Chop your ingredients into manageable, bite-size pieces. Cutting them up makes them easier to eat and to handle, and it also helps them cook faster and more evenly. A colder pan has hot spots. [1] X Research source Hot spots are places on the pan where it is inordinately hotter than elsewhere. This can cause uneven cooking, leaving you with some ingredients that are overcooked and others than are undercooked. As you continue to heat the pan, the heat distributes itself evenly over the entire pan, producing a better final product. Cold proteins on cold pans will dry out the proteins before they even begin to cook. Put a cold piece of chicken on a cold pan and your chicken will likely be much drier than had you started with the pan piping hot. Needless to say, dry food isn’t ideal.
Butter has a smoking point of 350 °F (177 °C), while most oils have a higher smoking point (375-450 °F). This means that butter burns easier than oils. If you’re worried about burning your fat while you cook, opt for oils. On the other hand, butter leaves a better “fond” (brown crust) and richer taste; if you’re cooking over less heat, opt for butter. One way to solve the flashpoint dilemma of butter is to use clarified butter or ghee. Clarified butter is simply butter with the milk solids removed. Because the milk solids are what end up burning, removing them from the butter should allow you to cook it at higher temperatures. [2] X Research source One caution using olive oil. While many chefs prefer the taste of olive oil over other oils, it actually has a lower smoking point than other oils. [3] X Research source For this reason, it may be beneficial to cook with a neutral oil like avocado oil (smoke point 480 ºF) and then add olive oil at the very end for taste.
Remember to start sautéing the food that takes the longest to cook first. Try to stagger the introduction of the ingredients into the pan so that the first ingredients to hit the pan are the ones that take the longest to cook.
Most recipes will give you cooking times for how long you should cook the ingredients. It’s important to remember to only use these cooking times as rough guidelines instead of as strict edicts. Your pan, burner, the cut of the ingredients, and even your level of expertise will affect that cooking time. Try to think of cooking times as suggestions instead of as mandates. Sample your food obsessively. In case you’ve never stepped foot into a professional kitchen, you might be surprised to know that chefs taste everything they cook. (“Never trust a skinny chef. “) They do this to make sure that the food is cooking properly. Only taste will help you determine whether something is truly done.
Alternatively, leave the food in the pan and add any ingredients that will form sauce for the dish.
Pan-frying. Pan-frying doesn’t involve tossing or stirring like sautéing would. (You pan-fry salmon, but you sauté collard greens. ) Plus, pan-frying uses a little bit more fat at slightly lower temperatures than sautéing does. Stir-frying. Stir-frying is essentially the same as sautéing, except for two points. Stir-fry is usually cooked in a wok or wok-like pan, and in stir-fry, the sauce is made in the wok with the ingredients still in the pan, whereas in sautéing, the ingredients are taken out before the sauce is made. Sweating. Sweating is the process of cooking vegetables, such as onions, for a short while over low heat. The goal is to get the ingredients translucent and limp, not browned and crunchy.
Non-stick pans are good for some types of cooking, but they don’t always produce the best results for sautéing in particular. That’s because they don’t promote as much browning as steel pans. [5] X Research source Consider using a non-stick pan for sautéing greens like as spinach and broccoli while using a steel pan for anything else.
Red meat is fully cooked at 160 °F (71 °C). Medium is measured at 135–140 °F (57–60 °C), while rare is measured at 130 °F (54 °C). Red meat can safely be cooked at varying degrees of doneness, based on the preference of the diner. Poultry is fully cooked at 165 °F (74 °C). Poultry should always be fully cooked. Pork is fully cooked at 160 °F (71 °C). Pork should always be fully cooked. Seafood is generally fully cooked at 125–140 °F (52–60 °C). [6] X Research source Seafood is often eaten rare, medium rare or slightly rare without incident. (Most seafood is flash frozen to kill off any parasites immediately after being caught. )
