I'm Just Here for the Food_ Version 2.0 - Alton Brown [53]
When picking an oil, consider the ingredients you’re cooking. Asian ingredients will be complemented more by sesame oil than by olive oil, whereas foods with a Mediterranean slant will prefer the olive oil. French classics like green beans and shallots lean toward walnut oil. That’s just the way things work.
The Toss
The airborne food antics of many TV chefs are just that: antics. Your food doesn’t need “big air” to sauté properly, it only needs to move. Until you get the hang of it, concentrate on turning the food over itself by pushing the pan away from you, then snapping it gently back toward you. With a little practice you’ll be able to turn everything in the pan over in a second or two without removing the pan from the heat.
Try this: Combine 1 cup of dry black beans and 10 individual white beans in your sauté pan. Practice your toss and watch where the white beans go—can you gather them all together and then move them over every inch of the pan?
Building the Perfect Sauté
1. Prepare all foods to be cooked: cut them into uniform, bite-size pieces. (Aromatics should be chopped smaller so that they release more flavor.)
2. Add the cooking oil only after the pan is hot.
3. Add the aromatics (onion, celery, garlic, ginger, and so on) and toss for 30 seconds or until fragrant. (If finely cut, aromatics can be added later in the process.)
4. Add firm vegetables or meats and toss until half-cooked, then add quick-cooking or high-moisture ingredients like zucchini or tomato and toss for another 30 seconds to 1 minute.
5. Add final flavors such as citrus juice or vinegar. If vegetables are still too firm, cover to steam briefly.
6. Toss a final time with salt and pepper, taste, adjust seasoning if necessary, and turn out into a bowl or platter.
7. Top with grated cheese, toasted nuts, bread crumbs, or additional herbs.
THE STORY OF TEFLON
The year was 1938, and DuPont chemist Dr. Roy Plunkett was at work on the creation of a new type of Freon refrigerant. Plunkett plopped some down and left them in his lab overnight. The next day, he found that something had happened. The gas had somehow polymerized into a waxy, slippery substance, which with further testing proved to be almost utterly inert, chemically speaking. He called it Poly-tetra-fluoro-ethylene or Teflon® for short. Some guys out at Los Alamos caught wind of the blunder/discovery and decided to order up some of DuPont’s new goo. (Turns out they were working on something that required the containment of a uranium byproduct that’s highly corrosive—Teflon was the only material that would hold it.) Once its slipperiness became celebrated, Teflon was used to coat the nose cones of missiles carrying later generations of the Los Alamos spawn. Then, in the 1950s, a French fisherman came up with a method of applying Teflon to his fishing tackle, rendering it tangle-free. And when his wife got the idea of putting some on her pots and pans… well, the rest is non-stick history. Teflon is still considered the slickest solid on Earth.
Butter
It is the fat most commonly called for in sautéing.
Butter is a flavoring agent, and a little in the sauté pan can go a long way. Because of its low smoke point, using butter in combination with a high smoke point oil can prevent burning. Butter is made by churning cream until it reaches a semi-solid state. By United States law, butter must be at least 80 percent milk fat. The other 20 percent is made up of water and milk solids. Many high-end butters contain up to 88 percent milk fat. The USDA grades butter based on flavor, body, texture, color, and salt content. These grades are: AA (or 93), A (or 92), and B (or 90);