fandomhigh | Home Ec 10, Period 4, 3/16

"This week," Steve said, "we'll be sauteing and pan frying. These two are very similar, and some people even use them interchangeably. Others argue that the amount of oil used, or something like that, makes them different. You can make up your own minds; I won't tell you how to think. Both methods involve cooking food in a shallow pan in a smallish amount of oil. For a saute, a distinctive 'flipping' motion is traditionally used." Steve took hold of the handle of a panful of sliced mushrooms and demonstrated this motion, while ~~handwavily~~ explaining how to do it. Oooh. Ahhh. "If you don't feel up to this, please do not attempt it, as you'll make a giant mess you'll just have to clean up. Instead, you can just stir with a spatula and I won't tell anyone. For pan frying, you typically cook something on one side, then turn it over and cook it on the other.

"So, now you're going to saute mushrooms--after you slice them up, of course--and pan-fry some pork chops. Make sure your pork is done all the way through before you eat it, or you could get food poisoning, and I'd hate to explain how I let that happen to your parents. Pork is done at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. I've provided thermometers at your duty stations. Please don't hesitate to use them."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Karla glanced up, feeling obscurely guilty. "Cooking?" she offered. "Really? Are you sure?"

She gave the pan a dubious glance. "I wasn't gonna flip it?"

Now that Steve was here, anyway.

"We need to pour off some--" by which he meant almost all "--of that oil," Steve said, taking the pan away to do so and returning it with a much-reduced amount. "Remember, we're pan frying, not deep frying. That has too much fire potential for this class.

"And, Tony, let me show you how to clean those mushrooms. See, what you do is, you take a clean kitchen towel and dampen it, and just wipe the cap off, so they don't get waterlogged. And, uh. And no soap on the food."

"Mushrooms get waterlogged?" WHERE WAS ALTON BROWN TO EXPLAIN THIS?

"And how do you know they're clean if you can't use soap?"

You didn't just rinse forks off with a towel and called it good.

"Soap isn't for things you're going to eat," Steve explained. "Your food would taste like soap. They're going in a hot pan, that will kill any surface germs the soap would get to anyway."

Though Steve had missed her entirely, he was of the Julia Child school of thought: if it survived his hot oven, it deserved to make him sick. Not that he could get food poisoning, but that was beside the point. Other people could.

"And, yes," Steve told Tony. "Mushrooms are sort of constructed like sponges; they'll soak the water right up and the texture gets bad." THE PLAYER WAS TOO LAZY TO LOOK UP THE CLIP, THAT'S WHERE.

Also Alton Brown subscribes to the theory that it's fine to rinse them briefly, which is one of the few points we disagree on.

It was a Southern show down. OH SNAP.

"Huh." Tony looked at the mushroom more closely. "Maybe biology is worth learning after all..."

Home Ec 10, Period 4, 3/16

Re: Cooking Time

Re: Cooking Time

Re: Cooking Time

Re: Cooking Time

Re: Cooking Time

Re: Cooking Time