GHI Wednesday: Meat Thermometer(s) with Classic Roasted Chicken Recipe

One thing that I think every home cook should have in their repertoire is a good, classic, moist, flavorful roasted chicken. Sure, you can go to the grocery store and buy a rotisserie chicken for about the same cost, but if you do a cost comparison by weight, the bird you get from the rotisserie is scrawny compared to what you can cook at home. Yes it's convenient, but honestly roasting a bird yourself does not take very much effort, you just need a few ingredients and the time for it to cook. 

Another thing that I think you need to successfully pull off a roast of any kind is a good meat thermometer... or two. You'll read in this post about the two types of meat thermometers I use, why I have two of them, and why you need at least one good one. 

Disclaimer: this is not a professional food blog (gasp)! It's my hobby. The food section of this blog is me rambling about food, sharing some recipes I have tweaked and love, and providing some cooking tips to those who are interested. So I'm posting iPhone pictures today because we left our DSLR camera at the hospital when we visited my BFF and her new baby. Which I'm so glad we brought because we used it to take exactly zero pictures. Anyway, I don't care that I'm just posting iPhone pictures, I just want to have something to show you guys the step-by-step for delicious chicken, and this will do the trick. 

Ingredients: 

1 roasting chicken

1/3 stick of softened butter

2-3 tbsp olive oil

Dried or fresh herbs

Paprika

Salt and pepper

4-8 garlic cloves

1-2 lemons, quartered or sliced (optional)

3/4 cup dry white wine

Steps:

1. Clear out the cavity of the bird. Remove the giblets bag and any huge pieces of fat (save these to make homemade chicken stock after!!). Check the skin for any feathers that stuck around and pull those bad boys out. Preheat oven to 425*

2. Prepare your herb rub. Mix the butter, olive oil, herbs, and about 1/2 tsp each of salt and pepper until combined into a paste. The herbs I use as a base are easy to remember if your parents were also quasi-hippies who were into folk singer-songwriter music... Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. I'm not kidding. I added chives this time for some onion flavor too which I really enjoy. Start out by adding the herbs in about equal proportions, and over time you'll experiment with different ratios until you find one you really like (I didn't have any garlic cloves left so I added some garlic powder to my herb rub. If using fresh garlic, don't use it yet). Save the paprika for the end, don't add it to the herb butter yet. 

3. Separate the skin from the breast. You'll know the breast side from the back side because the back of the chicken is hard without much meat. If you're feeling that side, then flip it over. Starting from the top (near the wings and away from the legs), wiggle your fingers between the skin and the meat until it separates. Take some of your herb butter and spread it down between the meat and the skin. Get it as evenly spread as you can.

4. Spread most of the remaining herb butter over the entire bird on the outside of the skin, making sure to cover every bit of it. Spread the remaining herb butter on the inside of the cavity. (Reminder that raw chicken has a ton of bacteria so any time you touch the raw bird, thoroughly wash your hands before touching anything else, especially other food! And same goes for any utensils or cutting boards). 

5. Smash and peel your garlic cloves. No need to press or mince them, just make sure you gave them a good smash with the side of your knife. Put the garlic cloves and cut up lemon into the cavity of the chicken. 

6. Sprinkle all of the skin on the outside with salt, pepper, and paprika. To do this, I usually keep one hand clean to sprinkle seasoning, and use the other to turn and manipulate the bird. Because as I said, and I can't say this enough, once anything has touched the raw chicken, it needs to be washed with soap and water before it can touch anything else. So do not salt and pepper one side, then turn the bird over, and grab your pepper grinder and dig your fingers into your salt dish... You'd need to do one side, turn it over, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and hot water, then do the other side. And by this point you've probably washed your hands a couple of times from putting on the herb rub, so that's my tip to save one more washing: one hand to sprinkle, one hand to work with the bird. 

7. Truss your bird. Yes that's English. Basically trussing is using kitchen twine to tie up the wings and legs so they don't burn, as pictured above. If you just put the bird in the oven the way it was, the limbs get loose and because there's less meat on them, they would cook crazy fast and would dry out by the time the rest of the meat is cooked. So the easiest way to do this is to tie the exposed bones of the legs together, and then set the bird on top of the wings. Doing this keeps everything together so it cooks much more evenly. 

8. Time to decide what you want to cook the bird in. I prefer using my cast-iron skillet because it allows for good even heating. Whatever you use, make sure that it has high enough sides to collect the drippings as the chicken cooks... So no sheet pans, and I would even avoid jelly roll pans. A glass dish works ok too. 

9. As mentioned, fold the wings under the bird and place it breast side up in your cooking vessel. Pour the white wine into the dish. As the bird bakes, the wine will cook off and steam and flavor the bird keeping the meat moist and tender. 

10. This week's gotta have item is a good cooking thermometer... Or a few. I have two, one that's an instant read, and one that is used as the food cooks and has an alarm (that is what's sticking out of the side of the chicken). Poultry needs to cook to 165 degrees to be safely eaten, but the higher you go above that the drier your chicken will be. The thickest part of the bird will take the longest to get there, so stick the probe of your oven-safe cooking thermometer into the thickest part of your particular bird, usually either the thigh or the breast for chicken. Make sure you are not hitting bone and they you are not poking through into the cavity. He temperature is taken on the very end of he probe, so make sure that part of the probe is in the thickest part of the meat. On mine, I then tell it what kind of meat I'm cooking and it tells me what the cooking temp should be, as noted 165 for chicken or any poultry. Then I turn on the alarm, and it will go off as soon as my meat is done. So there are no timers involved in this recipe, it tells me when it's done... To quote Ina Garten, "how simple is that!?" So now you have the probe thermometer placed, make sure the cable has enough room, and that the display can be safely kept outside of the oven. 

