Day 63: A Culinary Loose Cannon
Remember when I said you’d know when I reached the bottom of the barrel because I’d be posting recipes?
Jokes on you. We reached the bottom of the barrel when I realized I was doing the “Mad Scientist’s Super Powered Grab Bag” once a week (at least). At this point, I broke the bottom of the barrel already, am currently a mile under the surface of the Earth and fighting Mole People with my shovel.*
*Note to self: Commander Spade vs. Empire Most Moley would make a great comic book that I could write “ironically”
So here’s some unsolicited advice for burgeoning amateur cooks from another amateur cook who has already burnt the bottom of numerous pans on his way to the cutting edge of mediocrity.
You want to grill. I can tell. We all want to grill. Grilling’s fun. And it’s easy. Right? Right.
In the words of a nameless tower commander, “negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.”
Grilling isn’t just putting meat on top of fire. There’re hot spots, direct heat and indirect heat, charring the outside into a perfect crust, and leaving the meat juicy on the inside. A lot of people, (myself, included) think that grilling is the first step to a culinary black belt, when actually it’s probably a skill requiring more advanced techniques and experience than most other methods of preparing food.
Grilling is a real “back against the wall” sort of scenario. If you screw up, there is nothing you can do to make that food better. You can’t add water to balance it out, or more spices to hide what you did or didn’t add. You can’t drown out a mistake, nor is there some miracle agent that makes food less burnt.
To quote a Batman comic book:* “Grilling a steak to relax? But a prime piece of meat has to be just right, not under-or God forbid-overdone. It is. There’s no sauce known to mankind-or the French-- that can hide the fact that the chef’s to blame.”
*don’t act surprised. You knew what this blog was when you came here
No, ignore the impulse to grill if you’re just starting out. Like everything else in life, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you want to get even halfway decent at cooking, you must perfect the fried egg.
Given my grandfather’s childhood on a ranch, breakfast was hugely important to getting the fuel in order to get out there and work. While the current generation of my family is doing a really bad job honoring breakfast every day, when we do get around to it, it’s a big deal, and you’d best not fuck up the eggs. We’ll forgive you for accidently cutting off someone’s digit before we’ll forgive you for ruining eggs. This ain’t McDonalds, bitch. This is real fucking life.
Frying an egg is a microcosm of the skills necessary in most cooking. You have to work with direct heat to produce two different results in the same piece of food. The white part must be solid, and if you’re good, have crisp edges, and the yolk must be soft and liquidy. Now some people like their yolks solid, and that’s their right, just like how they no doubt prefer being put in work camps instead of free speech. Dying nameless in Siberia is preferable to them, just like they prefer overcooked yolks that a monkey could prepare.
If you’re a hard yolk lovin’ mutant then pop it towards the end, but get it perfect, first.
You’ll be working with oil (or grease, or butter) as both a conductor of heat and to keep the food from sticking. You’ll have to work with heat, recognizing when the pan is transferring more heat than necessary. You’ll also be preparing something that everyone has had a million times. You can’t fake it, or hope they dismiss any mistakes as something inherent in a dish with which they are not familiar.
Best of all, alongside working with different textures, conductors, and heat itself, eggs are cheap. Outside of grilled cheese, you will never get more food on the dollar which makes it a great ingredient with which to learn to cook.
Master the egg, and the rest comes easier.
Matt