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How to Score Meat Or Vegetables Perfectly (Awesome Tip)

I love picking up simple tips and tricks in the kitchen.  I especially love tricks when they are unexpected.

When it came to scoring meat or vegetables I’ll admit I had thought I stopped learning.  My progression went from being oblivious to the importance of scoring these things to the feeling of instant mastery.  Once I learned to whiz a knife in a few quick passes over the surface of the thing I was cooking, I thought I had learned it all.  I was dreadfully wrong.

Let’s start with the basics:

  • What does scoring mean?
    It means to cut lines into the surface of what you are cooking.  In the case of a potato, this means to simply cut lines into the potato about a quarter-inch (slightly less than a half-centimeter) deep.  You generally cut lines on a diagonal before rotating the potato 90 degrees and cutting again to make a diamond pattern.
  • Why do you score potatoes?
    For a variety of reasons – but the most common are for appearance and that it speeds cooking time (resulting in quicker cooking and better texture – both of a crispy outside and moist interior).  It also increases surface area (which is good because it increases the crispy bits AND leaves more room for condiments including chives that won’t fall off and butter that will sink in).
  • Why Score Brussel Sprouts?
    Many people score the stem-end of brussels sprouts with the theory that the stems will cook quicker.  While this may be true several food scientists (including Harold McGee) claim that this allows excess water into the stems and makes them soggy.  We eat them al dente – or we shred them with a grater (in the food processor) and then blanch and fry them with bacon.  So this one’s a trick question – we don’t score our sprouts.
  • Why score meat?
    Typically people score very fatty meat (such as the duck recipe that we’ll share tomorrow) and score the thick fat cap (or layer).  You score the fat layer until you reach the muscle and don’t want to cut into the meat.  This is done for many of the reasons above and one more: fat tends to shrink more than muscle – scoring it allows it to tense up without pulling the meat into a dense ball and allows for more even cooking and a larger-looking end product which cooks more evenly (imagine trying to cook the outside of a tennis ball evenly).

So now that we’ve covered the what and why of scoring, let’s change our focus to the most important thing to keep in mind when doing it.  It’s also the most important:

Many of us have heard to chop vegetables the same size before cooking.  We know that smaller ones will cook much faster than larger ones (which have a larger volume).  The most important thing about scoring is ensuring you are doing so at a uniform depth.  Imagine:

  • You have a slice of potato that’s a half-inch (12mm) tall.
  • Your first score is 1/16th of an inch deep, it would leave 1/7th of an inch NOT scored.
  • Your second cut is 2/16ths deep.  This leaves 1/6th of an inch NOT scored.
  • While the difference between the two cuts is only 1/8th (3mm) of an inch more, that represents 12.5% of the depth of the potato.  This inequality will lead to different cooking times. * fine print at end of story
  • While this may seem like an extreme difference, my old hack and slash days of scoring would leave such variances.

Cutting  into meat is even more problematic – most (if not all) of the fat cap is the same depth but an inconsistent cut finds us sometimes cutting the meat, sometimes getting it perfect and other times leaving the fat still attached at parts (contributing to shrinkage).

The ultimate problem we’re trying to solve is: How do I make cuts of consistent depth of the surface of items I’m trying to score?

The ultimate answer is my new ‘kitchen’ knife:

An X-acto knife is an infinitely adjustable tool that allows you to set – and lock – your blade to the depth of your choice.  There are several varieties of these knives but a version like the one above that has an adjustable length and lock is the best pick.

There’s a guide that won’t let the blade go deeper than your setting – so start your cut thinner than you need and make micro adjustments to get the cut you want.  They are affordable, can be taken apart and reassembled with ease and will last a lifetime in a kitchen if they’re looked after.  I haven’t investigated the food-safety of the blade but for the extremely limited amount of scoring I’m going to do (a few times a year at most), I’m more than comfortable using the brand new knife we were gifted for the purpose this weekend.

A special thanks goes out to my Dad for this idea – he read it in the River Cottage Meat book (a book that should be next-to-required reading for those who eat meat).  I’m sure this idea has been passed around many kitchens and tables and am excited to share it.

