water saute

[Moopheus]

Today I go to work and I'm handed a manuscript for a health/diet book on the topic of hydrogenated oils and how to avoid them. Main tip: don't buy products that have them. Buy products that don't have them. Anyway, I have to review the copyeditor's queries, and make sure the author has answered them. In a couple of places, the author refers to sauteing with water instead of oil. The ce, not surprisingly, queries this, and the author responds that "water saute" is a well-known term. I am dubious.

This isn't the biggest problem with the book, but I have to ask: have any of you heard this term? Am I missing someting, or is the author?

[markovitch]

nope. i have heard of folks adding water to oil to prevent scorching, but that's it.

[rslee]

According to Larousse:

saute: to cook meat, fish or vegetables in fat until brown, using a fying pan, a saute pan or even a heavy saucepan.

While this is a simple definition, I was taught that "saute" means to cook something with HIGH heat with a samll amount of FAT. There is no way of achieveing the high heat needed to saute and then adding a small amount of water without having the water evaporate. Adding more water would not be the classical definition of a saute.

Sometimes I use a little fat and add some water in the pan to saute raw vegetables, but I don't know if this can truly be called a saute.

Hope this helps.

[torakris]

We just discussed this (briefly) on a different thread, sorry I can't remember which one, but there was a cooking show on PBS back about 15 years ago where this woman sauteed everything in water. It was some show about Heart healthy or low cholesterol or something like that and I believe she used the term water saute.

[fifi]

What torakris said. I remember her. The show was really dumb. So was she. She made a lot of boiled food. Sorry. You can't saute in water.

[torakris]

just typed "water saute" (with quotes) into google and came up with loads of recipes that use the phrase.

water saute the onions

water saute the fish

water saute the ground beef

most of the recipe sare from low-fat, no-fat cooking sites....

[fifi]

They are just trying to make you feel better about eating boiled, yukky food.

[Jinmyo]

Bizarre.

The whole point of cooking something other than pasta, dried grains and beans is to draw out the water and intensify the flavour. Even steaming does this.

This is anti-cooking: making something worse than it was raw.

I hope they at least serve the stuff with the, uh, I suppose, "jus" from the pan.

[Moopheus]

That's sort of what I thought--you'd end up sort of boiling/steaming the food until you ran out of water, then just burning it onto the pan. Even with a nonstick pan this doesn't seem like a good idea.

[NeroW]

How could you saute in water? It would evaporate, or your pan is not hot enough.

[Chad]

I've never heard of "water saute," though I'm no expert. Certainly doesn't fit any description of sauteing that I've ever read. I wonder if the author is using "water saute" as a convoluted term for poaching as a way of making the techniqe seem more sophisticated than it is.

Chad

[slkinsey]

There are two issues here:

First is that the word sauté is often misunderstood and misapplied. Sauté comes from the French verb sauter, which means "to jump." Foods which are "sauté" are "jumped." Specifically, they are jumped around in a pan. This means that one takes irregular chunks of food, places them in a pan over high heat and shakes the pan back and forth to jump the food around in the pan and brown all the pieces evenly on all sides. It is important to use high heat because, at lower temperatures, the ingredients will exude their liquid and suddenly the items are being stewed in their own juices. When food is just sitting in the pan, it is not being sautéd, it is being fried.

Second, understanding the foregoing, I don't see how it would be possible to sauté with water instead of fat. First of all, there would be no browning -- one of the primary goals of a sauté. Second, the presence of excess liquid makes jumping the ingredients around difficult at best. Third, I don't quite understand why this technique wouldn't be more accurately described using already existing and commonly understood cooking terms (steaming, stewing, simmering, braising, sweating, etc.).

[balex]

I am not sure I agree with this. The etymology you give is quite correct but it does not reflect current usage. What you describe is more commonly called stir-frying.

To me saute means more or less -- fry in a small amount of fat. Not even particularly fast either.

By the way, all I am describing is how the word is actually used, and what it actually means, not what it should mean.

Water saute is nonsense though. Unless it means something like that Chinese technique where you splash a bit of water on vegetables as you are stri-frying them.

[balex]

I did a bit of googling and found this amusingly incoherent entry which claims saute as a Chinese technique --

sauté (saw-TAY) – A cooking technique which means to cook a food quickly in oil and/or butter over high heat. You can use a skillet or sauté pan, but make sure it is big enough to comfortably contain what you are cooking.

History:  The Chinese community introduced us to the improved method of cooking, which we call “sautéing” and the Chinese call “chowing.” Their Chinese cooks influenced the meals and diets of hundreds of California families. Although the Chinese cooks were seldom permitted to prepare Oriental meals, they held to their art of cooking and serving vegetables, a contribution that eliminated English overcooking of vegetables and contributed to the cuisine of the West Coast.

from Culinary dictionary

This page Shallow frying is quite close to my use.

There are probably differences in English American and French usages of the term.

[Oreganought]

Sounds like SPA slang. slkinsey definition is the one

I have always known.

[Chad]

Okay, a helpful friend pointed out this definition of water saute. Apparently this technique is fairly common among macrobiotic cooks. And apparently it is only for use with vegetables. I'm not real sure about the yin & yang of the "food engergy" presented here, but the technique seems pretty straightforward.

Chad

[Pan]

SPA? What's that?

[foodie52]

Well, if the term's going to be used in that book, there had better be an accompanying explanation of method.

[balex]

Okay, a helpful friend pointed out this definition of water saute. Apparently this technique is fairly common among macrobiotic cooks. And apparently it is only for use with vegetables. I'm not real sure about the yin & yang of the "food engergy" presented here, but the technique seems pretty straightforward.

Chad

So this is a variant of a normal East Asian cooking technique, without the oil. So the pan is at a high temperature ( above 100C), you sprinkle with water which sizzles as the drops hit the bottom of the pan. You get some browning since the pan is hot, but what stops it sticking is there is no oil?

[rslee]

You get some browning since the pan is hot, but what stops it sticking is there is no oil?

You can use a nonstick or a well seasoned pan (wok).

Still seems like a misuse of the term. Give it a new name.

"water sizzle"?