Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.
I struggled for years to make a great soup from dried beans. I tried many tricks – soaking, not soaking, salting before then after, cooking them slow, cooking them long and I always struggled.
Most beans do not need soaking (though it can speed up their cooking time). Simply bring dried beans to a strong boil with lots of liquid (I use a minimum of 3-4 times liquid to bean). I generally use liberally salted water. Leave at a boil for 10 minutes before lowering to a simmer and monitor their progress. Most will complete cooking in 40-70 minutes.
Because of such a dramatic range of cooking, my secret to a great multi-bean soup is simple:
Cooking each bean is useful for many reasons:
It ensures each type of bean reaches the level of cooking you wish
It prevents discoloration from darker beans leaking into lighter ones
Excess liquid from lighter beans can be used if you don`t have enough in darker beans
You could flavor different beans with different stocks.
My standard stock for bean soup include a large can of diced tomatoes (2-4 cups of home canned slices), including liquid, 1-2 liters of stock and a can of tomato paste. I generally add some home-dried onions, dried-celery salt, salt and pepper. While cooking the beans I bring this to a gentle simmer and turn it off to cool (too much cooking turns the tomatoes to indistinguishable mush).
It`s a no-fuss amazing soup and one that improves through the week.
If you`re a Facebook user and haven`t entered our contest by liking our video for Ocean Wise we need your help! There`s less than 24 hours left in the competition and we`re struggling to hold on. Liking our video makes you eligible for prizes from Ocean Wise and us). You have to like Ocean Wise before liking our video.
I had the absolute privilege of watching Chef Thomas Keller be interviewed live about a year ago (full notes and a few photos here). It was a memorable experience that I still reflect on – and it`s helped me become a better cook.
I remember Keller sharing his secret to becoming great – and the reason why people don`t. Paraphrased, it was `the problem with Chef`s today is that they want to learn the next thing. They get bored and jump from one thing to another. If you want to become a truly great chef, make 1 thing for a year or two and perfect it.`
I definitely fall into the problem category that Chef Keller mentioned – though his words have challenged that and I do find myself consciously repeating things and trying to improve them.
I`ve never been thrilled with my stock. It`s generally decent but not fantastic.
One of my significant issues was the color – I would generally end up with a greyish liquid. Roasting the bones (or veggies or both) helped but didn`t get me there.
I was flipping through Keller’s book, Ad Hoc at Home and he turned me on to this idea:
Charred onions. I burned the cut side in a cast iron skillet. They started off direct heat before moving them to the heat on medium-high and I watched them closely. You could do the same on a BBQ.
The resulting stock was much darker, the broth richer. I was thrilled with their impact on the end results.
I couldn`t help but think about a Greek Hot Dog vendor that I knew many years ago. He used to sing your order as he cooked hot dogs from his suburban cart. He would start his day by putting an onion under the grill and on the flame of his BBQ. He said that the smell would affect the flavor but would also make people salivate and buy more. In a way, I`ve had a similar tip from one of the best Chefs in the world – and the best Hot Dog Vendor I`ve ever known.
We`ll have more stock-making tips to share in time – what are your favorites tips for stock?
Like a sweet child that turns into a teenager, many greens become bitter as they mature (I couldn`t resist the analogy). Age transforms small and tender stalks to larger, bolder leaves which demand your attention.
This couldn`t be any more evident that dandelion leaves. Major chain stores are starting to carry them and I suspect that hardened dandelion foragers will balk at buying what is available in abundance for free while some newer to the task may experiment by picking up the commercially provided solution. There will be plenty of exceptions but I do wonder how many newcomers will buy mature dandelion leaves and never go back to them once they taste how bitter they are.
Some common solutions including a quick blanching (works well but changes texture), mixing them into other leaves for a mixed salad (works but kind of misses a pure dandelion experience if that`s what you are going for), adding lots of sweet fruit and vegetables and a salty dressing or cheese. Of course this applies to other greens as well.