What ‘unusual’ tools are part of your kitchen equipment?

* For the extreme mathematicians in our company (which I am not), these examples are of course flawed – for they treat a potato like it’s a cube when of course it’s more like an non-geometric egg.  I recognize the best way to score a potato would not be a uniform depth but instead a laser which took the width of the potato and cut the depth at some sort of bell-curved ratio of depth of potato compared to width of potato at cut.  But I’m short one laser cutter and a whole lot of IQ to master that one. :)

The Things I’ve Leaned in our Kitchen (2011) #5: Finding Beauty in Simplicity

For most of the rest of the year (and perhaps a bit into the next), I’m going to share reflections of the last year and what I’ve learned in the kitchen.  Sometimes daily posts miss the flavor of the larger lessons so this is an attempt to take a step back and share the lessons that I’ve taken from the last 365 days.  We’d love to know what you’ve learned this year too!

It’s a cliché that simple food tastes great.  Like most clichés, it became one because it’s simply true.

The first time I cooked for Dana (about 7 years ago) was a holy mess.  I made spaghetti sauce for the weekend.  Yep, enough for the whole weekend.  I lost track at how many ingredients I used after number 17 went into the pot (an entire head of garlic, chopped finely).  I was a better cook than I showed that weekend but I’ve learned a whole lot more since then (with lots left to learn) – especially when it comes to restraint.

A turning point happened a four or five years ago when Dana took me to see Canadian Celebrity Chef Michael Smith.  I loved his style of cooking (especially his show ‘Chef at Home’ which stressed cooking without recipes – ironically the same show has spawned at least two cookbooks) and his enthusiasm.  We sat in an auditorium at the Canadian National Exhibition to an almost empty room when the Chef presented a few simple recipes.  He presented a few Golden rules and the one that stuck with me was ‘as long as you only use a few ingredients you can use a LOT of them.’  Consider:

  • The amount of pepper (but relatively low ingredients) on a pepper steak.
  • Eating roasted garlic spread on toast.
  • The amount of vinegar in a pickle should be overwhelming – and isn’t.
  • Lobster dipped covered in butter and garlic is something that works.

You get the idea – you can go wild with a single ingredient as long as you don’t use a lot of them.  Smith also left me with the sage advice that many Chinese stir-frys used 5-different colors of ingredients and you could cook a great stir fry with almost any 5 different-colored ingredients (something difficult when eating locally in winter).

But it took a few years to really learn what this restraint and ‘going wild’ meant.  We’ve been fortunate to eat at some of Toronto’s better restaurants this year  (more on how in another ‘something we’ve learned post’) and the Chef’s have laid out example-after-example of such restraint.  It truly is amazing how a relatively small amount of ingredients with the right balance pack a flavorful punch that somehow brings more taste from them than if you had packed the dish full of the same ingredients.  The balance of their flavors with less quantity allows your mouth to perceive the flavors individually and creates an orchestra greater than they could do on their own – or in greater quantity.

Perhaps this is still murky, so let’s go with an example.  A few weeks ago we had a friend over as we waited on dinner reservations (at the amazing Beast Restaurant in Toronto).  We knew we had a large meal ahead of us but were a little peckish mid-afternoon.  In the past I would have defaulted to spaghetti or a heavy soup.  I knew we needed something light so started with what we had in the fridge.  A quick, fine chop, of 2-3 seasonal vegetables, a bit of garlic and ginger and we were off to the races.  The veggies were briefly sweated down in some oil before being covered with broth.  A slow simmer for a few minutes melded the flavors together and it was poured on top of some soba noodles we cooked at the same time.  A very simple broth soup that just punched the flavors of everything without muddling them together.  Simple goodness.

One thing I’ve found in the journey to simplicity: the size of your ingredients matter greatly.  Items of similar texture (i.e. an onion and a pepper) are almost always chopped to the same size and the chunks are relatively small.  Perhaps this is an amateur observation but cutting my veggies smaller for such things (like these which we used for turkey calzone after the Holidays) have made a huge difference in my cooking and melding of flavors:

What are ways you simplify your cooking to bring out the best in the ingredients you work with?

