Simplifying cooking instructions

[jgm]

Often I will see instructions in a recipe and wonder if I really have to do things the way it says.

Example: Asparagus soup recipe. Pretty straightforward. Saute leek and shallot in butter, add asparagus (in 1 1/2" pieces), chicken stock, and water. Simmer until asparagus is tender. Puree in blender. Press through sieve to remove woody stuff.

I wonder if I couldn't simplify this a little and get results that are just as good. If I were to nuke the asparagus, put it through a food mill, and then add the pulp to the other ingredients, would I be compromising anything?

Reason: putting a large amount of soup through a sieve was messy. Then I scraped the pulp out of the sieve and put it in the trash; I ran water through the sieve to remove all but the most stubborn of the remaining pulp, then painstakingly removed the last of the pulp and put it in the trash. I was trying not to put that fibrous stuff into the garbage disposal; I have learned that lesson the hard way.

Unknown: how fine the pulp would be when it comes out of the food mill, and whether that would allow me to skip either the blender or the sieve.

I'm open to suggestions, if anybody has other ideas. If you think this will not work, will be more trouble than it's worth, or for any reason would be a bad idea, I'd like to hear what you think. I know that in baking, procedure can make a huge difference. I'm not so sure about this recipe.

If anybody else has any questions about changing procedures for another recipe, post it here, and this can be the thread for that.

Jenny

[SobaAddict70]

It seems to me that the last step you cite (straining) is unnecessary. I usually trim asparagus beforehand and save the woody/fibrous parts for asparagus stock.

It depends on the recipe -- if you cook by following them. I rarely do and only if it's something I've never made before. Can't really help you there, sorry.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I agree with SobaAddict70 about trimming the asparagus beforehand, so you don't have to strain out the woody part at the end. There's no point in sauteeing the woody ends of asparagus.

As for putting the soup through a sieve at the end, no matter what the recipe says, it depends on how smooth a soup you want. Super-smooth isn't necessarily better--it's just one option among several others.

[Peter the eater]

Often I will see instructions in a recipe and wonder if I really have to do things the way it says.

If I'm trying something new, I like recipes that are formulas. Proportions, sequence, heat, etc.

But if it's also a classic dish from a long time ago, far far away, I like the all the weird details.

[maggiethecat]

Do your thing. Do what you wanna do.

Trust yourself and your cooking experience. In this case, I'd peel. When I read a recipe I always think "Hmmmm. Do I really have to do this?" If the answer is yes, I do it. If I know better than the recipe writer I feel free to take liberties.

[nakji]

I always feel compelled to follow a recipe exactly to the letter the first time I make it, even if I want to do it another way, or substitute another ingredient. Especially if it's a cookbook from an author I trust, although now that I've written that sentence, I can't imagine why I'm following recipes from authors I don't trust. Huh.

At any rate, I always assume they know something I don't, but that's probably because I still think of myself as a beginner in the kitchen.

[David A. Goldfarb]

But if it's also a classic dish from a long time ago, far far away, I like the all the weird details.

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I sympathize with that. Julia Child's version of the classic recipe for madeleines has this procedure for melting and then cooling the butter so that it is cool but still liquid. It seems fiddly, and I could have ignored it, but it actually works nicely to keep the buttery flavor, and I've since used it in other things. Or Anthony Bourdain in his simplified recipe for demi-glace in the _Les Halles Cookbook_ says something like "no one makes espagnole anymore," which meant I had to go back to Escoffier and make a demi-glace from espagnole and veal stock, and I learned a lot about demi-glace and other ingredients that have become commonplace or have substituted for demi-glace along the way.

Edited August 12, 2009 by David A. Goldfarb (log)

[jgm]

It seems to me that the last step you cite (straining) is unnecessary.  I usually trim asparagus beforehand and save the woody/fibrous parts for asparagus stock.

It depends on the recipe -- if you cook by following them.  I rarely do and only if it's something I've never made before.  Can't really help you there, sorry.

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Asparagus stock??? OK, sounds good. The only way I could think of to use it would be in risotto. How do you use it? I'm quite intrigued!!! Yum!

You're the kind of cook I'd like to be when I grow up, although I'm probably older than you. I would love to be able to cook without recipes. . .and I'm getting there, but for now, I'm more comfortable following the instructions. It helps me learn about seasoning and proportions.

