Welcome to lesson 1 of my guide to making you a better cook. The first lesson in the series is on Braising, which is traditionally a great way to make use of the cheaper parts of the animal which have been more heavily used during the animals life and require longer, slower methods of cookery to make them more palatable and flavoursome. Why start with braising? Quite simply it is probably my favourite method of cooking. Is that a good enough reason? Probably not but hey, what's the point of being in charge if you can't decide which path to follow. There are other reasons to start with braising as well. It is a simple method of cooking which brings great flavours and aromas to your meal and your home whilst you are cooking. Is there anything better than arriving through the front door and just as you turn the door handle you catch the waft of delicious food smells drawing you inside? There may be a couple of things in your life that better it but day to day this is definitely up there.
In today's lesson I will outline 3 basics dishes which will be used to highlight the braising technique that I believe will help you understand and give a little window into where you can take this style of cookery. The first will be a European influenced Braised Lamb shank recipe, the second an Asian slow cooked pork shoulder and a third will give either a vegetarian side dish to be enjoyed alongside any nights dinner or as a stand alone vegetarian meal, a simple braised mixed vegetables.
First lets start with a quick bit of history and theory on braising. Promise I'll keep it brief. The word braise dates back to the 18th century. It comes from the French word of the time for coal. It refers to the practice of putting coals under and on top of the cooking vessel to create the heat to cook the food inside of the box shaped vessel. The vessel with a secure fitting lid was placed on the coals and covered over the top by more coals. I told you I would keep it brief.
Technique
The important part of this lesson is not to copy a few recipes but more importantly to uncover the techniques so you will be either able to understand the recipes you are using or to cook with true freedom and creativity to make something that is truly your own creation.
Steps to braising success
Firstly, braising is essentially a way of cooking larger pieces of meat and vegetables. Below you will see that I have used the ever popular lamb shanks, and pork shoulder with the bone in. Cooking on the bone is a great way to achieve extra flavour. When completely cooked the meat will fall from the bone with only the use of a spoon and fork. (Trust me on this. If you need a knife then it is not ready). Whole baby vegetables are also great for braising. They present nicely on the plate as well. Once you get the technique you'll be able to play around with it and find what is pleasing to you.
Brown the meat in a deep pan with a fitted lid. Enough oil in the pan to stop it sticking will be good. Amounts of oil in a recipe are somewhat misleading I find. The amount of oil required is more dependant on the size of the pan or size of the meat surface which touches the pan itself. You need enough oil to cover that surface. So to start, turn on the pan to medium heat. After a couple of minutes (get to know your stove and if it heats quickly or slowly) add the oil. If the oil gets a shimmer not unlike a heat shimmer on the surface of the road on a crazy hot summers day, then you are ready to add the meat. Brown the meat deeply on all sides. This is an essential step. The more browning, the more flavour in your end product. I can't stress enough the importance of browning the meat thoroughly to get extra flavour at recipes end. Once browned all over remove the meat from the cooking vessel and add a little more oil if needed (this may not be necessary) and then add in the aromatics. Brown these also. What am I talking about here? The aromatics or aroma giving vegetables are traditionally carrot, onion, celery, and leek. Add all or a combination of these to the pan and cook over medium to high heat until browning starts to occur. At this stage add in other flavouring herbs or spices which may be prone to easy burning and cook out before adding back the main attraction i.e. the meat and deglazing the pan with beer, wine or stock to pick up the fond or those little bits of flavoursome goodness that have tried to attached themselves to the surface of your pan. At this stage add water or stock to approximately ⅔ cover the meat, top with a lid (this will shorten the time it takes for the water to boil) and when it comes to a boil reduce the temperature so that the liquid is at a gentle simmer.
What is a simmer? A very gentle boil. Basically you want the water surface bubbling as gently as possible without causing the water to boil over the sides of your pan.
From here we simmer away until the meat is ready to fall from the bone. In the case of the lamb shanks you may wish to cook gently enough so that the meat is still attached to the bone for serving but requires only spoon and fork at the table to detach it from it's bone. Hopefully during cooking your sauce has reduced down to a nicely textured sauce to serve with your dish. However, if the sauce is too watery or runny you may need to remove the meat from the vessel and then with the lid removed simmer more vigorously to reduce the sauce to the consistency required. Now you can either plate your dish with the rich unctuous sauce or add some brightening garnishes. During braising the flavoursome vegetables that provided early layering of flavour have done their job. At the end we need to finish off with some brightening flavours and textures to bring some energy to the dish. An example from a traditional dish is the French Beef Bourguignon which is finished with garnishes of pan fried mushrooms, crisp batons of bacon and topped with fresh parsley.