11. Put your whole dish in the oven, being careful about the thermometer probe. Roast at 425 for about 30-45 minutes, or until the skin is nice and golden brown and starting to get crispy. You will then drop the oven temp to 350 and continue cooking until your alarm goes off, about another hour, though this greatly varies on the size of your chicken, your oven, many other things. Starting high then going low allows us to have golden crispy skin and moist tender meat. If we stayed at 425 the whole time, the bird would be super dry. If we stayed at 350 the whole time, it would take forever and the skin would get yellow at best and wouldn't crisp up (and honestly, what's the point of that?). 

12. Make sure that the bottom of your pan is never dry. As the wine evaporates, the fat and juices from your chicken will start to render off and should replace that cooking liquid. However if your wine evaporates before your bird gives up its juices, just add a little more wine or even some chicken broth would be just fine. 

13. When your alarm goes off, pull the bird and double check the temp. This is where the instant read thermometer comes in handy. I recently bought myself a gift... The ThermaPen! It is a wonderful, accurate tool and was a great investment for my kitchen. After the oven-probe thermometer says we're ready, I use the ThermaPen to test a few different areas and make sure that no matter where I put it, it reads at least 165. This is important because the ThermaPen is more accurate than the oven-probe, and it also reads the temp more quickly. The oven probe heats up and cools down slowly, so the reading might be slightly delayed.  I typically check two spots on each breast, one leg, and one thigh. This is overkill and totally not professional, because it pokes a bunch of holes in this beautiful bird you just roasted, but I don't care, I'd rather be safe with a few puncture wounds than serve undercooked chicken! You'll also know you're ready if the "juices run clear." This is something you hear and read a lot, but what it means is that when you pick the bird up, especially if you've made any cuts yet, the juices that come out might have a color at first, but after a second they clear up. Not crystal clear like water, but they shouldn't be red or brown, they should be clear to light broth colored and definitely translucent.

14. Let the bird rest. Residual heat will actually continue to cook the meat (for this reason, I'll sometimes pull it out when my oven gauge thermometer reads 160 because those last few degrees will come from residual heat). This means that parts of the chicken that are well above 165 will keep transferring some of their heat to parts of the chicken that are cooler, so it will continue to rise a bit. The benefit to letting the meat rest is that the meat will be more moist. When you heat meat, the muscle fibers you're cooking totally relax and let out all of their liquid. And that liquid is going all over in the meat at a molecular level as it gets hotter and hotter. But when you take it out of the heat and it begins to cool, the muscle fibers begin to contract again and as they do, they re-absorb a lot of that liquid. This can take 10-15 minutes for a chicken. If you were to carve the bird up right when you took it out of the oven, all that liquid would run out onto your cutting board and the meat would be dry. If you let your meat rest, that liquid redistributes back into the muscle fibers and makes it more moist. The challenge is that you don't want to serve cold meat! So one common trick is to "tent" your meat, meaning make a little tent out of aluminum foil to rest over top. Because it doesn't touch the meat directly it won't make the skin get as mushy, but the foil will help keep in enough heat that you won't serve cold chicken (this trick goes for any meat - steak, roast, turkey, whatever! The bigger the pieces of meat, the longer it should rest). 

15. Carve and serve!! The best parts of the chicken to serve this way are the breasts and legs (the wings don't serve as well when done like this). You can serve 4-6 people with one chicken, depending on how many side dishes you have. My advice is to use a good, sharp, long carving knife. When carving the breast, start in the middle just to one side of the breast bone, and carve down till you meet resistance. Then starting at one end, start carving along the bottom in towards the breast bone and from one end to the other. You've just released most of the breast - you probably didn't get 100% of the meat but that's ok... I'll tell you what to do with that in a future post! Repeat for the other breast. For the legs, carve the skin around the drumstick to release that from the rest of the body. Then you'll grab where the drumstick meets the thigh, and pull out away from the body a bit. It should start to release at the hip joint, and that's how you know where to carve. Give it a little tug and it will show you where it needs to be detached. You'll now have the drumstick and thigh in one piece disconnected from the main body. 

Here's part of our dinner for that night: some light meat (1/2 breast), some dark meat (one leg), and a couple of biscuits. Not pictured: romaine salad with tomatoes, onions, peppers, red wine vinegar and olive oil.

The last chicken we bought was almost a 4 lb bird and we paid $7.15 for it. Yes the already-cooked rotisserie chickens are like $6, but those are seriously half the size of this one. We got 4 good sized portions from the first cut of the bird (two legs, two breasts). Then I was able to take what was left and pick off a bowl full of other meat that I used to make 2 trays of chicken enchiladas. So that's another 4 meals. And we're still not done... I then used the bones, skin, gibkets, and drippings in the bottom of the cast iron pan to make about 2 gallons of some of the darkest, most beautiful chicken stock I've ever made! And that's sitting in the freezer waiting to be made into soups, risotto, casseroles, sauces, who knows! I could get another 8 meals out of that in the future. I'll definitely detail how to use your kitchen scraps to make stock in a future post!! 