The Things I’ve Learned in our Kitchen (2011) #1: Acid Makes a Huge Difference

For most of the rest of the year (and perhaps a bit into the next), I’m going to share reflections of the last year and what I’ve learned in the kitchen.  Sometimes daily posts miss the flavor of the larger lessons so this is an attempt to take a step back and share the lessons that I’ve taken from the last 365 days.  We’d love to know what you’ve learned this year too!

One of the absolute major changes this year has been the deliberate addition of acid – especially in places that I would never have imagined to use it.

Acid comes in many forms – vinegar and citrus are the most common in our kitchen.  Ontario has several awesome wine regions near us and the options for local vinegar is plentiful.  We do lack long-aged vinegar (such as Italy’s famed balsamic, many older sherry vinegars and Japan’s Ume Boshi Vinegar) so they tend to play a role in my kitchen as well.

My use of acid in cooking changed on March 1. I know the exact moment because it came in the middle of a speech by Fergus Henderson at Terroir V (the day before I got to meet him in person thanks to our friends at Hooked).  Chef casually remarked that the primary challenge embraced in the kitchen is to ‘balance salt and acids.’  The moment was profound – I thought of how many recipes and cuisines I had experienced in the world and how often their cuisine had added acid – yet almost none of my cooking did.  I used vinegar when told to but when cooking freestyle (the way I typically cook), I didn’t use any acid at all.

Acid is a cornerstone of our cooking now.  A stir fry reaches new levels with a splash of wine vinegar and even stock reaches new levels with a bit of lime juice.  Spaghetti sauce loves balsamic or ume boshi vinegar and a touch of cider vinegar is awesome in pizza dough.  The truth is that, when adding a bit of acid at a time, I’ve never had a fail and almost always had a tangibly better meal – and most wouldn’t detect the vinegar at all.

What’s a lesson from your kitchen this year?

How to Get Breading (Crust) to Stick to Chicken or Fish

My Father is the master of a great fish fry – moist piles of fish with a crunchy crusted exterior.  He makes crusting fish look second nature – something I took for granted for most of my youth until I moved on my own and tried to replicate his success only to find out that I was really good at crusting the frying pan and making a giant mess. 

I’ve learned that a good crust is something that’s much more fun to eat than scrape from the bottom of a pan.  Here’s what I’ve learned from my Father and others about making a crust stay on your food and out of the pan:

  • Try different crusts.  I usually use flour, panko or cornmeal although a Rob mentioned on the FaceBook group that chickpea flour also makes a great crust and I’m pretty excited to give it a try.
  • Although counter-intuitive, the object you are crusting should be patted dry.  Crust sticks far better to a dry item than  wet.  Case in point: my father often does a light egg batter by dipping fish (which he pats dry with a towel) in flour before dipping into egg.
  • Once dredged, your product can sit for a while – but don’t wait too long or it will get moist and cause a mess.
  • If using egg, keep a dry hand and a wet hand.  This relates to the point above.
  • Warm your pan before adding the oil (we add minimal oil in a cat iron pan).  You’ll need a lot more warmth than you may think – make it uncomfortably hot (but not glowing red).  You don’t want the oil to smoke but it should be close.  When a single drop of water (use care – more than a drop is dangerous and will splatter) dances across the surface of the pan, you’re ready to go.  It needs to be hot.
  • Use a spatula and avoid tongs.  Thomas Keller (one of the best American Chef’s in history) outlaws tongs in his kitchen.  While we use them at time, they will only serve to remove crust in recipes that call for one.  Avoid them.
  • Only flip when ready.  It’s natural for the item you’re cooking to stick to the pan until it’s ready to flip.  Be patient and it will tell you when it’s time to flip (it’s always a bit longer than I think).
  • Flip as few times as possible.  Be brave – it won’t burn as quick as you fear and the longer it cooks, the tougher the crust.

What tips would you add?

My Secret to the Best Sheppard’s Pie

The best thing about Sheppard’s Pie, to me, is a crispy top browned in the oven.  It’s a firm crust that gives way to moist potato goodness and all the treats concealed inside.

