I am a big fan of learning the basic techniques of cooking and then applying them to create your own recipes with your own favorite ingredients and what’s on hand in your refrigerator. Not that I don’t use recipes, I do, but recipes are not always developed with your skills, likes and experience in mind. If you learn the technique properly, you never really need a recipe except for coming up with new ideas.

Saute is one of those techniques that I think every home cook can learn to master and when they do, they will be coming up with dozens of there own recipes and variations.

Saute is a dry heat method requiring a minimal amount of cooking fat whether it be oil or butter and intense high heat. Literally it means “to jump” and is associated with chefs tossing the ingredients in the air but I can tell you from experience, if the pan and cooking fat is as hot as it should be, smaller cut ingredients can actually “jump” in the pan.

I received an email from a reader who asked me a question about saute temperatures and I realized I had it wrong on my web site so I just updated The Secret to Great Saute as well as How Hot Should You Heat Your Pan When Sauteing and you may find this update easier to understand.

I go into much more detail and describe:

• What Is Saute?
• What’s The Difference Between Sauteing and Pan Frying?
• The Formula For a Great Saute
• The Right Pan For The Job
• The Right Fat - Butter or Oil
• How Much Fat
• Preheating The Pan
• Equal Sized Ingredients
• The Ideal Temperature
• Caramelizing and the Maillard Reaction
• How Do You Know When the Fat Is Hot Enough?
• Smoking Points
• The Basics

How To Saute Video

Just added to the site is a new saute cooking video page with three excellent cooking demonstrations by Chef Todd Mohr offering step-by-step instructions on the secrets to a great saute. I highly recommend you check out the How To Saute Cooking Video. It is an entertaining way to learn the basics and pick up some valuable cooking tips.

Related Articles

• How to choose a good saute pan?
• How do I choose the right cookware?
• How much heat when sauteing?
• How to saute properly
  

On Saturdays, I go to the Ardmore Farmer’s Market to shop with my buddy, Barbecue Bob. I typically pick up some pork product at Stoltzfus Meats because they have the freshest pork around. This weekend I picked up some Country Style ribs that were described to me as “big pork chops that have been cut in half so they look like ribs.” They were meaty, about 1 pound each.

I noticed from the cover of my June/July edition of Fine Cooking they were talking about a new way of grilling called “Sear, Braise & Glaze”. I’ve been reading about this technique lately in some other cooking articles. Basically you sear the meat on the grill, braise it in a Dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot and finish it on the grill as a barbecue.

There are many advantages to this somewhat new cooking technique and a couple of disadvantages but I’ll write about all of them another time. For now I want to tell you how I used their recipe to braise the country style ribs in my outdoor wood burning oven for some pretty good ribs and show you how you can braise them in your oven.

Country Style Ribs - What Are They?

These ribs are really not ribs at all but pork chops cut from the blade (think shoulder) end of the loin that are then butterflied so they look like a big, meaty ribs. There is enough fat on them so they can be braised or slow cooked barbecue style on the grill. Cuts with less fat would just get tough during a braise and are better suited to shorter, higher heat dry cooking methods.

These aren’t your pick up with your fingers type of ribs that you may be used to. You more or less need a knife and fork, and if you braise them, be sure to have your spoon ready. The sauce from the braising liquids is incredible.

Did I mention they are not that expensive? I think I paid under $5.00 per pound.

Dry Rub & Braising Liquid

Basically I followed Fine Cooking’s recipe for the rub, and it was very tasty. I encourage you, however, to come up with your own brand of rubs by experimenting with different ingredients. If you look at 100 cookbooks that have rib rub recipes, you are going to find many with similar ingredients, but they will all be a little differently. I typically go with what I like and what I have on hand.

One of the key ingredients for the braise is beer. You may remember my post called Bert’s Barbecue Baby Back Ribs. This is one of my favorite and quickest ways to make barbecued ribs in a hurry by starting them in the oven and finishing them on the grill. Bert’s recipe also calls for a bottle of beer.