Braised Lamb Shanks
Ingredients
2 tbsp neutral oil
2 Lamb Shanks
Salt and pepper
3 sprigs Rosemary
2 Brown Onions
2 stalks celery
2 carrots
4 cloves Garlic
2 cups red wine
2 cups low salt stock or homemade stock
2 tbsp tomato paste
400g chopped tomatoes
1/2 bunch Parsley
Method:
1. Wash and dice the onion, carrot and celery. In most recipes it will make life easier if you go through and prep your ingredients prior to cooking the dish. There are exceptions where ingredients for example an apple will discolour after preparation but generally it will make life easier if you pre prepare your ingredients. This is what has already happened on most cooking shows. Yes you have a few more bowls to wash at night's end but mostly they only need a quick wipe out and they are clean anyway. It's worth it to make your cooking a less panicked and more relaxed affair. Remove the rosemary from the woody centre sprigs. Peel your garlic. To do this, simply press your chef's knife or other wide knife down on the side of the garlic clove. This will cause the white garlic skin which feels a little like paper to release from the garlic clove. Slice the garlic, not too finely. The finer the chop the more easily it will burn. In fact in this dish you could get away with tossing them in whole. Wash the parsley and separate the stems from the leaves. Now for parsley simple chopping the parsley leaves and stems together will be fine as the part of the stem that has leaves is quite thin and leaves don't need to be plucked as you would with basil. The lower part of the parsley stem though needs to be left as batons with a trimming of the base to remove any grit. These will be used to add flavour to our base right from the start of cooking. One last thing. When you get your shanks home from the shops take them from the butchers bag and season with salt. The earlier you season your meats the more tender and flavourful will be your resultant meal.
2. Okay on to cooking. This dish I started the cooking on the stovetop in a cast-iron casserole dish and finished in the oven. It could have also been cooked on the stovetop over low heat for the journey. The choice is yours. I find that in the oven you can leave it and forget it whilst you get on with your day but on the stove you need to give more attention to keep stirring and making sure the base of the dish is not burning. Turn on the heat and allow the casserole to heat for a few minutes over high heat. Add the oil and when it gets that heat shimmer add in your lamb shanks to brown. This step is integral to overall success. Brown deeply on all sides, this will give the rich, deep flavours to you recipe. If you find that it is burning rather than browning reduce your heat to medium and brown more slowly. This step could take 10 minutes. Be patient.
3. When browned remove the shanks to a side plate. Allow a minute or so for the heat to increase in your pan and then add in the chopped vegetables. If you need a little more oil don't be scared. How do you know if you need more oil? If the pan looks dry or you find the vegetables sticking to the base. Again, we want colour. Rich unctuous browning is building layers of flavour. After about 5 minutes add in the garlic. Stir to prevent burning. Add back the shanks, the rosemary and tomato paste. move the tomato paste around to stop it burning, though you do need for it to fry a little before you add other liquid. If you just stir it in you will get a rawish acidity to your finished dish.
4. Just prior to the tomato paste starting to cook too much or burn add in the red wine to deglaze your dish. when you add it in get a spoon and scratch at the base and edges of your pot to release the browned edges of you ingredients. Those little yummy browned bits have a name and that name is fond. I just searched the word fond to confirm the meaning of the word and one of the google results says that the word fond is used incorrectly to describe the little brown bits attached to your pan. So, ... maybe don't use that. Little bits, yum, brown, add flavour. What else do you need to know. Reduce the red wine by half. How do you know that it is half in amongst all the other ingredients? You don't. Simmer for about 5 minutes and it'll be alright.
5. Add in the parsley stems and tinned tomatoes. Pinch of pepper, teaspoon of sugar, stir in to incorporate. Why sugar? Why not salt? Sugar will bring out the sweetness of the tomatoes and balance the acidity in them as well. Salt was added to the shanks earlier before you started to cook. Lid on.
6. Transfer your cast-iron casserole dish to the oven which is hopefully pre-heated to 160 ℃ and leave it to do it's magic for 2 hours. Remove lid and allow liquid to reduce for another 30 minutes.
7. first check if the Shanks are ready. Does the meat still adhere to the bone? If yes give it another ½ hour and check again. If this is the case just make sure the sauce hasn't reduced too much and add a ¼ to ½ a cup of water to correct it needed. If the shanks are tender and ready to eat then you need to move them to a plate and check your sauce. If the sauce is thick enough to attach itself to you shanks then you simply need to test for seasoning. Take a spoonful and adjust with extra salt, pepper or even sugar if needed. If too sweet then you could even brighten the meal with a tablespoon of red wine vinegar. These slow cooked dishes can be comfort food heaven with all their richness and slowly built flavours, however, acidity or even a little pan-fried bacon or pancetta or mushrooms and fresh parsley could make a magical finishing touch.
