Help - I Gotta Learn To Cook!

By ed dugan

Learning how to cook can open a whole new world for you. You’ll find yourself conversing with people you would not otherwise have known, and developing friends you might never have had. 

Being able to cook delicious and healthful meals and understanding the treatment of various foods, will make  you more independent as well as extending your active life by many years.

If you're in a relationship, it stands a better chance of surviving if one of the partners knows how to cook really good meals. Lynne and I have spent many wonderful evenings together, preparing a meal, sipping a glass of wine, and chatting. I call it culinary bonding

• Language: English
• Publisher: ed dugan
• Release date: Sep 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536595444

Book preview

Help – I Gotta

Learn To Cook!

––––––––

Become a Celebrity Chef in your own kitchen

––––––––

Chef Ed Dugan

Copyright © 2015 Ed Dugan

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the express permission of the author in writing.

DEDICATION

The Creator made my wife Lynne and threw away the recipe, leaving me with the only perfect woman on the planet.

When Karen and I split up...that was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn about living on my own. Food doesn’t automatically transport itself from grocery store shelves to refrigerator and cupboards or table. Someone has to go to the store and actually bring it home. And meals – especially balanced ones – don’t appear on the table magically. They require advance planning and preparation. When it comes to cooking, I’m a complete flop. - Detective J. P. Beaumont in Lying in Wait, a novel by J. A. Jance

Table of Contents

––––––––

Chapter 1: The Four Ts of Cooking             

Chapter 2: An Overview of Cooking

Methods - Part One

Chapter 3: An Overview of Cooking

Methods - Part Two

Chapter 4: Treatment - The Key to Successful

Cooking

Chapter 5: The Language of Cooking                   

Chapter 6: A Food Dictionary       

Chapter 7: Three Steps to Cooking a

Good Meal

Chapter 8: Training Wheels Meals                   

Chapter 9: Final Exam (optional)

Chapter 10: The Next Step                                     

BOOKS BY ED DUGAN

Help-I Gotta Learn To Cook!

Help-I Gotta Cook!

Help-I Gotta Retire! Option One

Help-I Gotta Retire! Option Two

Help-I Gotta Raise More Money!

Help-I Gotta Lose Weight!

Help-I Gotta Publish My Book!

To learn more go to:

Helpigotta.com

CHAPTER ONE

The Four Ts of Cooking

A

s someone trained in clinical psychology, I want to present you with a psychological fact: people tend to like what they’re good at and dislike what they’re not good at.

For instance, my wife Lynne did not grow up in what you would call a cooking household, and therefore never learned very much about preparing meals. As a result, she did not like to cook, and when we got married I took over that job. For the record, I LOVE to cook!

It really wasn’t very hard for me to do. I was raised by my maternal grandmother, who was a world-class cook in her own right, and, while growing up in her kitchen, she taught me how to cook, and how to treat various foods. I was a good student and became pretty good myself, and the better I got, the more I loved to cook. Exactly the point I’m trying to make.

If you feel you don’t like to cook, the chances are you won’t be very good at it. This book has been written to give you a new perspective about cooking and hopefully, a positive attitude about it. If you read it carefully and absorb what it says, it will help make you a very good cook. I suspect, at that point, you will really enjoy cooking!

Being a good cook brings with it a lot of benefits. If you know how to cook, it will open a whole new world for you. You’ll find yourself conversing with people you would not otherwise have known, and developing friends you might never have had.  By far, the most important benefit you will get is the degree of independence it provides.

Knowing your way around the kitchen and understanding the treatment of various foods, can help you survive on your own and not depend on someone else to keep you well-fed and healthy. This skill can extend your ability to live an independent life by many years.

Also, if you are in a relationship, or getting close to one, I think it stands a better chance of lasting if one of the partners knows how to cook really good meals. Not only is it healthier, but I’ve spent many evenings preparing a meal, as my wife Lynne watched, and we both sipped a glass of wine and chatted. I call it culinary bonding.

The food world changes daily, recipes come and go, tastes change, and new ways to cook appear on a regular basis. But some things never change. I had a good friend who was a former head coach in the National Football League, and he kept a huge banner in the locker room that stated:

LEARN THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE GAME AND YOUR TALENT WILL DO THE REST!

