Behind the scenes of Culinary Word of the Day. Jenn and Alicia discuss the words pinch, Maillard Reaction, and sauté.
In this edition, Jenn and Alicia discuss naming this podcast as well as the words pinch, Maillard Reaction, and sauté.
Esculentè is a behind-the-scenes conversation podcast hosted by Jenn de la Vega and research producer Alicia Book. For every three culinary words, Jenn and Alicia discuss material from the cutting room floor in a series of bonus episodes. They answer listener questions and dive deep into the words as well as the humanity behind them.
Hosted by Jenn de la Vega and Alicia Book.
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Jenn: Hello, check check. It is recording great. Hello everybody. It's Jenn de la Vega. I am here on the behind the scenes podcast of culinary word of the day
Alicia: And I’m Alicia Book. I'm also here speaking with Jenn today.
Jenn: And that's not the official title of the podcast yet. You will see the confirms title when we get publishing. But for now, we are operating without an official title. I haven't had any good ideas yet.
Alicia: You know, it's hard to play around with words. About culinary stuff and titling it. I don't know I'm using that great at this. So it's okay.
Jenn: No, it's just that it's a saturated category. I will say
Alicia: You know it is I had to do some deep Dives to make sure that we weren't ripping off anyone else if we wanted to go up with the title and you know, a lot of people like to talk about food.
Jenn: Yes, it's true,
Alicia: Which is great because it makes the community bigger we have different perspectives. So that's wonderful, except when there's just you know, it's not a deep pool for titles though. Yeah, you're really getting into the shallow water there to come up with something.
Jenn: So yeah, it'll hit us like lightning.
Alicia: I think it'll be beautiful.
Jenn: It'll be so beautiful and you know what we can always change it.
Alicia: Yeah, not very very part of it is that we can just you know, one day we're gonna be a different people today. And yeah, look at you same great info growth of that love that
Jenn: great folks.
Jenn: So we're back on a, you know, sort of extracted version of culinary word of the day and last last time you heard from us. We were we're talking about getting started again a little bit behind the scenes. Production process and our reasoning for starting the whole thing, but I wanted to introduce sort of the format of the following episodes or iterations of this particular conversation. So Alicia and I have done a ton of research and we can't necessarily fit everything into the confines of a bite-sized podcast. So there we wanted to to put the rest of that information somewhere else and and talk about it because a lot of questions came up as we were working on each of these entries and so we're going to chime in here every three entries or three podcast episodes to dive a little bit deeper into a set of words. So today's set of words are going to be pinch, maillard and saute Yeah. It's gonna be great.I promise words. Yes.
Alicia: What words?
Jenn: So, um, the whole reasoning that I've chosen are our next category of words is kind of a Back Back to Basics. So you'll see that the following words after this are sort of all Belong Together which is which is very exciting. I've actually ordered them in the way that you would encounter them in the kitchen.
Alicia: That's so interesting. I actually did not realize that. As a once again as a lay person in the culinary word that I might need a little bit more info on on how that works.
Jenn: Well, I think you know by practice. I am a chef and so I think about order of operations all the time much like how a music producer needs to order audio tracks or separate tasks into different timelines. That's kind of how I have to think about the world and and the way that I work and so given a set of 20ish words. I looked at them and I thought it's not enough to collect some basic culinary terms. It's not enough for me to say these are starter words if you're getting to if you're getting if you're new to the kitchen and you're learning how to cook these are words that I I think you will encounter when you start reading recipes or reading cookbooks, but I thought even further than that.
How could we present this in a more helpful way? And that was I thought it's very subtle. I don't think a lot of people are going to notice it unless they listen to this particular behind the scenes podcast.
Alicia: Fair enough fair enough,
Jenn: But I thought it would be helpful to think about it in the order that you you encounter things. So pinches are very first one. Pinch maillard and saute. So logically, these are not necessarily all the words that you're going to encounter the very first time you cook but in the set the way that I'm organizing the set is I know that you would you would encounter a pinch before you start heating things up.
