10 Cooking Skills I Wish I Had Known...

I started my culinary journey a little over a decade ago and like many of you, I was just an amateur home cook with no proper training, no culinary school, I didn't work in any kitchens under head chefs, I was just learning on my own. account through videos. through common sense through trial and error many mistakes in the kitchen and over the years I acquired many

skills

and became a much better cook and that's what today is all about. I'm going to reflect on those early days in the kitchen to really see how far I've come and choose a dish where I can break down the 10 most impactful

skills

I've learned over the last decade of my culinary career that have made me a Much better home cook.

For today's meal I have some beautiful beef ribs. I have about two pounds here and ribs are a tougher cut of meat, so to cook them well you have to slice them very thin and grill them like a Korean style rib. or you have to slow cook them to make them soft and tender and break down all that connective tissue which we'll talk about later, but the first tip is to season this cut of meat and let's go. using dry brine, something I didn't know when I was younger and for some reason always used to marinate meat.

I felt like putting meat in a flavorful liquid made sense to me, like I was going to achieve that. it gives it more flavor that way, but it turns out that it's actually not the best way to season a cut of meat because a liquid marinade takes a long time to penetrate the meat, so unless you have days to let that liquid soak in in the flesh, it's really not worth it. If it is better to make a dry brine, then the question is what is a dry brine. There are only two steps to drying brine, salting and thyme, so what we're going to do is heavily salt the outside of our beef ribs.

Now what will happen is that over time, through osmosis, the salt will draw the moisture out of the rib, so in about half an hour you will start to see some liquid in the meat and then once that has been removed that liquid, the salt in the meat. The outside will dissolve into that liquid and then slowly this salty liquid will soak back into the meat, leaving the meat in brine, which is wonderful because over time the salt will begin to break down some of the tougher muscle proteins in the meat. meat and Plus, you'll have a nice, even salty seasoning all over the piece of meat instead of just on the outside.

When I lived with my brother and we were catering together, we had a friend across the hall who worked at a two-Michelin restaurant. star restaurant and he would come to our apartment and was quite horrified by the chaos that was happening in the kitchen, it was just a disorganized

cooking

experience, there was no structure to the way we cooked, we didn't really prepare anything, we just wrote I tried, which works totally fine, but over the years I realized from my friend who worked at this restaurant and just from watching other people cook that it's actually very helpful to prepare the ingredients and there's actually a term French for this, basically misonplast. having all the ingredients in place ready to go before

cooking

, so whether you wash them, peel them and of course cut them to the size you need, this will be very valuable when you go to prepare the dish because you can focus on the cooking process real and don't have to worry about running back to the cutting board, cutting something, peeling something, washing when you take a little more time beforehand to prepare the ingredients before turning on the flame and starting to cook, that final preparation is on going. to give great results, so for this dish the base aromatics that I am going to use are carrots, celery and onion.

I'm also going to chop up some garlic and finally I have about five or six smaller ripe tomatoes that I'm going to cut into small pieces and look at all of that prepared and organized, feeling much better about the upcoming cooking process. The next skill is soldering, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, maybe some of you have mastered it, but for me when I was younger I didn't really understand how brazing worked and it's pretty simple and a Once you get the hang of brazing, it's a big change in the kitchen because it opens up the world of stews that every professional home cook should know.

To make now we're going to use the braising technique for these ribs and it's pretty simple, it's a two part process, so we have our ribs that have been in dry brine for about six hours and a lot of that liquid has now It's been absorbed but there's still some liquid on the outside so you want to make sure the meat is extremely dry because first we're going to fry these ribs so once the ribs are dry I put a skillet over medium heat or half. over high heat and then pour in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan.

