More kitchen basics and cooking methods

If you enjoy Asian cuisine, a wok is essential. With this cooking vessel, you can prepare dishes with vegetables, meat, or Asian noodles superbly. The Asian cooking tool offers you many possibilities, as you can stir-fry, simmer, steam, and fry.

The most common method of preparation in a wok is stir-frying. To do this, you heat the oil to a high temperature and add the ingredients. It’s important to keep tossing the wok or constantly stir the ingredients throughout the frying process to prevent burning. We recommend trying the delicious stir-fried vegetables: it requires few ingredients, is quick to prepare, and tastes fantastic!

Stewing involves briefly heating vegetables, meat, or fish in a small amount of liquid or fat (such as oil or clarified butter) in a pot. After that, some more liquid is added, and everything is simmered at low temperature without stirring. This method minimizes nutrient loss, preserving the taste.

Stewed vegetables often serve as a base for soups, since the water used in the process can be utilized as broth. If you’d like to try this method, we highly recommend a spicy bell pepper foam soup, where vegetables are stewed with orange juice and vegetable broth.

The term refers to sous-vide cooking. Meat, fish, or vegetables are placed with herbs and spices in a plastic bag and vacuum-sealed. The whole package is then slowly cooked in a water bath at a temperature of 55-60°C. This gentle cooking method helps retain vitamins, as well as the colour and flavour of the ingredients.

To utilize this cooking technique, a vacuum sealer and a specific sous-vide cooker are recommended. The cooker, also available as a stick, is suspended in one of your pots to heat the water and maintain the ideal temperature throughout the cooking process. After sous-vide cooking, meat and fish are often seared to add a crispy texture.

The difference between frying and searing lies in the technique. When searing, the goal is to quickly expose meat or fish to high heat. This process is necessary to close the pores, preventing the juices from escaping and keeping your steak moist.

It’s important to ensure that the pan is hot before adding the meat or fish, searing each side for 1–2 minutes. Often, meat is further cooked in a sauce or in the oven after searing. After trying our heavenly tuna steak, you’ll likely be convinced of the benefits of searing.

A particularly gentle cooking method is steaming. Vegetables, meat, fish, dumplings, and desserts are cooked with steam, without coming into direct contact with water. Steaming is particularly suitable for preserving vitamins, flavour, and colour.

While there are special steam cookers available, a budget-friendly sieve insert for your cooking pot is often sufficient. Hang it over slightly salted water and place the food on it. It’s important to close the lid during preparation to prevent steam from escaping. For a special aroma, you can also add herbs or spices to the water. Our recommendation for this is steamed buns, which you can fill, for example, with pulled pork.

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