Pan-Frying, Shallow-Frying, Sauting

Image source: https://www.organicconsumers.org/sites/default/files/pan_frying_sausages.jpg

(ARA) - Jamie Oliver, Food Network star and best-selling cookbook author, is on a mission -- to make cooking at home easy and fun for everyone. He bills his new book, "Jamies Kitchen," as a "cooking course for everyone." Armed with this cookbook, fresh ingredients and a good set of kitchen tools, there is no technique a new cook cant master.

Jamie Oliver offers the following tips for one of his favorite and most healthy cooking techniques, sauting, or what he calls "pan-frying:"

1. Get Yourself a Pan and Make It Hot

"The single biggest mistake that new cooks make is cooking in a cold pan," Oliver explains. "You must heat the pan before you start cooking. If you start to cook before the pan is hot enough, the food steams instead of caramelizing and frying. You want the heat of the pan to sear in the juices, making the food taste better."

2. Size Matters

"When it comes to frying pans, size matters! If your pan is too small, the ingredients will crowd each other, and theyll end up steaming instead of sauting. But if the pans too big, all those great pan juices will end up evaporating too fast and you may burn what youre cooking," Oliver points out. "So be sure to use the right size pan for the amount of ingredients you have. Also, look for some key features in the pan such as a good heavy bottom that distributes the heat evenly, shallow with rounded sides to make food easy to toss, and an easy-to-hold handle -- long enough to be comfortable to grasp, not slippery, and cool to the touch even when the pan is hot."

3. Want Less Fat? Use Nonstick Pans

"Using nonstick pans lets you use less oil or butter, which means healthy cooking. To get great flavor, what you really need is a good sear. And a good sear doesnt necessarily require lots of fat in the pan," notes Oliver. "When you do this properly, not only do you end up with glorious, flavorful food, but you also seal the juices and the nutrients right in with the flavor and youre cooking healthy food as well."

Oliver has just worked with T-FAL to design his own line of stainless steel cookware, the Jamie Oliver Professional Series. The cookware comes with either pure stainless or nonstick coated saut pans."My wife loves my new T-FAL stainless steel nonstick pans because theyre easy to clean and the cool little red Thermo-Spot lets her know when its ready to go. Her cooking has already improved," he says.

4. Your Mum was Right! The Gears the Thing

"You dont have to go crazy buying equipment, all you need to cook well is a good set of pots and pans (Im partial to my own!), a couple of good knives, including an 8-inch chopper, a heavy mortar and pestle, a set of tongs and a speed peeler," says Oliver.

5. So Whats for Dinner?

"This is the fun part -- planning what goes into the pan. Think seasonally and try to shop for organic products if you can when youre at the market," Oliver urges. "Be intuitive; pan-frying is a fast cooking method, so you want things that are thinly sliced and cook quickly (unless you are finishing in the oven.) You can also score thicker cuts of meat and fish to speed up the cooking time and add more surface area to the food. But what gets me going? Chicken marinated in some fresh herbs and garlic that youve pounded in a mortar and pestle. Steaks that have been liberally seasoned with salt and freshly cracked pepper. Or this fantastic salmon dish that I am including a recipe for below. "Go ahead guys. Get stuck in!"