The best book on cooking that I ever read is The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon. You should definitely buy many copies of this—they come in extremely handy for gifts. Make sure you buy an actual physical copy because the kindle edition lacks serendipity. Oh—and make sure you keep one for yourself!
This book taught me more about cooking and celebrating the Lord in mundane things than just about any other book (apart from the Bible, but the Bible doesn’t talk much about cooking).
I’ve written a number of cooking articles which I call “cautionary cuisine.” I’ve had a lot of positive feedback about these articles. A small sample is as follows:
“I don’t get it!” — P. H.
“Am I supposed to do this or not?” — C. Y.
“I am so confused.” — D. K.
“I tried what you said and it seemed to work just fine—am I missing something?” — J. W.
As a result of all this wonderful feedback, I decided to write a short post on some of what I call “the secrets of Cautionary Cuisine.” Some of these secrets came from The Supper of the Lamb.
The main secret of Cautionary Cuisine is “Never serve anyone a whole anything.” This principle is discussed at length in the above book. I want to focus not on justifying it, but on its implementation.
For indeed if you are to avoid serving whole anythings to people, you must cut them up (the things you’re serving, not the people). (Note: please, please, do not cut up steaks, except with a steak knife to eat it. I refer to you, Jasmine. They are pre-cut. You are not getting a whole cow.)
In order to cut something up, you must use a cutting implement, commonly referred to as a knife. While The Supper of the Lamb has a good treatment of knives, it is somewhat dated (though still extremely worth reading!).
If you go to amazon.com and search for “knives” you will notice a plethora of things you can buy that are called by that appellation. Do not be fooled! Many of them are not knives, and many others are not at all suitable for kitchen use!
For example, it is hard to imagine what possible use an “M48 Cyclone Tri-Edged Spiraling Dagger Knife With Custom Vortec Sheath” could be put to in the average American kitchen. If you need one of these, you’ve probably got much bigger problems than preparing tonight’s dinner.
Even if you type “kitchen knives” you will still be confronted with a vast assortment of stuff—I got 400 pages of items. I was immediately reminded of a quotation from Socrates after he came back from visiting a marketplace one day: “I never knew there were so many things I didn’t want!”
Here are the keys to obtaining good knives.
- Get married. People will give you knife sets galore. Sell them on Ebay. Use the money to buy a good set of knives.
- OK, that may not be quite the thing to do these days. Modifying the above slightly, marry someone whose parents have read The Supper of the Lamb. They will give you one or more good knives. Sell the other knives you get for your wedding on Ebay and buy a nice steak dinner.
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OK. You have decided to leave wedding presents out of it. You can also assume that few people will buy you knives for Christmas or your birthday. So you’ll have to do it yourself.
A. The first step to buying a good knife is to understand what a knife is for. Knives are for cutting things. This is a key principle. They are not to look at, or to take up unused space in your “knife drawer”, there to lie in undisturbed solitude. If you have a knife you are not using, either a) learn to use it, or b) sell it on Ebay.
B. Things that cut must be sharp. So any knife you buy must be capable of becoming sharp. Some knives are sharp when you get them. This is deceiving. They may be sharp to begin with, but in the hurly-burly of the busy kitchen they will not stay that way. Note also that a knife that is not sharp is dangerous. This may be surprising to the uninitiated, but a knife that is not sharp will require more pressure to cut. That makes it more likely that you will have some kind of accident that causes the not-so-sharp edge of this knife to intersect with your flesh. While a not-so-sharp edge may not cut well, it will still cut. So, counter-intuitively, a knife that is very sharp is safer than one that is not.
C. A corollary to B above, then, is knives must be sharpenable. It must be easy to put a nice, sharp edge on your knife without making a major production of things. This means you need to take the following into account.
i. Your knife must be made of carbon steel, preferably high-carbon steel. In fact, many shiny, stainless steel knives are really hard to sharpen; once they go dull they stay that way, resisting all attempts to put a nice edge on them. They are as useless as Narsil before it was re-forged, and more dangerous. And some of the best knives are dull looking carbon steel knives that will rust if you don’t dry them after use, but will take a razor edge with a few strokes from the sharpening steel.
ii. The attentive reader will notice that I just made a reference to something called a “sharpening steel.” The kind you want does not actually sharpen—it actually “hones” the knife. I won’t go into the details except to say that it doesn’t actually remove material from your knife like a sharpener would. (By the way, please do not use the phrase “hone in on”. It hurts my ears. The proper expression is “home in on”, like a missile homing in on a target. Honing is a different operation from homing, and one does not “hone in on” anything.)
Back to business. I recommend that you get an actual steel sharpening steel. Don’t get a ceramic or diamond sharpening “steel” or rod; they actually sharpen and that means they remove metal from your knife. If you are constantly honing your knife, like you should, you may do it five or more times during a cooking session. An actual sharpening tool will wear down your knives.
I suggest you get a 12″ steel. But you should get one that suits your size. If you are a small person, get a small steel. Of course, don’t go too small. Sharpening a ten-inch knife on a nine-inch steel is not optimum. However, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg. Your price range should be that of a reasonable-quality knife. Make sure the steel has a hilt guard so you can retain your appendages for their full useful life.
