A few of these supper shortcut recipes are a little more challenging, or perhaps a little fancier, than others in the book: roast duck, roast beef, even pulled pork. They go beyond the realm of the everyday. That’s not the worst thing, of course. It’s just a consideration.
But most of the recipes are still easy and quick. For example, there’s a set of recipes to discover the untapped possibilities of the brine left over in a pickle jar. Another set turns a Bundt pan into a vertical roaster. And there are recipes for the best way to cook fish fillets on the grill.
Before heading off to the last of the supper recipes, let’s take a quick review of a few of the most common cooking mistakes.
1. The heat’s too low. Leading hands-on cooking classes over the years across the U.S. and on cruise ships around the world, we’ve noticed that many people are afraid of the stove’s heat—not out of a fear of burning themselves, but because of a basic timidity when it comes to the task of cooking. To be frank, searing, caramelizing, or (most of the time) even grilling on low is like driving 35 mph at the Indy 500. Crank up that heat! If a recipe calls for medium heat, consider it to be the very middle of your burner’s dial, not nudged back down toward the low side. If you watch your skillets and pans carefully, you can nudge the heat a little higher than medium, on toward medium-high. And if you know your stove is sluggish, you should also bump up the dial a bit. Of course, there are lots of times when you should use a very low heat: simmering, reducing something over several hours, keeping a covered soup warm.
2. The skillet is packed. If so, the moisture that meat, fish, and veggies give off over the heat has no place to go. It pools in the pan and then turns to steam which softens the food’s outer edges and prevents proper browning. You need a fair amount of hot, exposed surface area in a skillet to burn it off quickly. Of course, you can go overboard. Two little boneless skinless chicken breasts can actually burn more quickly in a 14-inch skillet since all the protective moisture is almost instantly burned off. So use a small skillet only to cook small things: a single pork chop, a two-egg omelet, a turkey cutlet.
3. The meat is cold. Your refrigerator—and hence the food in it—is around 40°F. (Or it should be, or even a degree or two colder, for proper food safety.) But your oven is at 350°F, maybe higher. By the time a chicken breast or pork loin in the oven finally warms up at its center, it’s desiccated at the edges. So take meat and poultry out of the fridge 10 to 20 minutes before cooking it. That said, we do have recipes in this book that are cooked directly from the freezer. These have been calibrated with more liquids, lower cooking temperatures, and other culinary tricks to make sure they’re satisfying when they’re ready.
4. The pan or pot (or grill grate) is cool. Food on a hot surface immediately starts to sizzle and sputter. The road to caramelization may be noisy, but it yields a crisp crust and beautifully browned edges. Put ingredients in a room-temperature or even barely warm pan or pot only when a recipe specifically says to do so.