My other goal is to be able to use up everything; for example last night when making the soup, I had the green part of the leek left over. I would think it would be good for something, but I've always tossed it out.

Jenny

[Shalmanese]

Always taste a soup before sieving. If you think it doesn't need sieving, don't. For me, I'll almost always sieve, I hate the fibrous texture in what would otherwise be an elegant soup.

[SobaAddict70]

It seems to me that the last step you cite (straining) is unnecessary.  I usually trim asparagus beforehand and save the woody/fibrous parts for asparagus stock.

It depends on the recipe -- if you cook by following them.  I rarely do and only if it's something I've never made before.  Can't really help you there, sorry.

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Asparagus stock??? OK, sounds good. The only way I could think of to use it would be in risotto. How do you use it? I'm quite intrigued!!! Yum!

You're the kind of cook I'd like to be when I grow up, although I'm probably older than you. I would love to be able to cook without recipes. . .and I'm getting there, but for now, I'm more comfortable following the instructions. It helps me learn about seasoning and proportions.

My other goal is to be able to use up everything; for example last night when making the soup, I had the green part of the leek left over. I would think it would be good for something, but I've always tossed it out.

Jenny

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It's nothing really.

Whenever I cook asparagus, I save the trimmings. Eventually I have enough to make stock. Figure 1 lb. of peelings/ends per quart of stock. Combine asparagus and 5 cups water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. You can mash the asparagus with the back of a wooden spoon if you like; I sometimes skip this step. Strain. Keeps up to a week in the refrigerator or up to six months in the freezer. Use as you would chicken stock in risotto or as a soup base.

Incidentally you can do the same with corn cobs and mushroom stems (for corn stock and mushroom stock respectively). For corn stock, 8 to 10 cobs will do; for mushroom stock, roughly 2 lbs. of peelings.

Thanks for the compliment.

eta -- ditto for the green parts of the leeks although I note that their flavor tends to be sharper. I've seen recipes for braised leeks that use both the white/pale green parts and the dark green parts, as well as leek frittata but I've never used them in that manner.

I've gotten to the point where I save everything. It's kind of scary sometimes.

Edited August 12, 2009 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[paulraphael]

When I come up with a recipe, there's a typical arc that the process follows from the early versions to the final one. It starts simple, then gets absurdly complex as I address all the problems, and then it gets simple again as I figure out how to streemline the steps and make the recipe smarter.

I assume there's always room for it to get even simpler. However, it would be hard for someone besides me to know how to simplify it, since they won't necessarily understand the full purpose of every step as it's written.

If you're just riffing on the recipe's basic idea, then this probably doesn't matter much. But if you're trying to get the intended result, it's best to trust the recipe. Or do a thorough job analyzing it. Or best yet, write to the recipe author.

Edited August 12, 2009 by paulraphael (log)

[JAZ]

Often I will see instructions in a recipe and wonder if I really have to do things the way it says.

Example:  Asparagus soup recipe.  Pretty straightforward.  Saute leek and shallot in butter, add asparagus (in 1 1/2" pieces), chicken stock, and water.  Simmer until asparagus is tender.  Puree in blender.  Press through sieve to remove woody stuff.

I wonder if I couldn't simplify this a little and get results that are just as good.  If I were to nuke the asparagus, put it through a food mill, and then add the pulp to the other ingredients, would I be compromising anything?

Reason:  putting a large amount of soup through a sieve was messy.  Then I scraped the pulp out of the sieve and put it in the trash; I ran water through the sieve to remove all but the most stubborn of the remaining pulp, then painstakingly removed the last of the pulp and put it in the trash.  I was trying not to put that fibrous stuff into the garbage disposal; I have learned that lesson the hard way.

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Why do you think running the cooked asparagus through a food mill will be less messy than straining the soup? I make asparagus soup this way all the time -- blending then straining (using all the woody ends -- in fact, sometimes with only leftover ends). I use a medium coarse strainer, so maybe that's the difference. To clean, all I do is turn it over the trash can and give it a sharp whack against the side of the can. Virtually all the fiber comes out, then I just rinse it and stick it in the dishwasher. Is your sieve a fine mesh?

[howsmatt]

I wonder if I couldn't simplify this a little and get results that are just as good.  If I were to nuke the asparagus, put it through a food mill, and then add the pulp to the other ingredients, would I be compromising anything?

