knock your socks off chili

Chili is one of those things that are always good. It can also be extremely cheap and easy.

A basic chili is basically a stew with meat, beans, and some kind of tomato based sauce. But to get that bowl of steaming hot goodness to really knock your socks off, we're going to have to take it up a few notches.

To start off roast 5 red bell peppers. The easiest way to do this is right on the stove. Basically what you want to do is burn the skin so it can be peeled right off. So once at a time place the peppers over the open fire, rotating them once the skin has a nice char on it. Once all the peppers are fully charred, place them in a large bowl and cover them with plastic wrap to sweat them off as they cool down.

Next is when you sear the meat. Cut about 3 pounds of chuck meat into bit sized pieces, remember meat shrinks when cooks, so don’t cut them too small. In a large bowl, mix the meat with all purpose flour, enough to coat each piece evenly. Then in a sauté pan (preferable not a non-stick pan) sear each piece of meat so that they get a nice golden color on them. Make sure there is enough fat from the meat or oil in the pan so that nothing burns off. If your pan starts to smoke up, add some oil to the pan.

Once all the meat is seared, sauté one yellow onion cut up into small pieces. Once the onions are translucent add about 10 button mushrooms cut to the same size as the meat pieces, along with 3 or 4 cloves of garlic diced extremely fine. When the mushrooms are tender add enough tomato sauce to deglaze the pan, depending on the size of your pan, you will probably need about 8 oz (half a 16 oz can).

Once the peppers have cooled down, start peeling the skin off with your fingers. If they are roasted long enough the skin will almost fall off. Next is coring and de-seeding, you can do this by cutting the pepper in half and pulling out the core and seeds. You don't want any seeds in your chili. Next slice up all the peppers to about 1/4" pieces.

Once all the peppers are cut up place them in a large pot along with the mushrooms, onions, and 2 or 3 stalks of celery sliced into 1/2" pieces. Then add the other 1 and a half cans of tomato sauce, 2 cans of tomato paste and 1 can of diced tomatoes. 

Now I like my chili to have a nice kick, so I add 1 Tbsp. cayenne pepper and 1 Tsp cinnamon.

Let that sit on a high heat until it starts to simmer, then lower the heat to a medium low heat. 

Once you have reduced the heat add a can of black beans, drained and rinsed along with the meat pieces. Give that a nice big stir so that everything is mixed evenly. 

Cook for another hour/ hour and a half, and enjoy.

mastering the deep fryer

The deep fryer has, for whatever reason, been deemed an unsafe form of cooking. But the truth is if you are careful and paying attention, deep frying food is fun and delicious.

Deep frying, in case you don't know is a form of cooking that involves submerging your food in oil that is heated to about 365 degrees, give or take. Peanut oil is preferred because of its high smoking point, but olive oil works great too.

Before you get started there are a few things you are going to want to have prepared. First the type of pot you are going to use; you want a pot that is about 5" to 6" deep and 8" to 10" in diameter. Preferable you are going to want a cast iron, but most of us don’t have a cast iron that size (even though we'd like to) so any kind of pot that size will do just fine.

Second, you are going to want to have both a pair of tongs as well as a slotted spatula on hand. You are also going to want a drying rack for when your food is done. The best thing to use is a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet, but a cookie sheet with some paper towels on it will do just fine. And lastly, a bowl of salt to season your food after it comes out of the fryer.

Next is what to fry. Theoretically, you can fry just about anything, from potatoes to bananas. Most of the time when people fry things it is because of the crunch you get from the frying batter, so let us start there. The batter used to achieve this crunch can be one of the simplest things you will ever make.

For most things you are going to use a beer batter. It’s simple and easy, and works great. In a large bowl combine flour and beer, that's it! The carbonation in the beer lends to a beautiful texture to the fried batter. Start off with one cup of flour and 1 cup of beer, and then add beer little by little until you get a consistency that is a little bit looser than a pancake batter. A little tip is to not make your batter until you are completely ready to start frying, because the longer the batter sits the less carbonation it will have. For fried chicken you won't necessarily want a beer batter, try my fried chicken recipe instead.

Ok so you are ready to start frying, but what ARE you going to fry? French fries? Onion rings? Zucchini? Banana? Chicken? Those questions I’ll leave up to you.

A few things you need to think about when you are frying are; how long will it take to cook my food? And is my oil hot enough? For the most part by the time your food is ready to be taken out, it will be fully cook, but something like a potato you are going to want to blanch first before you fry them. This is because if you fry them raw, by the time the inside is fully cooked the outside will be so burnt you wouldn’t want to eat it anymore. You, also, have to remember that every time you put something into the fryer the temperature of the oil will drop and the lower the temp the slower it will take to cook and you will in turn lose that beautiful crisp you get when you fry things. To ensure the oil stays at the right temp invest in an instant read thermometer that hooks on to the side of your pot. Eventually, after frying for a while you will be able to gauge if your oil is hot enough by how long it takes to brown whatever it is you are frying.

Now, let's get frying!!!

1-2-3 BBQ Wings

BBQ wings have been a staple of American food since, well the dawn of time. The problem is people have associating wings with unhealthy or fatty, but if you cook them right and only have a few at a time, there is no reason why you can't make some delicious BBQ wings.

I like to make my wings in what I like to call the 1-2-3

Regardless of how I cook them - stove top or grill - I start off my sprinkling all the pieces with some salt and pepper. There are some people, OK most people, who would say to soak it in buttermilk first, but I feel that it is a little unnecessary. That's step one.

Step two, when using the stove top, heat up a sauté pan with a little bit of oil. Once the pan is hot, place the chicken wings in the pan, but make sure you don't crowd them. Crowding the pan will lead to steaming the chicken instead of searing them. When searing chicken, you want to get a real nice golden crisp to the skin on all sides. Rotate the chicken until it is fully cooked.

