cooked similarly at home using a double boiler. But the main quality of this cooking method lies in its ability to retain all the nutrients and natural juices of the food, even when packaged in plastic bags. A similar cooking method in a vacuum formed the basis for the invention of vacuum containers for products.
Smoking Meat and Vegetables
Smoked meat and smoky cocktails no longer require bulky and expensive equipment. Smoking takes place with the help of a compact chamber and natural cold smoke, and the raw materials can be completely different – from sawdust and herbs to flowers and essential oils. Just a few minutes – and smoked ribs or tea with an unusual aroma are ready. In addition, the fumigation process is a real alchemical show that can impress guests at the table, who can safely enjoy the process or play king kong cash on their smartphone. And all thanks to smokers, or tuxedo guns (smoking guns) – devices with which you can fumigate any food and drinks with smoke.
Blanching
But with this term, many are already familiar with it for a long time. French cooks were the first to use it in cooking, from the mouth of which this word meant “scald with boiling water.” This process facilitates the preparation of many products. For example, a tomato scalded with boiling water is easier to part with the skin, and kohlrabi cabbage acquires an amazing color. It can then be frozen without loss of vitamins. With the help of blanching, bones and meat are bleached, and they remove an unpleasant or specific smell of products and bitterness of taste. Almonds and peanuts are also cleaned with the help of blanching. The blanching process is quite simple – the product is either poured with boiling water or immersed in boiling water for several minutes and exposed to hot steam. The only thing that matters here is the blanching time, which must be calculated to not turn the product into a boiled one. Blanched vegetables should be cooled quickly by immersing them in cold water for a few minutes. By the way, if you add soda or salt to boiling water, then the color of the vegetables will be very saturated, and the structure will remain strong. The most important thing is to prepare a lot of cold water in advance so that hot vegetables cannot heat it. If you blanch vegetables for a couple, this will require a large saucepan, in which water is brought to a boil, then a grid or basket is placed on top, on which the products are laid out. The whole structure remains on fire for 4-8 minutes. Similarly, not only vegetables are blanched, but even dumplings, dumplings, and other dishes are prepared.
Abeille Technique
If you translate this term from French, its meaning “according to bees” will not initially tell you anything. You use a similar cooking method every time you cook a fish dish. This process is as simple as the gameplay at gamblechief.com/casino/booi/, where bonuses and big wins are waiting for you for dessert. Before you marinate, fry, or bake a fish, you carefully clean it of bones, fins, and scales. It is precisely this – thorough cleaning and cutting of the product – means this technique. Abeiller’s technique lends itself to meat, fish, and even, in part, vegetables. The meat is cleaned of skin, bones, and tendons, and all films are cut off with a sharp knife. Then they clean all the membranes and nerve bundles, after which the meat is washed and used in cooking. Most often, the complete process of Abeiller’s goes through the meat of poultry and animals – plucking, gutting, scalding with boiling water, or roasting the carcass. When the meat is bought in a store, the process is reduced to the simplest manipulations – washing and cutting the product. However, this culinary technique is very important.