You might find that the knife set you got as a wedding present has a steel. Usually they are not great, but they may be usable.
iii. And you should have some means to actually sharpen (not hone) your knife. This should not be a daily operation—maybe once a year if you stay up to snuff with your honing. Do not—I repeat—do not—use one of those little grindstone wheel things or a mechanical knife sharpener. Use a flat stone. There are different kinds of stones; what you probably want is a dual-sided knife sharpening stone: one side is coarse grit for major jobs; the other is finer for when you are touching up or when you are cleaning up the results of using the coarse side. They cost under $20. You can go up from there in price, but really there’s no point. Learn how to use what you have and you’ll be blessed with sharp knives.
iv. Learn how to use the knives. In particular learn how to maintain your knives. Example: do not put your knives in the dishwasher, unless they specifically say that you can do this. In general, hand-wash your knives and dry them right away.
Don’t leave your non-stainless hi-carbon knives lying around after use, without cleaning and drying them. They’ll rust. Eventually they will get pitted. A good non-stainless hi-carbon knife can be polished to a silvery shine; if they’re pitted they won’t look quite as nice.
When you cut with a knife, let the knife do the work. If it is sharp, cutting will be almost effortless. Draw the knife smoothly through the thing you are cutting—don’t shove down on it.
Needless to say, one should not use one’s knife to cut anything but food—and the appropriate food for which the knife was made. Don’t use a chef’s knife as a cleaver, for example.
Finally, DO NOT cut without a cutting board or soft surface! Do not cut on metal or stone surfaces, unless you have developed a particular antipathy toward the knife you are using and wish to ruin it as quickly as possible.
v. Learn how to use your steel and your stone. The main thing with both is the angle. It should be about 30 degrees, perhaps a little steeper than you might expect. Holding the steel pointing out away from you, strop the knife away from you, cutting edge pointing away from you, swiping the knife across the steel. Then flip your wrist so that the cutting edge is toward you and STROP IT AWAY FROM YOU again. Never strop the knife toward you unless you wish to make an impromptu blood donation. Strop ten strokes on each side. Once you have the hang of it, you can do it in about ten seconds. Do it before you start, and between jobs, and just before you put the knife away (after cleaning it).
Some people push the point of the steel vertically into the cutting board so the steel is like a telephone pole as they strop the knife. I find this very awkward, but perhaps it will work better for you.
To use the stone, drip a little water on it and slide the sharp edge of the knife across the stone and away from you. Then flip the knife and slide the other side of the sharp edge across the stone and away from you. You might need a little practice to get the angle right, but it should be fairly straightforward. If you have several knives, do one a month; that way you’ll stay in practice.
vi. What knives should you buy? Take a look at knife sets on Amazon. Then buy individual knives that are equivalent to the knives you see in the set. You could buy a set, but you probably won’t get the quality you would get by selecting the knives individually. Of course, you will probably pay more. So buy your knives over time, or give them to your spouse for birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Note that it is perfectly fine for a husband to give a knife to his wife, and vice versa. Cooking together can be a bonding experience.
Buy a chef’s knife. In fact, with a good chef’s knife you can really do just about anything. So buy a good one.
Buy a Chinese knife. These are not cleavers! Do not use them like a cleaver! Cleavers are much heavier duty. But a Chinese knife is great for cutting vegetables, chickens, and many other things. The large flat is great for crushing garlic as described in The Supper of the Lamb.
Buy a slicer with a “granton blade”. These are like long straight knives with a rounded tip, with rows of “scallops” in the blade. These give “relief” when cutting, so the knife is not forcing itself through the meat. A well-sharpened slicer of this style will let you make incredibly thin slices.
Buy a knife-and-fork carving set, for formal occasions. You may be tempted to hone the knife on the fork. This will work, but I strongly suggest you avoid doing this unless you want to risk making a personal, and probably unwelcome, contribution to the feast.
Buy a set of steak knives. You should consider these part of your good silverware, so go for looks as well as functionality. You usually won’t be able to hone these because they come with serrated edges (more expensive ones will come with straight edges; splurge if you want). Steak knives should be put out any time people are cutting anything of a meaty texture, not just when you are having steak.
Buy a bread knife. This will usually have a serrated edge. This is OK even though you won’t be able to sharpen it easily, because it is a single purpose, limited use knife. It is great for cutting french bread or other crusty types of breads. But make sure you let the knife do the work when you cut your bread; don’t force it but slide it across the loaf.
Buy whatever smaller knives your heart desires. I almost never use smaller knives; the larger knives (properly sharpened) will do most everything the smaller knives will do.
I suggest buying specialty knives such as cheese knives, apple parers, etc. so your regular knives are not abused. But go cheap on these items.
Also, buy a potato peeler. These make peeling vegetables much easier than using a knife.
If you have struggled your way this far, you should be rewarded. Unfortunately I’m going to talk about cooking brisket instead.
First of all, the beef brisket is a perfect item to try your slicer on. Once you’ve cooked it (the brisket, not the slicer).