If you want to keep the integrity of your leaves and consume a less bitter version there`s an easy solution: run cold water over your leaves for 2-6 hours. The water must be running and a long exposure is required.
When I first read this final tip, my nose scrunched up. It sounded like the most un-environmental way to serve greens in the world. I`d probably have to leave my house as well since I`m nut sure I could take the sound of the running faucet for half a day (or more).
But I kept listening.
People have been eating bitter greens for a long time. Long before we had kitchens, running water and split sinks. Native Americans would place bags made of netting (and filled with greens) in creeks with running water for hours on end. Nature`s faucet would work her magic on the leaves and take their bitterness away. It`s amazing to me how we`ve gotten so far from this that many of us (including me) consider the only source of relevant running water to be the tap.
I haven`t had the opportunity to try this yet. I have a spot picked out up north and when the timing is right, we`ll jump in. In the mean time we`ll either enjoy a bitter salad or look at some of the other solutions above.
We are hosting a small fete this weekend; it’s my birthday next week and my favourite celebration is to host and cook for others.
This years feature should be a large Pork Butt (it’s a cut from the shoulder of the pig) that is going to be pulled after a long and slow cook on the BBQ.
I’ve had various success with “real” BBQ like this; most of it has been fairly sketchy. I generally have cooked with too much heat and far too quickly.
Here’s our plan (we’ll share the results next week) so far:
We are going to buy a large butt or picnic roast (7-10 pounds).
Roast will be brined this evening.
In the morning (as early as possible), we will pat it dry and add a rub to it (brown sugar, pepper, salt, hot peppers, celery salt and likely more)
We will turn one side of the BBQ on low and place this on the other side. Monitor to keep the temperature of the BBQ around 275 (may need to prop the lid open).
Add soaked wood chips in a foil package (with holes) on the grill side.
Wait until the pork hits 200 degrees.
I have been considering injecting the roast with marinade as well.
Looking for more ideas out there from those of you with experiences (good and bad) – would love to hear any tips from everyone out there!
This may be common sense to many but I thought I`d share our tips on getting better grill marks on your BBQ and hope that others may share their own as well. It`s amazing how the smallest tip can make a big difference.
In no particular order:
Start with a glaring hot grill. In your face hot. Volcano hot. Be patient getting to this heat; it takes time. Cooking will not.
Make sure your object of affection (meat or veg) is room temperature. Cold will cool that grill quickly.
Make sure you have lots of room on your grill and avoid hot spots (you are hoping for even heat across the grill).
The initial placement is EVERYTHING. Once I`ve used a part of the grill I do not use that same space again (if I do, I avoid it as long as possible – I often work my way clockwise around a grill so I`m avoiding spots recently used to cook and slightly cooler).
Do not rip your meat or veg off the grill – this is telling you it`s not ready to flip (particularly for meat) and you`ll leave your charred grill bits behind.
Ensure things are cut evenly – uneven cuts make this process a nightmare to gauge.
Place everything the same direction to start (i.e. steaks across the grill) – when you rotate your food you can use grill to guide you how to place it to get 90 degree rotation.
Let your food (particularly meat) rest after the intense heat. Our steak rests for at least as long (and up to twice as long) as it cooks.
Be careful with marinades – especially sugary ones – if you are going to aim for grill marks. Sugar can burn fast and while it can be done you can also end up with a candied mess.
If you need to oil your product (in my experience this applied to some veggies), oil the product and not the grill. Any oil will long be gone with this heat by the time you place your product on it. Oil all product at the same time before placing it on grill.
The grill at our cabin has a bit of a cool spot (you`ll find it below) but this is the general idea:
We shared the theory between of two different types of campfire yesterday and eluded to a third setup. Cooking over hot embers is great in theory and fabulous for steak but if you`ve got to cook a roast you will quickly find a problem – embers won`t last 6 hours (or longer) and flame is your enemy.
Here`s a little trick:
On the left is a 7 pound picnic (also known as a `butt`) roast of pork. On the right is a prime slab of the Canadian Shield – it was a bit heavier. Having the counter weight weigh more is not an accident – it must counteract the leverage of the `hanging`weight and it`s position makes it virtually unflippable (it could have been much heavier than the roast).
