Sauteing 101.. Part I
Chef Isaac | January 16, 2009
Sauteing is one of my favorite cooking methods. I can remember when I worked in my first restaurant and was promoted to sauté cook. We worked on an open line meaning that you could see everything we were cooking. Of course when a cute girl would walk in, I would hop onto the sauté station and create big flames. The girls would oohh and awww over the show they were given but that didn’t land me any dates with the exception of doing the dishes at the end of the night! What a fun date!Let’s start to looking into sauting a little.
The word “Sauté” is French, meaning “to jump”. Later down the line you will see why. It is a fast cooking method that requires a little know how and technique. Let’s first dive into the right kind of pans we can use and then we will finish up this part with talking about the items we can sauté.
If we take a step back and think of a sautéed chicken breast, what is the final outcome of that sautéed chicken breast (another way to look at this is what would YOU expect to get at a restaurant if you ordered this?)? We want a breast that has a golden brown color on the outside (called sear) and we want the inside to be juicy and tender (not dried out). Now, if we use that criteria, it will tell us what type of pans to use.
A saute pan is the right tool for the job. Don't get caught by the culinary cops using a sauce pan!
We are looking for moisture to evaporate quickly. Moisture is the number one enemy of a sautéed item. If moisture is not removed, the item you are cooking will not gain that beautiful outside coloring we are looking for. So, we are looking to use a sautuse pan (aka: sauté pan). This pan has sloping sides to it which will allow moisture to evaporate quickly. You are NOT looking to use a sautior pan (aka sauce pan or skillet). These pans have sides that go straight up and down and do not encourage fast moisture loss. When sautéing, always grab a sauté pan! If you decide to go with a sauce pan, you’ll have a hard time reaching the desired outcome. Edible? Yes. Correctly prepared? No.
As mentioned above, we learned that sauté means to jump. It is a high heat-short cooking time, cooking technique. With that said, it lends itself to certain types of food that can be prepared using this method. Lets first look at meats, seafood, and poultry.
Meat that is closer to the hooves are going to be excerised more and will need a lot of time to cook. However meat that is away from the hooves are naturally tender, less excersised and are great for dry cooking techniques like saute.
We are looking for meats that are naturally tender, have a good internal marbling (fat specs on the inside of the meat), and are exercised less. Now, you’re probably wondering 1 or 2 things. How do we know if that piece of meat is less exercised and how do we know if it will have a good internal marbling? Great questions. If you can imagine looking at a cow… the meat that is closer to the feet (hooves) are going to be more exercised, less tender (tougher to eat) and less fatty. Meat that is away from the hooves is going to be naturally more tender, have a good fat content , and exercised less. Those are the types of meats you want to pick. No worries, I will identify some cuts of meat for you at the bottom of this article.
Seafoods that are moderately fatty to fatty will work best for this cooking method. Things like oysters, trout, salmon, and prawns.
Poultry like chicken and duck are excellent to sauté too. Both dark and white meat!
Moving on to vegetables. Basically speaking, there are two different types of vegetables….. soft vegetables (like yellow squash, green squash, tomatoes, and onions) and hard vegetables (like butternut squash, acorn squash, carrots, celery, and broccoli). Since we know that saute is a quick cooking technique, it lends itself to cooking soft vegetables better then hard vegetables. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. If you par cook the hard vegetables (blanch and shock them), then they can be sauteed just as easily as soft vegetables.
In the next part, we will look at the fats the we can use when sauting and the actual technique of sauting.