Braised Country Style Ribs with Orzo & Sauteed Broccoli Rabe

Dry Rub Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons dry sage
Salt & Pepper, to taste

Braising Liquid Ingredients

4 strips of bacon, cut into pieces
2 medium yellow onions, cut into thin slices
4 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1 bottle of beer, stout or dark lager if possible
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon caraway seeds

I also added a few drops of Asian hot sauce to give it a little kick.

Meat
6 Country Style Ribs

How to Prepare

Start by preparing the rub for the ribs. You’ll want to cover the ribs with the rub and let sit for a minimum of a couple of hours up to overnight. I used a large stainless steel utility bowl to mix all the rub ingredients and one at a time added a rib to cover. Be sure to knock off any excess rub off the rib before starting the next. After each one was covered, I placed them into a large Ziploc bag and stuck the bag in the refrigerator.

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Flouring Meat Before Browning - What Does It Do?

Just the other day, I decided to braise some lamb shanks. Most recipes that I see call for the meat to be dredged in flour before browning, so I began to wonder why. Is it really necessary at all?

As with most cooking questions, there is a lot of conflicting information, both in cookbooks and out on the Internet. I am not sure why this is, but I imagine that most cookbook authors and chefs learned from people who just used different techniques. Perhaps in one culinary tradition, flouring the meat before browning is standard operating procedure whereas in other traditions, it might be unheard of.

Thickening The Sauce

Most resources that I found agreed that flouring the meat before browning helps to thicken the eventual sauce. This stands to reason, as a very common method of thickening is through the use of a roux.

A roux is a mixture of equal parts flour and fat which is then cooked to achieve a certain color and complexity of flavor. When we flour meat and then brown it in oil, we are essentially making a roux—the flour on the meat mixes with the fat in the pan and cooks, providing thickening power when additional liquid is added.

Flavorful Crust

Aside from it thickening power, flouring meat, especially with seasoned flour, can provide both a flavorful crust and insulate the meat from the high heat in the pan. Whenever a recipe calls for flouring, it pays to look at the rest of the ingredient list to see if you can add any additional flavoring to the flour—flavors that will complement the dish.

For example, if you are making a Cajun-inspired meal that calls for flouring meat, you might consider adding some cayenne pepper and some Cajun seasoning to the flour before dredging the meat in it. Since flour contains both proteins and sugar, the browning is the result of Maillard reactions, just like when you brown meat.

The difference is that, during cooking, the starches in the flour mix with meat juices and gelatinize, or swell up. The gelatinized starch provides a sticky coating that serves as an insulating layer between the meat and the hot pan. This can be particularly useful in the pan searing of delicate foods, especially fish. The fish cooks nicely without drying out and ends up with a thin but crisp and flavorful coating.

When you flour meat, the meat itself gets cooked, but since it is insulated, it doesn’t necessarily brown. The flavors produced from the Maillard reactions in the flour will be slightly different than the flavors produced from browning unfloured meat, but there will still be complexity.

I imagine that, when having to choose between browning floured meat and not browning the meat at all before cooking, the dish with the floured and browned meat would have a more complex flavor.

Other Options

There has also been some discussion about using floured meat as a thickener. Many chefs consider browning in flour kind of a cheat and think that thickening and enriching should be done through reduction—slowly simmering a sauce to reduce the water content, thereby thickening it and intensifying the flavor. At the end of the day, the choice is yours: dredge your meat in flour before browning and then add liquid to provide some body and thickening, or reducing the sauce after cooking to produce a slightly thickened silky sauce.

In the case of thickening, there are a couple of other options available. While some professional chefs might consider it cheating, you can thicken a sauce by adding a slurry of flour (or corn starch, arrowroot, potato starch, etc) and cold water (or broth) to the sauce and then boiling for a few seconds. The boiling cooks off the “raw starch” flavor and helps the starches to swell up, thickening your sauce.

Another option is to knead equal amounts of butter and flour together into a paste and add this to the sauce as it simmers. This is called a beurre manie and will enrich as well as thicken a sauce. As far as I’m concerned, if my goal is to get a meal on the table on a weeknight, I will not feel bad about “cheating” with one of these thickening options.

Question For You - Do You Flour Your Meat, Chicken, Fish or Vegetables Before Browning & Why?