CHEF TALK, FAST FOOD AT HOME

CHEF TALK  

FAST FOOD AT HOME

Many among us love fast food, just pass by at the drive – through and pick up your favorite burger, pizza slice or hot dog, a regular practice for many of us.

 There are bad fast foods, very bad fast foods but also not so bad fast foods available in the market, but I think that you can make something better than that.

I do not have any intention to tell you here not to eat fast food or lecture you about health issues related to eating fast food, many chefs, a hundred times more famous than me, are touching that subject in and out, so I leave that to them.

Fast food companies do not cook, even though they make it look they cook like a celebrity chef, they purchase products from a food processing company and basically just re-heat the products they serve. 

I have worked for such a food processing company as product development chef for several years and dare to say that I pretty well know how the fast food industry works behind the counter and in their ‘kitchen’.

To give you a peak, we made, among others, burgers for a famous burger giant, good burgers, well produced, HACCP proof, super fast frozen, tip top product. They, these burger guys, have in every outlet around the world a special, only available to them, designed oven where staff places the burger on the base of the oven and your perfect burger drops, at the other side of the machine, on your bun after four minutes and twenty five seconds.  

 Sounds like magic? It is not, you can do the same at home, quality patties and even better quality fries and buns      

With increasingly worrying stories about the health aspect of fast food, heart diseases, obesity and what not, making fast food at home becomes more and more popular.   

The best thing about making fast food at home is that YOU choose the products to use.

Meat from a trusted butcher, buns from your favorite bakery shop and maybe you like to make your own sauce and fries.

Now here is the problem. I know. I hear them too often.

“I have to start making everything from scratch every time and I hate that”.

Here is your solution, make batches at a time, vacuum pack what you make and freeze it. If you have a family of four, pack four burgers per bag, no waste. 

Buy fast food ingredients on offer, you may save money as well, minced meat, chicken wings, sausages, vacuum pack and freeze.

When you freeze potatoes they will turn sweet after a while but you can freeze homemade French fries.  Cut potatoes in French fries shape, fry at 170 degrees Celsius or 338 F. for three to four minutes until cooked, drain, cool, vacuum and freeze. When you use them, just fry golden and crispy at 180 degrees Celsius or 356 F and you have the perfect fries.   

Vacuum packing and freezing prolongs the shelf life significantly and your products retain its freshness. 

The burger patties I spoke about earlier have NO seasoning whatsoever, if that works for them it works for you, just form the patties, vacuum and freeze.

Below a very easy, but tasty, recipe for fried chicken wings that you can use for the vacuum/ freeze method. Season the wings, vacuum and freeze is all you need to do to have a great fast food snack in your freezer. Give it a try. 

FRIED CHICKEN WINGS

1 Kg Chicken wings (cut in half, drummet and wing)

1 Nos Large onion (cut into rings)

1 Tbsp Turmeric powder

Salt and crushed black pepper

Oil for frying

Method:

Season the chicken wings with the turmeric powder, salt and pepper.

Heat the oil to 180 degrees Celsius or 356 F and fry 4 to 5 minutes.

Check for doneness

Drain the fried wings on kitchen paper.

Fry the onion rings in the same oil for two minutes 

Top the chicken wings with the onion rings and serve hot with a sauce of your liking, ketchup, mayonnaise, tomato sauce or hot sauce.

Note: You can use other small cut chicken parts as well, like I did in the picture.

Oh, if you still decide to go to the drive- through, don’t forget to ask them to include these wings in their menu.    

Written for PMG 

By Chef Marinus Hoogendoorn

Culinary expert in recipe development and proof reading.

Find top quality vacuum sealers in the USA www.vacupack.com

International distribution in Canada  www.vacupack.ca

CAN SOUS-VIDE COOKING MAKE A HOME CHEF FAMOUS

 CAN SOUS-VIDE COOKING MAKE A HOME CHEF FAMOUS

Ok, you have invited some of your best friends for dinner, now you need to decide what to cook to prove that you have the quality of a professional chef.

You are not the most experienced chef and spending hours of preparation time is not your thing also.

Well sous-vide cooking is your best friend or will definitely become your best friend after you have given this cooking method a try. And that try is so easy to do.

Sous-vide, it sounds soft and sweet like the finished products it achieves, means nothing more than “cooking in vacuum”.

Sous-vide has taken professional restaurant cooking by storm over the years. It can now turn your home kitchen to a level you never imagined.   

All you need is a vacuum sealer, good quality vacuum bags, a stockpot and a digital thermometer. 

This will do for starting sous-vide cooks. When you fall in love with the concept and you will, believe me, you may want to invest in a thermal water circulator.

The whole secret is to bring meats and vegetables in a vacuum sealed bag under low temperatures in a hot water bath, to the desired serving temperature. 

To achieve this part of the process, you need a good quality thermometer and a bit of effort to keep that temperature steady. 

Once the serving temperature has been reached and that may vary, pending on the cut of meat you use, you need to keep that temperature steady. Preferably you should not have any variation in temperatures and maintain the temperature within the range of one degree Celsius in temperature.

This can be a bit tricky but with a bit of dedication you can overcome this hurdle.

A good way of keeping temperatures of water steady is to keep the water moving or swirling, I know of people who use a small aquarium pump for this, the pump creates bubbles and swirls the water, it proves to be a really good tool.       

To keep things simple, let’s take an example, a sirloin steak of 2.5 cm or 1 inch thickness.

Season the steak to your liking, salt, pepper, a rosemary twig, onions, garlic, the choice is yours.   

Place the steak in a vacuum bag and vacuum seal the bag, using one steak per bag.

A good quality vacuum bag is important. This is to avoid any leaking if or when the bag submerges in the water bath. 

Now you need to heat your water. 

There are many guides about sous-vide cooking temperatures and times but for the steak in our example you can follow this guide.  

A rare steak 120 F or  49 Celsius

A medium rare steak 130 F or  56 Celsius

A medium steak 140 F or  60 Celsius

A medium well steak 150 F or  65.5 Celsius

A well done steak 160 F or  71 Celsius

It will take about 45 minutes for a steak of this size, straight from your fridge, to reach this temperature.

Now here is the good part, if your guests are an hour late, no problem. Just leave the bag with the steak in the water and it will be perfect, but make sure your temperature is steady.

When you are ready to serve, remove the bag from the water, take the steak out of the bag and let it rest for 1 or 2 minutes, the slow sous-vide cooking method ensures that the steak is evenly cooked so there is no need for a long resting time for redistribution of juices.

The only, little, disadvantage of sous-vide cooking is that the method does not brown your meat.

To get a perfect looking steak on a plate just pan sear the steak in a hot pan with a little oil until nicely browned on both sides. This will take about 30 seconds on each side.

And there you are, the perfect steak. 

Five minutes preparation time, more time to greet and chit chat with invited friends or family and the applauses are all yours.

Once you have mastered the temperature control, sous-vide cooking will become an integral part of your cooking adventures. I am sure of that. 

Written for PMG 
By Chef Marinus Hoogendoorn 

Culinary expert in recipe development and proof reading.

https://www.vacupack.ca