But for those of you keeping score at home, not including the stock (which on sale let's say is $2 per quart, and I made 8 quarts, so there's $16 out of thin air), that comes to 8 meals that I was able to get out of a $7 chicken... It makes me so sad when people think eating healthy is expensive! In most cases, it is significantly cheaper to do all of your shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store focusing on lean protein and produce and avoid the processed crap in the aisles of the store.

I have to share with you something that broke my heart... this was such a moment of sadness for me about the health of our country and why we have an obesity epidemic. It is because of the intersection of convenient and cheap. Or in this case actual convenience and perceived cheapness. The second page in the sale paper for Jewel today... All of these items are buy 4, get $4 off (but they're still relatively expensive compared to real food!): Chips Ahoy, Ritz crackers, Kraft singles, sliced variety of cheeses, variety of block cheeses, Bologna, Lunchables, bacon, hot dogs, easy cheese, bacon again, Easy Mac, Velveeta skillet dinner kits, mayonnaise, Kraft salad dressing (pictured: ranch and thousand island), Cheese Nips, Chips Ahoy again...  My lord. Folks I promise you, you will be less hungry, feel better, have less health problems, and save money by avoiding the center aisles (except for whole grains like brown rice, oats, and beans) and eating more whole foods. It's a hard habit to break because your brain reacts similarly to junk food as it does to opiate drugs, but once you get over the hump it'll be the best thing you ever did. I highly recommend the book Salt, Sugar, Fat to anyone who is interested by this topic. Getting off my soap box now...

Cooking a whole chicken only takes a few steps of prep work and then with the right tools, you can set it and forget it. It's a delicious, healthy, beautiful, and impressive center piece for any meal, and it is very cost effective. Just remember that it will take a few hours to cook (my first attempt started far too late and we were eating chicken at midnight... I'll never live that one down). 

Wednesday's GHI: Toaster Oven & Roasted Root Veggie Recipe

So you guys know how by now that being frugal is the name of the game for me. I try to save money wherever I can without feeling like I'm sacrificing. If it's worth the splurge, I'm all for it (I'm looking at you truffle salt), but if there's a cheaper alternative that doesn't feel like a sacrifice, you better believe I'm jumping on that.

Enter: toaster oven. When we were putting together our wedding registry, I knew that I wanted a toaster oven instead of just a regular pop-up bread toaster. At the time, I was really just thinking about the dinky little toaster oven that I grew up using (no offense Mom) that we would use to make cheesy bread as an after school snack, and I later started to use to make my decadent garlic bread recipe. It was this teeny little thing with heating elements on top and bottom, and my mom would put a piece of whole wheat bread in there with a slice of cheddar cheese, she'd cut up an apple, and voila - after-school snacks were served.

But in doing my research for our registry, I found that toaster ovens have come a very long way. And I found a model from Breville that I absolutely adore - it's their compact model, since we don't have a lot of counter space, but it's a full-feature design. The only thing it doesn't have is convection or pressure-cooking features, which I'm totally fine with. It has a bunch of settings, but the ones I use the most are toast, bake, broil, bagel, and defrost. It has two racks which can hold a lot of bread if I were to use it just for toast in the morning for a large crowd. But what it has that I love is a great bake / broil feature.

This is where we get into my frugality. It takes significantly less energy to heat up that little metal box to 350* than it does to heat up our standard-sized oven. And the energy is much more efficient - it's electricity through high efficiency heating elements vs. our gas oven. It also cooks more evenly and doesn't have as drastic of hot/cold spots as our gas oven does. So whenever I possibly can, I opt to use my toaster oven to bake rather than the conventional oven. I would say that I use the toaster oven more than 75% of the time I need to bake something. And this size oven is JUST big enough to fit a standard 12-inch frozen pizza (yes, we eat frozen pizzas every now and then... we're human too). I cook everything in there including meat and/or veggies I'm roasting, any type of broiling that needs to be done, desserts I'm baking (it's perfect to throw on just a couple of cookies, or bake up a quick cobbler to use fruit that's about to turn mushy). It fits my 8x8 glass pyrex baking dish and came with a broiling pan that I can use too. The cases where I'd opt for the regular oven instead of the toaster oven are if what I'm cooking is too big (either a roast, or anything in a 9x13 or one of my big gratin dishes), or if I need a dry heat. The gas oven provides a dryer heat because there's more circulation with the extra air that fills the big space, and the flames help it remain more dry. One example is if I'm making croutons, I'll most likely use the regular gas oven. But most of the recipes I've posted on the blog so far that were done in the oven have used the toaster oven.

The moral of the story is that I recommend a good toaster oven. You'll likely use it more than you think you will, it will simplify your time in the kitchen, and it will potentially save you money on your energy bills.

The recipe that I want to feature in my toaster oven is a Roasted Root Veggie Medley. It's super simple, but crazy healthy - tons of antioxidants, and lots of vitamins in the rich colored veggies!

