Welcome to our new series Expert Essentials for the Home Cook where we will interview chefs and other food professionals about their top five things a home cook should have, know, do, or understand to be a great cook. We begin our series with Preeti Mistry, a Top Chef contestant in 2009 and a former Google chef. Read on for Preeti's top five tips for a home cook looking to build flavor.
Preeti trained at Le Cordon Bleu in London, where she was born, and currently lives in Oakland, CA. She is in the process of opening a restaurant in the Bay Area called Juhu Beach Club where she will serve Indian street and snack food. Here she offers five great ways for home cooks to boost flavor.
Preeti Mistry's 5 Essentials for the Home Cook
1. Understand salt. How can something be full of flavor but still not taste right? The answer is probably salt. Preeti recommends that cooks salt throughout the cooking process and not just at the end. Always salt onions while sautéing as salt helps to release their liquid, just like when you salt an eggplant before cooking.
2. Understand acid. Acid (vinegar) in a vinaigrette is obvious but rich, creamy, unctuous dishes benefit from a touch of sour, too. A dash of vinegar in cream of cauliflower soup, for instance, or a few drops of lemon juice in a celery root puree. Lemon and lime juice, vinegar, tomatoes, tamarind, and sumac all are acid/sour additions that will add brightness and balance flavor.
3. Roast and grind your spices ... every time. Preeti has a coffee grinder dedicated to grinding spices. Roasting and grinding whole spices makes all the difference, she says, and not just for Indian food but all of your dishes. She firsts roasts them in a dry frying pan over medium heat, shaking the pan until they become fragrant and there is a light hint of smoke. Then she immediate pours them onto a cool plate to stop the cooking. (Burnt spices are very bitter.) When cool, she whizzes them in the grinder and uses them in her recipe.
4. Grow fresh herbs. Preeti always keeps fresh herbs on hand in her home kitchen. They're not that hard to grow in pots, she insists. Which herbs to grow? The ones you use the most, but in particular she recommends thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage, and parsley. Fresh herbs are indispensable. Use them in sauces, for marinating chicken, and for braising beans.
5. Salted anchovies. Preeti always has salted anchovies in her pantry. They add the most amazing depth and they don't taste fishy like most people think. Add the anchovies when you are sautéing onion and garlic, breaking them up with your spoon. They will dissolve into the onions, adding a special savoriness that will be hard to identify, but delicious.
Bonus recommendations: Preeti was quite effusive with her recommendations and also mentioned the Microplane zester and to always have plenty of prep bowls on hand for mise en place. Finally, she highly recommends that Americans get over their fear of deep frying, buy a wok thermometer, and start making French fries, samosas, fish and chips and of course, fried chicken.
Thank you, Preeti!
Related: Tips for Better Deep Frying at Home
(Image: Dana Velden, Albert Law)
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My newly favorite flavor booster right now is "roasted red pepper paste." I add a tablespoon of it to soups, stews, sauces, gravy, vinaigrette, mayonnaise, etc. It's great and simple to make (roast peppers, puree, then reduce on stove for a bit). I'm also a big fan of balsamic vinegar, which I add to sauce, or especially when pan frying veggies, onions or mushroom. It adds a nice flavor to it.
>>Americans get over their fear of deep frying
It's not so much as a fear of deep frying as it is a fear of making a mess. I grew up in an Asian household with a lot of stir frying... oil gets everywhere.
I agree, for deep frying, you need a good fan/hut over the stove otherwise it forms a layer on the wall kitchen and it stinks for ever. I had friends who moved into apartments where the previous tenant constantly deep fried and that is all you could smell in the kitchen. Doing it outside is ideal.
For me, it was a fear of deep frying. I just made french fries at home after an Indian cooking class showed me not to be afraid of a wok of oil!
Not fear, but aversion to using that much oil (calories, cost, cleanup) for cooking.
@SQ: well said.
I love this post! What an exciting new series, I'll be watching for more. And yay for anchovies!! I use the paste most often.
The number one comment always alarms me, we eat far to much salt as it is, I haven't added salt to my food for years and it was a revelation to discover what natural food tastes like when not hammered by salt.
Some things are naturally "salty" like oysters or mussels but to often we use salt to hide the lack of flavour in poor quality foods and instead of tasting the food we taste salt.
When you add up the ammount of salt called for by some "chefs" a single dish can have as much as 3 Tbsps of salt.
I wonder whether proffessional chefs have their taste buds jaded by the demand to "Season, Season, Season"
My thoughts, exactly, WendyMR: "I haven't added salt to my food for years and it was a revelation to discover what natural food tastes like when not hammered by salt." I'd rather not feel like I'm dying of thirst after eating overly salted food.
The other suggestions are interesting, however, and I look forward to the series.
I completely agree with you about our culture's problem with consuming way too much sodium, but I think it's important to differentiate between salting foods in your own kitchen and salty foods at the local fast food joint or in packaged goods. I don't think our country's problem with sodium stems from home cooked meals made from whole foods with salt added in by the cook. Rather, I think it stems from the amount of processed food we consume. Using salt in cooking is a wonderful thing and enhances the natural flavor of our ingredients.
WendyMR, I didn't interpret her comment that way at all. We all need salt in our diet. When you salt in small increments during cooking, you can adjust flavors.
For instance, tomato sauce is too tangy for most people, so I add a tiny amount of salt to the tomatoes in the beginning and adjust as I go to reach the right balance between salty and tangy, and dial back the salt content if I add meat (which has been seasoned already) or parmesean, which is already salty. If I'm making my tomato sauce spicy, I use less salt because I know the hot sauce most likely has some already.
When people add salt only at the end, they run the risk of adding too much, not understanding the salt content of other ingredients, and not being able to compensate for it like they could if they had added smaller increments during the process.
Agreed. But not just the mess--it's dealing with the leftover oil. I love deep-fried foods, but I rarely make them. Just too much hassle.