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)

Grilled Zucchini with Minted Lime Dressing

Mike grew up eating grilled zucchini that his dad would make "Greek style" which just means with olive oil and lemon juice. His dad would slice the zucchini lengthwise into long, thick strips, then drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, grill over high heat, then toss with lemon juice and a little more olive oil. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious. But I've recently found and adapted a recipe for grilled zucchini that... dare I say... I like even better! 

The inspiration for this recipe comes from a grilled squash and prosciutto recipe from Food & Wine's website that I made for Mike's 30th birthday party this year. But like most things I try to cook, I don't have all of the ingredients, so I adapt it to use whatever I have on hand. 

I started with 3 petite zucchini from the Madison farmer's market (which is my happy place, for the record). I sliced them on a bias on the mandolin between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thickness. Then I rubbed them down with olive oil, and Mike took them outside to grill them. While he was grilling, I made the dressing.

The dressing was so simple. I took the top 6 inches of 3 mint sprigs from my garden, and did a chiffonade on the leaves. This mint form my garden grew out of scraps. Last year I needed mint and what they had in the store was "living" herbs that still had a little root bulb. I bought no more mint from the store than what I used in this recipe, and it's grown into this bush you see here! 

Then since I didn't have lime zest, I used about 1 tbsp of lime juice from a bottle that I keep in the fridge. To that I added 1-2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, and about 1 tsp of garlic paste that I had in the fridge (if you remember from my garlic post, I had to go buy a tube of the stuff to do research, and I determined that it would be best to use in raw applications like dressings. So I put those cloves back and reached for the tube instead!). Otherwise I would have run 2 cloves through the garlic press. After adding a pinch of salt and pepper and giving it a good stir, the dressing was ready to go!

 And as long as I had the mint and the lime juice out, I whipped up a little mojito for myself... muddled mint with sugar and lime juice, add some rum, and simple syrup, and shake with ice. Pour into a glass with some soda water, and garnish with another fresh sprig of mint... it was the perfect dinner cocktail to compliment my zucchini.

 The last challenge is that I don't keep prosciutto laying around. That would be a crime... if I have prosciutto sitting in my fridge, it will be gone within 24 hours. But part of what makes this recipe so successful is the way that each of your different taste buds has something to do! Sweet from the zucchini and mint, sour from the lime, a little bitter from the pepper, umami from the garlic, and.... salt from the prosciutto! But without prosciutto, just adding some extra salt could have worked but it would have been lacking the extra umami that you get from the cured meat. So I scanned my fridge and found that I had some feta cheese - perfect!!! So after the zucchini was beautifully grilled, I drizzled on the dressing and tossed it all together. And lastly, took some of that salty feta and crumbled it into the smallest pieces possible and let it soften slightly over the hot zucchini. For a recipe that only took me a few minutes to throw together, this came out fantastic. I look forward to making it for a grill out we're having in a few weeks! 

Veggie Stir Fry

Stir Fry is my version of "Weeknight Surprise" - any random leftover veggies in my fridge get sauteed, tossed with some tasty sauces, and served over noodles or rice, and deliciousness ensues. 

So tonight, what I had in my fridge was: Broccoli, orange peppers, frozen green beans, onions. In hindsight, I would have left out the green beans. Mike specifically requested we keep water chestnuts on hand from now on because they would have gone perfectly! I just want to share with you guys exactly what I did, but also let you know what I would have done. Would have liked to add snow peas or snap peas instead of the beans, and some chicken would have been a good addition. 

So when making a stir fry, the goal is to cook everything at a very high heat for not a very long time. You're not looking to braise your food (braising means cooking low and slow in liquid... think osso buco, or any kind of stew). You want to get a good amount of browning on the outside, which means caramelization, which means flavor. Brown food tastes good. And you don't want the veggies to be mushy, you want them to still have a little crunch. So to do this, you'll pre-heat your wok or huge sautee pan with 2-3 tbsp of canola oil and 2 tbsp sesame oil. Do not use olive oil here for two reasons. 1) it has too low of a smoke point (meaning you need to heat it up hotter than it can safely get. Over-heated olive oil creates carcinogenic free radicals... that means causes cancer) and 2) it has a strong flavor that doesn't mesh as well with Asian flavors as the neutral canola oil would. So go with your canola oil / sesame oil blend (both of which have a high smoke point, and sesame oil has an amazing flavor that goes so well with stir fries). Get it screaming hot, then first add your protein, if using any. Always season your protein with salt and pepper before cooking. If you're using land-based protein (beef, pork, chicken), you'll want to fully cook it through. If you're using shrimp or scallops, you'll want to cook them just till they start going opaque and pink (shrimp) or browning (scallops). Do not fully cook them at this stage, because you're going to heat them more later. So if you cook them all they way now, they'll be rubbery by the end. No bueno. Tofu counts as a protein here too (though I'll be putting up a post later about why I avoid soy-based products when possible and what alternatives I use).