Alicia: Okay,
Jenn: there might be scenarios where you don't even need to use heat when you're cooking, but you would still need to pinch something
Alicia: Interesting. Okay. All right,
Jenn: Right. So if you were doing. This is a word that we might tackle later on but guard management is a station in a restaurant. So in a restaurant, it is separated into Brigade style stations, like like if an army had a you know, the major the general the cadet, you know that division. The line cooks are all separated by task. So you have your executive chef your sous chef. So executive chef is telling everyone what to do. Your sous chef is on the ground walking around making sure that things are operating.In the correct order and Manner and then each line cook has an individualized station or task and guard men J is a very specialized one and which deals mostly with cold preparations. That means your salads your vinegarets cheese boards charcuterie. So they're not necessarily dealing with heat at all.
So that kind of person would still need to measure things or use pinches of salt or pinches of anything too. Okay, but they need to do that was a very lengthy explanation of
Alicia: no, but it's interesting to know like the behind the scenes of how the kitchen works and like why people are doing certain things and the importance of the terminology because those are all beginning things in the kitchen like a lot of those cold food items come out first correct.
Jenn:Mm-hmm.
Alicia: So little pictures are the first line
Jenn: You'll notice that on restaurant menus the appetizers and cold prep are usually at the very beginning and so that person is is working first on the line. But yeah, those those tend to be faster preparations things that can be sent out right away or things that are already on the table. Like if you'll notice at weddings, sometimes the bread and butter and a salad is already on the table.
Alicia: Like right and
Jenn: That it that is the person the guard meche person that is that is preparing that
Alicia: Gotcha.
Jenn: Anyway, long tangent to say that there has been a purposeful ordering of the words in episodes that we are going to be talking about. This is very meta. Uh, yeah, so we have three words saute my art reaction and oh wait, I have them the wrong or pinch my art reaction and saute are the words that we will be discussing today at at length and also in great detail.
Alicia: Okay, so let's get back to pinch a little bit though.
Jenn: Mm-hmm,
Alicia: Because you said it can be done in hot and cold foods.
Jenn: Yes. Yes. Okay.
Alicia: What's a great example of a cold food that it goes into?
Jenn: I mean, we've been a great one of them or yeah, a very easy vinaigrette could be a one way to use a pinch of salt or a pinch of pepper. So I can already off the top of my head tell you that equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil extra virgin olive oil a healthy pinch of salt a healthy pinch of pepper. We use that three finger pinch that we described in the episode and that's that's one very easy vinaigrette.
Alicia: So this is actually a question. I had though what if you over pinch much salt in there and like what do I do then? Is there an easy answer to that and
Jenn: there are many articles about what to do if you've oversalted some preparations. You cannot come back from it's always better as a practice a lot of chefs repeat. This is it's better to under salt than to over salt. But in like a soup situation, this will be the sort of smaller example of of trying to fix and over pinching or over saturation of salt in a soup situation. You can always add more broth or more water.
Alicia: Okay. All right.
Jenn: Or you can add the opposite flavor element to offset and balance. We're gonna probably talk about balance a lot over the coming year. But you know salt or salinity is is one of the five components of of flavor and you can use the other four elements to sort of balance it out or in a soup situation. You can use other liquids to dilute it. So if you're gonna go the liquid Direction, you can either add more broth or more water. I always air on the side of more flavor. So more broth on my my recommendation.
Alicia: Oh, okay,
Jenn: But other ways that you can Tamp down the flavor is to balance the salt with acid so squeeze of lemon or a splash of vinegar or pickle juice depending on the flavor profile of what it is that you're cooking. sometimes a pinch of sugar May offset the salt. Sometimes a bitter flavor so adding a handful of greens like arugula or kale can soak up that extra salt or provide more of a pallet for the flavor to kind of distribute. So an interesting way to think about soup is surface area. So if you've covered a certain percentage of the soup, like imagine that it's a piece of paper imagine a soup is a piece of paper and you've added a percentage of salt that will you know stretch across this piece of paper. The way that you can you know augment or fix or balance a soup is to You know add more things to the paper like take the pick paper bigger. So either adding more greens or substance or broth or water and a trick that I've read on a lot of food blogs is to add a peeled potato. (11:31) To a soup if it's too salty at. A peeled potato peel potato will absorb a lot of that salt and flavor. It's it's a lot about osmosis and
Alicia: Yeah, okay.
Jenn: No, maybe if we remember our high school osmosis and hypertonic and hypotonic Solutions, the potato will provide another environment for the salt to rush into
Because there is a bunch of heat around it. Oh, yeah, this is a great question.
