Learn How To Cook in Under 25 Minutes

I hate when someone says I can't cook I never even went to culinary school but I've worked in some of the best restaurants in America how'd that happen and not to sound like a broken record or the guy from Ratatouille but anyone can cook so I'm going to distill down some of the core Essentials to what I know about cooking and by the end of this video mark my words you will be able to cook so long as you follow the guidelines I'm about to give you starting off with the basics of measuring this is

incredibly important because it's the first place most people go wrong how do you measure ingredients to be correct across the board really there's only two ways you can do that number one you can go by volumetric measurement that would be measuring cups measuring spoons but the other way is purely by weight grams ounces kilos normally people are going by weight though they're probably going by grams scale is ideal for any form of accuracy and you will 100% need one if you want accurate baking now for the more volumetric approach with cups and spoons what matters

is how you scoop everybody does a little different but I use the scoop and level method here's how you do it you scoop it up cup or spoon and then using the back of the knife scrape the top and level it different recipes require different things but if you have both you'll always be prepared to measure anything next let's talk about setup otherwise known as Meen plus translation somewhere along the lines of everything in its place whatever recipe you follow you need to identify and organize equipment and ingredients that means pre-measure and separate everything on

a tray then execute the recipe is this an absolute necessity no but it increases the chances of having successful execution of a recipe substantially although it adds more things to clean it does make cleaning up a little bit more organized all right at this point we're ready to to get cooking but Josh what kind of pans do you like to cook in I'm glad you asked there's a large variety of pans that you can use when you're cooking but my ideal choice is stainless steel which is why I'm happy to talk to you about today's

sponsor maiden's stainless steel collection despite the fact that they're a sponsor I've actually been using their equipment for years before I was even a partner of theirs of course you can spend $2 on a beat up pan that you find in a garage sale but good quality stainless steel like this here will last you years maybe even a lifetime if you take good care of it and they're extremely versatile for all types of cooking made in stainless line has fantastic heat retention thanks to their five ply stainless steel for even heating not to mention their

stainless is used in thousands of restaurants worldwide including multi- melin star kitchens so you could be confident that they're going to last for you if they're lasting for those guys so be sure to check out their cookware in the link in the description to save on your order now moving on next up knives we're going to talk about what knives you need and how to properly use a knife let's start with your must have knives step one absolutely no knife sets ever period they're typically way too expensive and you're usually only going to use like

maybe one maybe two out of the five six seven knives you get not a great bank for your buck in my honest opinion but if you have budget for three knives here are the three top knives I would pick one 8 to 10 in chef knife one serrated knife for slicing bread one Petty knife not a pairing knife it's basically a multi-purpose knife you can use this for cutting Small Things peeling things but if you can only have one singular knife and you really want to invest in a good one make it the chef knife

the first place people go wrong is how they hold the knife I've said this many times and I'm excited to tell you again lot of people do this right you're holding the knife you got no control over this thing this thing could go anywhere I don't know what the very simple process all right here's the spine of the knife thumb on one side and index finger on the other you're now pinching it what do I do with these three fingers they're just going to go around the handle like that here's the thing you're probably going

to be like oh this feels awkward move your hand around make it feel comfortable move the knife around till it falls on place it's like oh that feels pretty natural now you have control over the knife at that stage you have something to do with the other hand form a claw with your hand like you're going to scratch somebody with the middle finger out as far as possible second thing you're going to do is turn your elbow out like this the side of your knife goes against that knuckle and you're just going to stay on

that knuckle whenever you're cutting anything as you go you can pick up speed you can try different techniques but there are many knife cuts that you really need to know to get started let's talk about a chop a chop is more of a loose term and the goal is to get it sort of square-ish a rough chop focuses a little bit less on uniformity and more just getting into bite-sized pieces best you can typically this would be used maybe in a soup and you're in a rush or something that's going to get Blended so it

doesn't matter what it looks like a fine chop would just be slightly smaller than that and finally a mince this is when you just keep on chopping it up until it's borderline of paste many uses for that that moves me on the next bit which is sort of like a more clinical version which would be a dice you'll take an onion that's been cut in half through the root with the root still attached cut towards the root starting on one end and separating each cut about a/2 in each optionally about halfway through the onion you

can cut across towards the root that just helps separate the segments of the onion a little bit more evenly and then now cut Against the Grain at equal half in distances to get equally sized diced onion of course there's medium and large dices but there's also a small Dice and if you go even smaller than a small dice that's a Brun W then there's the Baton to make it simple you'll start off by taking a large thick vegetable cut it into planks in the case of a baton it's about a/2 in thick and then you're

