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Creating Prep Lists to Make Your Holiday Meals Stress-Free

by Mike on April 9, 2013 in Holiday Meals, Notes from the Kitchen with 16 Comments

Essential Tips - How to Create a Prep List to Make Your Holiday Meals Stress Free

This year, I cooked the Easter holiday meal at my in-laws’ house. I decided to do as much of the prep as possible at home, and do the final cooking there, for two reasons. First, I know where everything is in my kitchen (prep bowls, mixing bowls, storage containers, et cetera) and second, to make cooking in their kitchen as calm as possible.

I wanted to share about the menu and the prep that went into this meal. I’ve read in many places about the importance of being organized, but nobody seems to have written about HOW to put together prep lists. Let this be the first in a series I’m working on discussing how to prep. Bear with me, this is a bit of thinking out loud – blind leading the blind and all – but here goes.

Preparing the Menu

First off, the menu. Holiday meals are a bastion of tradition, well-worn setpieces that mustn’t waver. Last year, after our meal, we decided to change up the feel a bit to reflect a new balance in our diet (read: more vegetables, more meat, less starch). After some negotiation, we settled on this:

MENU:
Baked Ham
Baked Sweet Potatoes, with spring onions, bacon, butter, cinnamon
Roast Broccoli, with garlic
Seared Mushrooms, with shallots, scallions, garlic, butter
Halved Strawberries
Cheese Plate

Right. That gives me some focus and, more importantly, a grocery list I could stick in my head, ticking off what I already had at home and what I needed to go buy.

After the grocery store, it was prep time. I wanted to have everything as ready as I could get it, so that all I had to do Sunday morning was to apply heat and combine. I didn’t want to be reheating finished dishes, but I didn’t want to be scrambling to get things cut and prepped, either.

The Preparation of Each Dish

Oddly, looking over my notes, this is the one part I didn’t make a list for. Rather, I had a list, but it all stayed in my head. Let’s talk, in shorthand, about what goes into each dish on the menu.

BAKED HAM
heat and serve | 20 min ish per pound | 10 pound ham | so about 3 hours since their oven cooks a bit fast

BAKED SWEET POTATOES
mince spring onions | dice bacon | render/cook bacon | wrap potatoes in foil | bake for about an hour

ROAST BROCCOLI
separate florets | cut to uniform size | slice garlic | toss broccoli with olive oil | roasting pan, scatter garlic over | roast 450F 10-15min

SEARED MUSHROOMS
clean mushrooms | remove stem | halve mushrooms | mince shallot | mince scallions | toss mushrooms in olive oil | sear on HOT pan | cut heat to medium | return mushrooms to pan and add shallots butter scallions | warm through

HALVED STRAWBERRIES
remove leaves | hull berries | cut in half

CHEESE PLATE
unwrap cheese | put on plate

This was the mental checklist I used to keep track of where I was, how far I could go, and what needed to wait for the morning. Order matters – in these instructions, I’ve tried to bring as much prep tasks earlier in the sequence to not lose anything (as opposed to more conventionally saying, say, “Add minced shallots to the mushrooms” – oh, I needed to mince them, did I?).

In preparation, just about everything got cut and packed. Spring onions (same as scallions, here, but it sounds cooler to use both words on the menu, so…), broccoli, mushrooms, shallots, strawberries – everything cut and ready to go. None of that would suffer for being cut ahead of time – for example, I cleaned the mushroom caps with a damp paper towel only to avoid soggy, waterlogged mushrooms.

Choreographing the Actual Execution of the Work

The other prep list I did write down was a timing sheet. This is a new thing for me to do, but the trick is to think not of each dish individually and how long it takes, but look across them to weave the timing together. This was a huge part of why Sunday morning was calm – at any given time, I knew where I was across the whole feast, not just one dish.