Alicia: This is a bit of a chemistry field episode. Anyway, yeah stuff going forward. So I'm loving a pinch got to join their friends with the food chemistry stuff.
Jenn: I love this. That was such a good question. What if you overhang and it's not just with salt either the same the same strategy applies. If you put too much Pepper or too much paprika think about the opposite flavor profile or a way to stretch out. These substrate or the soup or the sauce or you know, the whatever.
Alicia: Was these are an easy way to find out what an opposite flavor, you know, like flavor profile it is, you know, Google that or is it a little trial and error and you kind of have to figure that out.
Jenn: It's a little. Bit of trial and error, but there are only five there you're working with so it's sweet salty bitter Umami and is it spiced spiciness?
Alicia: Yeah, that's five.
Jenn: So you can it's kind of like a painter's wheel. Like, you know how you have a wheel of colors that that seemingly go together or our opposites. I was gonna say that yeah, does it
Alicia: like, you know red and yellow or blue and stuff like that?
Jenn: Well flavor is a completely different beast in that you can balance with all five. It's not necessarily one is you know opposed to the other really
Alicia: Cool. Oh, yeah, interesting. It's very interesting. It's gonna end up talking about these five different things components like a lot
Jenn: A lot. Yes, we will be
Alicia: but I feel like I'm gonna be more well versed as these episodes goes like go on.
Jenn: I'm so glad just put a little more wrinkles in your brain. No looking forward.
Alicia: Oh, they're good though. These are helpful to my everyday life wrinkles though. I know it's like solid wants to have
Jenn: I love that everyday wrinkles. Aww. Okay, why do we pinch with the four finger and thumb? This is an interesting question. I I feel like we need to ask like anthropologists about this one.
Alicia: True true. I think though I mean from what I sort of sort of had seen it seems like this is what goes back in history books. The longest is just sort of you take it and it's universally done. There's like a lot of and almost every culture people just like no you just take a pinch you pick up your bowl of spice you take it and you throw it in and I think like you said you go under as opposed to over and you know, you're not really over cooking with flavor or spice to it. That's my guess. Anyway, is that it seems like a universal answer to a measurement.That seemingly worked.
Jenn: I love this. I wonder folks if you're listening if there are other words smaller International words that are along the lines of pinch like so in English, you know, we have Dash, Shake, smidge, scants. They all have very subtle differences between them but they're all small. So I wonder if there are there are other languages that have words for for small pinched amounts. I'm so curious.
Alicia: I'm so curious about that. I hope you get a response to that because that's that'll be super interesting.
Jenn: Um, but let's get a little I don't know. Let's get into Evolution a little bit here with the thumb and the forefinger. So I was watching this this show on Netflix. I feel it's called love sex and robots. It's a animated series. It's nice.
Alicia I've watched a couple episodes pretty yeah.
Jenn: It's pretty pretty violent and something that
Alicia: I said it's funny. But I'm like, it's also really really tough at some at some points depends on the episode depends on the episode.
Jenn: So there is a recurring cartoon in this series about three robots that visit. Yeah. I'm sure you've seen this.
Alicia: I like this is the one I actually have seen.
Jenn: Yeah. Um, so there's three robots that visit Earth after the apocalypse. So all of humanity has has perished and one joke that that they that kind of recurs between the episodes is that it all ended because cats developed opposable thumbs. We we bread cats to have thumbs and that was the end of humans, which is so funny because in evolution
You know that kind of is what sets us apart from from you know, a lot of the other beings on the planet so like us and and chimpanzees have opposable thumbs and we're able to grab things and pinch. I love that in all of evolution and through time and millennia.
We are now able to do with healthy three finger pinch into our soups.
Alicia: It's universally it's imperative that just you get it just enough space to not over pinch.
Jenn: Is this how we've evolved we've refined our motor skills so far far into the future to to simply enjoy our food a little bit more.
Alicia: That's beautiful. That's a beautiful statement.I love that.
Jenn: Thank you.