going to cut 1/ in thick segments lengthwise across that plank like so you have batons you want a batonette make those cuts closer together and equal to the thickness of your plank so if the plank has now gone from a/ in to 1/4 in then your cuts should be a/4 in apart to get bat tets the thinner you go the closer you get to a Julien which looks like this it all starts with a base cut and get smaller or larger from there now a shien you might not see used as often but it is

a great technique when it comes to getting really fine nice threads of herbs the easiest way to do a shift knot is to take large herbs in this case we have large leaves of Basil stack them on top of each other roll them up nice and tight like a cigar as Gordon Rams you would say and slice along the entire length of that quote unquote cigar as thinly as possible and you end up with these nice fine little threads there are more specific types of knife Cuts but everything after that is typically just a different

size but if you know those basic ones you'll mostly be covered for the general recipes that are out there go slow do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and uh you'll get better number four ingredients two things matter when picking ingredients freshness and quality when you're about to commit a bunch of time and energy towards this how can you expect a strong outcome with a weak starting point here's how you find fresh and quality ingredients number one Google is your friend every ingredient is different and

Exhibits qualities of freshness in many many ways and we're not going to be able to explain them all here so be sure to Google it first before you buy it that said here are some general cues to look for for Meats and Seafood generally speaking you don't want a stinky odor if you go over there and it smells like from Malahide or ammonia or like a fart using your nose is always a good place to start for freshness second Visual and physical cues take any vegetable especially one with lots of layers like an onion or

cabbage it should be tightly wound not loose or falling apart the color should be bright and it shouldn't have any marring bruising obviously no visible mold typically the more colorful an ingredient the fresher it is now that's not always true but if it is dull in color or graying or even sweating then might indicate a lack of freshness for fruit you're looking for just under Peak ripeness every fruit shows ripeness differently once you learn the cues pick just under that when you purchase because it will ripen on your counter for example a ripe mango looks

like this it should be a bit soft to the touch should give a bit when you press it if you pop it on the top it smells fresh of mango and it should not be rock hard you're only going to learn through repetition that is how you get great in really anything honestly but especially the kitchen but once you have a foundation of understanding freshness of ingredients you can focus on the unsung heroes of every kitchen a stocked Pantry Pantry Essentials Pantry Essentials may sound mundane and they kind of are but they're also important to

having a properly stocked Pantry the benefit of it is you always have what you need all the time no matter what it's a difference between an average meal and a great one because you have that special ingredient that you'd love to use Pantry Essentials are based off of what you would be frequently using they're Essentials they're things you need to have nearby you at all all times no matter what no fail that means you would kind of determine that but here are some general things that probably everybody should have ker salt some sort of a

flaky salt like Malone vegetable oil for high heat cooking or emulsifying like making mayos olive oil either for cooking making pastas dressings black pepper butter and one of the more unique ones is chili oil I feel like everybody has this nowadays but to me I have to have it always but think about it like this you bake a lot sugar and flour plus any seasonings you like should probably always be on hand basically this means stuff you use enough of so but it's always eight arms length away so for each person it'll be a little

different but if you start with this you have a good base point for just about anything you want to cook next up how to season and balance flavor to me this is the hands down that most important there's two pieces when people think seasoning they're thinking seasonings like spices garlic powder paprika celery powder so on and so forth those come into play but the number one most essential piece to seasoning is salt I've said it a million times it is single-handedly the most influential thing you will use in your kitchen period end of story I

don't want to hear anything about it the simple reality is there are many flavors around the entire globe that are incredible but none of it would really be that great without the addition of salt it enhances flavor why would you not want to use that the biggest mistake that most people in even restaurants make is not putting enough salt yes putting too much as possible but I think people get such a scared hand that they end up under seasoning don't be scared add salt to the absolute maximum don't go to the point where it's too

salty but just before that the idea that you should only season high quality ingredients lightly with salt or else it will just taste like salt is literally an urban legend the simple reality is that salt has a threshold it is guaranteed to enhance the flavor of your food the more you add it until you reach that limit and that changes depending on what you're cooking so obviously if something is cured like bacon that already has salt in it then you might need to you know pull back on that and take that into account let me

give you a real life example let's say you're seasoning a sauce and you add a little salt and you taste it tastes good add a tiny bit more taste it again does it taste better because if it does taste better you need to keep asking yourself how much more can I add before this just tastes salty major key alert just be sure to taste your food as you go now we can talk about spices the world of spices is incredibly Broad and I suggest you play with them over time and if you want to learn

a little bit more about flavor combinations you should look at the book flavor Bible it's incredible so salt enhances flavor spices change Flavor now for the most important part balancing flavor that brings me to the five basic tastes sweet salty sour bitter and Umami most of the time you're going to use a combination of one maybe two maybe three some vegetables are naturally bitter some meats are naturally a little sweeter than others here's an example of a dish that is balanced with nearly all five tastes and here's how I balance it I've got a classic