Now we are in phase one of braising, which is first browning the meat and getting a nice crust, which is very important because we are going to be activating that mayar reaction that equals flavor, all that beautiful browning on the outside of that rib. which will equal extra flavor in our final dish and also by burning that crust you will develop more texture instead of just having soft meat that falls apart in your stew, now we are going to have a little more texture in our stew, which will always a plus in my book so once you've seared them on all sides you can remove the ribs and We'll move on to the next skill which is caramelizing and I thought I understood that when I was younger like sautéing some onions and They would brown and be delicious, but there are different levels to the caramelizing game and what I didn't understand when I was younger was the slow, slow process to really get a beautiful texture and some sweet aromatics that will end up flavoring the rest of our stew, so I'm going to take all of our aromatics that are loaded with natural sugars and we're going to pour them into all this fat taking advantage of all that leftover flavor from the rib, of course, and I'm going to turn the pan down to medium low heat and I'm going to put a little bit of salt immediately because salt will speed up the process of removing moisture from our aromatics so we can begin the caramelization process and the next key step is patience, we need patience and this is definitely something I didn't understand when I was younger, you have to give it time over low heat to really develop the flavors, so after about five minutes it will start to look pretty good, around 10 minutes it will start to look even better and around 15. to 20 minutes, if you give it that extra time and patience, Those aromatics look extra sexy, they're nice and brown, we've turned those sugars into a delicious caramel, which will equal extra flavor in our final dish, but we're not quite there.

Done, but time to unlock another skill when I started cooking, my spice shelves certainly didn't look like that, they weren't that extensive, I had things like garlic powder, paprika, cayenne powder, basic powdered spices that maybe the recipes called for, I saw other people using them, but Over the years, one thing that radically changed my cooking was the use of whole spices and whole spices are wonderful because once something is broken up and turned into a powder, It starts to lose freshness over time and you can also control the texture, instead of just having a powdered spice that will blend smoothly into everything you can get some texture by grinding it a little coarser and that's what we're going to do to make these ribs improve a little.

I'm going to grind up some of my favorite spices so I'm going to grab my mortar and pestle. You can do this in a spice grinder too and I'm going to add some cumin seeds. I've got some fresh chilies and then just a few cardamom pods and I'm just going to grind it up and at this point our aromatics are close to perfection so I'm going to add the sliced ​​garlic with those ground spices and cook it for about five more minutes. I want to take a quick minute to tell you about today's sponsor, which is Mizen, a kitchen tool company that I've been obsessed with for the past few months and, in fact, that blue knife that you've seen in this video and in a Lots of videos above, it's my Zen Multipurpose Chef Knife, which has quickly become my favorite knife in the kitchen, but I've fallen in love with this brand for a few reasons.

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Going back to the video, when I try other people's food and it tastes a little disappointing, it's most likely due to two things: it's not salty enough or it's not acidic enough, so if you feel like you have the salt under control, then it is quite salty. you probably have a lack of acidity in your dish and that's something I didn't understand when I was younger and you can add acid at the end of the dish just as a seasoning, like a little freshly squeezed lemon juice, but in this case I'm going to add two elements acids that will cook slowly over time.

The first is tomatoes. Tomatoes are super acidic. I'm going to throw them in and cook them and once the tomatoes have cooked for about five minutes, I'm going to add my second acidic element, which is some red wine that goes great with ribs, but of course the wine is very acidic, so I'm going to pour about three quarters of a bottle in here and let it cook for about five minutes. I'm going to cook off some of that alcohol and then I'm going to put my ribs back into that liquid and then I'm going to pour in some water until those ribs are almost submerged in the liquid and now our ribs are ready for part two. from the braising process, which is slow cooking in a liquid, so I'm going to cover my dish to make sure it doesn't evaporate too much and I'm going to put it in the oven at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours around three. to four hours and what will happen is that over time that fluid will slowly begin to break down the connective tissue in the short ribs and when that connective tissue begins to melt, the muscle will not have that glue to hold it together and they will begin to fall apart and become super cute, so that's what we'll be looking for for the next few hours.

Well, it's been about two and a half hours at 275 degrees and you can see the bone slowly moving away. of real meat, but the meat is still a little tough, you can see as I dig into that, you know, not too far away from my friends yet and this is something I messed up a few times when I was younger when I was slow cooking a tougher cut of meat and the recipe told me a certain time and I checked the meat at that exact moment and it felt super tough. I felt like I had messed something up, like I had overcooked the meat, but meat goes through a strange journey. where it's going to tighten a little bit it's going to get tight before it starts to fall apart and I can tell you right now in this welding process that we're still about half an hour to an hour before the flesh comes loose when that connective tissue just starts to melt, these ribs are going to be perfect, so stay tuned for that, when you try a really good meal, like a great meal, you go to a restaurant and you're like, "I can't cook like that, my food just tastes a little bit less exciting, well one of the main reasons for this is that you don't focus on creating layers of flavour, something I wasn't doing back then, I only focused on one thing: the final dish, but going to cook really reduces to focusing on these layers of flavor that build up one after another to finally give you something amazing, so layer one was that brine on the ribs, plus searing them to get that crust, then layer two was caramelizing those aromatics and spending time to develop. the sweetness and then layer three was adding those ground spices that will release their flavors and oils over time into the stew, then we added the acidic ingredients, we did the tomatoes and the wine, which helped strengthen the sauce but also helped. to balance the salty and sweet flavors with the acidic tones and now we are at the end of the plate and a lot of people would stop here once the ribs are tender, but I like to add that last layer of flavor that is just a little bit of freshness or the final seasoning, something that is not necessarilyIt's not going to blend with the whole dish, but it's just going to give it a nice touch, so I'm using a little bit of fresh parsley and then, of course, just a little bit of salt as a final seasoning, if you think so.