Alicia: You think about how delightful I just seems this is really come perfect amount
Jenn: So funny. Um, all right, so you had another question I believe about pinching
Alicia: I do. I'm actually curious we've talked a lot about salt and like soup now and silence is there but is there a genre of food that we really use if you looked at 20 different recipes, they'd all they all might have like a pinch of something in it. you know from
Jenn: Yeah, um, it depends on the kind of Cuisine that you're looking at, and I know that a lot of English speaking. Languages really over-prioritized salt. Um
And in sort of Japan China East Asian countries salinity doesn't necessarily come from Salt like salt exists. You have you have various kinds of salt, but you will see not necessarily dependency on it. We have soy sauces, which also you know provide. We have fermentation. So miso also provides some salt. So those aren't necessarily pinched. Which is interesting pinches exclusively in dry spices.
Alicia: Gotcha. Okay interesting.
Jenn: I mean you can try to pinch off dough.Or other viscous items but you know won't necessarily see pinches in those sorts of recipes that prioritize like a liquid seasoning but I will say in a lot of Indian cooking, I've read through a few Indian cookbooks and you will see lots of pinches of mustard seed whole Mustard Seed, cumin seeds and as a potato which is something that we should discuss later on which is a sort of resin that is used to finish a lot of curries stir fries and soups
Alicia: I actually just added that to my kitchen the last couple of weeks
Jenn: Really
Alicia: True story actually. Yes, we can talk about I found actually a woman in Brooklyn Brooklyn Deli.
Jenn: Oh, I love yes.
Alicia: So I've been using her stuff. It's vegan a lot of her stuff. It's like, you know vegan friendly and I have friends who are vegan. I'm not but my friend and so you should try to so I try to cook when I can though to make everyone happy and a lot of for us he's kind of end with like, oh if you use this at the end go for it. I was like, yes actually try this out.
Jenn: Yes, chitra Agarwal. We author of vibrant India and the purveyor of Brooklyn Deli, which is a company based in Brooklyn. They manufacture condiments from the Indian Pantry like a charge chutneys and simmer sauces and Chitra is a huge proponent of vegetarian Indian cooking. And so I learned a lot about us potato from her recipes and her writing so that's amazing that you you use her recipes as well.
Alicia: You know stumbled upon it spicy and delicious. Yeah, if you wanted to be
Jenn: Highly recommended we will put the link in our show notes so that you can check out her book. And if you click on it be affiliate money, we'll go to us so that we can make this podcast a little bit better every time but we've spent a long time on pinching we must move on to maillard.
Alicia: Love it. Let's get some reactions out of my reaction. I have to do like what I had to like make some sort of weird comment about reactionary Tails.
Jenn: Yeah. This one is pretty heady. The maillard is something that is used but people use it every day, but they just do not know the name of it.
Alicia: It's true. I actually I was almost embarrassed that I did not know what this word was. When we first started. This is one of the first words we did. Yes, or that I worked on I said it's you know, my husband and he's like, oh, yeah, of course like the Browning of foods, I was like, oh cool.
Jenn: Yeah. I totally good like my shirt collar a little bit like
Alicia: This whole time moving together and cooking together. I definitely use is what we were doing. Um, but that's how but it is ubiquitous. It's everywhere you use it all the time without realizing it. So this is actually sort of fun to sort of delve in and actually kind of put a face to a name I guess in like a very basic but a process that needs to be everywhere.
Jenn: That is an excellent way to put it putting a face to a name. I love that. Um, and I think the most impactful part of the definition isn't necessarily the culinary part. It's not necessarily the act of cooking part. The thing that I was shocked the most about is that the entire flavor industry is based on the maillard. That's the most mind-blowing thing for me.
ALicia: It's wild and there's so many different iterations of it.
Jenn: Yeah. So, this is when when I heard that the career of a food scientist was a real thing. I thought that it was mostly research and development. So like somebody just tinkering with ingredients in a kitchen. That's what I thought a food scientist was but actually a majority of Food Science is analyzing those amino acids and compounds that come from the maillard because as you category as you categorize them, they become artificial flavors that we use in all kinds of processed food. So like chips, sodas. Like bubblegum,
Alicia: it's everywhere and it comes to even to the point where they've deduce that. They could make certain things healthier. But if the color is not right consumers will not want it. So it could why cookies and bread need to be certain types of shades of brown, but they could make them a little bit better for you, but they'll taste slightly different but But people won't want them. They just don't they don't want the healthier less physically, aesthetically pleasing version
Jenn: Oh, this is frustrating.