Now the right thing to do is to put lump charcoal, wood chips, and a pan of water in your outdoor smoker and wreak havoc with the air quality in your neighborhood for about twelve hours. But you are not going to do that, are you?
You are not going to buy a ten-to-fifteen-pound hunk of delectable beef, covered with a layer of fat that will keep it juicy through the cooking process, right?
You are not going to buy a large bag of lump charcoal. You are not going to get a bunch of hardwood chunks and put them in water.
You will not fill a throw-away aluminum serving tray with water and put it in your smoker on one side, opposite to where you will put the coals, under the grate where the brisket will sit.
I am certain you have no intention of grinding some peppercorns, about 1/4 cup, and mixing that with 1/4 cup of kosher salt the night before you intend (or do not intend) to do the smoking.
Nor will you leave your brisket out of the refrigerator overnight to allow it to reach room temperature.
You will certainly not set your alarm for 5am in the morning.
You will not leap out of bed at 5am and go down and start up your coals using a chimney charcoal lighter (the display is spectacular in the dark!).
You will not place these lit coals along with some wood chips in your smoker on the side away from the chimney and the place where you will put your brisket.
You will not, while waiting for your smoker to heat up and start doing the thing it’s named for, go and pour the salt-and-pepper mixture you made the night before all over your brisket, smoothing (but not really rubbing) the mixture into the meat.
You will not, I am sure, then place the brisket into the smoker and spend the next twelve hours anxiously tending the smoker, making sure it keeps smoking but doesn’t get too hot. If you can keep it under 300 F most of the time you’ll be doing well. But don’t let it stop smoking. I take it your smoker has a thermometer so this will actually mean something to you.
But of course you won’t do any of this. Instead, you’ll think, “Can’t I just cook it in the oven?”
Sure, go ahead. Who wants flavor anyway? (If you don’t know what I am talking about, you should go to The Smoking Pig barbecue house and have some of their smoked brisket. That will convince you to go the extra mile.)
Anyway let’s say you chickened out. Haha. No pun intended. You are going to cook your brisket in the oven.
Now having started off on the wrong foot, you could just throw it in the oven at 300 F for four hours in a covered baking pan with some beef broth to keep it from drying out. That will cook the meat. But if you’re going to do it like that, well, why bother at all?
If you must bake your brisket in the oven, you should still consider it an all-day job. Have your brisket in the oven by 7am if you intend to serve it by 6pm.
And you thought you could get away from grinding the pepper? No way. You should still coat the brisket with 1/2 cup kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper mixture.
Now comes the hard part. You will have to use your judgment here, and given all the mistakes in judgment you have already made just to arrive at this point, I hold out little hope that you will be able to accomplish this step. But what the heck. Give it a try.
Place your brisket fat side up—you did NOT cut off the fat, right? That beautiful layer of swaddling that will keep the meat moist and tender and, if properly done, render into the perfect gravy starter? DO NOT cut off any fat before cooking.
Place your brisket fat side up on a tray with a drip catcher, or in a roasting pan that will contain the whole thing. Place it in the oven. Now put on the broiler. Your job is to blacken the top of the brisket. This will give you flavor. No, not as much as if you smoked the thing. After all, there are no shortcuts in life. But you will get something not too bad if you do this carefully.
The object is to make the top more or less black, but not charred. This will take judgment on your part. I suggest erring on the side of blacker is better because you will mostly not eat the fat. But don’t let it burn. It will take about fifteen minutes before you have to start really watching it. How much longer you go is up to you.
Do not turn the brisket over. You could char the bottom as well, but it is not as well protected as the top and you could do some serious damage here. It is also not necessary, since this is not really a “cooking” step but a flavoring step.
Once you have blackened your brisket, set the oven to 225 F. Bake at this temperature the whole day (in the ballpark of 10-12 hours). Near the end of the process, you can use a quick-read thermometer to check the temperature of the meat. It should be around 175 F or maybe a little higher.
Take out the meat and “let it rest” for about 1/2 hour. In the mean time you can make gravy with the drippings as follows.
Place the drippings—fat and beef juice—in a pot and bring it to a boil. While waiting for that to happen take flour and butter and put it in another pot and cook it, stirring constantly, until you start to see a bit of golden color. Here again judgment is necessary. Don’t burn it.
Once the flour/butter mixture is ready, take a cup or so of the drippings and mix it slowly into the flour. Try to get an even consistency without burning yourself too badly. Pour enough liquid into the flour mixture so that it can be poured back into the dripping pot.
Then mix the flour/butter/juice mixture into the remainder of the drippings, stirring like crazy. With any luck you will get a pretty smooth gravy if you have applied yourself with sufficient zeal. Of course, the very fact that you are baking your brisket in the oven rather than smoking it makes me think your zeal is somewhat limited, but do what you can.
By now your brisket should be rested, your gravy should be ready, and your guests should be rioting with hunger from the smell of your cooking. Now comes the crucial step, the reason for which you paid so much to get good quality knives.
You must slice your brisket. Use the carving fork and the slicer. Slice as thin as possible without making a mess of things. Thin is in. The thinner you can get your slices, without ripping them to shreds, the better.
Serve with vegetables, mashed potatoes and a nice Chianti and go crazy!