IF you watch a lot of food shows on TV, you may frequently think to yourself, “Oh that’s just silly. They just do that to show off.”

In fact, there are a lot of those show-off things that we could incorporate into our kitchen routines at home.

Using a honing steel

Chefs are constantly using a steel on their knives. At first glance, it just seems like overkill, all of that over-the-top whipping the blade around the sword-like steel. But, the more you cook, the more you’ll use your knives. The more you use them, the more “out of line” your blade will become. While using a steel will not sharpen your knife, it will help realign the blade between sharpenings. That is a good thing.

Two-level cooking

Another example is two-level cooking. Essentially, that just means using two methods of cooking for one dish. The clearest example is a breaded chicken breast. At first, you saute it in a skillet on the stovetop until the breadcrumb coating is golden. But often the chicken is not yet done. You don’t want to keep sauteeing because the breadcrumbs will burn. So all you need to do is place the skillet in an oven until the chicken finishes cooking through. It’s a technique you’ll use constantly once you try it.

Blanching and shocking

TV chefs all seem to also spend inordinate amounts of time blanching and shocking vegetables. Isn’t that just a messy extra step? Many people blanch green vegetables and then shock them in cold or ice water. It may seem fussy, but this way, they are virtually cooked, and all you need to do before serving is a quick saute on top of the stove in oil or butter and herbs or spices for flavor, rather than the entire cooking process. As an added benefit, you can do about 90 percent of the vegetable cooking long before the dinner rush overwhelms you. Not to mention, this method really does retain the bright green color and a lovely crunch, just like the TV chefs say.

Seasoning from above

The showiest technique is perhaps seasoning from a height. When you see the TV chef hold a handful of salt what appears to be 40 centimeters above a piece of chicken or beef and then lets the salt float down like a rain shower, there’s a reason for it. When you rain seasonings down from a height, the coverage is exponentially more even so that there will be no salty bites next to totally unsalted ones. It looks showy, but you’ll be shocked at how easily you can evenly season things.

(SD-Agencies)