Alicia: But that's how far we've come with this which is also very interesting though. I mean, that's how long people spend. I mean, this is Decades of research about what consumers want and what actually goes into the you know, the different things that every single day.
Jenn: It's fascinating. Do you remember what Heinz Ketchup was trying to change the color of the ketchup?
Alicia: Absolutely.
Jenn: Yeah, it was more Nickelodeon style slime like they were trying to harness that childlike. I want to play with my food or paint splatter kind of color palette but it turns out people just love the classic red.
Alicia: It's yeah, we were I was a very ketchup friendly household. My sister is putting out. It was one of those puts it on everything. Um, I was very excited to try colored ketchup. I was one of those weird kids. She was like not having it. She like absolutely not. This is a red ketchup household. This is where we at, you know, this is it and I thought that was such you know, I think we were I was probably 10 or 12 something like that. Um kind of in there in their bracket maybe a little too like that's my question that too much but it wasn't interesting because I was old enough to see that it was an experiment on there and to see yes would kids dominate. Who's gonna buy this ketchup? Is it the parents or is it the kids requesting the ketchup at the household? It's the parents.
Jenn: It's the parents.
Alicia: They don't want green food anything like and I also think that ketchup was more messy quite honestly,
Jenn: It's so funny now that we are older and both of us have experience and in marketing and we now know the word for this kind of Campaign, which is A/B Testing.
Alicia: Yeah. Yeah.
Jenn: That these corporations are sending out various options and seeing what sticks like what spaghetti sticks to the wall inside cases, literally.
Alicia: But that was I thought when I was like reading about maillard I was like this is an interesting like from what it started out. I think in 1912, he he would it was what's his name Louie Camille mayard. He was really a biochemist at heart and it really translates went after World War Two became this whole thing. I want to see a marketing it became food marketing. It's food science, but it's also food marketing which is a whole other thing we could tap into at some point why we buy the things we buy. We actually will tap into it. I think in a couple of different episodes later on which will be really fun. I think but, With somebody starting points in this already, which I know I can only take so many notes as we're talking right now. But like, oh my gosh need to touch this again.
Jenn: Yeah, but who knew that a simple reaction a chemical reaction would found an entire industry and it's pretty shadowy. Like it is proprietary information. A lot of a lot of companies do not share this and it's only up to people who research it or look it up. You know that you'll feel even hear about it. Like it's something that's so abstracted from from the public consciousness.
Alicia: It is and is I think that's like a very interesting thing especially doing the research to all of these words too finding that finding that like you really have to do like a lot of work to sometimes find a very basic definition because sometimes hidden under other things on seemingly on purpose.
Jenn: Hmm,
Alicia: You know, like if you try to Google things if you try to use a lot of different buzzwords a lot of other things pop up before you actually find out what you want out of that word.
Jenn: Wow,
Alicia: How it's functioning and why why it exists in another product and stuff like that.
That I thought was sort of the interesting thing. That's what I'm saying. I think you know talking about the marketing the food industry. It's gonna be interesting. Yeah, you do have to do your homework, you know, you got to learn that your Basics and then you can go further into it and really you can have a whole other world at your fingertips that goes beyond just cooking when you start looking at culinary words, like it's a whole there's Cuisine and cooking and then there's just like the whole way the world interacts with it. Which yeah, I think is unbelievably fascinating.
Jenn: You know, this is what I love about this project is that you and I as we do this research are are learning exponentially more with each episode and and everybody who is listening is is list is witnessing us sort of process that and it it is a surprising to find a lot of these these little details and we hope that that other folks start to think about and talk about, you know, where our food comes from and what is it that we're what exactly are we putting in our bodies? And because it's such a huge part of our day like yeah important
Alicia: It is and it's also it's a connector of people too. You know, how often you know, you talk about food probably with one other person every day, too. How is your coffee for breakfast? You know what I mean, like even ordering something, you know, who knows you go to the grocery store?
Jenn: My goodness, all right, what else what other things are bothering you about the maillard or not bothering you? What's what's the b in your bonded Alicia?
Alicia: It was also my first delve into understanding would dry heat was die.
Jenn: Yes.
Alicia: So that was another thing that I've been using it unknowingly and it kept popping up when I was they're like, oh it's a dry heat. It's dry heat. I'm like, I don't fully understand what that means. I think we'll go into that as a later word as well. But is there like a brief definition in the beginning of all of this of what dry heat means?