Ingredients:
2 large beets - peeled and cubed
1 large sweet potato - scrubbed and cubed with peel left on
2 carrots - peeled and cut into 1-inch lengths (you can halve the lengths if they're too big), or ~1.5 cup baby carrots, halved
2 tbsp coconut oil
salt & pepper to taste

• Put the 2 tbsp of coconut oil into the bottom of your roasting pan, and put it in the oven while it's preheating to 400* and while you prep the other veggies
• After the veggies are cut and the oil is melted, toss the veggies in the pan with the oil to coat evenly. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and toss together again
• Bake at 400* for about 45 minutes or until roasted, fork-tender, and browning on the outsides (take out the pan and mix up the veggies at least once during roasting)

Wednesday's GHI: Salt

Something that every kitchen's gotta have is salt. One of the biggest cooking mistakes one can make is under-seasoning the food. When I say under- or over-season, I'm referring to the most common seasonings people use: salt and pepper. A frequent misconception is that it is best to under-season the food while cooking and then serve salt and pepper at the table so people can season to their own taste. Over-seasoning during cooking is obviously bad, and a mistake that I have definitely been guilty of. It's a problem because it's much harder to fix than under-seasoning, but under-seasoning is not good either. The reason it's not ideal to just assume that diners will salt-and-pepper their own food at the table is because just sprinkling some table salt on top of the dish right before eating does not add the depth of flavor that would be present if the seasoning had been done properly while cooking.

Cooking is all about building layers of flavor with each and every step. When cooking a savory dish with multiple steps, you should be seasoning at every step. For example, in the recipe I posted earlier this week for the pasta with the veggie cream sauce, I made sure to season with every single step. The key though is to not season too much at each of these intermediate stages, and that just takes practice to learn the right amount. No recipe will be able to accurately and precisely tell you "1/8 tsp when you add the mushrooms" you just sprinkle a pinch and through trial and error you learn what the "right" amount is (technically speaking, a pinch is an actual unit of measure that equals 1/8 tsp, but you're not expected to actually measure out 1/8 tsp when a recipe calls for a pinch). A pinch is usually supposed to be how much you'd get if you had a bowl of salt and you picked up as much as you could with your first two fingers and thumb using only the pads of your fingers. That's what recipes usually mean when they say a "pinch," not precisely 1/8 tsp. More commonly though, recipes will say "to taste." This is because it's impossible to know the perfect amount. The necessary salt level depends on a hundred variables in each recipe (how big are the tomatoes that you used, what brand of broth did you use, etc.) which means it's up to you. 

Keeping that in mind, in the recipe I posted earlier this week I seasoned the mushrooms while they sauteed, I seasoned both sides of the chicken breasts before they were cooked, I added more salt and pepper when I tossed in all of the other veggies, a little bit more salt and pepper when I added the cream. And then the final step - TASTE before you serve! At that final tasting I decided the salt was perfect, but it needed more pepper. So a few turns of the pepper mill, and voila - dinner was served. Never serve a dish before tasting it. This is why I keep a pile of little spoons in the drawer next to my stove - those are my tasting spoons. I use them to taste my dishes throughout the cooking process but especially at the end before serving. I grab a clean spoon, dip it in my dish, take a taste, pop the used spoon in the sink. That tasting is your last line of defense, you should always adjust your seasoning before you serve. That's why you may have noticed that at nice restaurants, they don't put salt and pepper on the table... they season their dishes correctly throughout the cooking process so you don't need to add any more at the table. 

To further confuse matters, there are different types of salt that have different purposes. If you think I'm messing around, look at the picture of the different types of salts that I use in my cooking. Mike thinks I'm insane, but there is a reason for the insanity, and I'll tell you about each of the different types of salt and when to ideally use each one.

 Yes, I actually have all of these salts in my cabinet and use them all differently. The one that I don't show in more detail here (because I didn't want to waste any of this precious commodity haha!) is the truffle salt. This is used as a finishing salt, meaning you don't add it throughout the dish to add layers of flavor, because the truffle flavor would be cooked right out, and that would defeat the purpose. So this is used at the last step of seasoning before serving to give a nice salty truffle finish. My favorite use for this is sprinkled over top of pasta or risotto dishes. It also is incredible on homemade popcorn.

  Here are the salts here from right to left:

Maldon large-flake Sea Salt

 This is another finishing salt. The size of this flake creates a nice salty crunch for dishes that require that. Read: salted caramel. This is a great salt to use for sweet / salty dishes. I bought this to use with one of my FAVORITE desserts that I'll post about next time I make it... they're bars with a layer of shortbread, a layer of caramel (or toffee the way mine always come out), and a layer of dark chocolate ganache. And then you finish them with this beautiful, flaky, crunchy salt once the chocolate has cooled and they're phenomenal. I want to find other great uses for this beautiful salt. Can't wait to try more recipes!

 Coarse Kosher Salt

This salt is the work-horse of any serious cook's kitchen. Its the best salt to use in almost all savory cooking dishes, especially with meat. This salt has a flat, flaky texture. It is the preferred salt to use to season your meat when browning it in a pan or on the grill because the flaky structure creates a beautiful crust on the outside of the meat that you won't get as nicely if you use regular table salt. I keep this salt in a little dish with a magnetic lid. I do this because as the salt I use the most, I prefer to pinch it with my fingers vs. sprinkle it out of a container. This gives me better control over how much salt I'm using, exactly where it's going, and allows for more precision. It's also the perfect salt to use on a margarita rim... just saying.

