Beyond Recipes: Understanding Techniques as a comprehensive way of learning to cook.

Urgh a ‘chef’ talking about cooking? 

Unfortunately so. 

For those that don’t know me, I am a Chef *dry heave*. What type of chef or where you ask? Fuggedaboudit.

Just know that an unfortunate amount of my time is spent in a kitchen.

Now, I like cooking. I don’t love it, but I’m alright enough at it that it’s not unenjoyable–although I have to mention thought, if you asked me to make desserts, I’d begrudgingly spend the next 2 hours making and ruining a mediocre cake, before unashamedly resorting to a Colesworth mudcake. Trust me (or don’t), it has happened before (sigh).

I’ve found though, that the cusp of liking and loving cooking, is a spectrum. It really depends on who I am cooking for. Cooking is the right mix of anxiety and creativity, and with very immediate feedback can be ego soothing –under the right circumstances. At work, whatever. As long as it’s cooked, looks pretty and tastes good: damned if I care, damned if I don’t (although don’t get me wrong, there is still a significant amount of care and effort that goes into cooking, the distinction though is that the motivation is extrinsic, essentially outside of the self, and ego driven). At home? At a friend’s? At family’s? Urgh! I’m an addict: in the zone, and non-verbal till the food hits the table. It’s intimate. It isn't work.

At the beginning of my cooking journey, and a lot of old co-workers could probably attest to it, I was– I probably still am, just to a lesser extent– a shit-fight. I couldn’t tell the function of one knife from another, a carbonara from a bosciola, nor a bechamel from a mornay. Burning pots, and curries was a pastime. I suppose like a lot of things, experience breeds familiarity. I know a lot more now, but I am also aware that there is also a lot that I don’t know. It’s nice knowing that you can hold your own, but there is also a comfort in knowing that there are whole worlds and cuisines to explore and branch into.

Cooking now feels easy. For a lot of people, it probably already is. You might have a collection of go to recipes, or cookbooks that have taught you how to do things, and if you’ve worked through a large collection, you’ll have noticed a lot of similarities between recipes, but have you ever wondered why a step has been included?  

While I believe that recipes are a good way to learn how to do things and are a relatively straightforward way of developing an understanding of cooking, I want to recommend to you the next appropriate step to take once you feel as though you’ve outgrown your recipe collection.

Depending on how much of a ‘food-nerd’ you are, this advice probably isn’t new.

When I was first learning how to cook, there were two bits of advice I remember feeling so strongly about: the first was the importance of learning to allocate the right amount of care to ensure you don’t burn out (we love self-care over here), and the second and more pertinent was the importance of learning cooking techniques, over recipes.

Now you’re probably thinking, ‘what is this bloke on about?’, but allow me to explain: recipes provide you descriptions and steps to follow, and you continue through without much thought. You focus on the method, without the underlying theory to guide your action. You are driving without knowing the road rules. Knowing the rules, and following the steps provides you with a greater insight and affords you the ability to alternate, substitute, experiment, and make something yours.

While you might not believe in making something yours, knowing what can be substituted, or omitted can allow you to make meals you truly enjoy. You want to make a gluten free bechamel for a potato bake? Substitute plain flour for gluten-free flour. Want it lactose free instead? Vegetable fat (Nutelex is a crazy hack), plant milk, nutritional yeast and lactose-free cheese.

The variations to recipes you can learn through a knowledge of technique, is enlightening. While I do admit and emphasise the importance of techniques, I do realise that you ultimately do not eat a technique. Recipes are thus the de-facto, and an acceptable way of learning, perhaps the key here is the importance of being cognizant of the various techniques employed throughout the recipe. For instance, if we look at these three Bolognese recipes:

a. Bon Appetit

b. RecipeTin  Eats

c. BBC Good Eats 

In all the recipes they essentially start with the use of sauteed onions. In recipes a and c the onions are sautéed with carrots and celery, in an aromatic mixture known the 'Soffritto' in Italian or 'Mirepoix' in French. Across cuisines, these base vegetables, sometimes referred to as their respective holy trinities can vary. For instance, in Spanish cooking they have sofrito: tomato, peppers (capsicum) and onions; in Cajun cuisine they use peppers, onions, and celery, and in German they use Suppenggrun: leeks, carrots, and celeriac. These aromatic vegetables when cooked provide a base flavour that can be built upon.

Across all these recipes, they require you to brown the meat. Best refereed to as the Maillard reaction, browning is essentially cooking at a high heat. Cooking at higher temperatures, induces a complex chemical reaction that results in an aromatic and flavourful product. Now, if we look at the recipes, there is a difference between when to brown your meat. In recipe a, they brown the meat, then remove it, however in b and c, the beef is cooked with the soffritto. Recipe a also has the cook wiping out the pot. An interesting point of discussion is that you lose flavour by cleaning out the pot in recipe a, whereas all that flavour is locked in and reduced in the other two recipes. Another way I have seen that flavour used (which admittedly isn’t traditional) is with the addition of flour to soak up the fat, that when combined with stock makes a velouté that adds a saucy consistency to the meat sauce.

