Winter cooking’s dos and don’ts
Do make stock
Stock is vital to the winter kitchen. Aside from chicken and beef bones and meat trimmings, winter vegetable offcuts make excellent stocks. Fish frames and prawn shells, too. It’s dead simple to do, will make your food taste better and save you a lot of money on packaged stock as well.
Don’t eat out of season
Don’t be the irate shopper at my local greengrocer who was giving the cashier an earful because peaches were too expensive. It’s June. If you’re eating peaches, they came from the other side of the planet. Try winter citrus instead, or quinces and apples that cropped in autumn. On the vegetable side, you’ve got broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, leafy greens, fennel, sweet potato, etc.
Do use a heavy pot
A heavy cast iron pot will improve your winter cooking. Cast iron over low flame is about even heat, but not in the way most people think. The conducted, contact heat of cast iron for frying is actually quite uneven because it is a good conductor and so the heat from the flame can create hotspots. Cast iron is heavy and has higher emissivity than stainless steel or aluminium, which means that even though it takes a while to heat up, when it’s hot the pot radiates infrared heat. Over low heat and over a long time, this means that the overall heat in your pot is more even because it cooks with heat radiated from the bottom, sides and even the top. This makes a big difference to braises and stews.
Do start it right
For stews, what you do at the beginning can make all the difference. The aromatic vegetable flavour base you start with should be cooked for at least 10 minutes. Meats need to be well browned (do it in batches, so you don’t overload the pot). Doing these initial steps properly will greatly improve the result after all those hours of braising.
Don’t eat it straight away
Slow-cooked dishes take time. The great thing about stews is the complexity and depth of flavour you can get by allowing flavour molecules to interact for a long time. A curry or stew tastes even better the next day because the flavour has developed at cooking temperature and also at a lower temperature after it has cooled. If you have the time to plan ahead, Plan for a stew to be ready a few hours before. Let it cool and then reheat it.
Do think quick
Thai curries, French soups and Italian fish stews are quick to make. Japanese nimono can be ready in minutes, and is a hearty meal that’s also light enough not to make you feel heavy. Hotpot-style dishes from China, Japan and Korea are so quick you literally cook them at the table.
– Sydney Morning Herald