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Learning
To Sauté
It's classic but
easy - and a good way to develop your cooking skills.
Written by Kay Chun, Photographs by Rita Maas - Real Simple,
October 2000
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Many
home cooks fear French cuisine, thinking it consists of
nothing but fancy foods and terrifying techniques. Not
so. Consider the art of sautéing. It manages to be classic
and elegant as well as fast and efficient. It consists
of cooking food quickly in a small amoung of fat over
direct heat for even browning. Almost any food can be
sautéed - meat, fish, or chicken. All you need is a heavy-bottomed
sauté pan, a pair of tongs, some flour, and a touch of
fat: olive oil, or a combination of butter and oil (for
the flavor of butter but the stability of oil). Once the
meat if done to a golden turn, you deglaze the pan with
some liquid - broth of lemon juice, for instance, and
let the caramelized bits clinging to the pan turn into
an exquisite sauce. The result? Intense flavor in a matter
of moments. To begin, just follow these four steps.
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| POUND.
Meat
that is to be sautéed must be thin enough to cook
quickly. Using a mallet, pound chicken and pork until
the chicken is 1/4 inch thick; the pork, 1/2 inch
thick. Take care that you don't crush the meat. Pounding
between two sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper
protects the meat by allowing it to slide as it gets
thinner and wider. |
FLOUR.
To ensure
good browning, the meat must be dredged in flour immediately
before it goes in the pan. Don't flour the meat ahead
of time. You want to go directly from flour to pan
to ensure a dry, crisp sear that won't stick and that
will leave a golden crust. Any moisture will interfere
with proper searing and browning, since the food will
start steaming instead. |
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| SAUTÉ.
The
oil must be very hot so the meat can literraly jump
around in the pan. The word sauter, in fact,
means "to jump" in French. To test the oil,
drop a tiny bit of flour in the pan. If it puffs and
comes to the surface instantly, the oil is hot enough.
If it's not, the flour will sink to the bottom. Learn
to look for the moment when the oil is luminously
clear and shimmering. |
DEGLAZING.
Once
the meat is browned and cooked through, the sauce
practically makes itself in the pan. You deglaze by
adding liquid (usually water, stock, or wine) and
stirring to loosen the caramelized bits of food left
clinging to the pan. Add a touch of butter and fresh
herbs and the result will be a rich and concentrated
French sauce. Congratulations, you're a gourmet chef! |
NEXT : PORK CHOPS WITH CIDER GLAZE >>
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