Iodized Sea Salt

This one is kind of specific to my current situation. I use this as my primary salt when I can, especially as a finishing salt, for example when doing simple steamed veggies with a little salt and olive oil, or something like that where I'm just sprinkling some salt on top. I am only doing this for health reasons... truth is I miss my Kosher salt. I've read some interesting articles recently about a resurgence in iodine deficiency, which is particularly problematic among pregnant women. Kosher and Sea Salt don't usually provide iodine (iodine is never found naturally in salt, it is always added. But it is not added to Kosher salt, and this is the first sea salt where I've ever seen iodine added, so I snatched it up). Sea salt is a healthy alternative to traditional salt because a) it has a slightly lower sodium content for the same amount of saltiness (and less sodium is not a bad thing), and b) the natural sea salts have some minerals that you won't find in regular table salt. So I found a sea salt that has iodine added so that while I'm pregnant I'm getting those health benefits of sea salt and I'm getting my iodine. This salt does not have a long-term place in my kitchen. I will not be buying more of it after the baby comes. This particular salt has bigger granules than standard table salt, though not quite as big as the Coarse sea salt, and definitely not as big as the sea salt that goes in the salt grinder. It's more uniform in size than kosher salt (kosher salt is flat and flaky, this salt is more cube-like).

Standard Iodized Table Salt

This is a good salt to use in large quantities and for baking. The reason I like using it in large quantities is because recipes are typically written for this type of salt and when you're working with large quantities, weight matters in addition to volume. Because this salt is much finer in texture, more actual salt fits in a given volume than would Kosher salt. For example 1 cup of this salt would weigh more (because there's more salt that can fit) than 1 cup of Kosher salt. So when you're working with large quantities (maybe 1/2 cup or more), it's more accurate to use this type of salt, because this is the type of the salt that the recipe was typically written for. But when a recipe calls for "a pinch" or a tablespoon, the difference is not meaningful, so stick with your Kosher salt. I also like to use this when working with large quantities because it's much cheaper than the other salts I have. For these reasons, I use this one most commonly to salt my pasta water, salt the water to blanch veggies, make a brine for meat, and even in soups and other liquid applications (where it'll dissolve anyway so the texture doesn't matter). I also use this one for any non-cooking applications like cleaning my cast iron pan. This is also the best salt to use in baking because of that same precision in measuring. Again this is because of accuracy - baking is a precise science so the littlest details matter. It's also because this salt dissolves better due to its smaller size. And when you're baking, you usually don't want to bite into a salty crunchy flake (unless you're doing salted caramel, which we've already talked about).

Coarse Sea Salt

These big crunchy pieces are another great option when you want that salty, crunchy bite. They're more cubed than the flaky kosher or sea salt, but not quite big enough to fill the salt grinder. The best use for this type of salt is when I'm making pretzels, and other types of dishes where you want a bigger salty crunch.

Sea Salt Grinder

 This is what I serve as my "table salt." I personally prefer the flavor and texture of this better than traditional table salt that's served in a shaker. I've already noted the health benefits of sea salt vs. traditional table salt, and those benefits add to the reasons why I prefer this to be served. Although if I've done my job correctly while cooking, we shouldn't need it.

So that's the skinny on salt... every kitchen's gotta have it!! Let me know your thoughts!

Wednesday's GHI: Cast Iron Skillet

I love my cast iron pan, and for most protein I cook it is definitely my go-to. The key with cast iron is that it needs to be properly cared for. So for today's Gotta Have It, I'll tell you why I love my cast iron pan, and what I do to make sure it treats me right. If you don't have one, you should get one. They're not that expensive, but are so incredibly versatile. You can use it on the stove, in the oven, on the grill, at a camp site - they are indestructible, and so easy to maintain as long as you do it right. 

The usefulness of a cast iron pan comes in its weight. Because it is such a heavy-bottomed pan, when you preheat it for long enough, you get incredibly even heat distribution. This means that if you're cooking chicken breasts, you're not going to have hot spots and cool spots in the pan, the whole thing will be hot. Because of this even heat distribution and the fact that it holds heat well, this makes it wonderful for frying. You won't get as big of a drop in temperature when you put your foods in to fry (usually if you heat oil in a normal pan, you drop in your items to be fried, and the oil will drop in temperature, sometimes significantly! With cast iron, because the pan itself retains so much heat, it helps keep the oil more evenly hot even when you drop your food in). This means that your food will be less greasy, as you'll have less temperature fluctuations with the oil. The other great use for cast iron is cooking anything for people who are iron deficient. When cooking in a cast iron pan, it actually imparts a little bit of iron into the food that you cook into it. Unless your doctor is concerned about you getting too much iron, this is not a problem. For most people, it's actually a bonus because a lot of us don't get enough iron in our diets.

Caring for your cast iron pan is very important but also very easy. When you get it, the first thing you need to do is season it. This does not mean adding salt and pepper, it means baking a layer of oil onto the entire surface of the pan. This actually gives it a natural non-stick coating, and also protects it from rusting. 

To season your pan, choose an oil with a high smoke point (plain vegetable or canola oil, do not use olive oil for this). Dab a paper towel into the oil and rub the pan down inside and out - cover every surface of the pan with oil. Then put it in an EMPTY oven set to about 300 degrees, and bake it for several hours - 2 or 3 to start. I know it seems a little wasteful and you may be tempted to multi-task by putting something in the oven to cook while you're seasoning your pan, but resist that temptation. The steam created by any food cooking will mess up the process, so you need to just bite the bullet and only bake the pan in an otherwise empty oven. After baked for 2-3 hours, turn off the oven, let it cool (this will also take a couple of hours... remember how well cast iron retains its heat?), and repeat. You'll go through this process a couple of times, adding very thin layers of oil each time. When seasoned properly, this will become a permanent fixture of your cast iron pan. When you cook the first couple of times a little bit of it may come off, but it's nothing to worry about. 

