Tips & Techniques – FoodWatcher

The Absolute Easiest Trick for Cleaning Your Grill

Why is it important to clean a grill? And how come leaving charred bits and leftover cooking oil doesn’t season the grates similar to a cast iron skillet? Well, first and foremost, grilling meats at high temperatures can actually produce carcinogens, which are then left behind on the grill, so it’s important to keep the grates maintained. Beyond that, regularly cleaning your grill will lengthen its life, prevent dangerous flare-ups, and simply make your food taste better.

We know that summer is officially in full swing, but here's a tip that will carry you well beyond the Fourth of July: how to clean your grill, using things you already have lying around. All you'll need for this quick hack is a piece of aluminum foil and a pair of tongs. Oh, plus your dirty grill grate and a little bit of elbow grease.

It’s Been 14 Years Since I Went to Culinary School—These Are the Lessons I’ll Never Forget

It’s been 14 years since I enrolled in a year-long culinary school program, and I’ve regrettably lost more knowledge than I’ve retained. Rich little memories will occasionally resurface, however: finding a spiny sea urchin on top of a locker in the cha…

It's been 14 years since I enrolled in a year-long culinary school program, and I’ve regrettably lost more knowledge than I’ve retained. Rich little memories will occasionally resurface, however: finding a spiny sea urchin on top of a locker in the changing room one night after class; holding a kelp-like piece of vinegar mother and fearing it might crawl across my hand like an inchworm; watching the two googly eyes of a flatfish stare back while I ~~destroyed~~ filleted my first fish.

As my career path veered away from the professional kitchen and to the writing table, many of the hard-won rewards from that year of practice fell by the wayside in favor of long-held cooking habits. But it took some time and distance to realize I’d retained a few fundamentals that forever changed the way I cook and see food, even if the dishes I prepare week to week remain mostly the same.

A Beginner’s Guide to Cooking With Kief & Hash

Next to my olive oil and kosher salt sits a small, hotel-size jam jar of decarbed kief. As a food writer, recipe developer, and maker of my own cannabis-infused confections, this simple form of concentrated cannabis allows me to have weed at the ready to sprinkle into any recipe without extra work or complicated calculations. Kief is to cannabis cooking what granulated sugar is to sugar cane, or all-purpose flour is to wheat: the accessible, easy-to-use version of a plant that’s been processed for home-cooking convenience.

Like all-purpose flour versus wheat kernels, using kief instead of flower cuts the cooking time for making edibles in half. It also leaves the more expensive cannabis buds for the format in which they taste best: twisted up in a joint, not steeped in butter for hours on end. Meanwhile, kief—aka the concentrated resins of cannabis plants—is easily available in states where weed is legal and is ideal because it simply melts into any fat. That’s right: You can use kief to make edibles without worrying about preparing cannabis-infused butter or oil ahead of time. Beyond the ease of cooking with it, kief tastes less grassy than flower and packs a lot more potency. In a nutshell, cooking with kief (and other concentrated forms of cannabis, such as hash) yields tastier edibles while delivering a powerful high.

The Right Way to Caramelize Onions

While following a weeknight pork ragú recipe from a celebrity chef who shall remain nameless, I came across the following, offending phrase in the method: “Cook onions until caramelized, 25 to 30 minutes.”

It doesn’t seem to matter how many articles, …

It doesn’t seem to matter how many articles, books, or cooking shows try to set the record straight. Even the experts among us cling to the hope that it’s possible to caramelize onions in 20 or 30 minutes, when in reality it takes about an hour to do it properly.

13 Essential Cooking Tips We Learned From Our Moms

Being an only child, my mom has always been much more than just a mom to me. She’s also my best friend. Sure, there were plenty of times when—as a parent—she dropped the iron hammer, but we’ve always had a closeness that was more like friendship.

Grow…

Being an only child, my mom has always been much more than just a mom to me. She's also my best friend. Sure, there were plenty of times when—as a parent—she dropped the iron hammer, but we've always had a closeness that was more like friendship.

