Understanding a cooking method?

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i didnt write that the right way.(dont see a delete,sorry).i do understand heat source and process its just like with braising i think steaming is the biggest part in cooking the meat here in the braising,so i thought the heat source should be steaming .

Braised foods are mostly covered with liquid. So the method of getting heat into the food is by convection and conduction. As the water heats, it rises to the surface of the cooking vessel, and transfers its energy to the food through directly touching it (conduction). Poaching is a very similar method of cooking compared with braising. But in poaching, the liquid is not allowed to come to a boil at all while the food is in the poaching liquid. Also, poaching is done usually on the stove top. You can braise food in a slow cooker, over a campfire, on the stove top, in the oven, even in a solar oven if you want. Braising is simply the act of cooking food that is mostly covered with liquid, at a slow boil, or simmer. It is done for a long period of time to bring the food slowly up to about 190' F. The slow cooking helps to break down (soften) tough, protein fibers, collagen, fat, and cartillage. The juices from the braised food are almost always used to make sauces and gravies to go with the braised food. This makes sense as the liquid removes significant flavor, and water soluble nutrients from the food being braised.

Seeeeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
on a web site it said.....if using a cooking bag ...steams the meat bec. traps moisture and meat braises in the moisture. So,is this a correct statement? Thanks The only thing in the cooking bag was flour,no additional water. Just what came from chicken.
 
What website? It's pretty much up to you where you want to get your information. We have given you our opinions, now you have to decide who you believe.
 
Pri-Fi has been cooking a good long time, and knows her stuff. I have an engineering degree, for which I had to take two physics classes, some chemistry, and a whole bunch of math and electronics courses, plus, I have been trained in the scientific methods, as well as having a love for cooking techniques and arts for well over thirty years. GLC, though I don't know him personally, I can vouch for the knowledge he brings to the table. Andy is one of the people on this site who I simply do not question, well, maybe once or twice. Between myself, and the people I've named, I would suspect that we have over 150 years of cooking experience. And there are many more who I haven't named, such as LPBier, and so many more that I couldn't name them.

If you still doubt, go into several of the on-line dictionaries, such as Websters, or any of the on-line cooking dictionaries, such as Epicurean, and look it up. Do some research. Try techniques. The best way to learn this stuff, besides asking someone you trust, is to do it yourself, carefully, and with no pre-formed expectations. Use scientific methods to confirm your results.

You will learn what you need to know, grasshopper. But it will take years, literally.

Seeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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understanding

i know what u guys said and i respect your answers. This web site someone said was really good for a newbie and i wanted to run some things it said past you. Guess i will dismiss this site. I feel their statements are wrong,based on what i have been told.
 
If it goes in my oven and it's not specifically being roasted (dry heat), almost in every case, I would call it "baked". I would not roast lasagna or a cake, but bake it. But I might roast a turkey. If I steam something, it's on top of the stove in a steamer.
 
With reference to information from web sites, the Internet is pretty much the Wild West. And more and more sites are chasing fewer and fewer dollars (pennies) from Google ads and similar services. The Web is increasingly hungry for content. I think anyone who frequents Yahoo's news page and reads both Yahoo articles and those they republish from Shine, etc. has seen many, many articles, perhaps more than half of them, proffering advice and information that the reader knows are patently false. It's obvious that a great many of the content writers simply develop an article idea and just guess at their facts. Content doesn't pay enough (often nothing) to justify even a modicum of research. I find so many blatantly false statement in fields where I am trained or have studied or experienced that I discount pretty much anything in such articles. It's all free to read, and so it is worth exactly what you pay for it.

That's why sites like this are so valuable. Even if someone is moved to confabulate in order to see their words in print (in pixels?), it's a collaboration, and there are plenty of others to call them on it. And almost everyone tries to honestly help and speaks of what they know. Or at least of what someone's question has moved them to learn. It's information. I know a lot of the time, I have a notion of the answer, but having to answer it in prose has made me learn something to make my answer both accurate and sensible. It's inspiration. It's great discussion. Sometimes, it's great argument to the point of settling the disagreement by agreeing that it can't be settled, which is also a useful result, because not everything has a pat answer.

If you hang around her for long and make an effort to work on the problems that are presented, you eventually get to know a lot more than you used to know. It the consistently best part of my day, even when my intent comes through wrongly and I get the official D.C. rolled up newspaper to the nose.
 
+1 GLC!

Further,

Sometimes discussing the fine points of some questions becomes a splitting of hairs. It gets to the point in a discussion where the next level of refinement of an answer is not important to the cooking process but becomes important on it's own.

In this thread, it's really important to understand moist and dry cooking methods in order to create top notch dishes in the oven. Further discussion of whether a moist cooking method is steaming, poaching, braising or stewing etc. won't really contribute much to improving a dish but is more about understanding the fine points better.

The other thing is that, because there are no internet police who make sure what you write is correct, people write crap and get away with it.

Thus, one day you can read a recipe that says you should sear the meat to seal in the juices. Another time you could come here and learn that searing meat doesn't seal in juices. The difference here is that it's not one person's opinion. It's supported by lots of other really knowledgeable people giving you a higher level of confidence that it might just be correct.
 
+1 GLC!

Further,

Sometimes discussing the fine points of some questions becomes a splitting of hairs. It gets to the point in a discussion where the next level of refinement of an answer is not important to the cooking process but becomes important on it's own...


Andy, you bring back memories. We've (all DC participants collectively) have had some crazy discussions about the fine point of this or that subject. Personally, I loved the discussions about how marinades affect meat.

This site has also helped reinforce the fact that just because I make something one way, and it comes out delectable, doesn't mean that it's the only way to make that dish. And sometimes, just sometimes, someone puts out a way of doing something that makes what I've been doing for years, easier, or enhances a dish.

