When searing a steak, certain small steps – heating the pan properly, patting the meat dry before putting it in the pan – help ensure success.Processed and convenience foods and shortcut cooking methods have become so entrenched in our culinary culture, it’s easy to forget just how much we have forgotten about real cooking.
But cooking instructor Darina Allen knows all too well. More and more of her students arrive having never cooked so much as an egg, or needing lessons in remedial onion chopping. She remembers one student who thought she’d ruined a bowl of heavy cream because she’d whipped it too much. She thought the clumps and clots in the bowl meant it was bad.
“I said, ‘Stop! Don’t throw it out!'” says Allen, author of “Forgotten Skills of Cooking.” “I said, ‘You’ve made butter!’ She was completely fascinated.”
As cooking has been rendered optional – the victim of rising restaurant culture, myriad take-out options and supermarket sections packed with pre-cut vegetables, shredded cheese and prepared foods – Allen and others say cooks are increasingly losing touch with skills considered basic, or even essential, just a generation or two ago.
And that is changing the way people like Allen teach, as well as how recipes are developed and written.