Tom kagay soup here now I want this soup to be sour I want it to have a nice salty Umami kick I want some sweetness and I want some spice so how do we get there so the first thing I'm going to do is when I make it I'm going to taste it and think about all four flavors how they're all tasting maybe it's a little too tart not salty enough and missing some sweetness okay now I know what to do I'll add a little fish sauce for that salty kick which will naturally add some

Umami good stuff I'll add some palm sugar for some sweetness taste it again okay now I got the sweetness I want now I need a little more acidity so I'm going to add a touch of lime juice taste it again okay now it tastes good but that lime juice now counterbalanced the salt it needs a little bit more fish sauce so pop a little more fish sauce taste it again okay now it's got the salty Umami but I've lost some of the acid now we got to add a little bit more lime juice taste it

again this is the act of flavor balancing sometimes it takes longer than you think but what I will say is on that final taste boom there it is it has all the levels where I want it to be I'm happy and I'm confident to serve this and listen mastering flavor is great but understanding texture is revolutionary this is what separates someone who's good at cooking and someone who is absolutely mindboggling excellent at cooking hence my cookbook texture of her taste this book will allow every cook beginner or an expert to unlock true culinary Mastery I

wrote the book to get people to look at food a little bit differently we always think about Flavor Flavor Flavor but we never ask the question about texture what makes a great crunchy french fry what makes the most perfect creamy mashed potato it's texture not just flavor so if you ever want to get into that cck the link in the description it's right there is also currently running a deal on Amazon now on to cooking techniques technique is the number one thing that separates bad cooking from excellent cooking sautéing sautéing is a method of cooking

that uses a relatively small amount of oil or fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat I would say like medium sometimes medium high but typically medium but really the goal is to cook the thing in the pan tossing occasionally until it's just cooked through and if it gets a little color that's totally fine if you're trying to avoid that you would then be going into a sweat gently cooking low heat with no color number two roasting by definition roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat where hot air covers food cooking it

evenly on all sides from an open flame or an oven or some other heat source to roast something properly you want to look for some form of a dry heat I prefer convection in an oven if you have it just because it helps the air circulate around the food better the whole goal is to dry the exterior in a way that you get a beautiful nice Browning on the exterior and perfectly cooked on the inside whether that means that it needs to be brought to a medium rare or if it's a vegetable it's soft but

not too soft there are many roasting techniques and I urge you to try different ones of your own number three boiling and blanching boiling is the method of cooking food in well boiling water it could also be stock until it's cooked to your desired consistency blanching is similar typically what happens is it goes in the boiling water and then as soon as it's done it comes out and immediately is plunged into an ice water bath why to stop the process of cooking and shock and refresh the item that it is you're cooking what it'll do

is retain color in vegetables and it'll also keep the vegetables from overcooking make sure you take it out at the right time and what you're really looking for is when it goes in that ice bath there is enough ice that it doesn't know something to look out for number four grilling it's a form of cooking that involves heat applied to the surface of food it usually involves a significant amount of direct radiant heat could be firewood could be propane Etc how do you know your properly grilling something me personally I like to grill aggressively that

means I'm looking for a lot of color the best way to do it is have an offset setup one side is really hot and one side is completely off that way whenever you're done getting nice grill marks and Char on the food that you're cooking if it's not cooked cooked through you can scoot it over to the cold side close your lid and let it continue until that is cooked through to your desired internal temperature number five brazing brazing is a combination cooking method that uses both wet and dry heat typically the food is first

browned at a high temperature then simmered in a covered pot in cooking liquid such as wine broth coconut milk the meat does not get fully submerged in the liquid you're going to want it 3/4 of the way up the meat this also depends on the length of braising if you're only brazing for like maybe one 2 hours I'd say like halfway up should be enough you can either cook it until the meat falls apart and it's super duper tender but if it's a leaner meat or a very delicate meat like a fish then you can