Now that your pan is seasoned, it is relatively non-stick and ready to cook with! I love doing things in the cast iron that need to be started on the stove and finished in the oven. Any meat (chicken breasts, pork chops, steaks, etc), brussel sprouts (recipe to come), and also frying like I mentioned. If properly seasoned, you can cook with anything, even acids. I love making a pan sauce after cooking meat which typically involves deglazing the pan with wine or something else acidic. This is ok to do as long as it's been seasoned.

The key though is now that your pan is seasoned, you can NEVER LET SOAP TOUCH IT. EVER! May I repeat, do not ever use soap to wash a seasoned cast iron pan! Soap is a degreaser, which means that it will remove that layer of oil which you so painstakingly worked to bake on there. The solution is actually super easy and is another reason why I love using my cast iron pan - washing it is a breeze! All you need is table salt, and if necessary some iron wool. 

I just use cheap plain table salt, don't waste your good sea salt or kosher salt on this. After you're done cooking and the pan has cooled enough to handle, first rinse the pan out with hot water. After you've rinsed it and scraped off the big pieces with a spatula, sprinkle the salt liberally and start with your hands - rub it into the pan like you're giving it a salt scrub... which you are. The abrasiveness of the salt will scrape off any pieces of food that might be stuck. If you have any stubborn pieces you can use some iron wool, but it isn't usually necessary. Once you've scrubbed the salt all around and it's picked up all the pieces of whatever you cooked, just rinse thoroughly. 

They key then is after each time you use the pan, do a quick re-seasoning. It's likely that because all you used is salt, the pan is still a little greasy from whatever you cooked. This is a good thing! Just put the pan back on the stove, turn on a burner, and let it heat up for about 10-15 minutes. This will bake that layer of oil into the seasoning you've already started, and it will continue to help protect the pan. 

Now that you know the proper way to care for your cast iron pan, enjoy using it!! It's a phenomenal kitchen tool!! 

Wednesday's GHI: Garlic Press

You guys know how I feel about unitaskers. I don't have space for them in my kitchen, I don't have room for them in my life. With RARE exceptions. And this is probably the biggest exception of all.

Garlic is one of my absolute favorite ingredients. I've got a post half-written all about garlic that I'll be sharing with you soon. But in the meantime, I'm going to share this week's Gotta Have It with you - my garlic press. 

Is it absolutely necessary? No. You can get by just fine mincing garlic on your own, or turning it into a paste using the blade of your knife and some salt. But with the amount of garlic that I use in my cooking, it saves me a lot of time.

And in my next post about garlic, I'll share with you the reason why using a garlic press actually changes the garlic vs. just mincing or slicing it. But until that post, here's how to use one of my most favoritist tools, the garlic press. This one was also a gift from my brother Billy. Clearly he has good taste in gifts.

Many people will just pop the clove off of the bulb, put it in the press, and smush out the pulp to use, and then throw away what's inside. And yes, you can do that. But in my opinion, that's wasteful, and it provides sub optimal results. So here's how I use my garlic press to create one of the most magical substances on earth... Garlic paste.

My beautiful garlic cloves... mmmmmm

Step 1: Smash the garlic. This not only loosens up the paper to get it off, but smashing it also begins to release the essential oils and bring out all that garlicky goodness. Lay your knife on the clove, and give it a good smash. Get out that aggression, I mean a real smash!!

Step 2. The "Paper" is already falling off after giving it a good smash. Peel off the rest of the paper

 Step 3. So garlic has this rough stump on the bottom of each clove. It's where the clove is connected to the bulb. I call it the butt. I think I'm the only person I know who does this, but I cut off the butt before I work with the garlic. I do this because I'm a texture freak. If I don't, I can crunch down on a piece of it in my food, and I just do not enjoy it. So for the extra 3 seconds it takes, I slice it off.

Butts removed. If you don't care about this texture, skip this step, but I always do it. 

Step 4. Place the smashed garlic cloves into the well of the garlic press

Step 5. Close the grips of the Garlic Press and smush. Garlicky goodness will come oozing out the other end like Play-Doh from the pasta extruder when you were a child. If you're pressing multiple cloves, it's at this step where you'd open it again, put the next clove inside, and press again. Repeat indefinitely.... garlic.....

Step 6. Scrape the smashed garlic off the end of the garlic press

Step 7. Now you've got this layer on the inside of the garlic press. You flip the handles inside out, and push them together, and it helps pop out this little layer. 

Step 8. Now this is where I do things differently. Like I said before, many people pop the whole clove into the press, and this layer is what they pop out when the clove is pressed, and it includes the paper, the butt, and any extra skin. But remember, I've already removed the paper and the butt, so this is all good garlic that can still be used! So I pop it out, add it to the pile of other pressed garlic, and run my knife through it a couple of times and I just added to the volume of usable garlic deliciousness. And the nice part is that if you're pressing multiple cloves, each clove pushes out this layer from the previous clove, so you don't need to repeat this step. But if you had put in the whole clove including paper and butt, you'd need to clean the press out after each clove. It's totally personal preference, but this is my blog so I'm telling you how I do it. 

My only complaint: why is it called a garlic "press"? It should be called a garlic smusher, or I would even accept garlic smasher. That would be a much more accurate name... 

Garlic.... mmmmmmm.....

