The Ultimate Easy to Prepare Vegetarian Recipes Cookbook - III.Techniques and Tips for Cooking Vegetarian

III.Techniques and Tips for Cooking Vegetarian

Have you ever opened a vegetarian cookbook or a cooking blog and found words like the Maillard reaction, blanching, or poaching? These terms can be confusing to an inexperienced cook; much more so for a layman who just wants to know how to cook better-tasting food in her own kitchen. To avoid any confusion and to arm you with a bit of culinary knowledge that you can drop on your friends like a suave bomb, we’re going to explore a few culinary tips and techniques that are often associated with the vegetarian diet.

The truth is, there are some cooking methods and techniques that you will be using more often than others as a healthy vegetarian. Chances are you won’t be deep frying too many of your vegetables but what you can do is stir fry them or grill them. And because you want to make the most out of your ingredients, you’ll be learning how to blanch them.

Here are a few important cooking techniques and methods that you will be needed as a vegetarian cook:

Poaching

Poaching is a gentle cooking method that cooks your food at low temperatures or at the range of 65°-80°C in water or in flavoured poaching liquid like vegetable stock. Because the temperature for poaching is so low, your food doesn’t lose a lot of moisture and retains its springy and crunchy texture.

There are four types of poaching and they’re fairly easy to distinguish from each other. The first one is poaching while floating in liquid without a lid. This means that your ingredients will be completely covered by the poaching liquid in a pot that is uncovered. This is the most common type of poaching because it is the method used to prepare poached eggs but can be used for a variety of ingredients.

The second type of poaching is poaching in a small amount of liquid while half-covered, usually with parchment paper. The ingredients won’t be completely immersed in the cooking liquid; by half-covering the pan, the steam will help cook the uncovered part of the ingredients.

The third type of poaching is poaching on a water bath while stirring. This type of poaching is commonly used for preparing sauces because your ingredients won’t actually be touching the water. Instead, it will be placed in a bowl that will be placed on a pot that is heated to poaching temperature. You then stir the ingredients in the bowl until they emulsify. This is the poaching method that is most often used in the pastry kitchen for mousses, creams, and butter sauces.

The fourth type of poaching is poaching on a water bath without stirring. You place your mixture or ingredients inside a container like a ceramic bowl then placing it inside a baking pan lined with cardboard or a baking mat. The pan is then filled with water about halfway up the container and placed inside an oven. This method of poaching is commonly used for preparing flans and puddings because it allows egg mixtures to thicken without cooking the egg.

What do these four types of poaching have in common? It’s the low cooking temperature. Even when you’re poaching inside an oven, the actual temperature of the cooking liquid should be at 65°-80°C which you can achieve by setting the oven to 165°C. If you’re wondering whether you actually need to know everything about poaching, you probably don’t; but a little knowledge never hurt anybody. Keep the first type of poaching in mind – poaching while floating in liquid – because you’ll probably be needing it a lot more than the rest.

This is an excerpt from the book:  The Ultimate Easy to Prepare Vegetarian Recipes Cookbook