How to Chop a Leek

If you haven’t already, please make sure you’re familiar with basic knife safety before starting this tutorial. (link)

Like onions, leeks are a type of allium. In fact, they taste rather like a soft, mild, onion. And they look like a giant, tough, spring onion! So if you’re already familiar with chopping spring onions (tutorial here), chopping leeks is quite easy.

Now it’s a step I’ve been known to skip with a lot of veggies, but it is important to wash your leeks. The reason is that the structure of leeks is exceptionally good at trapping small amounts of dirt. Because of this, you may find it easier to rinse leeks after chopping them.

To start chopping your leek, first remove about 1cm off the root end. Also remove the dried out ends of the leaves, and any dried out whole leaves. (Some people recommend removing all the dark green parts – while these are slightly tougher they soften when cooked, especially when slow-cooked.)

For slow-cooking, I recommend chunks of leek. Starting from the green end of the leek, simply cut off chunks about 2cm (a little under an inch) long. These chunks are perfect for roasts and casseroles, and they take about an hour to cook at Gas Mark 4 (180°, or 160° fan).

For faster cooking, slice your leek instead. Just like with chunks of leek, start from the green end of the leek. (This helps the leek stay together while you cut.) For most uses, I recommend slices about ½ cm thick, which you can pan-fry in 10-15 minutes. Thinner slices will cook faster.

When cooked, leeks become soft and translucent, just like onions do.

Leeks are great for giving a milder, sweeter, onion-y taste to dishes. They’re especially good with potatoes – why not try frying some sliced leeks in butter, and mixing them in with mashed potatoes? They’re also great in casseroles!

How to Chop a Mushroom – into chunks or slices

If you haven’t already, please make sure you’re familiar with basic knife safety before starting this tutorial. (link)

We have a bit of a love/hate relationships with mushrooms in our house. By which I mean, two of us love them, one is indifferent, and one of us hates them.

 

 

Mushrooms are a type of fungus, and there are actually a lot of different varieties. However, the ones you’ll see most often in supermarkets are closed-cup, chestnut, or button mushrooms.

These mushrooms have already had some of the prep done for you. All that’s left are the stalk and cap, so you can eat the whole thing!

 

 

 

You don’t even need to wash mushrooms; in fact it’s best to avoid getting them wet. Not only will it make them feel kind of slimy, it makes it very easy for mould to grow on mushrooms. (Mould growing on mushrooms has always amused me, a little fungus growing on a big fungus, but I digress.)

 

 

 

If your mushrooms are getting a little old, however, you may want to peel them. It’s actually easiest to do this with your fingers! Start by pulling the stalk off the mushroom. You can then reach into the middle of the mushroom and get hold of the edge of the skin, close to where the stalk was. Then, gently pull it off.

 

 

 

To chop your mushrooms, it’s easiest to start with them lying on their caps. For chunks, you can just quarter them.

If you’d rather have sliced mushrooms, start by chopping them in half. Then place the mushroom on its cut side as you slice it. I like slices about half a centimetre (1/4 inch) thick.

Mushrooms can be eaten raw or cooked, but an overcooked mushroom is rubbery and chewy. To fry mushrooms, simply heat them in a frying pan for anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes! It really depends on how well-done you like your mushroom.

How to Pan-Fry Chicken

Chicken is a popular (and tasty!) source of protein, but it’s one you have to be a little bit careful cooking because of the risk of salmonella. Luckily, chicken undergoes a very helpful change in colour and texture from raw to cooked.

Like fish (which I wrote about baking here), raw chicken is translucent, or kind of see-through, and has a kind of jelly-like texture. Once cooked, the colour fades from pink to a kind of off-white (though this does depend on the part of the chicken). The texture also changes, becoming firmer and more stringy.

If you’re going to be handling raw chicken, make sure to wash your hands (and utensils) with soap and water afterwards. Don’t wash the chicken though – this can actually spread harmful bacteria. You can find out more on food safety in my post here.

Pan-frying chicken is a great way to cook it quickly, and you can even cook it from frozen!

To start, add a little oil to your pan, and put it on a medium heat. You don’t need a lot of oil to fry chicken, just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. We like to use a silicone brush to get a nice, thin layer.

Once you’ve added your chicken, putting a lid on your pan will help it to heat up quicker. It can also help to keep moisture in. (You can even add a little water if you want – this can help distribute the heat more evenly, as well as stopping the pan from overheating and burning your chicken! A little water is especially helpful if you’re cooking from frozen.)

Now chicken usually comes in quite large chunks – breasts or thighs for example. This means the heat reaches the outside of the chicken much quicker than it does the middle. This can lead to the outside being overcooked while the inside is undercooked. To avoid this, I like to chop my chicken into cubes a couple of centimetres (a little under an inch) on each side. You can even do this while the chicken cooks, as long as you don’t have a non-stick pan! Doing it in the pan also helps you to check whether the chicken is cooked right through to the middle.

It takes about 20 minutes to pan-fry chicken, but it does of course depend on how high you turn up the heat!

Pan-fried chicken is great for salads or sandwiches as well as hot dishes, but if you’re looking for a hot chicken recipe, why not try adding it to my curry (link) or stir-fry (link)?