Freestyle Cooking 101
Instructor: Eric Lee
Learn the basic principles of cooking to make tasty, economical meals at home WITHOUT a recipe. Designed for total noobs.
Class meets for 2hrs, once a week for 5-6 weeks (will possibly expand syllabus if necessary). Planning to start first week of March 2024.
- Buying and storing ingredients
- Get a big load of groceries at Costco
- Unit economics of ingredients, profit margins at restaurants
- Portion, label, and freeze food
- What to refrigerate and what to freeze
- HW: bring food home and store it
- Kitchen setup, spices, seasoning (salt), oils + Eggs
- Basic tools and essentials vs. nice to haves
- Put together a mise en place
- Knife strip is ideal for drying
- HW: Order any essentials you don’t already have
- Cooking eggs 3 ways (scrambled, fried, jammy)
- HW: Make eggs 2 ways, take pics and notes
- Veggies
- Field trip to get veggies at the vegetable stand
- Chopping and caramelizing a shit load of onions
- Roasting veggies
- HW: Roast vegetables, caramelize onions
- Meats
- Chicken, pork, beef
- Touching and handling meat
- Dry brining is CRITICAL
- Jacques Pepin video (any herbs and spices is fine)
- HW: dry brine and cook Pepin chicken at home, take pics and notes
- Hosting
- Final dinner party
- Planning a big meal with multiple courses
- Cold dishes prepared in advance
- Large scale proteins or braises prepared early morning or night before
- HW: Host friends for dinner, at least 4 people, at least 3 dishes