Wizard Recipes

THERE’S no denying we love our meat, and many of us still put it at the center of our plate as often as we can. The reasons are the same as they always were: Meat is filling and requires little work to prepare. It’s a relatively inexpensive and an excellent source of many nutrients. And most people like it.

How much meat you eat is obviously a matter of choice, but the trend toward smaller portion sizes has had an impact on the estimated number of servings in many recipes from our website. In most of the recipes, I assume that a pound of meat serves three to four people rather than the two to three it did not long ago.

The fat question is also worth considering. Reigning wisdom has it that fat is “bad” for you, but this is far from clear, and even if it were, there are lots of kinds of fat, and the jury is still out even on the presumably most evil, saturated fat.

But for the last 30 years saturated fat has been considered unhealthy, and the meat industry has responded by making its products leaner than ever before. Which presents cooks with a dilemma.

Since fat-good or bad- adds flavor and moisture, you have two choices: Buy meat that has some fat on it or pay a little more attention when cooking lean meat. (Most veteran cooks do a little of each)

When cooking lean meat, you might want to add a bit more seasoning or take advantage of recipes using powerful seasonings (there are plenty of those here); and you might want to slightly undercook the leanest cuts so they remain juicy. When a lean pork chop or sirloin steak is cooked through, there is just no pleasure in the eating.

The Basics of Cooking Meat

Many meat cuts are interchangeable  and generally meat can take a fair amount of seasoning before being overwhelmed. Once you learn the basic techniques, you can take meat in just about any direction you like, giving it a flavor spin that can originate in almost any region of the world.

Most meat tastes best when it’s browned, because the process of browning creates literally hundreds of flavor compounds. You can brown by grilling, broiling, pangrilling, roasting, or sautéing, usually with added fat.

The first four of these techniques are not merely the initial process of a given recipe but the entire technique; that is, when you brown meat by grilling, broiling, pan-grilling, or roasting, you usually finish cooking it that way also.

That is sometimes the case with sautéing, too. But when you’re braising or stewing meat (or poultry,  for that matter), you frequently want to give it an initial sauté to heighten flavors by browning.

The impact of browning is more noticeable in some final braised dishes than in others, but, given that most braised recipes have several added flavors, it isn’t always essential, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be disappointed by the results if you skip it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for browning, but if I have to choose between finding another recipe and proceeding without the browning step, I’ll sometimes choose the latter, and I’m rarely sorry.

When you do brown meat, consider doing it in the oven. It’s easier to brown a large quantity of meat at high heat (450-500°F) in the oven than on top of the stove and far less messy, and uses less fat in the process.

Meat cooks best if it is at room temperature when it hits the heat. A half an hour or so out of the fridge is usually all it takes, which is frequently the time it will take you to prepare other ingredients or start a grill. You don’t want it to sit out for more than an hour before cooking, however.

Finally, you definitely don’t want to cook still-frozen meat. Ideally, you’ll thaw it over the course of a day or two in the fridge. Second best is to put the wrapped meat in a large container of cool water and change the water every 30 minutes or so. I don’t recommend defrosting meat in the microwave, because it semicooks, or on the countertop, because it’s not safe.

Veal has always been regarded as one of the finest meats, and it is associated with some very elegant dishes. This lean, delicate meat resembles poultry more than beef, and it has a versatility that lends itself to a variety of seasonings and cooking techniques. But remember, veal requires a bit of extra attention to keep it from becoming overcooked and dried out.

Buying Veal

Veal calves are raised for eight to sixteen weeks. In order to maintain the meat’s delicate texture, the calves are never subjected to excessive movement. The finest and most expensive veal is milk-fed, either their mother’s milk or a special milk formula. Milk-fed veal is rarely labeled as such but can be recognized by its pale pink, almost white color.

Grain-fed veal comes from older calves that were raised on grain or grass. It has a deep rosy pink color and a slightly stronger flavor than milk-fed veal. This veal is sometimes labeled “calf ” but more often it is just labeled “veal.”

When buying veal at the supermarket, let your eye be your guide. Look for meat that is fine-textured and pale. While marbling in beef is desirable, veal should have very little marbling, and what fat there is should be firm and very white. The bones of milk-fed veal have reddish marrow.

Prime veal is usually milk-fed, whereas grain-fed veal is usually graded choice. Veal marketed under brand names is rarely graded. Veal cutlets are readily available but vary in quality.

The cutlets are ideally cut from a single muscle, usually the top or bottom round. If they are cut from two or three muscles, they will curl when cooked.

Storing Veal

Because veal is a moist meat, it is fairly perishable. Large cuts and stew meat will only keep for two days, tightly wrapped, in the refrigerator. Be sure to cook veal cutlets the day of purchase.

Cooking Veal

Broiling, Grilling and Panfrying For broiling or grilling, choose thick chops and steaks so they won’t dry out. Veal cutlets, which are thin, are usually panfried.

ROASTING TIMES  FOR VEAL

(OV E N T E M P E R AT U R E O F 325°F )

Start with meat at refrigerator temperature. Remove roast from oven when it reaches 5°F below desired doneness; temperature will continue to rise as roast stands.

Best Bets: Shoulder or blade steaks, loin or rib chops, ground veal, and cutlets.

Braising and Stewing Bone-in pieces are especially suited to braising and stewing. Veal stew meat, cut from the neck or shoulder, is readily available and delicious.