It needs a little more salt and also if you think it needs a little more acidity at this point, a little bit of lemon juice will be great, but I feel good about the tomatoes and wine that are already on the plate, my next skill which definitely took me away. Sometimes understanding is zero waste, not wasting food, so in this case I have all this extra liquid on my ribs, which is very tasty and I don't really need that much liquid. I'm going to throw in some sauce, but that would just go in a container and maybe you would throw that stuff out at some point, don't throw it away, that tastes good, so what I decided to do was take a look in my pantry and then I found some dal, but you can use it. beans or rice or whatever you have and to bulk it up a little bit, I had some cauliflower so I cut some cauliflower into small pieces, put it in a small pot, added it to the soaked doll and then served it Ladle in about two cups of that delicious braising liquid. followed by a little bit of water and let it cook for about 15 to 20 minutes and voila you've got a nice little garnish or something to put on top of that flatbread so most of you know I'm a big bread guy.

I've always loved bread, and I'm sure many of you do, but when I think back to the early days of my culinary career, I ate a lot of bread, but much of it was store-bought or pre-made. things so if I was making a pizza I would use a pre-made pizza crust or if I was making Mediterranean food I would buy the pita dough and one thing that has really changed the cooking game for me is just learning how to make basic breads. such an enhancer to a meal will really impress people and there is nothing better than some fresh homemade bread and most basic breads follow exactly the same steps so once you understand those steps it is very easy to expand your vocabulary about bread, so I'm going to make a flatbread for this dish, which is probably the easiest bread to make because it requires very little shaping, but the first phase for bread is of course making the dough, which usually starts with a yeast, some type of liquid, usually milk or water.

I have flour, ground wheat, and salt, and some breads use the addition of fat like butter or oil, but I'm not going to use any of those for this flatbread once the dough is mixed. Phase two is a bulk augmentation process. where your fermented dough gains volume and generally with baker's yeast you seek to double its size. If it is a sourdough bread it will have a little less volume. Step number three is to shape your dough into whatever bread you are making in this case. I'm making flatbread so the first thing I'm going to do is shape them into balls, let them sit for about 10 minutes to rest and then I'm going to roll them out into two rounds almost like a pizza dough and then the next.

The step is to take that shape of dough or roll and let it rise in the bread or roll, we will give it a little more air so that it gains some volume, in my case it becomes a little more spongy, since I am making flatbreads, I can skip this. step and I can go directly to the final step, which is the baking process or in this case, the frying process. You can also bake these flatbreads and turn them into pita. They will puff up, but I will only fry them a little. of oil on both sides and you will see that they will bubble very well and after a few minutes, when they are golden brown, I will turn them over and fry them on the other side and boom like that, you have incredible. flatbreads that will impress anyone who tries them and are also a wonderful vehicle for basically any food and my finishing skill.

If there was anything I could go back in time and tell that young college kid who was just getting started in the cooking game, I would just do it. Tell me to pay more attention because cooking for the most part is very intuitive. All of these skills that I've taught you today you can learn just by cooking, paying attention, making mistakes, and saying, "Oh, well, how would I fix this?" That allowed me to try something else next time and eventually you will learn these skills on your own, but the more you pay attention and be aware of what is happening, the faster you will learn these skills and develop all kinds of new skills.

I'm still learning just by paying attention to cooking. You don't need to go to culinary school to be a good cook. It's great to learn those techniques that have been taught for years and years. That's good. base, but a lot of these things you can discover on your own, so I hope you enjoyed it if you want more videos like this just cooking skills cooking skills for beginners check out these videos right here thanks again to mizan for sponsoring this video, You can Check out the link below to see your discount and see you in the next video.