And yes, that`s an old tire rim. It`s affectionately known as our Rim-A-Cue. We`ve been cooking with it for most of my life (a few times a year)
This indirect heat allows for plenty of smoke and slow cooking. This roast cooked slow and steady for about 8 hours seasonsed with garlic, salt, pepper and pureed pepper paste.
The roast continues to cook away from the main heat (our logs shifted intentionally towards the far side as we continued to cook our dinner):
This may be my favourite picture to illustrate the distance of the heat while still having open flame:
The inside of the pork was white, moist and tender – we judged doneness by eye and it worked perfectly. If you`re not willing to take the same risk, use a thermometer – the irregular heat of the fire makes cooking time more art than science.
Our final roast nearing it`s finale:
I was thrilled at the results – this felt like a significant culinary moment in my life. It was the first roast I had cooked over a campfire and it was exquisite.
Now for a couple of small lessons learned that, while serious, are enough for me to laugh at myself for (though I was lucky) and serve as a good reminder to all.
Lesson 1
A rock when placed oven an open fire becomes hot in less than 5 minutes. And by hot, I mean really hot. As in, don`t move it with bare hands:
Lesson 2.
Don`t get too close to the flames – they will crimp your hair.
Conclusion I`m ok – humbled and got lucky twice. I`ve been around campfires for my entire life. I know better than both of these silly mistakes – never, ever, take fire for granted. Or your finger. Or your hair. Be safe and look after one another.
We`ve just returned from 3 days in the middle of the woods. A fantastic break in early spring and the isolation of the cabin was wonderful. We did pull out the generator to catch the last episode of LOST; some may think that`s cheating but I thought it was a fitting location to end a 6-year obsession of ours.
I`ve had an odd relationship with fire my entire life.
My Father was a FireFighter for 37 years. My household taught me to respect fire rather than avoid contact with it. I understood the great damage it could do and could tell when Dad had his toughest nights simply by the lingering smell it left on his clothes when he returned from work. Having a FireFighter for a Father was both super cool and super scary.
It is ironic that one of my truly undiscovered talents is lighting a fire. It`s a talent that remains hidden from most and one that is of little use living in the city (these two facts are indeed intimately linked).
There are primarily two different types of fires one should be handy with if they are going to spend any time in the woods – a heat fire and a cooking fire. The goal of this post is to share a bit of food for thought on my approach to both.
Before dissecting the two different types of fires, let`s discuss the 3 things a fire needs to thrive:
a source of ignition
fuel
oxygen
A lot of people struggle building a good fire because they don`t pay enough attention to the third factor. Oxygen is just as important as having wood; and even more important when you are starting a fire. Placing wood too close together with no room to breathe is a guaranteed way to struggle. A general guideline is to leave the same amount of air between pieces of kindling as the pieces themselves (i.e. if your kindling is 1-inch thick, leave an inch between pieces).
Let`s move on to the two different types of fire:
Heat fire
This is the one many know and love. We start with pieces of kindling and set them up like a `tent`or a `teepee.` A few pieces pf paper or birch bark is surrounded by pieces of kindling which lean on each other and simulate a tent. This generates a lot of oxygen `pulled`through the structure which further fans the flames with more oxygen. Adding thicker pieces of wood on the outside creates a taller teepee and stronger flame (with the addition of more fuel).
Cooking Fire
This term is a bit of an oxymoron as the goal is to cook over coals as opposed to a crazy flame. Many use the heat fire above which is difficult to cook on – the sheer height of the fire creates a hot spot in the middle (it`s highest point) and cools towards the outside. Not an ideal cooking instrument.
A cooking firse starts like a log cabin – kindling is laid on the ground and alternate pieces form a square structure which allows for air circulation and creates a `flatter` heat source to cook over. This can be more difficult to light and setting up a teepee in the middle of your cabin can help you get a jump-start.