Asian Style pork Shoulder
Ingredients
500g Pork shoulder
2 tbsp. neutral oil
4 cloves garlic
2 ½ cm piece of ginger
2 medium brown onions
3 tbsp. hoisin sauce
1 stick cinnamon
3 star anise
3 tbsp. soy sauce
3 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. rice vinegar
1 tbsp. cloves
1 tbsp. black peppercorns
water to half cover the pork
3 tbsp. Chinese rice wine
This second recipe is here to highlight the similarities from our first braising recipe above. Particularly note the browning of the meat, moving to the side to add aromatic or flavour building ingredients prior to adding liquid to slowly cook the meat and allow time for the flavours to permeate the Pork. This dish was prepared completely on the stovetop in a Sauté pan with a good fitting lid.
Method
1. Dice the onion, peel the ginger and roughly chop it into small pieces. Ginger should be chopped smallish but really it isn't critical for it to be a fine dice or anything in particular. The joy of braising is that most things you add will breakdown during the cooking process.
2. Heat your high-sided pan with lid for a few minutes to get nice and hot. Add the oil and then the pork shoulder, on the bone is preferable. The rule is cook on the bone if possible as it will give flavour. When cooking is done the meat can be detached from the bone with no effort at all. Brown as we did in recipe 1 until well browned all over.
3. Move meat out of the pan. Give the pan a minute to regain it's heat and then add in the onions. Allow a few minutes for the onions to start to colour. When this occurs add in all the other ingredients except the water and the Chinese rice wine and the vinegar. Cook until the ingredients become aromatic which should only take a couple of minutes. Add in the Chinese rice wine to deglaze the pan and then add back in the Pork. Top with enough water to half cover the meat and use a wooden spoon to make sure that nothing has caught on the base of the pan.
4. Bring to the boil then reduce to a gentle simmer and top with your lid. Simmer for a couple of hours or until a fork can pull the meat from the bone.
5. In the case of this recipe as you won't be serving the meat on the bone you can simply pull apart the meat with a couple of forks, remove the bones and simmer until the sauce is thick enough for your liking. The other option, often used in Asian cooking is to thicken the sauce with a tablespoon of corn flour mixed with a little cool water and then poured into the sauce. When the sauce boils the sauce will thicken. When completed stir in the vinegar which will help brighten the dish and cut through some of the richness of the pork.
6. I would recommend serving the meal with steamed rice and garnish with pickled mustard greens which will bring acidity much like the vinegar but also some freshness and crunch.
Hopefully I have been able to show that even though these two dishes are very different from one another in origin they are both utilising very similar methods of cookery. Browning of meat and flavourings at the start of the process to build flavour and richness before simmering slowly to break down the proteins and give melt in the mouth meats filled with lovely rich flavours.
Braised vegetables
Ingredients
1 tbsp. butter
1/2 kg mixed vegetables
2 bay leaves
500ml stock
a few sprigs of thyme
3 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 carrot
2 tbsp. Tomato Paste
Method
1. I bet you can almost guess the steps for this one. Dice the carrot and onion, peel and slice the garlic. For the half kilo of vegetables you are ideally looking for baby vegetables or at least smaller vegetables like young zucchini, mushrooms, cauliflower florets or really whatever you like to eat.
2. Heat the pan, add the butter though you could use oil instead of or as well as the butter. Add in the diced onion and carrot. Cook for about 5 minutes or until you see some colour. Remember colour early on equals flavour at the end. Add in your larger vegetables and brown a little as you did with the meat in the first two recipes. Add in the tomato paste and cook out.
3. You could use a little white wine to deglaze the pan at this point and reduce the wine before adding in the stock. Add in the bay leaves and Thyme sprigs.
4. Simmer for around 20 minutes with the lid on or until the vegetables are tender but are still maintaining their structural integrity.
5. Again as we did above, remove in this case, the large vegetables and then increase the temperature to thicken the sauce. Also at this time you should remove the bay leaves and sprigs of Thyme.
6. When the sauce reaches the right consistency add back your large vegetables and fold in to coat with the sauce.
I hope these three dishes illustrate the technique of braising in a way that can be bent and moulded to your needs. The most important thing is the technique of braising.
Very simple the steps are these:
Heat fat in deep pan.
Brown meat or vegetables. Set aside.
Add flavouring aromatics such as onion, carrot, celery and garlic or ginger. Brown.
Add back in meat or larger vegetables.
Deglaze the pan usually with wine or other alcohol.
Half cover with stock.
Cover with lid and simmer over low heat until meat or vegetables are tender.
Thicken sauce by reducing or by use of a thickening agent such as cornflour.
Brighten the dish with a fresh or acidic or crisp garnish.
Serve with appropriate carb such as rice or mashed potato, although you could make an argument for a crisp roast potato to balance the saucy dish.
I think that folks is the end of lesson 1. Hope you have enjoyed it and learnt something along the way. Most of all, Happy Cooking!!!
