How much salt should I add to a pot of boiling water?
How much salt should I add to a pot of boiling water?
The wisdom about how much salt to add to a boiling pot of water is vast and varied.
Cooks will recommend anything from 10 to 50 grams per liter. Traditionally, it is thought that salty water helps green vegetables hold their color and makes pasta water boil more quickly, although both theories have their naysayers.
French culinary guru Joël Robuchon always adds two giant pinches of gros sel to a pot of boiling water for pasta or green beans with his pudgy and knowing fingers. He tells us that salting the water is our only chance to flavor pasta and help the vegetables stay bright. And while both pasta and vegetables will need additional salting after they're cooked, they will need less than if you neglect to salt them during the cooking process.
Chives are the most petite member of the onion family. They are related to green onions (aka, scallions) and grow in little clumps of long, thin, hollow green leaves.
Almost anything looks better with a spray of chives. Strewn whole across a plate or snipped into inch-long pieces, chives add color to a pale or visually lackluster dish. Chopped finely, they add a very subtle onion flavor to everything from salads to omelets to soups. Chives can also be briefly blanched and refreshed and then used to tie up food parcels and hors d'oeuvres to give them a polished appearance.
Chives are one of four main ingredients in the French mixed herb preparation known as fines herbes.
Recipe: Braised New Potatoes With Spring Onions, Garlic And Chives (Cookthink)
Recipe: Green Salad With Shrimp Fritters And Dijon-Sesame Dressing (hogwash)
What does it mean to let the butter's foam subside?
What does it mean to let the butter's foam subside?
Certain phrases have become part of the recipe vernacular despite giving little in the way of good guidance. Most of us, for example, have seen something like this in recipes that call for cooking with butter:
“Melt the butter over medium-high heat in a medium saucepan. When the foam subsides, add the vegetables and stir.”
Why does the butter's foam need to subside?
It’s an indicator of temperature. Adding vegetables or meat to cold fat is a fast way to mess up a good dish. The ingredients soak up the butter rather than cook in it, and the finished dish can turn out excessively buttery and too moist on the surface. Hot fat, on the other hand, prevents sticking and encourages browning.
Letting the butter's foam subside before adding ingredients ensures a hot cooking environment and adds a rich flavor to the dish. Of course, butter is hot well before its foam subsides. In some dishes like soups, where you're sweating vegetables, you may not want that extra richness. In these cases, you're looking for the point at which the butter begins to foam.
But if a recipe does call for you to let the butter's foam subside, here's a rough guide:
Heat 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat. Swirl the butter around in the pan. The milk solids will begin to separate out. The butter will sizzle and foam.
After another minute or so the foam subsides. The butter looks more like oil now, and it’s hot. At this point you might add eggs for an omelette.
For something like a sage butter sauce, let the butter go another 30 seconds or so to let it brown and take on a slightly nutty flavor. Like olive oil, butter has a low smoke point, so watch it closely. You don't want it to burn and smoke. If it does, rinse and dry the pan, then start over.
Recipe: Tortellini With Sage, Brown Butter, And Parmesan (Cookthink)
Related: Root Source: Unsalted Butter (Cookthink)
Why does Cookthink use red pepper flakes in so many recipes?
Why does Cookthink use red pepper flakes in so many recipes?
We use red pepper flakes so often that we've come to think of them as the third standard seasoning, after salt and pepper.
Why do we use red pepper flakes in so many recipes?
We use it as a flavor highlighter. In addition to the fives tastes -- sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami -- our tongues detect capsaicin, the main ingredient found in any hot chile. The heat of capsaicin in red pepper flakes "points up" the taste of ingredients they season. So, no matter what tastes and flavors you have going on in a dish, a pinch of red pepper flakes will help clarify and those tastes and flavors without necessarily adding heat (though you can add plenty of heat by adding red pepper flakes).
Experiment with red pepper flakes by starting out with a pinch in a dish like this Fusilli with Broccoli Raab and Parmesan. Increase (or decrease) the amount you use to get a sense of how much you like to add.
Recipe: New York Strip With Spicy Gremolata Dressing (Cookthink)
Reference: Measuring freshly ground black pepper (Cookthink)
what you should know
An aromatic masking as an herb. A slender, slight blade that implies (rather than declares) onion flavor. A garnish's garnish. That's pretty much the skinny on chives.
afterthought Because chives are the most delicate of the onions, they're usually added near or at the end of cooking-- sprayed across the surface of a soup, folded into an omelet, sprinkled on warm noodles or spooned over a baked potato from the salad bar (though not the one at Applebee's).
fines herbes Chives are one of four herbs that form the classic fines herbes. They're also central to the Persian New Year's dish sabzi polo and the Blue Flower omelet, a chive flower-herb omelet traditional in Shaker cooking.
chives tales If you get scorched in the summer sun, take heart: the Romans apparently used chives to treat sunburn.
what you need
Do you use scissors to snip herbs? If not, you're missing out on the joy of kitchen shears.