After lighting
We tend to burn wood for several hours before letting it cool down and turn to embers. The ambient heat of the coals will provide plenty of heat to cook. As you place more wood on the fire make certain to ensure proper air circulation for a faster, hotter burn.
We`ll share a technique tomorrow (and photos) on a way to cook with flame (and break all of these rules) while not burning your main course to shreds.
My Mother was a Nurse, my Father a Fire Fighter. Our Neighbor had been a Policeman. All of them cautioned me against being on two-wheels. All of them had seen enough of the bad consequences.
I remember a specific piece of advice from the Policeman who had also been a motorcycle officer at one point. `The moment you feel cool while driving, pull over and get off – you are in trouble.` In 5 years and tens of thousands of kilometers of travel (including a trip to Nova Scotia), I managed to stay upright and, more or less, without incident. The 3 or 4 times that I had my gravest problems all stemmed from feeling cool.
The moment you think you have it nailed, it has a way of reminding you that you don`t. Motorcycling can be humbling. Making bread can be the same:
What happened? That`s easy to figure out; the short answer is I felt cool.
This was to be my best bread yet. For starters, it was part whole wheat. I knew the farmer that grew the wheat and milled it into flour. I had taken onions from a neighboring farm, dehydrated them myself and added it to the dough to create an onion-bread like dough.
I mixed the ingredients, using a scale. I long ago learned that bakers find weight a far more reliable indicator of quantities when baking. Everything was painstakingly obvious when I, without explanation, through a bunch of water in without being careful to measure. I added way too much. I was able to remove some (along with some floating yeast and other ingredients). Now the entire concoction was a guess.
I then let it rise too long (twice) and I was left with a dough-like resemblance to add to the oven that wasn`t nearly hot enough.
I suddenly felt not-so-cool. I was, however, able to laugh at myself instantly (I knew long before it entered the stove that I would need a yeasty miracle to pull this one off).
The good news is that we were able to eat the outside crust to get an idea of flavor (the further you cut into this loaf, the more it resembles solid stone). It was remarkably good and the onions really came together in the taste.
It`s amazing to me how personal the sense of loss over this one was. I`m not in an overly dramatic morose state of sadness and I am totally fine that I simply made a mistake but I do feel that I let my farmer down, the wheat down and even my poor shrivelled onion. I know the people that worked far harder than I did to make this bread and I flopped it with an avoidable flick of my wrist.
It was quite the adventure and I am thankful for the loan of the SousVide Supreme. When they lent their unit to us there were no conditions attached – we only post about things we genuinely like and this made the cut. There is enough negativity in the world without us adding more to it here!
There were several lessons learned, some victories and challenges. I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience and here’s what has stuck with me:
The machine was easy to use, accurate and allowed us to adjust temperature quickly.
It was the easiest cleaning kitchen appliance I’ve ever used.
Using a proper sealing system would have offered more options, control and reliability than what we had to work with us.
The precision of control is exciting – and knowing that you can come close to replicating a world-class recipe is a definite benefit of the technique.
As superficial as this is, it was darned cool to cook Sous Vide at home and share the results with friends.
The use of plastic in cooking offers some potential challenges – both sustainably and, possibly, for health. I am not a scientist and do not know the facts well enough but a comment left by Diane mentioned the possible estrogen content that could come with this. A dear friend of ours is a scientist and I remember her telling me of experiments involving control groups of snails – one group raised in a plastic bottle and another in glass. The group in plastic had significantly higher estrogen content. On the flip side I think of the amount of bottled water (and pop) I drank in my past and tend to think that it would be far more plastic than the amount I’d consume from SousVide cooking at home.
The texture, flavor and taste of food are definitely different than any I’ve had before. It can be hit or miss depending on your taste.
The technique is very easy – I believe further experimentation with recipes would have found some we love. The hard-cooked egg was definitely on the right track. I’d love to take it further and try moose, ribs and a lot more vegetable dishes.
There are few cookbooks. Do your research in advance – learning what is possible is far more work than cooking it.