If you read enough articles, and recipes, you eventually come across the adage that ‘fat is flavour’. Sure, fat on its own can be disgusting, however in the cooking process, and on a chemical level, it plays a significant role in which it both extends and develops flavours, while also keeping meat moist. In recipes a and c, there is the distinct inclusion of a cured pork product, pancetta in a, and bacon in c. This, as well as the aforementioned Maillard reaction, provide two levels of flavour distinction to the meat sauce: one of the cured pork, and the other of the developed flavour through the browning, as well as the required fat to enhance the flavour of the soffritto base.

Following this the meat is added back to the pot.

In recipes c, after the meat is added back to the pot, the remaining ingredients, tins of tomato, herbs, stock and wine, are added to the pot and allowed to simmer away till the sauce is done.

In a and b, wine is added to the meat. Once the meat is caramelised, it leaves flavourful bits at the bottom of the pot, known as fond or sucs, liquid is added –in our case wine– to deglaze the pan. This liquid is then allowed to reduce– the technical term for simmering to reduce the amount, while increasing flavour. The use of alcohol, like fat allows for extra flavour by essentially unlocking the flavour molecules that are alcohol soluble.

Now, what is probably almost –but not really –conventional wisdom is to match the wine to the colour of the sauce. A lot of recipes like b and c call for red wine, c however uses white. In my own experience, I have found that a nice dry white wine adds acidity and consequentially a lightness and kick to a Bolognese, an already heavy tomato and meaty dish, compared to a red which can add to the heavy feel.

In recipe b, following the reduction of the wine, the remaining ingredients are added then the sauce is allowed to simmer away.

In the final recipe, after the wine has reduced, the tomato paste is added with herbs and browned off. Like the soffritto and the meat that preceded the tomato paste, allowing it time in the pot to caramelise allows for more flavour to be developed through the dish. Following this, stock is added for more flavour, and milk for added creaminess, as well as to counter the acidity of the tomato paste. Unlike the former recipes, there isn’t a need for crushed tomatoes to be added. The meat sauce is then simmered away.

The selected recipes will undoubtedly result in flavourful meals. From experience, and subject matter knowledge I would argue, that if I were to follow a recipe from start to finish, with no deviation, it would have to be recipe a. Through the above analysis, we can see that the additional steps, and thus techniques allow for more flavour to be extracted from the ingredients, thus producing an –arguably– better product.

So, following this brief analysis, what have we learnt?

•  Base flavours are developed through the use of aromatics.
• Maillard reaction refers to the chemical reaction that enhances flavours and results in caramelised product.
• Flavour compounds can be water, fat, or alcohol soluble. Using these ingredients can help unlock levels of flavour. 
• Light wines for lighter flavoured sauces, and vice versa.
• Deglazing a pan dissolves the caramelised bits at the bottom of the pot.
• Reducing liquids results in a concentrated flavour.

Now that we’ve come to understand a handful of techniques, it thus becomes interesting to consider how these can be used across other recipes, or cooking endeavours. For instance, if we’re cooking a stew and or curry, the meat can be browned to produce fond. The aromatics are added and caramelised. Other additions like tomato or the relevant curry paste are added and cooked out, to then be respectively deglazed with wine, then, or stock, before being cooked out until the meat is tender.

“A stew is pretty much like a bolognese anyway” I hear you say, maybe let’s take a grilled dish of some sort.

Recently, I have been extremely partial to Grilled Chicken in a Creamy Cajun Sauce. Technique wise it’s pretty easy: the chicken is marinated in Cajun spices, and grilled, caramelised on both sides till half cooked. The sauce is cooked in a pot. Butter is melted, and spices bloomed, fat soluble flavours are imparted through the butter. The onions, celery, and bell peppers are then added and caramelised. Flour is added to soak up the liquid flavour, then cooked out. Milk and stock are added till a sauce consistency is reached, before cheese is folded through. Add chicken to a separate tray, and cover with sauce. Cook in the oven till chicken is all the way done. Simples.   

I suppose, with experience, looking at the bigger picture is easy.

What I’m getting at is that cooking as a skill is more than creating, at it’s core, like a lot of art, and science, is about understanding ‘why’ as much as ‘how’. While I believe that recipes provide a detailed, and helpful guide for 'how', technique truly provides you the 'why', and the ability to adapt and work without recipes. Whether that be through the Maillard reaction providing a depth, to balancing flavours between the five tastes, to deglazing and reduction enhancing the overall richness of a dish. Being able to recognise techniques, and how they are applicable to a wide range of recipes is beyond following instructions. It allows you to adapt recipes to your palate, dietary needs, or to what you have on hand, and I argue that that is where the real joy of cooking lies– not in the repetition, but in the understanding of fundamentals that allows you to branch out, learn and create dishes that are, at the very least, delicious. At the end of the day, cooking should be more than a task– it should be an experience.

It feels as though I’ve fallen off the ‘new year, new me’ bandwagon. Ironically, I suppose I have become 'lost in ennui'. Perhaps after exhausting the stores of new possibilities, reality has set back in? Maybe it’s a sign that motivation for newness is novel, and that to continue through to the vision of the ideal self, one must instead become disciplined and calculated in how they move? Whatever the case–and I personally lean to the latter– I am back, and hopefully will be posting regularly!

~M~

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