Beef & Broccoli

Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes

• It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
• The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
• Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
• The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
• The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.

Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.

Blanching & shocking 76 recipes

• A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
• Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
• The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
• It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
• Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.

Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.