That’s the goal of this Cooking Course, to teach you the fundamentals and let your talent or inclinations do the rest. Speaking of fundamentals, there are four things you need to keep in mind every minute you’re in the kitchen preparing food. I call them the Four Ts of Cooking:

Time: When I first started to cook, I can’t tell you how many times I screwed up a good dish by not paying attention to time. It’s not so important with dishes like stews and braises, but cooking just about anything else requires that you time the dish very closely. Often that means to the minute. You can ruin an egg or fish dish very quickly by overcooking it. Even things like steak will get away from you if you don’t keep your eye on the clock. Eventually you will gain a sense of time about a particular dish but, until you do, pay attention to how much time has passed since you started cooking it.

Temperature: Closely allied with the timing of a dish is the temperature you’re using.  I don’t mean worrying about burning the dish, although I’ve done that a number of times when I got more captivated with my wine than the dish I was cooking. What I mean by this is that different foods cook better at different temperatures, so you should be aware of this fact. For instance, with eggs and other delicate foods, they cook much better at lower temperatures while with steaks, often the hotter the pan the better. The same is true of roasting. When I’m roasting a chicken I like to crank up the heat, get the bird cooked, and obtain a nice golden brown at the same time. On the other hand, I think pork, and some beef roasts, fare better with lower temperatures. Another example is roasting vegetables, where a relatively high temperature, 375 degrees, puts a nice color on them.

Treatment: I will repeat this a number of times because it’s an important key to good cooking. I often quote my grandmother, when she told me that she could take four chicken breasts and treat them in four different ways. She said she could fry one, poach one, bake or roast one, and use one in a chicken soup. Same breast, simply a different way to treat it. The point is that you should learn how different foods react to different treatments and then cook them accordingly. You can fry a breast and do it rather quickly to get the best results. On the other hand, if you’re putting it in a soup or stew, longer cooking is called for.

Perhaps the best example is if you’re making a squid dish. Squid has to be cooked quickly, as in a matter of seconds, or cooked for hours. If you cook squid differently than that, you’ll end up with a very rubbery dish. Chapter Four goes into how to treat various foods in much greater detail.

Tasting: If you don’t like unpleasant surprises when you’re preparing a meal, you need to get in the habit of tasting it frequently. Is it too spicy, not spicy enough, does it need some additional herbs, is it salty enough, does it need  another ingredient  to make it just perfect – these are questions that only frequent tasting can answer. By doing this you also will avoid having a dish turn out too salty or too spicy for people’s taste, so taste frequently, and be careful not to burn your tongue while you’re doing it.

I don’t care what the recipe tells you, and that includes the recipes in my cookbook, Help – I Gotta Cook!, the only way to get the dish to where YOU like it is to taste it while you’re cooking. Not just once, but frequently. The ultimate test of any recipe is whether YOU like the taste. If you do, the chances are good that everyone else will also.

Whether you’re preparing an elaborate meal or simply frying an egg, these four factors, time, treatment, temperature, and tasting, will influence the final outcome. If you keep them in mind as you learn to cook, I think it will help you considerably. They really do represent the fundamentals of cooking and, as the coach said, your talent will do the rest.

NOTES

CHAPTER TWO

An Overview of Cooking Methods

Part One

T

he following two chapters will cover the standard methods of cooking. If you master them you’ll be well on your way to being a good cook.

Most of the foods we eat lend themselves to a number of different cooking methods so it pays to be familiar with all of them. For instance, you can fry an egg, poach it, bake it, or sauté it. Each treats the egg differently and gives you different results.

Cooking a dish is a lot like creating a painting. Every artist has the same materials at hand in the way of brushes and paints of various colors. What goes on the canvas makes all the difference. I can’t promise that every dish you cook will be a masterpiece, but by understanding the various cooking methods, you can be assured the results will look and taste good.

Sautéing

A literal translation of sautéing means to jump, which means it’s usually done fast and furious – high heat, constant motion, and quickly.  Sautéing