Each of us owns a rotary herb mill. None of us uses it. Ever.
Use this Cuisinart mini-prep processor to make chive oil, chive butter, chive vinegar, chive vinaigrette and chive cream cheese.
Somehow, it just wouldn't be as funny if it were called The Chive.
what you do
Chilled cantaloupe soup with chives and prosciutto is a perfect cool dinner for a hot summer night.
A shower of chives adds a delicate onion flavor to this heirloom tomato and herb salad.
Tortellini with tarragon, chives and parsley is a nice, light seasonal pasta. (Add chervil to make it tortellini aux fines herbes.)
Next time you're craving meat and potatoes, try a grilled flank steak and braised new potatoes with spring onions, garlic and chives.
You'll have to read Kin Sunée's Trail of Crumbs to get the full story on her whispery eggs with crabmeat and herbs. For a more classic egg-herb combination, try an omelette aux fines herbes.
Featured recipe: This herbed tuna salad with feta and pine nuts comes from Nicole of Pinch My Salt. It's the featured recipe for this week's Root Source Challenge.
Tarragon is a delicate, green herb with long, thin pointy leaves and a singular flavor with hints of anise.
One of the signature herbs in French cooking, tarragon is a main player in the classic quartet known as fines herbes. Tarragon marries particularly well with chicken, eggs, fish and cream. It also infuses tarragon vinegar and is the most crucial ingredient in Béarnaise sauce.
French tarragon is the most aromatic and flavorful tarragon for cooking. Russian tarragon doesn't smell or taste as good (no offense, Russians). You can buy tarragon fresh in summer, but in a pinch dried tarragon will work for many recipes. Just be careful not to get carried away and use too much, since tarragon has a strong personality and a tendency to overwhelm the other ingredients when given a chance.
Fun facts about tarragon: It was once thought to cure snakebite and the famous character of Estragon the clochard in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is named after the French word for tarragon.
Recipe: Iceberg Wedges With Garlic Croutons And Green Goddess Dressing (Cookthink)
Recipe: Tortellini With Tarragon, Chives And Parsley (Cookthink)
what you should know
Like a seasoned diplomat, tarragon is somehow forceful and subtle at the same time. It's an elegantly tuned herb -- delicate, reasonable.
walks softly Tarragon's thin, long leaves have a slightly sweet, resinous flavor, like basil-infused licorice. Add fresh tarragon towards the end of cooking to retain that flavor in the dish.
carries big stick As with thyme and marjoram, too much tarragon can overpower a dish. If a recipe calls for fresh tarragon and all you have is dried, use less than the recipe calls for.
fine aliment Tarragon goes especially well with eggs, chicken, fish and cream. A fundamental herb of French cuisine, tarragon is paired with chives, chervil and parsley to create the classic French herb mix called fines herbes.
fit for a king The difference between Hollandaise sauce and Béarnaise sauce? For Hollandaise, you use lemon juice. For Béarnaise, you use vinegar and add tarragon.
fit for a tramp The famous character of Estragon the clochard in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is named after the French word for tarragon.
what you need
This contraption might be the flashiest way to chop tarragon, though we think this knife would work just as well.
Has it been too long since your last reading of Beckett's Waiting for Godot? Nothing to do but read it again.
Got a witch in your life who needs to brush up on tarragon's many mystical applications? (It's been said to cure snake bites.) Get her Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs.
For more traditional culinary uses of tarragon, Herbs and Spices: The Cook's Reference has got you covered.
what you do
Tarragon's delicate but distinctive flavor adds depth to many sauces and dressings, notably bearrnaise sauce, tarragon vinaigrette and Green Goddess dressing.
Earthy, green broccoli loves the anise-y flavor of tarragon in this creamy risotto.
While we love our morning pancakes, sometimes we like to mix it up with savory potato latkes and fried eggs.
We often find it unbearable to cook indoors during the month of August, when summer's end is in sight. Get outside and grill this tarragon chicken with carrots.
Cook & Eat's summery salmon noodle soup is a quick and comforting lunch.
Featured recipe: This week's Root Source Challenge recipe comes from eating club vancouver. These tarragon carrot deviled eggs are brighter and more complex than the usual deviled egg.
Visit Cookthink.com for more tarragon recipes