Jenny

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Yes you are compromising something. By cooking the asparagus with the soup you will extract more of its flavour into your broth. Things like this are often the reason that recipes are written a certain way and why many restaurants seem just a little better than others.

Before I started working in a restaurant I wouldn't follow recipes and I figured there was no difference. Now that I have had a chance to try things 10 different ways I see that these small steps can make a big difference.

In your example whatever asparagus is left in the food mill is lost flavour goodness that could be in your soup.

Matt

[ermintrude]

Perhaps the woody part of the asparagus adds something.

An example would be the difference in taste between a smooth baked potato soup made from potatoes with crispy toasted skins or just the inner pulp. You wouldn't want chunks of hard bits in the soup but the skins would make a big difference in taste (and colour)

Now I've started on this line of thinking, what would it be like to roast whole potatoes till they had really crispy skins, use the flowery centers for the soup and make a stock out of the skins (to avoid the problems of discoloration, possible grittiness) and possibly a gelatin clarification of the stock to get a smooth soup tasting of baked potatoes?

Thinks, will bake an extra potato or two next time and have a play

Edited August 14, 2009 by ermintrude (log)

[jgm]

First of all, the reason I was thinking of running the asparagus through the food mill, and perhaps even straining it then, is that it wouldn't include the broth and water that is added later in the recipe. Less volume=less mess.

However, I did think of an alternative. A few years ago, I picked up some very large teaballs, about 4 inches in diameter, for the purpose of making mushroom soup. The original recipe calls for pureeing the entire soup, but my husband and I like to have some mushroom slices in the soup and I didn't want to have to pick them out before pureeing. The recipe also has chopped onions, so simply straining them out wouldn't have worked. My fix was to pack a tea ball with additional raw mushroom slices when adding the broth to the mushroom/onion mixture that had been briefly sauteed, so that I'd only have to lift out the teaballs, and then I could puree the rest of the soup.

Soba's asparagus stock answer started me thinking, and I realized that if I put the woody ends into one of the teaballs, I'd get whatever benefit there would be from having them in there, but I'd simply need to press them against the side of the tea ball with a spoon to express any retained liquid, and I could just discard or compost them at that point. If I didn't have the teaballs, then what I'd do is use a separate saucepan, and make asparagus stock with the water the recipe called for, while simmering the non-woody part of the asparagus with the broth, leek and shallots, then add in the strained asparagus stock either before or after pureeing.

Whenever I serve asparagus from now on, I'm going to reserve the trimmings and make stock with them to add to either this soup recipe or a risotto.

For years, I've read about making vegetable stock from leftover vegetable trimmings, but I'm just now figuring out how to use the stock. I have read that vegetable stock doesn't freeze well. Is that true? Would I be better off freezing the trimmings and making stock later, or making the stock from fresh trimmings and freezing it?

[ruthcooks]

When I make asparagus soup, I break off the woody parts and cut the remaining asparagus into 1/4 inch slices before cooking. that way, the fibers are so short that they puree nicely and don't make the soup stringy. I suppose I could put all the tough ends in a cheesecloth bag and cook along with the soup, removing before pureeing, but I use chicken stock instead of water to add flavor.

To complete the pureed soup I add salt, pepper, a bit of sugar, grated onion and a cup of Mascarpone cheese. When I served this to my grandsons, the then 10 year old said "Grandma, I HAVE to have this recipe." And he didn't even eat asparagus.

[JAZ]

Soba's asparagus stock answer started me thinking, and I realized that if I put the woody ends into one of the teaballs, I'd get whatever benefit there would be from having them in there, but I'd simply need to press them against the side of the tea ball with a spoon to express any retained liquid, and I could just discard or compost them at that point.  If I didn't have the teaballs, then what I'd do is use a separate saucepan, and make asparagus stock with the water the recipe called for, while simmering the non-woody part of the asparagus with the broth, leek and shallots, then add in the strained asparagus stock either before or after pureeing.

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Here's an idea that might solve all your concerns without the trouble of teaball: Cook and puree the soup as called for in the recipe. Then instead of straining though a sieve, line a colander with loose weave cheesecloth. If your colander is big enough for the whole batch of soup, just pour it in and let it drain through (if not, you could pour it through in batches). At that point, you should be able to gather up the cheesecloth with the pulp, squeeze it gently to get all the liquid out, then throw the whole thing away.