Wednesday's GHI: GOOD Chef's Knife

Most Millennials are on a budget. And if you aren't, you probably should be, to some extent. So we don't usually spend a lot of money on things like kitchen equipment until we get really successful and can afford the splurge, or as in my case, register for it for our wedding and have somebody else buy it for us. 

But if I could recommend ONE high quality item to spend good money on, my Gotta Have It this week is a fantastic chef's knife. It is the work horse of your kitchen, and you will use it for just about everything you do. 

My brother Billy got me the Wusthof Classic Ikon 7" Santoku knife for my 23rd birthday in February, and it was one of the best gifts I've ever gotten. I moved into my apartment in Chicago that summer, and for almost 3 years that was the only knife I used in my kitchen, and it was perfect. I bought a cheap set that had a paring knife and a serrated knife for cutting bread, but those were terrible quality and I only used them when I absolutely needed. 

And while you're living on a budget, that is exactly what I would recommend that you do. Invest in one solid chef's knife, get a cheap paring knife and serrated knife for bread, and then upgrade to the good stuff either when you can afford it, or when you can register for it. 

There are two main styles of knives: Japanese, and German. The biggest difference is in the shape of the blade, and the width/angle of the blade. The Japanese knives (Shun, Korin) have a flatter cutting edge, meaning that you are cutting more surface area with each pass. You can see below that the German-style Chef's Knife that I have has a rounded cutting surface, making it great for any cutting that involves a rocking motion. The other shape difference is the width - the German knives (like Wusthof, J.A. Henckels, etc.) are MUCH wider than Japanese knives, and are thicker near the handle and get thinner towards the tip. Japanese knives are a more uniform width down the whole length of the blade. Certain Japanese knives are used to cut raw fish into precise, sometimes paper thin slices for sashimi. To cut through something that delicate, it can't have a lot of resistance. That's also what those cut-outs are for along the bottom edge - it helps minimize the friction with whatever you're cutting. And my last point on shape is that in my opinion, the handles on Japanese style knives tend to be more ergonomic and streamlined, and that handles on the German knives tend to be a little chunkier. 

The other big difference relates to the angle of the blade - not the angle like we talked about rounded vs. flat at the bottom, but if you were to look directly at the blade with a microscope, what angle is it sharpened to, compared with a perpendicular plane. So the classic Western Chef's Knife maintains an angle of 40-45 degrees (meaning that if you created a 40-45 degree angle, that is how sharp the blade of the knife is. So the bilateral shoulder is 20-22.5 degrees. That means that when you sharpen these knives, you want to hold that side of the knife at about a 20 degree angle away from the steel sharpening tool on each side, creating an overall angle of about 40 degrees). On the Japanese style knives, there are two differences: 1. they are often only sharpened on one side (though traditionally Santoku knives, which are among the most popular, are sharpened on both), and 2. Their angle is between 20-30 degrees, or 10-15 degrees per side. So the cutting blades of Japanese knives are two times more narrow compared with German knives. This doesn't mean twice as sharp, it just means twice as narrow. 

So which do I prefer? The answer is both. They both have their uses, and I love them both in different ways. It truly is personal preference - if a consumer report tells you definitively that one style is better than the other, don't believe it. Try them both out and make your own judgement. If you're INVESTING (yes they're expensive!!) in a good quality chef's knife from a reputable brand, you will probably be happy with either style. 

My last tip for this post is for when you are taking the plunge to either invest in or register for your full knife set. The tip is this: don't get a pre-packaged set. Knife companies make knives in all different shapes and sizes and styles, and they are purchased by a variety of individuals with specific needs. However the vast majority of us do not need all of those knives. But the company pays money to make them, so they want to sell them. What do they do? They package them up with other more useful knives in a beautiful block, "discount" the set, and sell it as a packaged deal. Don't fall for it! All you really need in your knife set is the following:

7-8" Chef's knife (obviously... please go back to the top if this was unclear)

~ 3.5" Paring knife

~8" Serrated Bread Knife

Good kitchen shears

Carving Knife at least 8" and Carving Fork (I only use this on holidays, but you sort of need it if you're roasting big meat like turkey, beef tenderloin, standing rib roast, etc.. Damn you unitaskers!!!!!)

These knife blocks usually throw in a skinnier knife that's about 6" - it's too small to do any heavy lifting, and too long and skinny to do delicate tasks. And sometimes a 6" paring knife... what the hell are you supposed to do with that?? So don't fall for it, save your money!!

The proper way to hold a knife, using my Wusthof Classic Ikon 8" Chef's Knife as an example

In later posts, I'll get into knife skills as well as caring for your knives. Did you learn something from this? Is there more you'd like to find out? Share below!

Wednesday's GHI: Water bottle

Gotta Have It: Giant water bottle

If you could only do one good thing for your body each day, I would recommend drinking tons of water. And I mean tons... a gallon if possible. But start for a goal of at least 64 oz. per day. Water is so essential for all of your body's processes to function properly, you need to give your body plenty of it!

My favorite water bottle. This thing comes with me everywhere!!

By the time you feel "thirsty," your body is already dehydrated!! You should be constantly drinking water, and you should never feel thirsty if you are staying properly hydrated. Here's the TMI time: if your pee is actually yellow, you need to drink more water. Your urine should be practically clear. The yellow color is from uric acid, which is the waste that your kidneys process out of your body. So you can imagine that it's not good for that to sit in your body for a long time, especially if it's that concentrated. In fact, prolonged dehydration can even lead to UTIs as those toxins pass through you in such a concentrated form. And for those of you who have ever had one of those... Let's avoid that, shall we?? So while many people complain about drinking the proper amount of water because they don't like that it makes them have to use the restroom more frequently, that's a good thing!! Get those toxins out of your body as often as you can!! Embrace the toilet. Not literally though, that's gross.