I’ve experimented for years on how to get it just right.  Here’s our conclusion:

  1. Before cooking, level your potatoes with a spoon.
  2. Lightly brush the potatoes with a bit of oil (we use soya but any vegetable oil will do)
  3. Rough up the surface with a fork.  You’ll notice that some of the oil will be worked into the potato while most will stay on the surface (this increased surface area will easily brown):

And if you think these look good – check out our best roasted potatoes which offer a related trick that changed my relationship with spuds.

My Secret for the Best Chilli

Claiming to make the best chilli in the world is akin to a restaurant with `famous`soup or the world`s best (fillintheblankhere) – everyone makes the same claim and no one can prove it.  And because flavor is such a personal preference, 6 billion people could lay legitimate claim to making the best chilli in the world.

This post isn`t about sharing a recipe for the best chilli – it`s about sharing a simple trick to enhance your beloved recipe.

I never make chilli the same way twice.  Sometimes I`m very typical and play safe while other times you`ll find me shaving chocolate, moose, zucchini or other ingredients.  Sometimes it`s meat heavy and others it`s completely vegetarian.

But it always starts the same way:

We roast everything (except the beans).  Our veggies are spread across a cookie sheet and placed on the top rack of a hot oven (450-500 degrees with the broiler on).  When the peppers collapse, we peel the vegetables and throw them in.

We`ve also started roasting our sauce on the bottom rack.  It gets thicker, richer and darker.  I leave it in for an hour or so (or as long as it takes to get all my veggies peeled and chopped) before combining everything and letting it roll on a gentle simmer for a few hours to allow the rest of the flavors to get to know one another.

Do you roast your veggies when making chilli – or do you have any other tips to share?

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Learning More About Pizza – The Best Tips I`ve Got…

I continue to learn a lot about making pizza and am mildly obsessed.

As today is a travel day, I thought I`d share a few quick tips that I`ve recently developed that`s helping my homemade pizza reach the next level (pictures and another post on pizza when I get back).  These tips are resulting in the bes pizza I`ve ever made at home (and the second-best outside of Italy that I`ve bever had).  These tips come from a combination of trial-and-error, reading and talking to some amazing Pizza Chefs:

  • `Real`pizza cooks at 1,000 degrees for 90 seconds.  I cook mine as hot as possible at home – bake at 550 degrees with a pizza stone near the top of the oven.  My thin-crust pizza takes 10 minutes in the oven.  It won`t burn.  Pinky swear.
  • You can let the dough raise as long as it needs.  I accidentally let one rise for more than 12 hours last week (the oven was off and the couch was comfy) and it made for a great breakfast pie. 
  • The best rolling-pin is your fingers.  Flatten the pie with your fingers and knuckles, make little dimples in the dough and don`t worry about being perfect.
  • Don`t worry about perfect circles – it`s far prettier when not `perfect.`
  • The best sauce = diced tomatoes and olive oil blitzed with an immersion blender or food processor.
  • Fresh herbs will last in extreme heat for a short duration.  10 minutes is not short.  I blend herb flakes into my sauce and am very liberal with them.
  • Less ingredients = more.  Sauce, cheese and 1 ingredient (I like pickled hot peppers).
  • Heat the pizza stone in the oven for a long time.
  • Smaller pizzas are easier to handle.  I make small pizzas which are about the size of a plate (this is essential to transfer from a cutting board to the hot stone which I do with the help of a spatula).
  • Once you put the sauce on the dough, act like it`s a race.  Each second longer means that your pizza is getting `soggy-er` and more difficult to transfer.
  • Cheese should be applied in chunks – not grated.  The bigger the chunks, the longer it takes to melt and the more that you will have individual pools of cheese and not a solid film covering the entire pie.

A few pizza-related articles tht may help you get up to speed if you`re looking for the fundamentals:

Any other tips out there?  I`d love to hear them.

A Humbling Lesson – Always Trust Your Tested Recipes

Short post today – but if the lesson helps one person (or, as I suspect, makes a bunch of you laugh at and with me), then it`s worth it.

We`re hosting up to 60 people for a pre-wedding (not our own) party this evening.  It`s been a tight deadline and Dana and I have been on a treadmill today – running fast but not far.   I love these days, even when they school me.

