In order to eat enough calories, protein, and micronutrients, I prefer tasty meals to get it all down. Call me crazy. Cooking comes down to a few basic steps, once you have gathered the ingredients you plan to eat. Remember, there aren’t really any shortcuts to cooking, it all comes down to sharp knives, high heat, plenty of seasoning, and cleaning as you go.
Prepping ingredients mainly involves salting meat 30 mins before cooking time to give the salt a chance to seep into the middle parts of the meat, and cutting veggies for convenient heating. It’s essential to maintain a sharp knife and non-moving cutting board, and cut with safe form.
Heating ingredients makes them safe to consume. A cook controls how hot the cooking surface is, and how much food lube there is between the hot surface and the food.
- Heat - The sweetspot for most cooking is medium-high, the magical point where the oil/fat is maximally hot, but not burning/smoking off the cooking surface. More heat leads to faster cooking and maybe burning. Less heat is good to keep hot things hot, e.g. “low” means super low.
- Fat - Food lubrication used to prevent complete burning, and enable a nice technique called browning which tastes really good. Less oil leads to more browning, and eventually, burning. More oil leads to frying, still delicious, but less browning happens.
Seasoning means balance the amount of salt in each ingredient to balance the overall dish, adding enough fat to bring out the flavor, and balancing the dish with acid to make the flavors pop.
- Salt sources: Kosher Salt, Sea Salt, Soy Sauce
- Fat sources: Olive Oil, Cheese, Avocado
- Acid sources: Lemon, Lime, Vinegar, Tomatoes, Wine
Clean as you go to finish all dishes by the end of cook time. Really, efficient cooking comes down to efficient time management, and most of the time is saved by cleaning during the cooking process.