Green onions are a milder, versatile alternative to onions. The white parts are great for cooking, but mild enough to work into raw salsas and salads. The green parts work in either, too, but have an almost herbal quality when raw.To prep them, first pull off and discard any soft outer layers. It's best to rinse them after you do this. Cut off the root and and any damaged top green parts and discard them.Now just thinly slice straight across the onion. Thin slices are good to at at the end of cooking, sprinkled over a finished dish, or raw in salads and salsas.Make thicker slices for longer cooking dishes, and when you plan to sauté them first with oil or butter and spices. As with onions, a little salt at the beginning of cooking helps them soften more quickly.For stir-frys and shorter-cooking dishes where the green onion plays a starring role, slice the onions at an angle. The sharp slices look great on the plate (if you're impressed with that sort of thing).
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)
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.
Flat-leaf parsley vs. curly-leaf parsley
Flat-leaf parsley vs. curly-leaf parsley
Italian, or flat leaf, parsley has flat leaves as its name suggests, and many cooks prefer it for its more pronounced flavor, as it contains more essential oils than the curly leaf variety.
Curly leaf parsley is most often used as a garnish to add color to plates of monochromatic food or to dress up seafood displays.
While parsley is generally used for its leaves, parsley stems actually contain more flavor. Finely dice them and add to stocks, sauces, sautés and other preparations for added taste and vitamins.
Recipe: Barbara Kafka's Parsley Soup (Cookthink)
Recipe: Tortellini With Tarragon, Chives And Parsley (Cookthink)
Parsley used to be a gross-looking garnish on the side of your plate. Now, we think of it as one of the best go-to herbs to work into your cooking. It adds a bright but relatively neutral herbal flavor to almost any dish.To prep it, first rinse and shake dry the leaves. Hold the bouquet at an angle with the leaves against the cutting board. Run your knife down the side of the bouquet to slice away the leaves. It's fine to remove some of the tender stems along with the leaves.Now just run your knife back and forth across the pile of leaves, chopping them as coarsely or as finely as you need to. The closer to the end of the cooking you plan to add the parsley, the finer you'll want to chop it. But since parsley's so tender it's usually okay to keep the the chop coarse.