After the protein is cooked and removed from the pan, add another couple of tablespoons of oil. It's almost time for your veggies, but we need to be strategic about it. If you throw all your veggies in at once, toss for a few minutes and serve, you'll wind up with unevenly cooked veggies. Some may be overdone, some may still taste raw. So you need to add the veggies at different times so that they all finish cooking at the same time. And as for the quantity? Whatever blend sounds good to you, but I probably used 10-12 cups of chopped veggies for this stir fry and this quantity of sauce (note: I did not have a protein, so add more sauce if you're using a protein).



Before the veggies though, you need to add the Asian Trinity: onions, garlic, and ginger - the base flavors of so many Asian dishes. For stir fry, I use sliced onions. I would recommend that you do these first so that they can brown on their own. Once you toss in the other veggies, the onions tend to not get the alone-time they need in the hot wok to brown up deliciously. After the onions have started to brown, add your garlic. For this recipe I used minced. Garlic should only cook alone in the pot for literally 30-60 seconds. As soon as the garlic becomes fragrant and you can smell wafts of that deliciousness, it's time to toss in more food. When you add more food, it brings the temperature down inside the pot, so you don't risk burning the garlic. If I had fresh ginger, I would have grated it and added it right after the garlic, but unfortunately I did not. So I used 1-2 tsp. of powdered ginger which I added with the sauces, it just depends on how much of that ginger bite you like.


After your seasonings are done, it's time to add your veggies. You should add them in order from hardest / sturdiest to softest / most delicate. So for my stir-fry, I started with the broccoli. If I had snow / sugar snap peas, I probably would have added them around now as well. After those cooked for a few minutes, I added the orange peppers, and lastly the green beans (previously cooked and frozen, so just needed to be heated through). 

It is important to add the sauces to the veggies and protein after everything has been browned. Once you add the sauces, things will start to braise and will no longer be able to brown, so do not do this step too soon.  At this point, if you cooked a protein, add it back in, add the sauces, toss to combine, and cook for another couple of minutes until the sauce thickens up. You can choose to either serve it over cooked brown rice, or like I did, toss in some boiled gluten free rice noodles, so they sop up all that delicious sauce.

By the way, the leftovers of this are amazing. I love stir fries because they are so versatile - you can use up whatever's in your fridge in a satisfying way. And when done right, they are quite healthy too!! Great way to get more produce, whole grain brown rice, and lean protein. Win-win-win!!!!

Base Recipe for Stir Fry
Ingredients:
2-3 tbsp canola (for veggies, and another 2-3 for protein)
2 tbsp sesame oil
~1 lb lean protein (sliced lean beef, sliced or cubed chicken, sliced or cubed pork, shrimp)

~8 cups chopped Asian-inspired vegetables (broccoli, snow peas, snap peas, peppers, water chestnut, zucchini, onions, carrots, etc. Think about what you can get at Flat Top or Stir Crazy, and add whatever you have)
2 medium onions, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tsp fresh, or 1-2 tsp powdered ginger

Stir-Fry Sauce: 
4 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar (unseasoned)
*(optional) 1 tbsp sweet soy sauce
*(optional) 1 tsp sweet mirin

1) Heat canola oil in pan; season protein with salt and pepper. Cook till browned on all sides. Remove from pot, let drain on plate
2) Add remaining canola and sesame oil. Cook onions till just beginning to brown. Add garlic and fresh ginger (if using); cook for 30-60 seconds, then add veggies from hardest/sturdiest to softest/most delicate. Cook each type of veggie for a couple of minutes before adding new ones
3) Add all ingredients for sauce (including powdered ginger, if using). Return protein to wok, and toss to coat/combine. Cook for a few minutes to finish heating the protein and so that it absorbs some of the sauce
4) Either toss with noodles, or serve over whole grain brown rice

Enjoy!!

