Techniques #3: Jump Into Sautéing

Okay, where were we? Right, you can season your food correctly and you can cook a large roast dinner for you and your loved ones. Now let’s focus on a two-part technique that produces food that’s a bit smaller in scale, but is one of the cornerstones of good cooking both in restaurants and at home. Today we’re talking about the sauté and its cousin, the pan-roast.

Sautéing is a dry heat, stovetop cooking method where you cook food, usually quickly, in a small amount of fat using a skillet, frying pan or, most apropos, a sauté pan. The pan you choose may be different depending on your application, but here’s a few things to take into account. If you’re like me, you don’t want a whole bunch of shit cluttering up your kitchen. You want a few reliable, heavy-duty and long-lasting pieces of cookware that can do many jobs. A big, thick and heavy cast-iron pan is good for some sautéing, like when you’re trying to get a perfect crust on a steak, but it may be too heavy and unwieldly for others. Carbon steel is another great choice, lighter than cast-iron, but with many of the same properties that make it so attractive.

These are both dark metals, however and I find it more difficult to make a pan-sauce (a subject for another time) in them. For that, I’ll always use stainless steel. Whatever your pan(s) of choice are made out of, they should have thick, flat bottoms to more evenly spread and retain heat. Also, they should have oven-proof handles so that they can pan-roast as well as sauté.

You don’t want to use too much fat when sautéing, otherwise you’re basically pan-frying (which is a whole other thing), but don’t be stingy, either. Make sure the bottom of your pan is covered with fat, at least. Bare spots will encourage burning or sticking where you don’t want it. And if you heat your pan before adding oil, then you don’t need to wait as long for the oil to be at a cooking temperature.

Pan-roasting is, as the name implies, a combination of sautéing and roasting. The food is seared on one side in the pan to create browning and begin cooking, then flipped and the whole pan is put into a pre-heated oven to finish. The more consistent temperatures available by cooking in an enclosed oven allow us to get the benefits of a delicious browned crust from sautéing, while cooking the interior of the food more evenly.

So, when do you sauté and when do you pan-roast? Depends on what you’re cooking. A pounded-out chicken breast, a pork schnitzel, a thinner piece of fish or some delightful scallops? No need to throw those in the oven, just put them in a hot pan, wait for the crust to develop, flip them and you’re good to go. That’s a straight sauté, friends.

What about a thicker steak, pork chop, un-pounded chicken breast or girthy portion of fish? Well, you may want to consider pan-roasting those. Think about it this way: you’re cooking food on the stovetop in a pan, so all the heat is coming from below. Even if you’re flipping the food, only the side that’s in contact with the pan is cooking while the other side is rapidly cooling down. While you’re getting great browning on those outside faces, it’s an uneven way to cook. If your food is thin, then the heat can penetrate quickly, but if not you risk burning the outside before the inside even gets warm.

This can be somewhat alleviated by basting your food in the pan, which is a good go-to move, whether you’re pan-roasting or not. Once the food is flipped (if simply sautéing) or has come back out of the oven (if pan-roasting) toss a handful of appropriate aromatics into the pan. Think things like the butt end of shallots, cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary or thyme. Then toss a hefty knob of butter in there and, once foamy, CAREFULLY spoon it over the meat, 5-10 times per side. The smell and extra delicious crust this will form will make you a believer after only doing this once, I assure you. And remember, no matter which method you use, meat and poultry still have to rest before you cut into them.

So, do you have to sauté over high heat only? No, sometimes you’ll want to start with a lower heat to render out fat and make skin crispy. This is a technique that’s great for bacon strips or lardons, for instance. I always start fish with skin on it in a cold pan and let it come up to no more than medium heat over a while to get that skin crispy. Then it’s just a quick flip and sear on the flesh side. And of course, then there’s duck breast, which I cooked for dinner last night.

We got a few items from Mariposa Farm to stretch out our groceries a bit longer. Some smoked trout, a dozen duck eggs, a delicious wedge of La Sauvagine cheese and two delightful duck breasts. Mariposa is known for their duck in this city and the surrounding areas. Let’s put it this way, if you’ve ever been to a restaurant in Ottawa and enjoyed duck anything, it’s from Ian and Suzanne down at Mariposa. If you don’t know what they’re offering, I implore you to click the link and check them out. Go on, go now. I’ll still be here when you get back.

The first trick is to trim any excess fat overhanging the breast then flip it over, flesh side down and slash a series of crosshatches into the fat cap. You don’t want to go all the way down to the meat, just score the fat so it will render easier. This is a vital step in cooking duck breast. If you don’t score and render it well, you’ll never know what all the fuss is about.

Speaking of rendering, after heavily salting the fat, it gets placed fat-side down into a COLD, DRY PAN. I cannot stress this enough. A cold pan, let the heat come up gradually to no more than medium. You want to slowly render the fat. Season the meat side in the pan with a bit more salt and some freshly ground pepper.

As the duck cooks, you’ll see duck fat rendering out. You may be surprised to see how much. Maintain your heat, checking the fat cap on the duck breast now and then. You want deep golden-brown, not black and burnt. If it seems to be cooking too quickly, lower the heat. Don’t rush this step, a properly rendered duck breast takes anywhere from 15-25 minutes, depending on how thick the fat layer is.

When it’s finally all rendered out and crispy, remove the duck from the pan and blot the fat on some paper towel. Meanwhile, increase the heat in the pan just until the rendered duck fat begins to produce wisps of smoke. Then, back into the pan with your duck breast, this time flesh side down, cooking the meat for only 30 seconds to 1 minute, basting the fat cap with the rendered fat in the pan, to keep it crispy. Take it back out and allow it to rest. If you’re an absolute genius, you’ll have some par-cooked cubes of potatoes at the ready to fry in the duck fat as your breast is resting. Nothing cooks potatoes better than duck fat, don’t even @ me.

You can serve it up with whatever vegetables you have on hand, I had a bunch of bell peppers so I made a rustic peperonata, an Italian dish of slowly cooked onions and peppers, but I would have much rather some Brussels sprouts or root vegetables as these really take to duck. I also drizzled some Vincotto over the meat, because I’m 100 years old, and that’s what we did in the nineties.

So, as you can see, sautéing doesn’t necessarily mean messily flipping food around a hot skillet while flames shoot out and boiling grease goes everywhere. As with any cooking technique it requires attention to temperature and what’s happening to your food while it cooks. But, once you master it, you’ll be cooking with the confidence of a seasoned line-cook. The sauté station in many restaurants is a coveted position; it’s where the action and the glory is. Break out your pans and get cooking, it won’t take you long to see what I mean.