For the grill, heat up the grill to about 450 degrees, then grill the wings until you get that great grill char on the wings, then flip and repeat until the chicken is fully cooked.

Step three is when you go from grilled wings to BBQ wings. Remove the wings from the grill or pan and place in a large bowl with your favorite BBQ sauce. Mix the wings until they have a nice coat on them, and then return them to the pan or grill to get the crisp back that was lost when you coated the wings.

And that's my 1-2-3 BBQ wings.

from beef stock to red wine reduction

Yesterday I made my first beef stock, which I, then, reduced to a demi-glase, which I used to make a red wine reduction......YUMMY!!!!!

To make a beef stock you need several thing. First is bones, lots and lots of bones, about 12 pounds of bones. Second is a mirepoix, about 3 pounds. And last is a bouquet garni.

Stock bones are one of the cheapest things you can buy from your butcher. When you buy your bones, try to get  mostly knuckles and marrow bones. The less meat the better. When the stock cooks, it basically renders out all of the flavor from the bones, and if there is a lot of meat, then you will have to skim off the fat from the surface.

Once you rinse off the bones, place them in a roasting pan and stick them in the over (preheated to about 400 degrees). Don't coat the bottom with anything, just let them cook for about an hour/ hour and a half.

Next, add your mirepoix to the roasting pan. A mirepoix (pronounced mɪərˈpwɑ) is an assortment of cut veggies, usually carrots, onions, and celery. Depending on what time of stock you are making will determine how fine of a chop you need. a beef stock cooks for about 6 hours, so you are going to want a fairly rough chop.

After another 30 minutes, add 4 to 6 oz of tomato paste to the roasting pan by spreading it over the bones and mirepoix with a spatula. Then let it cook for another 30 minutes.

Next, put everything into a pot on the stove. Now, at the bottom of the roasting pan is going to be some yummy leftovers that are stuck to the pan from the bones. To remove those pieces, place the pan on the stove over low heat, add 1 to 1 and a half cups of red or white wine, and use a wooden spoon to scrap off the pieces. Then pour everything into the pot, fill up the pot with cold water and bring it to a boil.

Once the water is boiling, add the bouquet garni, and let it simmer for 6 to 8 hours. A bouquet garni is bundle of herbs like thyme, parsley and sometimes bay leaves, usually tied together with string.

Once you have extracted the flavor you are looking for, strain out the broth, and cool it down.

The next step is the demi-glase. a demi-glase is when you take a stock and you reduce it to about half its volume, so that all that flavor is compacted and intensified. This sounds simple because there is very little to actually do. All you have to do is put on a stove on low heat, and let it simmer.

Once your demi-glase is done, the last step is the red wine reduction. To start off, dice up 2 medium shallots, place them in a sauce pan with one tbsp of butter, let those simmer for a few minutes. Then add 1 cup of red wine, and reduce it to 2/3 of its volume. After that, add 1 cup of demi-glase and let it reduce again until you get the desired flavor. Lastly, add another tbsp of butter to smooth it all out.

When done right, you are going to want to eat it with a spoon, it's that good.

Sauce Veloute & Sauce Bechamel

In addition to stocks, in my second day of my cooking class, we also made two basic sauces. The first being a basic white sauce known as Sauce Bechamel, and the second being a white gravy known as Sauce Veloute.

To make either sauce, you start off by making a roux. A roux (pronounced 'ru') is a mixture of melted butter and flower, to which you add milk for a Bachamel, or white stock for a Veloute.

The ratio of flower and butter to liquid is 1/2 an ounce of each to 1 cup of liquid, and of course, salt and pepper to taste. Additionally, for a Sauce Bachamel you will also add 1/4 of a bay leaf and freshly grated nutmeg (a micro-plane grater will be your best bet).

When making the roux, you want it to get to a "wet sand" consistency before adding the liquid. Once the milk or stock is added, keep mixing it until the roux is completely mixed into the liquid.

In our cooking class, to know when our sauces were almost done, we learned that if you scoop some of the sauce up and pour it back into the sauce and it doesn't make any noise, it is almost done.

If there are lumps in your sauce, which there most likely will be when you make it for the first time, do not worry.  Simply pour the sauce through a strainer and you are good to go.

five types of stocks

A stock is an extract from cooking meat bones and/ or fish bones and/ or vegetables in water. There are many different uses for a stock, such as sauces, soups, braises, consommé’s and aspics.There are five different types of stocks

A white stock - made with blanched veal or beef bones, along with a mirepoix (a mirepoix is a rough chop of stewing vegetables, such as onions, carrots, celery, and sometimes leek.

A chicken (white) stoke - made with chicken bones, along with a mirepoix.

A brown stock - made with chicken or beef bones and vegetables. The different between a brown stock and a white stock is for a brown stock, you first brown the bones and mirepoix in the oven, and then tomato paste is added and cooked longer.

A fish stock - made with fish bones, along with a mirepoix.

And lastly, a vegetable stock - a vegetable stock is made when meat is not desired. Although, a vegetable stock is quick and easy, it is, however, the lightest of stocks and therefore generally not used for sauces.

my first days in cooking school

On August 8th I started my first day of the 20 week, Pro 1 cooking class at New School of Cooking.

The first class was our introduction day, getting to know our teacher Laura Weinman, getting to know our way around the kitchen, kitchen and food safety, and lastly, some chopping.

My second day was much more interesting. We covered stocks and and the beginning of sauces.

A stock is an extract from cooking meat bones and/ or fish bones and/ or vegetables in water. There are many different uses for a stock, such as sauces, soups, braises, consumme's and aspics.

To my surprise there are actually five different type of sauces, a white stock, a chicken stock, a brown stock, a fish stock and a vegetable sauce.