*I would use either one of these two optional ingredients, but not both. They are optional because they aren't pantry staples I expect everyone to have (read: you should have all the other ingredients. If you don't, you're missing a lot of flavor in your life. Hoisin sauce is my jam).

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!

Herb Crusted Salmon in Parchment

I am a sucker for good seafood. I tend to travel to places where seafood is a staple dish - Greece, Hawaii, Costa Rica, San Francisco, etc. The problem is, I don't get very creative when cooking it myself. I'm solid in terms of crustacean recipes, but when it comes to fish, I have three recipes - two for salmon (one Italian-inspired, one Asian-inspired), and one for any white fish (parmesan crust that will be featured very soon). So here's the Italian salmon one.

I chatted up the fish monger at Whole Foods and picked out a beautiful piece of salmon. Whole foods can be expensive if you do all your shopping there, but I go there for any animal I'm going to eat. When it comes to animal protein, I am way more concerned with quality, organic, local when possible than I am about produce. I also am a huge environmentalist, and the factory farm industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gases and why our planet is falling apart. So I appreciate the fact that Whole Foods cares about sustainability and sources most of its products from organizations that care about that too. Yes it's more expensive, but totally worth it to me. And plus, since it's more expensive, we tend to ration it out a bit more which is not a bad thing from a nutrition and environmental perspective. Replacing animal protein with veggie protein a few times a week is a GREAT way to keep your body detoxed and help keep your liver and GI tract healthy. 

Additionally, re-read the first sentence of the last paragraph... one of my favorite things about Whole Foods is how knowledgeable the staff are in their respective departments. The conversations I've had with the butchers, fromagers, and fish mongers are miles above what I feel like I could get out of the staff at most other grocers. So when I have questions or need to talk before making a purchase, it's ALWAYS Whole Foods for me.

Ok... to the "recipe." And again, we already learned how I write "recipes" - there isn't really any measuring. I took pictures of each step this time though, so you could follow along.

My ingredients: Sodium-free Italian Seasoning blend, dried basil, granulated garlic, salt, pepper, lemon slices, and olive oil. In a perfect world, I would have used several cloves of fresh cut garlic, but it was 8:30pm and I was hungry so I went with the quick stuff. Still delish.

Here's the order to sprinkle them all on the salmon: Salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic (granulated or fresh), basil, Italian seasoning. I just do a couple of drizzles - not a lot. Salmon is a very fatty fish to begin with, though it's amazing healthy fats that your body needs and that are necessary for proper neural activity and also good for your eyes. So don't over-do the oil, you're basically just putting a little bit on so that the herbs stick to the salmon. You could even use an olive oil cooking spray if you wanted. And as for the herbs, you can see the thickness of the "crust" that I use.

Then layer the lemon slices on top of the salmon like so...

And fold the parchment around the salmon to make a packet. Do your best oragami so that the parchment is actually sealed. The point is that as the fish cooks and gets hot, the parchment traps in the steam, and your fish basically steams. This keeps it moist and flaky and delicious. So use a lot of parchment - then fold two sides towards the middle, hold them together up above the fish, then roll down towards the fish till sealed. Then crimp in both open sides to fully seal.

Cook at between 375 - 400 for ~20-25 minutes. Depends on your oven and on the size of the piece of salmon. Warning - if you have any loose edges on the parchment (like I had here), IT WILL SMOKE in the oven! So either tuck in all loose ends, or go for 375 and a slightly longer time.

To test if the salmon is done, stick a fork right in the middle. It should flake away pretty easily. If you got a good quality salmon, please don't cook it to death... if the middle is slightly darker than the edges, that's ok. And probably preferred.

I meant to get a picture of it completed and unwrapped, but I was starving and forgot. So here's the skin in the cooked parchment after removing the flesh and portioning it out.

My serving - about 5 ounces. I love fresh lemon on my seafood, because it helps me use less salt, which is my weakness! Less sodium = less water retention!

It always comes out so incredibly moist, flaky, and delicious!

Because I can't just have salmon, we made a quick salad with whatever veggies we had in the fridge. Romaine lettuce, yellow peppers, onions, kalamata olives. Dressing is always the same: red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt, granulated garlic. Dress lightly, toss, taste, adjust ingredients, toss, taste, repeat until delicious.

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.