just braze it till it's just cooked through the second element is the liquid it cooked in it has now become a beautifully flavorful broth you can then turn that broth into a sauce or you can just serve it straight up with that loose broth that's nice number six searing searing is a technique in which the surface of the food usually meet is cooked at a very high temperature until a brown crust forms also called the myard reaction get a pan set it over medium high heat add oil just enough to Co the surface of the

pan let it get extremely hot till nearly smoking adding your protein for example this steak make sure it makes full contact with the pan let it sear for 2 to 3 minutes flip and then another 2 to 3 minutes this classic formula of medium high heat 2 to 3 minutes per side has worked for every single piece of protein I have ever cooked in my entire life once the food is seared if the inside is not cooked through you can always lower the heat and then continuously flip until the food is cooked from the inside

or you can pop it into a low temperature oven at around 350 Fen until the internal dness is achieved number seven frying I could simplify frying into one sentence honestly a high temperature cooking oil around 350 Fahrenheit you put food in there you're frying what I'm saying is you can fry anything like that bread it or not vegetables like brussels sprouts fry tremendously without breading now if you want something extra crispy then you would bread it if you're breading it you want to make sure that it's evenly coated in the breading there's no bald spots

and once it goes in the oil you want to see nice even bubbling not excessively violent no crazy popping and when it comes out the inside should be cooked through and the outside should be a beautiful golden brown and crisp not soggy if you want to learn more about how to fry anything then you should watch our how to fry everything video the link will be in the description for that there are tons of other cooking techniques but to me these are some of the most important Baseline ones that'll get you started and give you

the ability to cook most General things things get more specific and advanced in technique after you master this level next up sauces what is a sauce sauces are liquids creams or semi-solid foods served on or used in preparing other Foods most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves but they add flavor and texture and visual appeal so technically speaking anything could be a sauce but I'll give you a basic example if you're American think about ketchup do you just spoon ketchup in your mouth no you use it to dip things into you use it on

top of things now back in the day we would commonly identify the mother's sauces it's good to know your mother's sauces and you should research them can I remember all of them blute espanol SAA tamat Bell and holles it's good to know them but unless you work in a traditional French restaurant you're probably going to end up using really any kind of a sauce that you can to make good flavor but what we can learn from the French mother sauces is the principles of why sauce is important how it should be utilized and there's really

two things that chefs often look for but they're not the end all be all and that is number one adding a lot of flavor if you're not going to do that you might as well just pour water on top of a steak and call it a day number two and this depends on the application but generally a sauce should have some level of viscosity to it why because it needs to cling to the dish or the food that it is on and you get that nice coating of the sauce some sauces are naturally thick but

more often than not chefs are constantly trying to find a way to adapt sauces to their dish if those are the things that chfs are looking for what's their first step into making a sauce well they look at the dish and they find ways to give their sauce shape and purpose so here's a couple ways there's thickening a sauce and there's emulsifying one these are not the only ways emulsions they help blend flavors together in a synchronous bite maybe you want a special color have it coat your palette in a certain way emulsifying is the

key but emulsifications can be challenging a broken sauce versus a smooth sauce is substantially different a broken sauce is usually not going to have the flavor nice and even distributed throughout the sauce and also it won't cling to your food properly in a mulifa meat carbohydrate into your mouth to then act as a vehicle for that flavor emulsions good another way to look at that is thickening sauces there's many ways to make a sauce thick fun fact emulsifying also thickens the sauce but you can also reduce you know something like a red wine sauce for

a standing RI roast reducing is literally boiling the sauce or simmering the sauce until until you've evaporated the water out so you've intensified flavor you've thickened it and sometimes it looks a little more desirable you can add gelatin you can blend in hydrocolloid like zanen gum science has made it so that any sauce can be whatever you want chefs and Great Cooks will find a way but listen anything can be a sauce allay as a sauce so is a mixture of sugar fish sauce lime juice it's liquidy but it's a sauce and it might be

good for a raw fish dish like a Hamachi Kudo where it would soak into the fish rather than cling to it so it's okay that it's liquidy make things flavorful make them coat things well a way to get it in people's mouths and make it taste good next up cooking meat there are really only two ways to cook meat hot and fast or low and slow hot and fast is exactly what it sounds like the goal is to achieve color on it on both sides and hopefully by the time you flipped it over and gotten

color on the other side so in the case of a steak that thing is cooked to the desired temperature or maybe needs a few more minutes flipped back and forth and then it's done done done now they're slow and low the temperature is going to be very low and you're going to cook that item very slowly because the temperature is lower you're going to avoid burning anything on the outside while very slowly cooking the internals of that product what will happen with a protein is that if it's high fat High intramuscular fiber it'll get nice

