SW+: SLOW BURNERS
Slow cooking 101: patience, rewarded.
Hello! Welcome to today’s SW+ deep-dive into slow-cooking (this is a paid subscriber only edition of the newsletter). Every other month I tackle a big topic in one go, so that you have these handy reference guides at your fingertips — e.g. on kitchen organisation, on making and cooking pasta, on all the savoury ways to cook eggs and so on. Thank you for being here.
SLOW-COOKING 101
Perhaps one of the most intimidating aspects of cooking is that everything is in flux — and, in particular, temperature. Becoming a confident cook is in part, then, about the ability to control but also to relax into this constantly evolving process.
One way to do that is to hurry less.
The raison d’etre of slow cooking is to tenderise and concentrate flavour. The pros are numerous: it’s reasonably hands-off, a pretty certain path to deliciousness, makes the most of cheaper cuts of meat and can be made well ahead of time (it’s all the better for it, in fact). The cons? It takes time and requires a little forethought… but sometimes it’s good to slow down.
And though we might be familiar with slow-cooking a stew in winter, how about slow-cooking a steak?
They’ve been doing this in Spain for years, allowing the meat to sit several feet above the grill, gently warming through before being given a hard sear on the grates at the last minute. The result? Tender meat, a golden crust and no resting needed.
This brings me nicely onto the 4 types of low-temperature cooking:
Braising (which includes stewing) — the default slow-cooking approach
Slow-roasting (which includes reverse searing) — the ultimate in slow-cooking convenience
Confit — an underrated technique that’s much less cheffy than people think it is
Sous vide — the fancy pants option
In this deep-dive we’ll cover the first 3 of these, interspersed with some tricks that may look cheffy on the surface but are actually very simple.
I’m not covering sous vide because I’m assuming that most of us here don’t have the gear (you’d need one of these plus this)?? But if you are interested, feel free to comment below and I’ll be happy to share some pointers.
Let’s get into it!
Braising (the default).
Pt 1: The braising formula
The basic formula for braising meat is as follows: