Fast Cooking School – Lesson 4: Thorough Food Preparation And Choosing The Right Cooking Method To Make Cooking Faster
Today’s topics are food preparation and fast cooking methods. So, here are my next two tricks to help you make cooking a quick and easy job:
The way how you prepare your foods has a great impact on how long they will take to cook. If you want to keep the cooking time short, take a bit more time to prepare your foods. This extra effort will still save you time in the overall cooking process, as it is usually less time consuming to cut them than to cook the whole big bulk. If you want to boil a whole big potato for example, it can easily take you half an hour and more. If you slice it thinly, this will maybe take you two minutes, but then your potato can be done in 15 minutes, meaning you saved at least 13 minutes.
Cut your vegetables either in small pieces, like one-centimeter-cubes, or thin slices. You can use a grater for that as well if you have one that can make slices. This works especially well for potatoes and cucumber. Meat is best cut into small cubes or thin stripes, unless you are using a filet that is already thin. If the filet you bought is quite thick, cut it in half horizontally and make it two, or cut off thin slices.
Trick #2: Choose quick cooking methods
There are several ways to cook food in a short time:
Boiling
The vegetables are cooked in boiling water, depending on the type of veggies for 5 to 20 minutes. Nutrients that can dissolve in water are drawn out of the food, so you should keep a watchful eye on the food to prevent overcooking it. To still get these nutrients, you can make your meal a soup, or use the water to make a soup the next day. If you only add the veggies to the water once it starts boiling instead of heating them up with it, you can also keep this loss of nutrients to a minimum, provided you don’t overcook the food.
Steaming
This great cooking method uses a pot with a sieve insert. The bottom part holds the water, whilst the food is lying on the sieve and cooked in the rising steam. Unlike often assumed, steaming takes less time than boiling. It’s healthier too, because more nutrients remain in the food. This is especially great for fat-free cooking. Just make sure that you combine foods of similar texture (e.g. potatoes, pumpkin and carrots) or size.
Stewing
You stew foods either in a closed pot or wrapped in foil in the oven. You don’t necessarily need to add fat when stewing. If you cook hard vegetables like potatoes or carrots, it’s advisable to add a bit of liquid. Foods that contain a lot of water themselves, for example marrows or mushrooms, can be stewed “in their own juice”. Unfortunately, stewing can take quite some time when working with harder foods. So, if you are in a hurry, rather use this method only for fast cooking foods like marrows, mushrooms or tomatoes. If you do want to make a stew including some harder veggies, cut these into small pieces or thin slices to shorten their stewing time.
Au gratin
You can prepare the foods by placing it into boiling water for a few moments and then cooling it down under cold water, but most foods won’t need that when you cut them very small or slice them thinly. Cover them with a béchamel sauce and/ or grated cheese and bake them on high temperature in the oven (250°C) until the veggies are soft and the cheese nicely golden or brownish. As with stewing, this will only go quick if you choose foods that are fast cooking (e.g. marrows or tomatoes) or very thinly sliced. Alternately, you might want to use canned vegetables.
Sautéing
This means the quick frying of foods in hot fat in an open pan. No water is added. The food needs to be stirred frequently to prevent it from burning. You can use this method for small pieces of meat or vegetables. For the latter, butter instead of oil gives a nicer taste. Veggies like marrows, carrots and pepper taste great with olive oil which is healthier than using other oils or butter.
Microwaving
Cooking foods in the microwave can be very quick and does not require fat. To make it as fast as possible, you should still cut your meat and veggies small or thin.
You see? Cooking fast is all about being clever. Now, get cooking and discover how fast you can be! And don’t forget to check on the next tricks which will appear here soon! Or check the previous ones below.
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