Jenn: Well, So there are two kinds of heat and dry heat. It sounds obvious. You know, it sounds really obvious. It is a heat that is used to cook. That is dry and it it means that it doesn't mean that there is a complete absence of moisture because humidity exists, you know in in an atmosphere that we have like on Earth where there will always be some kind of moisture in the air, but dry heat is just a general term for you know, not using liquid to heat whatever it is you were doing so
ALicia: Gotcha. Okay
Jenn: Wet heat. So the wet heat is is complicated Because deep frying is technically a dry heat.
Alicia: Okay, but it even though you're submerging have seen in in, technically a liquid is oil a liquid then I guess or it's not a liquid.
Jenn: So it's mostly about the hydrophilic relationship to the food. I know this is oh boy. This is too much Jenn Jenn real it in
Alicia: I did say it was gonna be a chemistry filled day.
Jenn: Real it in Jenn. We may need to continue this conversation in a later episode, but I will say that dry heat are your sauteing this is a good introduction to the next word. We were gonna talk about to your sauteing walk frying sort of of cooking. So it's you typically higher heat. Uh, you only relying on the moisture in the in the atmosphere. We're not adding any any liquids. We're not boiling. We're not blanching or not. You know, whatever. This is a technicality we will get into with deep frying deep frying is technically a dry heat, but that is for a later episode.
Alicia: Love it love it. I'm looking forward to that too. So I feel like there's gonna be a lot of questions about deep frying so that one's gonna be yes, which is gonna be great. It's gonna be so good.
Jenn: But that's a great segway into our next word which is saute.
Alicia: Which I think is so fun. It's when I think one of the easiest cooking methods for veggies and proteins and I think people do it once again without realizing that they're doing it.
Jenn: Yes, it is for this reason. This is why it's the third entry in the whole second season that it's it's so commonly encountered that again. We want to put a face to a name.
Alicia: Right, right.
Jenn: Okay. So what came up for you when you when you looked into this word?
Alicia: Sauteing well first and foremost. I did not realize the importance of having a hot pan.
Jenn:Ah, yeah.
Alicia: So I I'm guilty of just cutting let's say cutting up a veggies and then throwing them in the pan then turning on the heat. Why is that sort of problematic?
Jenn: Yes, so it's kind of like preheating an oven.The reason the reason why we preheating oven is so that it's at a consistent temperature. So this is about reading recipes this is it goes a little deeper than you realize. So okay when we read when we read recipes, there's an understanding that we want to keep it consistent, so we write recipes so that other people can replicate it, and so when you're baking a cake, it says to preheat the oven to 350 degrees if you had not the cook time will be wrong. So it's sort of a consistency thing. There are some foods that do benefit from a starting with a cold pan, but most of the time when you're referring to a recipe and you you have a specific cook time of saute this for five minutes, it's assuming that your pan is already hot.
Alicia: Gotcha, because they don't always tell you, you know baking they say the first thing you do is preheat. You don't tell you in the recipes like preheat your pan. So that's good to know that there. It's a yeah, it's a Unwritten rule that you should be preheating the pan. Yeah, preheating oven.
Jenn: Like if it says put a pan on medium heat put the pan on medium heat and then start your process because that job time will change if you you know, it will take a little bit longer if you start from cold to do whatever it is you're doing. And plus you won't get that maillard sear. If you start it cold
Alicia: it all comes back to to the reaction. I love it. I love it's true though. That's true. You won't get the color or the aroma, right?
Jenn: Yeah so you will maximize the aroma when you start with a hot pan true that you will brown from a cold pan. You will still be able to brown with the time and a cold pan. It's just that you also risk steaming whatever it is because it's just been sitting there for a little bit longer because if you slowly, you know, if you slowly warm something up in a pan, it's you're gonna start breaking down for example in a carrot. You're gonna start breaking down those cellular walls and water is going to come out and it's gonna end up being a little bit more pliable and mushy if it's slowly breaking down the walls like versus a slow cooker. So the reason why you would want to saute something is if you want to keep it crisp you want to Brown the outside and stop
Alicial: Gotcha. Okay, you want that crunching the veg still?
