Cover Story: Herald Sun extrafood
Top chefs tell Ed Charles their secret tips on how to cook like a professional.
Cooking a meal by simply following a recipe is one thing,but turning it into a masterpiece by adding a few secret tips and tricks can take your cooking to another level.
As extrafood discovered, sometimes it’s the most obvious things – such as properly preheating the oven – that can make the biggest difference.
We’ve managed to get some of Melbourne’s best chefs to share their most guarded secrets,and they’re sure to help make you a better cook.
1. Brine chicken and pork
The problem with roasting is how to keep the chicken or cut of pork moist. Scott Pickett, chef at The Point Albert Park, says the secret is to brine the meat overnight. Brine is simply a salt solution which is usually used to flavour and/or cure meats.
Pickett says to use 20 to 30 grams of salt for every litre of water. Aromatics including bay leaves, herbs and spices can be added for additional flavour. The mixture should be boiled until the salt is dissolved and left to cool. Add the meat and store overnight in a cool place. Remove and cook as usual.
Ben Shewry, chef from Attica in Ripponlea, says that brining will transform the flavour and texture of cheap supermarket chickens.
2. Roast meats from room temperature
Before roasting any meat at home Teage Ezard, the chef behind Ezard and Gingerboy, always ensures that it has warmed from fridge to room temperature by leaving it out for about two hours. He says beef cooked from cold will leach a lot of blood and require a very long resting period. He always lets the meat rest for 20 minutes in the oven with the door ajar after it has been switched off. This doesn’t affect the total cooking time which should be calculated with the usual methods.
3. Get the oven temperature right
The most important element in baking pastry or a cake is to have the oven at the correct temperature, according to pastry chef Philippa Sibley. “I put it at 180 as soon as I get in a 9 AM,” she says. “Always check the thermostat. Usually ovens have a light that goes off when the oven is at the right temperature. People sometimes think preheating the oven takes ten minutes and that’s generally not the case.” That’s because not only the air in the oven has to heat up but also the lining and internal parts.
This is especially important when baking cakes or pastry. “If you put your pastry in the oven and it’s not quite hot enough, the butter will melt before anything starts cooking,” she says.
4. Bake meats at 140C for better results
French chef Jacques Reymond, from the restaurant of the same name in Windsor, never seals any ingredient whether it be meat, fish of vegetable at a high temperature. “Always cook them from scratch on the medium temperature in the oven,” he says. This helps keep the moisture and texture of the ingredients. He says instead of 180C or higher for chicken (or beef or lamb) it can be cooked slowly in the oven at 140C to 150C. Instead of taking 45 minutes, it will take 90. “But you will have the most delicious dish of poultry than you have ever tasted before because it will be so moist,” he says.
Technically meat only needs to be heated to 60C to kill bacteria, but cooked this way will look pink. Above 120C the Maillard reaction occurs with the meat turning an appealing brown colour and taking on caramel flavours.
5. Get a good non-stick pan and use less oil
Andrew McConnell chef-owner of Three, One, Two in Carlton says that the first thing a home cook needs is a quality non-stick pan. “I use a non-stick pan probably for 70 per cent of traditional pan-fried cooking,” he says. “I try to use a non-stick so I don’t have to use too much fat or too much heat,” The idea is that the cook can pan fry at low rather than high temperatures which can burn and dehydrate the flesh.
“For example, we don’t have to cook the hell out of a piece of fish and kill the texture and push out the moisture,” he says.
Using non-stick allows McConnell to cook with less oil than many chefs, usually a only a few drops of a blend of olive and vegetable from a teaspoon. Many oils, such as olive, break down and start smoking at high temperatures and will spoil the flavour of the food being prepared.
6. Learn how to simmer properly
It is a universal truth that at sea level water boils at 100 degrees centigrade. Most people think simmering is just below that at around 99 degrees, says Ben Shewry, chef at Attica in Ripponlea.
It is not.
“My definition of a simmer has calmed down a lot,” he says. “All of the broths and stocks cooked at Attica now are not going over 80 degrees.”
That’s just a bit hotter than a good cafe latte. What it means to cook at 80c is that the stock or soup doesn’t bubble. It is the bubbling which dissolves fats and other impurities into a stock spoiling the flavour and clouding it.
Slow cookers tend to cook at about 85C around the edges which will still bubble.
The same techniques as used in stocks should be applied to soup where overcooking vegetables decays flavour and texture. “I think a very common mistake is to really cook the bugger out of the soup,” Shewry says. A soup should be simmered until the vegetables are just cooked before serving.
7. Know your eggs
Teage Ezard dates all his eggs. “The reason to do this is because eggs that are seven 7 to 14 days old are easier to peel than fresh eggs,” he says. As an egg ages the shell oxidizes breaking down the internal membrane that connects the egg to the shell. Ezard uses these older eggs to soft boil and peel for breakfast or for salads. Eggs than are under seven days old he uses for omelettes, custards, or any recipe that requires a whole egg broken.
Bistro Guillaume’s Philippa Sibley freezes her egg whites. She says defrosted whites make better meringues.
She also says that eggs vary in size and that quantities of yolks should be weighed for baking cakes. “Generally if a recipe asks for an egg yolk it’s 20 grams. But today, for instance, I’ve been using egg yolks that are 12 grams. I always use the yolks by grammage rather than by the unit. It does make a difference.”
8. Season smarter with a squirt of lemon (or chicken stock)
One of the great challenges is to season correctly with salt. “A lot of the time we season with lemon juice rather than salt,” Michael Lambie chef at Taxi Dining Room says. “Sometimes lemon juice can just bring out the natural flavour. The way you would describe it [lemon] is that it enlivens a dish,” he says. When Lambie worked in France a lot of meat sauces were seasoned with lemon. He says it will also work with vegetables. And, of course, the Italians will often serve lemon as a seasoning for meat. Lambie says if the dish has sauce, the lemon should be squeezed in early on. If the dish is grilled or griddled simply use a squeeze at the end.
Lau’s Family Kitchen’s Gilbert Lau uses the Cantonese technique of seasoning fish with chicken stock. “You can’t put soya sauce alone onto the fish,” he says. “It would be too salty. But the chicken stock gives it the right amount of seasoning,” he says. Typically for two pieces of fish he would heat two tablespoons of peanut oil and pour it over them followed by, heated in the same pan, one quarter of a cup of stock and two tablespoons of soy sauce.