I would like to try to eat more Sous Vide prepared by people with more experience than I have – though I think I could have learned plenty more without this luxury.
I would try to cook it again.
We`d love to hear about any other adventures out there – for now, this is the end of our Sous Vide adventures at home.
My interest in Sous Vide was all the fault of Herve This (ThEEs).
Dr. This is a mad scientist. He dedicates his studies to understanding food and cooking and coined the term `Molecular Gastronomy` (based on work he had done with Nicholas Kurti). He was the first person in the world to obtain a PhD in molecular gastronomy.
His field of study is often confused with a style of cuisine which stole the title to describe cooking with tools of science (such as mysterious powders and processes). The focus of his art is to understand what happens to our food as we cook it and learning how we can modify our approaches. He teamed up with Farran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and Harold McGee to create a mission statement for their approach to food and technique that could form the mission statement of almost any cook – professional or pedestrian (we wrote about his super cool project here).
Thes challenges age-old techniques to determine the best way to approach cooking. He discovered that one set of egg white proteins solidify at 142°F, the yolk starts to solidify at 158°F and a final set of egg whites solidify at 184°F. He determined that the optimal temperature for cooking an egg is precisely 149°F for as long as you want. As long as the temperature the egg is being cooked in is stable, you cannot overcook it (after all it can`t get hotter than the temperature it is cooked within).
Thes uses a precise oven to cook `soft boiled eggs.` If you are interested in his writing, Google Books has an almost complete version of Kitchen Mysteries (we wrote how to access this and others online for free, legally, here). There is also a great review of his egg science in Discover Magazine which reviews eggs he cooked at 140°F (60°C), 153°F (67°C) and 70°F (158°C) . You can find that article here.
Thes also proved that you can overcook a hard boiled egg. There are two consequences to this crime: the yolk will be off center and the proteins of the egg (which naturally contain sulfur atoms) will release a gas (dihydrogen sulfide) which creates a foul smell and reacts with iron ions in the egg and creates a greenish rim around the outside of the yolk.
All of that is a very long introduction to our migration towards the Sous Vide Egg. Our experiences as Sous Vide `chefs` was off to a rocky start – in the terms of traffic lights we had found a yellow light (the pork belly) and a red light (the tuna). Sous Vide was proving to be interesting but challenging to the palate (yet remarkably easy to do). We were in need of a hit.
We had two options – soft cooked and hard-cooked in shell. Soft cooked would yield a soft yolk and white while hard-cooked would cook both parts to a tender firmness. The SousVide Supreme recommended soft cooked to be done at 147°F (64°C) while hard-cooked asked for 160°F (71°C) – both for 45 minutes. Simply set the temperature, wait for the water to come to temperature and drop the whole eggs in the water.
The soft cooked egg was unlike any we had eaten before. The entire thing was soft – which is, of course, entirely different from runny. The whites were cooked through but had the texture of jelly. It was tough to peel the shell back without them spilling over. It reminded me of discovering surface tension as a child when you filled the glass just over the rim. With each prod of a fork I expected the entire soft egg to spring a leak and drain on to my plate. I have left the photos in Toronto (I am in San Diego) and will update this post by next Friday morning to include photos of them.
Soft cooked eggs were good – but an acquired texture. With time I could see that I could be converted to these possibly being the best eggs I ever ate. Another yellow light – it was getting late in our experiments to find a big win.
The hard-cooked eggs went in. These were the best eggs I ever ate in my life. Delicate, soft, yet cooked through The yolk became a moist golden nugget of pure happiness. The whites were tender and moist and beyond tasty.
I am not a breakfast person – these eggs would change that. They were everything I looked for in an egg – and never knew I wanted. If you own a small brunch shop, you really must consider an investment in this type of thing – you could own the hard-cooked egg in an entire city; just make sure we get an invite!
We finally found our success! I am sure there would have been many more with more time to experiment (and more knowledge). I`ll wrap up our final thoughts on the experiment tomorrow.
