Continuing on from an earlier Kitchen Tips, today we’ll talk about roasting. Whether working with cuts of meat or vegetables the basics are the same. Roasting can considered a style of baking because, just like baking, your food is cooked by being subjected to heat on all sides from hot air.

Roasting is almost always done uncovered, in a shallow pan and with little to no water. Why? Browning. These settings allow your food to keep (relatively) dry to brown and crisp. Adding water can result in more of a steaming effect which you don’t really want.

With vegetables (and I suppose meats as well), you want to keep into consideration spacing. As your vegetables cook they will release their moisture. If you crowd your vegetables they will essentially steam/moisturize each other; giving less browning (there are some exceptions to this, but not many). The spacing depends on the situation, but I recommend starting with half an inch and exploring from there. Remember, pans are cheap, but good food is priceless!

There are days when I get home from work where all I want to do is dig into some food as quickly and simply as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook, but we all have our ‘meh’ days. On those days I just want all my ingredients at home practically ready to go. Wouldn’t it be great if you came home to find your vegetables freshly chopped?

I’m not much a fan of frozen vegetables for most dishes, but I do recognize the value of frozen meats. When you have some beef tips or chicken breasts in the fridge you’ve got a small window of availability before they begin to spoil; usually within a few days. If you freeze it, however, then your window can range from a few months to even a full year (keep in mind, after a month most begin to slowly degrade in quality). But how to get that meat ready to be cooked and in my stomach as quickly as possible?

Cooking meats before they are fully thawed can be, to quote the Joy of Cooking (also known as my culinary bible), disastrous. Not only do you run the risk supporting the growth of harmful bacteria, you will most likely end up with something that’s cooked on the outside and raw on the inside. Not exactly good eats. If you know your meat’s thaw time in the fridge and you plan ahead, no problem. But stuff happens. You run out the door on your way to work and forget to move something from the freezer to the fridge only to return in the evening, stomach growling, with a frozen block of unhappiness. Sigh…

When this happens, use a technique I picked up from an episode of Alton Brown’s Good Eats: running cold water. Put your meat in an airtight bag, place that bag in a bowl of cold water, and place that bowl under a small trickle of water in your sink. The trickle ensures the water stays cold (warm water = bacteria fun zone) while not spiking your water bill. This method is safer and faster than on your counter top.

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If you’ve spent some time trying to cook meals from scratch then you’ve probably across the terms sautéing and sweating. These are pretty common terms for many recipes where you simply apply combine heat, vegetables (often aromatics) and a little fat (often oil). However this deceivingly simple trifecta hides many processes that can yield wildly different results. Today we’ll focus on the two most common.

Sauté comes from the French word sauter, to jump, and it’s where you apply relatively high heat to brown the ingredients, trapping in its moisture and flavor. The goal is to preserve the uniqueness of the individual ingredient with only minimal, subtle mingling of flavors. This is often used in dishes like stir-fries or perhaps as an initial step before searing some meat. I personally love sautéd onions and peppers in my burgers (when I eat burgers, of course). The browning tends to add its own unique touch to the ingredient; enhancing it.

Sweating comes from the Italian word soffrito, underfrying, and this is done with low heat. The goal of sweating is to pull the flavor out of the vegetables so that it can influence the liquid in your dish along with the other ingredients. You will often find this done in one of my most often cooking forays: soups. Certain vegetables, like onions, will become translucent after sweating and very little browning should occur. If you see browning, it’s often a sign that your heat is too high or amount of fat is too low.

I find that some people don’t pay full attention to which one they’re doing when cooking. I strongly encourage you to take a moment next time your working with something like a mirepoix to ask yourself what the recipe is telling you to do and why it makes sense (or doesn’t) with the dish you’re making. Enjoy.

Gather around children, it’s time for this weeks installment of Kitchen Tips.

Garlic, while an excellent aromatic, burns very easily; and when it burns it becomes very bitter. While there may be dishes that call for a very bitter flavor, many don’t and you burn your garlic, you’re done. Game over. That bitter is not going away.

So when you’re cooking with something on a wok with very few ingredients to absorb the heat (like my Baby Bok Choy recipe), start with a cold wok and cold oil. This heat up process will infuse the oil with all that garlicky goodness without burning. If you’re cooking with other aromatics like onion, consider adding your garlic with the other vegetables or the protein.