Jenn: Yeah, and so if you are going to slowly heat up a pan from cold you are breaking down the Walls a little bit more and more and more and you're not gonna get as much brown unless you like leave it in there for a while, but it's it's acting more like a slow cooker, which is more about a breaking things down over time and not necessarily getting a sear.That makes sense?
Alicia: That totally makes sense. That's actually a great way to put it a different way than I was I would have thought about it. So that's fantastic actually love that love that. So that also does that hold hands in with crowding a pan or not crowding a pan?
Jenn: Yes, crowding your pen. I like that. You said hold hands with. Yeah, a lot of recipes depending on what it is that you're cooking advice against overcrowding the pan. If you see that on the line, that means it they want you to keep the food in a single layer. The reason for that is, not all the food is going to make contact with the heated surface. This is why sometimes you need to fry things and batches or saute things in batches because if it's not all gonna fit in a single layer on the pan, you're going to pile them up. And what happens when you pile them up is the first ones on the bottom are getting that good sear, but as they cook they're releasing steam and so the second layer is not getting this sear and they're getting steamed. So you're you're getting an uneven cooking process. They're gonna come out differently.
Alicial: Right, so you're technically cooking them but they're gonna taste differently or look differently or smell different. Whatever you're gonna be different
Jenn: Right, though, I will say as a chef who colors outside of the lines a lot. There is nothing wrong. If you were just a beginner cook there is nothing wrong with overcrowding a pan. It's just gonna take a little bit longer for you. If you're in a rush, I'd be like, yeah F-IT, you know.
And it's okay that not everything is perfectly uniform the first time you're cooking a dish. But the reason, you should understand, is is when things are cooked in batches or in single layers. It's to get a consistent result.
Alicial: Interesting interesting. I did have a situation where I dumped a bunch of peppers and onions into a pan and covered it. It was kind of like I just want them to get soft.
Jenn: Yeah!
Alicia: And it was just a quick, you know, they were sort of sauteing but I just need to softness real quick before I did moved on to other things. So yeah.
Jenn: That is one way that is a way to soften your vegetables for sure because you know, as I said the steam is rising up, it will a either evaporate or you can put on a cover to use that residual Steam Heat to to steam everything else in there, or sweat. I feel like that is a word we have
Alicia: We're gonna come to sweating later.
Jenn: Yeah, so
Alicia: Which will be which I actually have a lot. I do have some very interesting questions about because I think it's an interesting.
I love that tt's called that and I love that. We're gonna talk about how vegetables do it. It's good. Yes. But I'm actually curious though. Is there anything that should not be sauteed? Like is there is there any vegetable like we also talk about how vegetable you know, sauteing is great for most diets because you can do your vegetarian
Jenn: You're pretty much anything.
Alicia:Yeah.
Jenn: I think the enemy of of all of my frying pans except for maybe my my nonsticks is a lot of sugar content. So you'll see that some some sauces some East Asian sauces. So like Teriyaki, Yakitori, tare sauce, or like like an orange chicken or glazes those have lots of sugar in them and they're cooked fairly quickly. But yeah, sauteing like straight up sugar is typically not advised unless you were working specifically with sugar work or caramels.
Alicia: Okay,
Jenn: And that is typically with non-stick material. So please please do not throw straight up sugar into your Wok.
Alicia: See that's a good advisory. That's a good this is what this is for we need these advisories. We're not necessarily get that in the definition, but you need the behind the scenes.
Jenn: Yeah, most most things will unstick themselves when you're sauteing. If you start to notice that that things are are taken up on your pan during a saute. It's either that the stuff is too soft and shouldn't really be sauteed or they will unstick eventually a lot of the the solution for sauteing things that are stuck is to let it sit and it may un-stick itself. But if it's like burning
Then the first thing you do is take the the pan off of the heat.
Alicia: Gotcha. Okay. That's that's a good distinct like because there is a fine line between letting it stick itself off and then it's just gonna start burning onto the pan.
Jenn: Yeah.
Alicia: Is there and maybe this is gonna sound silly but is there a clear way to know what's happening? Like if something sort of sticking like you let it sit there for like 30 seconds. Do you wait until you see a little bit of smoke
Jen: If you start to smell it and it's bad and then immediately remove it from the heat.
Alicia: Gotcha,
Jenn: if you don't smell anything and it's just pleasantly sizzling. It's not smoking then it may still unstick itself.
