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?

Johnson & Wales Culinary Student Receives 2nd Reluctant Gourmet Culinary School Grant

I’m excited to announce that Blair Cannon, a sophomore at Johnson & Wales Culinary School in Charlotte, NC who is pursuing an Associates of Applied Science degree in Culinary Arts, was chosen to receive the 2nd Reluctant Gourmet Culinary Scholarship in association with Chef4Students.org.

The program was established in 2003 to assist culinary students in need of financial assistance. Since that time, over $77,000 has been awarded to future culinarians in the form of $1,000 culinary grants. I was able to get involved in the reviewing process along with a panel consisting of several certified chefs, business executives and culinary professionals from various organizations across the globe.

About the Chefs4Students.org Culinary Grant Program

Chefs4Students.org offers a variety of programs for companies and individuals to participate in this non-profit effort to assist culinary students in need. The Chefs4Students.org Culinary Grant Program is administered by Chef David and Pamela Nelson.

Chefs4Students.org utilizes the Yampa Valley Community Foundation, www.yvcf.org to independently oversee the financial aspects of this non-profit fund.

For More Information: http://www.chefs4students.org

A Letter From Culinary Student Blair Cannon

It’s great to be able to give back a little to the culinary industry with these culinary grants, but it means even more when you hear from the recipients themselves and learn how much these grants mean to them. Here is a letter from this years Reluctant Gourmet sponsored scholarship Blair Cannon to my friend Chef David Nelson who makes this all possible.

April 28, 2009

Dear Chef David Nelson,

I was chosen to receive the Reluctant Gourmet sponsored scholarship for your organization for 2009; and I am writing this letter to express my sincerest thanks to your organization for allowing students such as myself the opportunity to obtain this scholarship.

It has been an honor for me to be recognized for my hard work, and by receiving this scholarship; it motivates me to continue to strive for excellence.

I currently am finishing my sophomore year at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte, NC, pursuing an Associates of Applied Science degree in Culinary Arts and your scholarship support has allowed me to concentrate more on schoolwork without the financial burden. In addition, in my junior and senior years, I plan to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in Food and Restaurant Management.

The program at Johnson & Wales has been challenging and the instructors inspiring as well. I have been volunteering in many activities at school such as Charlotte Shout and the academic community. Having the opportunity to meet many celebrity chefs as well as gain lots of culinary advice, has been a dream come true. At this time I am away at co-op in Augusta, GA at the Augusta National Golf Club for the Masters Golf Tournament gaining work experience and meeting a lot of celebrities.

This scholarship has helped me to realize my dreams of becoming a Chef and one day owning my own restaurant. I can assure you that as a recipient, I will make your organization proud by excelling in my studies and giving back to the community as a token of my appreciation.

Your generosity has made a profound impact on my life and I am sincerely grateful and truly honored to have been a recipient of this award.

Best Regards,

Blair Cannon

Wow! If anyone is interested in getting involved with Chef Nelson’s foundation to help culinary schools fulfill their dreams, please contact me or Chef Nelson at the web site above.

Constant Motion - The Art of Working the Line

Even if you’ve never been to culinary school or worked in a restaurant or seen cooks putting out food in a commercial kitchen, you’ve probably eaten in a crowded restaurant and wondered, “How do they keep track of it all? How can they possibly feed all these people without screwing up or serving cold food?”

The answer is organization and division of labor. That is a deceptively simple answer, not simple in the sense of “easy,” but simple in the sense of “basic.” I’ve been back there and seen cooks hard at work during a busy dinner service. Even from a layman’s point of view, it may be basic, but easy, it ain’t.

The backbone of any service—breakfast, lunch or dinner—in a restaurant is “mise en place”. Each cook at each station is responsible for getting every component prepped for every dish that comes off that station. The trick is to make sure that, once tickets (orders) start coming in, the cook has everything he needs to fill those orders without ever having to leave his station. This can get very murky for a novice. Let me explain by illustrating.

Say a cook works the Panini station. (For those not familiar with Panini, it is a sandwich served hot or cold but most of us are more familiar with toasted Panini.) On the menu is a grilled vegetable Panini with goat cheese and herbed aioli on focaccia, a grilled Portobello Panini on ciabatta, a Cuban sandwich on Cuban bread and a bacon, lettuce and turkey Panini with Swiss cheese on seeded rye. All items come with fries, potato salad, side salad or chips. That doesn’t sound like too heavy a load, but let’s look at the mise en place for that station:

Pre-slice, pre-toast breads
Make vegetable marinade
Marinate vegetables
Grill vegetables
Make herbed aioli
Prep goat cheese
Make mushroom marinade (if different from veggie marinade)
Marinate portobellos
Pre-grill Portobellos
Slice cheeses
Slice some cheddar—there are always substitutions
Slice pickles (or stage pickles)
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Cook pork shoulder
Slice ham
Cook bacon
Wash and stage lettuce
Slice turkey
Make potato salad
Have chips ready
Oil for Panini press
Salt and pepper
Chop herbs

Being Prepared For Anything

Not only does the cook need to make sure that everything is prepped, but he has to make sure that he has enough of everything to make it through service. While it might be no big deal to send someone back to the walk-in cooler to get another dish of mustard, it’s a huge deal to need more grilled vegetables when the grill cook has the grill full of hamburgers. Often the cook will have two pans of their ingredients ready - ones at the station to start service and ones in the walk-in or in the low-boy under the station for back up.

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