Best Bets: Shanks, shank cross cuts (osso buco), arm (shoulder) or blade steak, breast, and shoulder.

Roasting Veal roasts are generally very lean, so you’ll get juicier results by cooking them to only 155°F, since the temperature will rise as it stands. Veal breast and shoulder roasts should be cooked until well done and tender.

Best Bets: Rib roast, loin roast, round, shoulder roast, and breast.

A few failures can intimidate anyone, yet cooking rice to perfection, once you learn it, is one of the easiest and most fool-proof kitchen tasks, next to boiling water. Remember one thing-rice cooking leaves very little latitude for errors or carelessness.

Learn a good rice cooking technique, practice it and stick with it (pun unintended). You’ll invariably end up with fluffy, perfectly-cooked rice grains that are neither dry nor soggy or sticky. And if it is sticky rice you are after, you will get the stickiest, gummiest rice that stays on your chopsticks in good-size lumps instead of two or three grains at a time.

Have a rice-cooking marathon to get thoroughly familiar with the technique. Get a pound or two ( a kilo) of rice and play hooky from work for a couple of hours. Start with the recipe here, then vary your technique to suit your taste until you judge the finished product perfect for your taste and your purposes.

Rice cooking varies slightly depending on your water, variety of rice, humidity (i.e. how much moisture rice grains retain) and how hot your lowest burner setting is. And some people like rice slightly al dente, others soft. Keep cooking batches of rice until you have exactly the way you like it, noting for each batch the amount of water you used and cooking time. It is a very cheap lesson, since rice is so inexpensive, and it only takes a few hours.

Feed your dog or cat any poor results and tell them that all Asian pets live mainly on rice. They don’t know the difference between good and bad rice and it is good for them (many canned cat and dog food filler is rice).

Each cookbook’s rice cooking technique is different. One variable, the amount of water to use so the rice absorbs the last drop at the end of the cooking period, changes with the age of the rice. Younger rice has a higher moisture content, so use slightly less water. But virtually all rice we buy has passed the young-rice stage.

The large variety of cooking techniques probably originated in Asia. There are many Asian rice-eating nations, and each culture prefers a different end result. Many people in parts of Asia prefer a long-grain, fluffy, dry rice. But even these people don’t agree on their cooking techniques.

In Pakistan, India, Burma and Sri Lanka they cook rice with salt.In Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam they cook it without salt. Going further east, Cambodia, Korea, China and Japan prefer a medium or short-grain variety that cooks up fluffy but moist with the grains sticking together. They add no salt to the water. In Laos, they eat glutinous rice as the everyday staple, not just in sweet preparations.

In Western cookbooks, the recommended cooking time for white rice varies from 15 to 30 minutes. Your guess is as good as anyone’s why this broad range.

Another area of complete disagreement is whether to rinse the rice before cooking.Asians often do this simply because their rice is not pre-cleaned. With better processing techniques clean rice is now available more readily in Asia. Rice we buy in the U.S. is always clean and you save a step by not rinsing it before cooking.

Another argument for pre-rinsers is to remove any surface starch that would make the cooked rice sticky. Rinsing advocates swear that rinsing until the water runs clear (starch in the rinsing water turns it milky) gives the fluffiest, driest, least sticky grains possible. Non-rinsers argue that rinsing washes away most of the nutrients, particularly the three B vitamins. Nutritional researchers agree. Laboratory experiments confirmed that much of the valuable vitamins end up in the rinse water with extensive rinsing.

So do you want vitamin-rich rice or non-sticky rice?

To settle the controversy, I cooked identical rice in identical pots, one after a thorough rinse and one straight from the bin. I found no perceivable difference in stickiness or in any other culinary properties between the two pots of cooked rice. My recommendation-don’t rinse the vitamins away and save an unnecessary step.

There are three different ways to cook rice in your kitchen (not including the rice cooker). One way is to cook it like pasta, in plenty of boiling salted water. When it is cooked, pour water and rice into a colander, drain well and serve. This is not the easiest, and much of the nutrients in the rice end up in the cooking water. But the method is foolproof.

Then you can . Combine rice, measured water and salt, and bake, tightly covered, in a 350°F (180°C) oven for 25 to 30 minutes (if you are using brown rice, give it an hour). Uncover and let bake for a few more minutes to evaporate any residual moisture. Simple.

The best and easiest method is the absorption (some cooks call it steaming) method. Put unrinsed rice into measured boiling salted water, cover, turn the heat low and cook for 15 minutes. Then let the pot sit covered, off the heat for 5 minutes. The proportions are 1 cup rice, 1½ cups water and ½ teaspoon salt. Fluff gently with two forks and the rice is ready to eat. This amount serves four people.

If you are cooking more than one cup of raw long-grain rice, for each additional cup of rice you only add 1¼ cups of water, not 1½. The amount of salt remains ½ teaspoon for every cup of rice. For short-grain rice the cooking technique and amount of water is the same, but for each additional cup of rice add only 1 cup of water.

Brown rice takes longer to cook because of the fibrous bran layer that cover the grains needs longer time to soften. The amount of water and salt are the same as for long-grain rice. Most brown rice cooks in 40 minutes.

Glutinous rice is not cooked in water but steamed. I don’t know the reason, possible it is tradition. The less common Asian variety, black glutinous rice, on the other hand, they always cook in water.

Both the absorption method and oven cooking rice, by the way, retain all nutrients.