Growing up she obviously taught me a lot of very important things: work hard, make good choices, and don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. But when it comes to cooking, the most important thing she instilled in me was small: Keep an organized work station, and clean up as you go.

5 Smarter Ways to Clean Your Kitchen, According to Pro Chefs

As much as I love to cook, cleaning my kitchen is one of my most dreaded—even feared—household tasks. It doesn’t take long for dishes to pile up, my limited pantry space is a jumble of spices and jars, and my dirty pans sit on the stove longer than I’d like to admit. I’d pretty much given up on remedying the situation—that is, until I spoke to three cooking pros about their smartest, cleverest, and most-trusted techniques for kitchen cleaning. From general words of wisdom to specific, practical tips, the advice from these chefs has reminded me that keeping my kitchen clean doesn’t have to be (such) a chore.

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1. Stay Organized

You may think this goes without saying, but it’s so important that I’m saying it anyway: Staying organized is the first step to improving your kitchen clean-up process. “The biggest mistake I see home cooks make is not staying organized from the get go,” says Caroline Schiff, acclaimed pastry chef at Brooklyn’s Gage & Tollner. “The process of mise en place, which is a restaurant standard practice, keeps you neat and organized as you work,” she explains. “Starting off this way means the whole process will be more streamlined—even clean-up.”

Everything You Need to Know About Dutch Oven Cooking

The Dutch oven—or as I like to call it, the analog crock pot—is a favorite among those who love cooking. The hype around Dutch ovens exists for good reason: They are highly effective, beautiful, dynamic, and durable pieces of cookware. Many of the dishes central to your core cold-weather food memories likely came from a Dutch oven, as it is the ideal vessel for braised short ribs, seafood stew, sourdough bread, and countless other cozy classics.

As someone who also loves to cook, allow me to stay true to form—here is everything you need to know about Dutch oven cooking.

An Underrated (& Simple!) Technique for Fancy-Feeling Eggs

I’ve been trying to spread the gospel of coddled eggs to friends, coworkers, acquaintances—really, anyone who will listen. But I keep getting a similar response along the lines of, “What on earth is that?”

I’ll give you the short answer first: A coddl…

I’ll give you the short answer first: A coddled egg is simply an egg gently cooked in a ramekin-like container (outfitted with a screw-on lid) in a pot of simmering water. Safely nestled in their individual vessels, the egg gets cooked by what is essentially a warm bath.

Don’t Forget to Sterilize Your Canning Jars—Here’s How

We’ve officially reached the point in summer when my garden is producing way more vegetables than we could possibly eat. I’m talking 3 or 4 pounds of cucumbers per day! Because I hate to see anything go to waste, I started learning how to preserve produce a few years ago, and now, canning is one of my favorite summertime activities. On any given weekend, you can find me pickling cucumbers, zucchini, and beets or making jam from homegrown rhubarb and peaches.

I’ll be the first to admit that canning can be a bit intimidating, as you have to follow recipes precisely and properly sterilize your equipment to ensure the food is safe to eat down the road. There’s a lot of different information online about how to sterilize canning jars, so we turned to the experts at Ball for definitive answers on how it should be done and when it’s necessary. Here’s what they told us.

How to Prevent Freezer Burn Once and For All

Freezers are magical appliances: They allow us to save homemade soups and sauces for months on end, keep ice cream frozen for our daily after-dinner sundaes, and store ice for cocktail parties (a must). As essential as it is to freeze leftovers and frozen pizzas for zippy suppers, freezers aren’t always our friends. In fact, they can sometimes be the foe—namely, when so-called “freezer burn” infiltrates our supply of frozen foods.

Let’s get one thing clear: Freezer-burned food is completely safe to eat. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “freezer burn is a food-quality issue, not a food safety issue.” The FDA notes that freezer burn often presents itself as “as grayish-brown leathery spots” on the food in question. So even though freezer burn doesn’t always look or taste quite right, it doesn’t mean your food is spoiled or otherwise harmful if consumed.

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1. Stay Organized