And lastly, staying properly hydrated can actually make you eat less. When you feel hungry, more often than not what your body actually needs is water. But when your body goes to send those signals to your brain, the "hunger" and "thirst" signals are so close together, that your brain kind of smooshes them together, and the feeling if hunger dominates even if it's caused by thirst. So any time you feel hungry outside of a normal meal time, try drinking a big glass of water and wait ~15 minutes. If you're still hungry, then have a snack with some protein and fiber, like peanut butter and carrots or an apple, or almonds and some dried fruit. 

Here are some tips to help keep you optimally hydrated:

1. Get a big reusable bottle, and keep it with you all day. Bring it to meetings with you. Bring it in the car. Bring it into the store with you. 
2. Set milestones for when you want to finish said water bottle. For me, I have a 24 oz. bottle, and I fill it up first thing in the morning, then I refill it once before lunchtime, once in the afternoon, once before I leave work, and once in the evening. That's 120 oz minimum each day. 
3. Avoid drinking water within 30 minutes of eating or during meals. When you drink water, it actually reduces the acidity of your stomach which means you can't digest food as efficiently as you're meant to. So drink a big glass of water 30 minutes before eating to keep you hydrated during the meal. If you need to drink water while you eat, add some lemon juice - the little bit if extra acidity reduces the alkaline effects of the water (chemistry class, anyone??).
4. When drinking anything with diuretic effects, drink one glass of water per beverage to reduce the potential for dehydration and bloating. This includes any caffeinated beverages (especially coffee) and any alcoholic beverages. Bonus: you'll be way less hungover. I would also say any time you eat something really salty, you should down a glass of water 30 minutes after you're done eating to avoid bloating. 

Wednesday's GHI: Salad Spinner

Every week on Wednesdays, I'll talk about something that I've just gotta have. It could be anything... Keep up with me, I may throw some curve balls.

You guys will learn that I subscribe to the Alton Brown philosophy: no unitaskers in the kitchen. Gadgets that only do one job have no place in my cupboards. For the two years I lived in an apartment in Downtown Chicago, and even in our small house now, I do not have space in my little kitchen for things that only serve one purpose (there are very few exceptions, and you'll learn about them over the coming weeks. I'll give you a hint - check out yesterday's post re: my obsession with garlic). But more importantly, most unitaskers are gimmicks! A strawberry huller? Trust me, you can pass. Use a paring knife and, at worst, it will take seconds longer than with some gimmicky tool that does no other task and just clutters your kitchen. And they often don't even work that well. I'll create some posts to debunk some of these gimmicks so you can save your money. But it's Tuesday, so we're talking about things I love.

Gotta Have It: Salad Spinner

OXO Good Grips Large Salad Spinner

This is my salad spinner, and I could not live without it. Ok, that's an exaggeration. But I would definitely eat fewer salads without it.

My salad spinner is one of my favorite kitchen tools because of how well it accomplishes the one task that it is designed to accomplish: drying lettuce and other leafy greens. But in addition to that, it is versatile in other ways. Tips for the salad spinner are that you fill the bowl with cold water, let your greens take a bath, lift out the basket, drain the water, replace the basket, and spin until the centrifugal force flings the water off your greens till they are dry. 

I eat a ton of salads, so this baby gets a work out. Our local grocery store has lately been selling 5 lb bags or romaine lettuce for $1. We also get giant bags of spinach in the spring, and all summer long I clean the kale from my garden and spin it dry for our favorite salad (recipe to follow in a later post. I need to make it once and write down the proportions I use because right now I totally wing it. So we have to wait for the kale to grow in). So it gets an A+ for spinning greens. And after the greens are spun dry, I dump the water out of the bowl, then put the greens right into the bowl, add all my other ingredients, and dress and toss the salad right in that same bowl. After spinning dry, I also will put the lid on and pop the whole thing in the fridge. Being in the basket and not directly in the bowl helps air circulate and it stays crisp for a long time. Another tip is that if your greens are a little wilted when you go to wash them, add some ice cubes to the cold water bath you give them, and let them soak for an hour or so. The veins in the leaves will absorb the cold water and they will get crispy again. I've also used a variation on this trick by filling the bowl with cold water, placing in the basket w/ the semi-wilted lettuce in it, and just putting the whole thing in my fridge overnight. My lettuce was perfect the next day!!

My salad spinner helping me make quick work of 5 lbs of Romaine lettuce tonight

I actively try to eliminate plastic from my kitchen, but this is one bit o' plastic that I'm ok with. That's because food doesn't stay in there for really extended periods of time, and food is never heated or frozen in it, so there is less of a likelihood that the chemicals will leech out. 

I also use it to spin dry big leafy herbs like basil or flat-leaf parsley. I'll use the basket as a colander while I'm washing veggies like beans or asparagus. One technique for cooking eggplant is that after slicing it but before cooking it, you sprinkle salt on the slices to pull out moisture, and you let them drain for an hour... I do that in the salad spinner too. So while it may technically be somewhat of a unitasker, a) it does that task REALLY well and there isn't a great alternative to it, and b) there are other things that it can do. Those are the signs of a good kitchen tool, even one that's masquerading as a unitasker.