I made a critical mistake that almost blew dinner.  My dough had stopped rising and I was portioning it out for buns and I was certain I didn`t have enough dough.  Even though I`d made this recipe before, I was sure that I had enough dough for half the portions my recipe promised.  With everything cleaned up and ready to go, I had to make a decision – go for small buns or start a second batch.

I opted for the second batch – better safe than sorry.  It cost me 90 minutes and Dana had to bail me out of a kitchen mess I had previously cleaned.  Thankfully the guests are not here yet.

The good news is I have some rather large buns – of course the final rise doubles their size and I could have easily cut them in half (thus doubling my total to what I had expected originally).

It`s the first time I remember making a bad decision under pressure in the kitchen like that in a long time.  Thankfully I was able to get some help and get the rest done – now it`s time to wait for the doorbell to ring!

What`s a kitchen blunder that you`ve learned from?

What to Cook in Hot Weather – a Few Secret Weapons

A late post today – busy tying up loose ends at work and preparing for the lovely onslaught of love that will be my family arriving from all over the world for 3-days for a fabulous wedding.  I know that we`re having 20-60 people for dinner tomorrow night but not sure who is arriving when and if they`ve eaten – and I love it.

Tonight will see some kitchen prep work, groceries, blog posting and maybe even a pre-beer (it`s almost 9.30 as I write this so it`s gonna be a quick trick tonight.

Our friend Julia and I were in a Facebook discussion yesterday and one thing led to another and she inspired this post.  I can’t remember what we were talking about but I knew the moment I read a message from her that I would be writing about this today (although I thought it would have been about 16 hours earlier).

My inner voice asks me one question more than any other question.  I’ve heard this question at least 1,000 times.  Today.

What’s for Dinner?

The question is tougher at different times of year.  It’s tough to get the fresh ingredients I love in April so that adds a challenge.  The middle of a heat wave is also a challenge – it’s easy to feel lethargic and talk yourself out of cooking.

Many people solve this problem by eating cold food or salads for dinner.  This doesn’t usually cut it for me for 4 reasons:

  • When it comes to food, I really want what I can’t have (if I can have it, the craving isn’t so bad).  When it makes no sense to bake, I really WANT to bake.
  • I really like something warm – it feels like a meal.
  • I was told, as a child, that when you consume something cold on a hot day it can make you feel hotter because of the contrast.  The proof, in theory, was the amount of tea and hot beverages and food eaten near the Equator.  Hot food made your core feel warmer and the contrast make you feel cooler on the outside.  I have no idea (ok, I rather doubt it – lowering your core temperature should cool you, much the same way a pool does) if this is true but I like the story and don’t know it’s not true.
  • Some summer food just needs cooking.  Corn, BBQ, quinoa and more (I love humus in the summer)

There’s a few obvious tricks:

  • Turn your air conditioning down to frigid.  (This won’t work with two small window units that are used on the hottest days).
  • Use a microwave – it doesn’t resonate heat for hours after it is turned off like an oven can (we don’t have a microwave).
  • Cook later at night (sometimes that doesn’t work).
  • A BBQ is great but even then some days are just so hot in our backyard (We share ours with the coffee shop on the main floor – it’s awesome for parties as it has tables and chairs for 40 but it is wind-locked and the 100% patio stone radiates hot.
  • Be practical and eat a salad (anyone who knows me or has read a bit here has likely figured out that ‘practical’ and ‘food’ and ‘Joel’ don’t generally mix).

So I’ve found two handy alternatives:

  1. We have an awesome 2-burner camp stove.
  2. Despite having a propane BBQ, keep charcoal handy.

(Yes this picture was taken is much cooler times).

Both items are very portable.  They allow me to cook many different ways – anywhere I want.  Toronto has an awesome lakefront and a quick journey down the street can drop the temperature by 10 degrees or more with the wind – though I rarely take the trek.

Sometimes it’s just enough to get out of the backyard and around the corner of the alley to find shade and cooler climes.  The camp stove is handy for this.

It’s not Earth-shattering news – but the first time I thought of it, I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done it sooner.

What are your tips for cooking on hot days – even you salad-only lovers (teasing)?