Alicia: Okay.
Jenn: laughing
Alicia: Well, I'm coming from this like I said is a lay person. So there's some things like
Jenn: I love that you're asking these questions.
Alicia: Well, I've been cooking for a long time. But a lot of it's I like to fly by the seat of my own pants. Sometimes
Jenn: you don't know the why yeah,
Alicia: I don't know the why I don't know the why and I'm a curious person and this is really where I'm getting my answers
Jenn: good I’m so glad yeah. My goodness, that was a great question folks. If you have any input on what should not be sauteed do not say gross things like babies or your pets. You know, we're yeah, you know,
Alicia: but if there's anything that you found along your travels like do not try and saute this it will not work. I would love to know about yeah.
Jenn: We love to hear, we'd love to hear it. Yeah. All right. What else what else is on your mind about sauteing?
Alicia: This kind of goes hand and hand. I think with the arena start a fire today kind of question is are there are there certain oils or butters or fats that I might use to sauté that you probably should stay away from
Jenn: interesting good question. Okay, so there are some distinctions that we need to make between types of oils. So there are neutral oils and there are finishing oils. So there are oils that are made for high heat cooking. Those are your vegetable oils cannolas safflowers?
Olive oil can sometimes depending on the grade be a saute oil and so this is where we get into finishing oils. So there are you know, cooking olive oils and then nicer finishing olive oils. So the more expensive stuff the extra extra virgin single origin. Finishing olive oils are not for cooking.
Alicia: Those are for dipping.
Jenn: Those are for dippins. Those are for dip in those are for your vinaigrettes. It's not to say you cannot cook with olive oil. There are just certain grades that you would cook with and some that you don't so finishing olive oil is not to be sauteed with and that also goes for flavored oils. Or nut oils. So those will evaporate quickly. So like walnut oil, pistachio oil those kinds of flame pumpkin oil those kinds of things are for finishing flavors only because when you cook it, all of those flavor compounds are gonna burn off and you won't have the flavors anyway, um. And then when it comes to butter, you can technically you can saute with butter if you're gonna do it very quickly.
Alicia: Okay,
Jenn: Um, but if you're gonna do a longer fry, I would say more than a couple minutes then ghee is your better option because the a lot of people will tell you not to saute with butter because it has the milk solids and so ghee in Indian cooking is clarified butter. You can also buy clarified butter. You can also do it yourself in 15 minutes. It's a it's slowly melting it.
And then separating out those milk solids and then you're left with clarified butter or ghee which can act like a vegetable oil in high heat situations and you'll see that a lot in Indian cooking
Alicia: Interesting.
Jenn: Mm-hmm.
Alicia: Yeah, we might be getting into that a little bit later too. Because I feel that's a whole other world of Butters that we may need to touch upon at some point,
Jenn: And I'm sure folks will have questions about coconut oils, but I honestly cannot tell you because I'm allergic, to coconut, so I've never cooked with it. So yeah, so folks if you have insight about cooking high heat with coconut oil coconut milk coconut fats, please shout out on Twitter or send us a note and we will happily happily learn from you about it.
Alicia: Totally I could clearly use it. So I would love the information on coconut oil that would be fantastic.
Jenn: Well, we talked for way longer than we thought we would
Alicia: That we did that we did
Jenn: But I love everything that we dove into these are all excellent questions, Alicia.
Alicia: Where I have I'm curious. I'm curious by nature. So and you're I'm happy that you're happy to talk to me. So when you put those things together. It's Gonna Get You know, it's gonna get a little And you know, it's gonna get a little informative.
Jenn: Yeah, just a little informative just a little bit tiny bit
Alicia: Tiny a little bit.
Jenn: All right, folks um.. We're gonna get back to work researching more words and recording more episodes for you. But if you'd like to sound off, please reply to us on Twitter at culinary w o t d, we love to hear your feedback or any other anecdotes facts or feedback about any of the things we discussed today. I am I am but a self-taught chef. So if you have any other academic backing for any of the things we talked about we would love to hear it. We would love to correct anything. Also if you think that we you know had a misstep, but we would happily keep learning and augmenting these words and the growing your brain wrinkles with you. So yes, thanks a lot for sticking with us, and we will be back with three more episodes for you.
Jenn & Alicia: Bye.