Cooking Notes and Recipes

Posted on February 17, 2013

Last updated on May 7, 2014

This page serves as my collection of different cooking notes and recipes. I thoroughly enjoy cooking, and find it a relaxing, meditative, and also scientific experience. My main cooking inspiration is Heston Blumenthal; he approaches cooking with scientific precision, and his methods conclusively show which techniques work, and which don’t. I have not yet attended The Fat Duck, Heston’s restaurants, but am planning on doing so in the near future.

1 Scrambled Eggs

2 Omelette

3 Glazed Carrots

4 Steak

Having to endure and chew through an overcooked steak - an abomination. The technique I present is due to Heston Blumenthal, who showed via experimental evidence that his techniques outperform others.

What you will need:

Having acquired the above, the steps to cook a steak are as follows:

  1. Take the steak out from the fridge around 3 hours before you are planning to cook it. This is so it can reach room temperature. Otherwise, when you put it on a pan, the outside will burn and inside won’t cook too well.
  2. Apply some salt to the steak, and rub and pat it into the steak. Wait around 3 hours (or until the steak is room temperature) until proceeding.
  3. Take the cast iron pan, and put it over full heat. Wait around 5 minutes, the pan needs to be as hot as possible. Add enough oil to cover the surface of the pan with 2mm cover. Wait until you see the oil start to smoke. This is an indication everything is as hot as it should be.
  4. Grab the steak with the tongs, and place it on the pan. Watch out for hot oil.
  5. The core of the technique lies in flipping the steak every 15 seconds. Heston Blumenthal demonstrates with a thermal imaging camera, that when a steak is one side, the other side very quickly loses temperature. Hence, start counting off 15 second segments, and flip the steak at the end of every segment. Depending on steak width, among other factors, you will want to do around 6 flips before the temperature measuring part, described in the next point.
  6. After you feel your steak is getting closer to your desired state (rare, medium, well-done), you need to use the thermal probe. After each flip, insert the probe into the steak at its thickest point, and ensure that the probe ends up in the middle of the steak. A temperature guide is as follows:

    • 45 degrees Celcius - Rare
    • 55 degrees Celcius - Medium
    • 65 degrees Celcius - Well-Done (abomination)

    The above are final steak temperatures. Due to the fact that after taking the meat off the heat, the core will continue heating up due to residual heat, you must take the steak off the heat around 3-5 degrees Celcius below the value stated above. If you want your steak medium, I found it good to stop at 50 degrees Celcius.

  7. Per the above, take the steak off the heat as soon as it reaches the required temperature, and place it on a warmed plate. Leave the thermal probe in the steak if you would like to see how the temperature climbs up. The steak needs to rest 5 minutes now, do not touch the steak before that.
  8. After the resting phase, the steak is ready to be eaten. Enjoy.

Praxis over teoria, or practice over theory, is the school of thought I subscribe too. It won’t be perfect the first time you try it even though I laid out the theory; simply practice more, and you will get a fantastic steak every time at a fraction of the price you would pay in a restaurant.

5 Assorted Notes and Tips

Markdown SHA1: a91a64ab5da46c11ec350d665e9234ab7f4da787