FOODY CORNERS

CHAPTER 6: COOKING TECHNIQUES

Cooking techniques involve the procedures, skills and processes used in cooking. It includes methods used in cooking, like boiling, roasting, soup, baking, steaming, grilling, stew, sauce, sautéing, simmering, blanching, stock etc.

We will discuss some of them, the rest you can check out on the food terms section.

 Stock

Stock is an extraction of flavour from meat, poultry, vegetables or ingredients into water. Then the water is infused with the flavour of the ingredients, producing a base liquid used in cooking other dishes. There are two types of stocks;

White stock is simply a stock that is light in colour. The ingredients are simmered for a few hours. With the same ingredients, Brown stock is fried or roasted before water is added. The sugar in the ingredients caramelizes and then producing a darker stock.

The difference between the two stock is the method and colour.

There are five known common stocks. Bouillon, glaze, demi-glace, court-bouillon and Nage.

1. Bouillon: This is gotten from a French word meaning 'to boil', is a meat, fish and vegetable stock. It is often rich and meatier and served as soup.

2. Court-bouillon: or short stock; is a light fresh stock, with vegetables, herbs, wine or lemon juice, used to poach fish and shell fish and often discarded after use.

3. Demi-glaze: is a meat stock that is reduce to intensify its flavour.

4. Glaze: is a stock that has been reduce through boiling till it is thick and gelatinous. It can be used in preparing sauces and soups.

5. Nage: is a lighter stock with fresh flavours, butter and cream is added to make it lighter, it is commonly used when cooking fish or shellfish.

Methods of preparing stock:

1. Mise-en-place: Means "putting-in-place". It involves the preparation of all your ingredient and equipment before you begin to cook.

2. Roasting and Blanching: This is when the ingredients are either browned to make a brown stock or blanched in water when making a white stock.

3. Simmering: After adding the ingredients and water, it is brought to a boil and then to a simmer, in order to get a clear stock.

4. Skimming: While simmering, the stock should be skimmed regularly to remove proteins, fats and impurities which will rise on the surface of the pot in order to retain the quality of the stock.

5. Straining: This is done to remove solid ingredients.

6. Reducing: This is done by simmering for hours in order to reduce the water content and intensify the flavour.

 Soups

In Nigeria, soups are prepared with stock and vegetables, with lots of assorted meat and fish. However, soups come in different forms.

1. Bouillon: A dense, meaty stock with a deep flavour that can be served as a soup on its own. It contains meat, broth and vegetables.

2. Consommé: A clear broth that can be served hot as a soup or cold as a jelly.

3. Puree soup: A vegetable soup thickened by the naturally occurring starch with the pureed vegetables. Example is tomato stew.

4. Bisque: A shellfish soup made using pureed shellfish and finished cream.

5. Veloute: A rich, velvety soup enriched with butter, eggs and cream.

6. Cream soup: A soup thickened using a béchamel sauce or roux mixture, finished with cream.

 Sauces

Are made from Chicken, Fish, Beef, Vegetables with different ingredients giving different aromas. They are often thickened with a roux or starch (e.g. potato or corn starch).

Roux is a mixture of fat and flour. The flour is added to melted fat before being gently cooked to remove the raw flour flavour. There is the white roux cooled over low heat to avoid colouring and the brown roux which is cooked further till browned.

There are 5 known mother sauces: Sauce Espagnole, Sauce Veloute, Sauce Béchamel, Sauce Tomat, Sauce Hollandaise (Escoffier's 5 mother sauces).

1. Sauce Espagnole: Made with brown stock and brown roux, vegetables, then is simmered for some time before being skimmed and strained.

2. Sauce Veloute: Made with white Roux and white stock.

3. Sauce Béchamel: Made with white Roux and Milk with onions and bay leaves.

4. Sauce Tomat: Made with white Roux and Tomato stock, oil vegetables and herbs, salt, pepper etc.

5. Sauce Hollandaise: Made with egg yolks and butter, water, lemon juice, pepper, salt etc. It is the trickiest of all the sauces.

Mostly, in the rural Nigeria, not everybody cares about these sauces. Once they hear about sauce, what comes to mind is Chicken stock with some vegetables in it. And while the mother sauces serve as a base for different recipes, this Chicken sauce can only be used to eat rice.