10:00 AM: Put ham in oven – 3 hours @ 325F
10:00 AM: Cook bacon bits for potatoes
12:00 PM: Bake Sweet Potatoes
12:30 PM: Sear Mushrooms
12:45 PM: Prep Broccoli
01:00 PM: Remove Ham
01:00 PM: Remove Sweet Potatoes
01:00 PM: Raise oven temp to 450F
01:00 PM: Broccoli in oven
01:05 PM: Finish Mushrooms with shallots and butter
01:15 PM: Serve

The thought process: The ham’s going to take the longest and hog (ha!) the oven the most. It really determines the meal time. Behind that, the potatoes will take an hour, so they go in for the last hour. The broccoli needs the oven, but at a much higher temperature and for a short time, so it can cook while the ham rests. The bacon is a prep item – I just didn’t want to chill it overnight – so it can happen early, and the mushrooms need a pan on the stove. I’ve cooked mushrooms like this a few times recently, and the searing step seems to take longer than I expect, so best to try and do that before the ham comes out – it’ll finish with the butter and shallots while the ham rests.

I won’t say that I followed this to the minute, but I wasn’t far off. About the only step I didn’t have on here is to wrap the potatoes in foil, and I didn’t factor in any time for washing dishes (that happened, as much as it could, in between tasks). With only a couple of edits – namely, I left the potatoes in with the broccoli – this is how it went down.

Making this list – and putting times to it – is a great benefit for two reasons. First, it is a roadmap for the effort, so I know where I am and what’s left to do at any time. Second, it forced me to think through the choreography – what food is in what pan on what oven rack or burner at any time. This is why the timing matters – I’ve made interwoven lists before but without timing, and have had to do some fancy shuffling when two foods wanted the same pot or burner to follow the plan.

The Don’t Forget This List

Finally, the last list I made on Saturday for prep is the don’t-forget-this list. Everything I might want to have from my own kitchen needed to be on a list so I wouldn’t forget anything. There were only a couple of additions not shown (a sauté pan that the ham cooked in – I wanted the roasting pan for the broccoli – and a cast iron skillet for the mushrooms). Let’s just say I’m not always the sharpest in the morning, so having an external backup was a very good idea.

Bring along:

  • Sweet Potatoes
  • Ham
  • Broccoli
  • Mushrooms
  • Bacon
  • Green Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Cheese
  • Butter
  • Shallots
  • Cinnamon
  • Salt
  • Knives
  • Thermometer
  • Olive Oil
  • Garlic

The resulting food went unphotographed, but it was delicious. Everything was hot, done at the same time, and best of all, I was relaxed throughout. THAT is a first for me.

Top 10 Kitchen Essentials

by Mike on February 20, 2013 in Notes from the Kitchen with 16 Comments

Ten Kitchen Essentials

Recently, a friend of ours who is setting up a new kitchen asked us about our Top 10 Kitchen Essentials – the must have items to outfit a new kitchen. Here is my top list:

  1. A comfortable, sharp chef’s knife. This is your workhorse. It should be as long as is comfortable for your grip – usually 8-10 inches is about right. Keep it SHARP – that’s far more important than how much you paid for the knife itself – but more on that below. Get hands on with knives before you buy them – go peek at a friend’s house or grip them in the store. If you’re afraid of the knife, it’ll cut you. You have to be comfortable with it.
  2. A comfortable, sharp paring knife. Usually 3-4″. This is your fine detail knife, useful for smaller or more precise tasks. Again, keep it SHARP. Seriously, a dull knife is one of the most dangerous things in a kitchen – they’re exponentially more likely to skip off food and cut you, and the cuts they do leave are more like a tear than a cut. Sharp knives go where you want them to, and if they do happen to nick you, they do so almost politely – cleanly and quick to heal.
  3. A honing steel. This is a metal or ceramic rod that helps maintain a knife’s edge. An example is this ceramic rod by Messermeister. A honing steel doesn’t sharpen your knife, in that it doesn’t actually take metal off the blade, but it helps keep the edge true and working well until the knife is truly dull. Use this often – a few swipes before getting started. When this doesn’t get your knife sharp, it’s time to find a good professional and let them put a great edge back on your knife. (This is usually every 6-12 months, depending on use.)
  4. A skillet. 10 inch is a good all-purpose size. I like stainless steel, with a heavy base, to keep the heat even. (Something along the lines of this 10″ Cuisinart skillet could work great.) Since this is a top-10 list, I’m skipping non-stick skillets – regular metal is more versatile. Humanity survived without non-stick surfaces for years and ate well.
  5. A good pot. 4 quart or greater. May not be large enough for boiling pasta, but it’ll handle all sorts of soups, sauces, and the like. Again, make sure it’s sturdy, not flimsy – avoid aluminum, as it can react with acidic foods and this is your one good pot for anything. Stainless or enameled cast iron are my favorites. Something similar to this 4 quart pot from Cuisinart would work well.
  6. Cutting boards. This is your work surface; don’t skimp on size. There is no definitive scientific evidence that I’ve seen on whether wood or plastic is better; basically, both will perform well as long as you care for them. Clean promptly in hot soapy water (plastic ones can generally go through the dishwasher). I like having two, one specifically for raw/uncooked meats and one for everything else. Avoid glass, marble, or other exotic materials, as all they do is dull your sharp knife.
  7. Instant read thermometer. Yes, I put this on my top ten list. I own the Cadillac of instant read thermometers, the Thermapen (in British Racing Green). It isn’t cheap, but it’s the gold standard. For years, though, I used another instant read thermometer from Thermoworks, the RT301WA. This thing is a workhorse. The main difference is that it takes 5-6 seconds to read instead of 3, and it’s about one fifth of the price of the Thermapen. Use this religiously to test any meat for being done, whether bread is cooked all the way through, whether the water is hot enough to poach – really, once you get in the habit, you’ll find you use it all the time.
  8. Utensils. It’s a bit of a cheat to put a category item here instead of listing things out, but these are incidentals. Have a good spoon, solid and slotted. Have a couple of big heat-resistant spatulas. Have a turner/flipper spatula. Have a couple of whisks, one French-style (slender and long) and one balloon-style (same length, but much wider) – they’re used for different things. (Use the skinnier one to mix things, use the balloon whisk to beat air into things like whipped cream or egg whites.)
  9. Mixing bowls. Have a couple of good big ones. It’s easier to use a bowl that is too big than a bowl that’s too small. Plus, they double as a giant salad bowl for when, like me, you decide to binge on lettuce. (It happens.)
  10. Side towels. Kitchen towels dedicated to wiping up spills, quick cleaning of counters, and as a pot/pan-holder. Wash after every use. I’m kind of obsessive about my kitchen linens, but they really are great tools to have.
  11. Bonus: A totem. I’m stealing the term from an Alton Brown interview, but it’s something I’ve done for a long time. This is the thing that gets you in the right frame of mind to be in the kitchen. For me, for a long time, it was a bobble-head tiki god that Christine bought for me at Target one day. It sat next to the cooktop (at my insistence – I admit, it matched exactly none of our décor), and I would tap it on the head before any food met pan. Currently, that guy is in a box from the move, and I don’t have a great home for him. Instead, now, it’s my best blue pinstriped apron I picked up in England, with a side towel hanging from the waistband. Putting that on is the difference from I’m-going-to-go-heat-something-quick and I’m-serious-about-what-I’m cooking. It’s like any other uniform – putting it on is putting on your game face.

Spoon & Knife, Launching Soon!

by admin on February 5, 2013 in Notes from the Kitchen with No comments

This is the future home of great cooking content from Christine and Mike. After nearly 9 years of marriage, thousands of blog posts, and countless meals together, it is time that we share them with you in one place.

Update (2/14/13): Everything is set up behind the scenes, the posts from my blog & Mike’s blog are moved over, the logo is done, and as soon as I get the photos switched out here, we will be back to our regular posting schedule! YAY!