and tender and fall apart succulent cooking meat is about temperature and understanding the qualities of each cut and why they need to be treated differently to reach their full potential these are the temperatures you need on most pieces of meat really the goal with slow cooking is to cook something past well done slowly enough while you're preserving the juices but to a high enough temperature that the gelatin and intramuscular fibers essentially melt so for example you can cook a chuck roast to 13 and get medium rare but it's too chewy so you really need the

time and temperature where the intramuscular fibers are actually being melted properly which is going to be between 200° and 205° F that'll be enough to be easily shredded with a fork so first figure out if you need to slow cook or not identify your desired outcome choose your method brazing grilling searing Etc and pay attention to the thickness of your meat if it's really thick for example a thick steak you may need to use two methods of cooking to get the internal cooked before you get color on the outside so for example you might need

to put it in an oven to cook the internal temperature closer to 130 135 and then sear it if the meat is thicker than usual you likely will only get color on the outside by searing it without cooking the inside this is obviously considering a Sak technically speaking you'll hear a lot of things that certain Meats need to be cooked a certain way and that's the end of the story and the simple reality is that's not exactly true you can cook any piece of meat however the you want assuming that it's safe to eat at

that temperature but each thing is going to have a different outcome it depends on if that outcome is desirable to you or not so I'll give you two examples a short rib you can cook that protein hot and fast or low and slow and get completely different products but you need to choose carefully how you do that so if you were going to low and slow cook a short rib it's very simple you would Brown it get some color on it if you wish you can also not brown it and let's say you decide to

braze it low and slow it' be at a very low temperature a very gentle simmer for a couple of hours what will happen it won't go dry cuz it has lots of fat and lots of gelatin and intramuscular fibers which will then melt these are going to take that internal temperature way past well done and it can sustain that cuz it has enough fat in it and it will become very tender and melty and fall apart almost like shredded meat it's so lovely now if you wanted to cook it hot and fast you could just

Grill it straight up but because it's so chewy in another culture like Korean culture they would slice the short rib very thin maybe even marinate it and Grill it over really high heat by slicing it thin you make those intramuscular fibers much smaller so they have a chance to melt much more quickly which will happen on the grill it won't be too chewy and you can enjoy it like that it benefits well from cooking well done so my best suggestion is figure out the protein you want to make learn every everything you can about it

and cook it to your desired end product goal and research how to get there there's a lot to learn here and I'm not going to be able to explain it all in one videos the best thing I can suggest is find a great recipe for cooking meat and follow that recipe to a tea practice it over and over learn about that technique and then experiment from there learn from there you'll find that there's a million ways to cook one thing the beauty of cooking meat is specifically that each cut and each type has its own

character and with proper care and proper technique you'll know exactly how to bring out the best in each lastly we dive into the art of plating it might sound a little weird or intimidating is it even worth the time small thoughtful touches can make a big difference we've all heard this saying you eat with your eyes but look even if you're eating completely by yourself just taking a couple extra 30 seconds just to make it look a little nice before you sit down to eat to me makes a big tremendous difference you take care of

the food I do like to make my food look as beautiful as possible if it looks good it's definitely going to make you feel good does an artist just explain how they do their art no they just do it and you can only really get good at that by practicing it so you know think about adding garnishes on top of stuff layering your food adding lots of different colors those are a good place to start when it comes to plating in presentation the other thing is composition how you lay it on the plate are you

going to have it all be in one line do you want it to be like in a c shape around the edge of the plate all these things are going to take time they're going to take practice this is a Midway Focus element and by that I mean Midway through your journey of learning how to cook you can start to learn how to Plate things nicely but try to focus on technique first so look there's a lot of things we didn't cover and I don't know that we could ever cover all of the world of

cooking they don't even cover all of the world of cooking in actual culinary school even if you spend years in culinary school you will never learn everything about cooking that is what cooking is supposed to be it is a NeverEnding learning process as long as you open yourself up open your mind up open your heart up to all the things that there is to learn and just realize that you'll never learn it all but it's the constant striving to learn it all that will make you good we also didn't touch on on baking and let

me put it to you like this there's a reason in restaurants there's a separate pastry routine because when it comes to baking desserts it's a whole another layer of knowledge and classifications that's exact and scientific whereas cooking could be a little bit more loose but the number one Surefire way to get good at anything cooking baking pastry is to do it over and over and over if you want to get good do the Reps love you so much subscribe bye thank you again to Maiden for sponsoring today's video don't forget to check the link in

the description to see their cookware and save on your order he [Music] [Music]