DC is my go to place for all things cullinary. There are only three people who I trust implicitly in cooking, because I have first hand experience with what they create. Each of them have rediculous IQ's, and are as creative as they come. That would be P.A.G., Sprout, and my son who cooks proffesionally. And even we are sometimes at odds with one another. But usually, we are bouncing ideas off of each other, trying to improve on something that's already tried and true.

Their truly are master cooks on this site as well, who I wish lived in my neighborhood, not only for their cullinary expertise, but because they are such great people. Some of them have posted in this topic.

Mumu; I understand what you said in your posts. You are definitely on the right path, asking questions, and seeking new knowledge so as to enhance you cooking skills. And you have a source for that knowledge that many of us didn't have at your age, DC (when I was your age, computers were gargantuan in size, and could not match even this old computer that I use in power, and the internet wasn't even a though in anyone's head yet.).

Here, you are in good company, and with good freinds, even if mnst of us never get the chance to meet. And like Ady said, when we give advice, it's advice that comes from years of cooking, solid research (at least for me), lot's of trial and error, and a collaboration from good people with a true desire to help.

I have never seen a site that is as honest, or honorable to this idea of community as DC, and I've belonged to a good number of discussion sites.

So ask questions, try out new ideas on us, take part in discussions, just as you have.

If I haven't said it before, I say it now. Welcome to DC. You're gonna love it here.:D

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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Thanks again for all the help and info.........But most of all putting up with me. Sorry if times I annoy you guys with off the wall questions. But i really appr. the help.
 
Thanks again for all the help and info.........But most of all putting up with me. Sorry if times I annoy you guys with off the wall questions. But i really appr. the help.

Annoy us? You don't know us very well. Rather than annoy, you gave us a chance to do what we like to do best, discuss. I think that maybe, we were a bit overbearing with our statements. We love questions. And occasionally, as we are human and so very apt at making mistakes ourselves, we get carried away with a topic, or thought.

Please feel free to ask questions about cooking, about life, about how to find the right part for your car, or whatever. Enjoy the sometimes silliy, sometimes dead serious, rarely angry, and always with a desire to give our best, answers to your questions. Also, put in you own two cents. Give us new ideas, and recipes. Sometimes, it is the questioner who sparks discussions through which we all learn something new.

No, you didn't annoy us. You gave us something new to chew on. And to show you that you are indeed not only welcome here, but valued, I give you my signature recipe (My eldest daughter, PAG here in DC, helped me figure out just the right mix of common ingredients for these pancakes.

World’s Finest Pancakes

These pancakes come out so moist and light that you will never buy a pancake mix again. Enjoy them.​



Dry Ingrediants
:
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbs. Sugar
½ tsp. Salt
1 tbs. Double Acting Baking Powder​


Wet Ingrediants:
3/4 cup milk
1 large Egg
3 tbs. Cooking oil​

Preheat the griddle. Place the dry ingrediants into a large bowl and stir together with a wire whisk or mixing spoon. Add the remaining ingrediants and again stir until mixed. Do not stir until all the lumps are gone as this will overmix the batter. There should be small lumps. These will dissapear while cooking the pancakes.​

Cook over medium heat until the bubbles close slowly as they rise and pop. Do not cook until the bubbles stay open as this will dry out the pancake. And most importantly, Don’t squish them down with your cake turner or spatula. When they are ready to flip, turn them over and cook for about 1 minute more. Remove from the pan and serve immediately. If you must cook up enough for a bunch of people, keep them warm by stacking in a large-rectangular cake pan and placing the pan into a 120' oven covered with a clean kitchen towel.​

You can add blueberries to the uncooked batter without changing anything else. However, if you add acidic fruits such as strawberries, raspberries, or pineapple, you will need to add ½ tsp. Baking soda to the batter to ballance the acid from the fruit.​

The above recipe makes enough pancakes for two people. Yo can easily enlarge the recipe by simply multiplying the ingrediants by the same number. That is, if you double the flour, multiply all other ingrediants by two.​

Seeeya; Chief Longwind of the North​
 
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understanding - Discuss Cooking - Cooking Forums

what is the cooking term used when say you are cooking on the stove in a frying pan with some water and a lid. I cook fresh sausage in a skillet with some water and a lid and when i am done cooking it i take the lid off and brown it. Is there a cooking term for this? Is there any time cooking on the stove doesnt have cooking terms.....like stewing,braising ,pan frying. thanks
 
Well, I don't know that I've heard a name for that particularly, but it's close to poaching or steaming. But poaching is specifically a short time gently cooking in liquid, and it's done with more delicate foods, like fish, and the time is kept quite short, because foods that are appropriate for poaching undergo undesirable changes with longer cooking. So those foods are not those that would be subject to being seared.

Pork chops are an example of the reverse of what you describe. They are browned (rather lower temperature than for beef because the surface shrinks badly with too much heat) and then finished with some water in the pan. (Not everyone does that. You can make very good pork chops without the water.)

Reversing the steps wouldn't be the best way. Browning/searing depends on direct dry heat. One of the problems with searing is getting the surface dry and preventing such sweating that the food more steams or boils than sears. And cooking in water would aggravate that. Which is likely why there's no name for it. It's not a logical technique. Sure. The pork chop will cook in water and will eventually brown when the water evaporates, but it will be seriously overdone. Try the sausage the other way around. Brown it, then add water, not much, and finish covered under a medium or medium-low heat with water.
 
what is the cooking term used when say you are cooking on the stove in a frying pan with some water and a lid. I cook fresh sausage in a skillet with some water and a lid and when i am done cooking it i take the lid off and brown it. Is there a cooking term for this? Is there any time cooking on the stove doesnt have cooking terms.....like stewing,braising ,pan frying. thanks

The method you describe is often called basting.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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