Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques for French Cooking
By Laura Calder, host of French Food at Home
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment or ingredients to cook French. For the most part, it’s a meat-and-potatoes cuisine like any other in the Western world, so in a nice way there’s a lot about it that’s already familiar to us, which I think makes it especially approachable.
Here are some special French ingredients and equipment that I like to have on hand, because I use them over and over again and they give me inspiration when my creative batteries need recharging.
A Few Useful French Ingredients
- Fleur de Sel: I use this white and pure French salt, with a texture somewhere between fine and coarse, for garnishing.
- Bittersweet Chocolate: High quality chocolate at about 70% is my standard for desserts.
- Anchovy Paste: A little squirt here and there gives a nice salty zing to dishes. It’s also great mashed with butter and spread on toasted baguette.
- Crème Fraiche: This is a thick, high-fat cream with a distinctive tangy flavour that I’m going to be on a campaign to get grocery stores everywhere to carry. It’s not as sweet as heavy cream but it’s not as sour as sour cream either, and for some dishes I really feel it’s irreplaceable. You can find it in high-end grocery stores…and in big cities I’ve even seen it in the regular grocery stores.
- Herbes de Provence: There’s nothing fancy about this; it’s simply a mixture of familiar dried herbs like thyme, rosemary, bay, basil and savoury. It makes a great coating on a leg of lamb.
- Lardons: This is nothing more exotic than bacon cut into paperclip-sized pieces, something else it would be useful for grocery stores to sell in small packages, like the French can get. They are ideal for pasta dishes, salads, and for getting a head start on stew
Some Useful Equipment for Cooking French
I am always reminding people the most important tool we have is our hands, and I do use them for everything I can. However, sometimes they need a little help.
- Cocotte: This is simply a heavy casserole, or dutch oven, perfect for stews, meats, and even bread.
- Sauté pan: My constant companion. I have a stainless-steel-lined copper one and I use it for everything: sautéing meats, glazing vegetables, poaching eggs…definitely my desert-island pan.
- Strainer: People think straining is a complicated, fancy trick, for some reason. But it’s nothing more that dumping a mixture from one recipient into another through a thing full of holes. I strain a lot of things because I delight so much in lovely textures and that’s usually what straining is trying to achieve.
- Copper Bowl: Nobody needs one of these, but I do love mine because it is such a beautiful object, and it really does make whipping egg whites a pleasure.
- Rasp: I am not a gadget girl, but this thing should go in the gadget hall of fame. It is quick, efficient, fun to use. For Parmesan cheese and citrus zest, it’s essential.
- Parchment paper: Ever since I practically smoked myself out of the house using waxed-paper in a silly way, I have switched to Parchment for anything directly exposed to the oven.
A Few French Techniques in Plain Language
Don’t be intimidated by French words or the odd professional culinary term: they’re just words.
- Deglazing: just means to pour a liquid, such as water, wine or vinegar, into a hot pan in which food has been cooking. It serves to lift up all those nice bits that stick to the bottom of the pan and set them swirling back into the dish for flavour.
- Reducing: means to boil down.
- Sautéing: is, basically, frying in just a very little fat.
- Refreshing: is to dunk something into ice-cold water.