Foil - use in food preparation
Where it is convenient, where it speeds up or facilitates baking, you can use foil. In other cases, for example, with scaly river fish, it is easier to do without foil, but to bake, so to speak, in the "old-fashioned way".
Foil Is a wonderful invention of our time. Thin, metal-like paper that protects food raw materials, like dishes, but does not have any of the negative aspects of dishes: the foil is non-oxidizable, it does not need to be washed, it is lightweight and compact. It is simply thrown away after use. Foil has such qualities that dishes sometimes do not have: you can bake in it, that is, imitate the technology of a Russian stove, and a fire, and ash, and coals, and all this without leaving a comfortable city apartment, clean, with a minimum expenditure of energy, time and even culinary skills. The foil provides both the consistency and aroma of products prepared in it without any additional human intervention in the cooking process.
But, like any material, and even more so new, foil must be able to use.
You can bake:
- meat, poultry (but not game!),
- pickled cheeses and feta cheese,
- fish,
- vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips - whole, cabbage - in large chunks: half, a quarter of a head of cabbage).
- you can prepare minced meat products, fish, combined with already pre-cooked cereals or with raw vegetables.
Cannot be prepared cereals and cereals, mushrooms, soft, aerial, green vegetables.
It is not recommended to bake fruits either: apples, pears, quince, because their taste does not improve, and vitamin C is completely lost.
Can be baked or warmed all ready meals, but within an extremely short time - no more than 5 - 7 minutes.
In foil, meat and meat products acquire a taste close to stews:
- poultry - for fried dishes, but without fat and without the smell of stews and fried foods. - the fish gets the taste of boiled, but closer to baked.
- vegetables (root vegetables) get the taste of baked in ash.
The consistency of all foods cooked in foil is immeasurably better (softer, more tender) than the consistency of the same foods, but boiled and fried.
Since all dishes baked in foil do not require the participation of fat (oil) and acquire a consistency closer to boiled, but softer, then everything that is cooked in foil can be quite recommended for dietary nutrition, including for children.
Cooking time in foil does not obey the usual rules.
First, it depends on the heat of each specific oven. If the oven is capable of providing a temperature of 380 - 400 degrees Celsius (with good heat chamber insulation), then cooking in foil goes quite quickly: within 15 minutes - half an hour.
If the oven does not reach a similar temperature level (less than 380-400 degrees), then the cooking time:
- a kilogram of meat (one piece) is 1 hour or 1 hour 15 minutes (tough old meat),
- a kilogram of fish - 25-30 minutes,
- large potatoes - 20 minutes,
- feta cheese - 7 minutes,
- chicken-poultry - 25 minutes,
- chicken - 40 minutes,
- ducks - 45 minutes - 1 hour.
This time is usually stable and can fluctuate only within 5 minutes. Such accuracy allows the hostess to freely engage in other activities, noticing only the time when the product in foil is placed in the oven, and monitor it only during the last five minutes of cooking.
Readiness is checked by smell or by the appearance of blackening, smoky corners on the folds of the foil, where part of the meat or fish juice burns when full readiness is reached.
The readiness of the potatoes can be checked in the usual way: by piercing with a sharp knife through the foil (if the potatoes are still raw, then the puncture will not affect the readiness of the product in the future).
One of the first signals of readiness in meat products, fish, feta cheese, and poultry may be the so-called “raising of the foil” (this phenomenon, however, occurs only if it is properly wrapped).
Wrapping food in foil.
First of all, all large pieces (from half a kilogram and more), regardless of the meat is it or fish, should be closed only hermetically, otherwise they will be spoiled: the juice will flow out of them, they will lose their taste, their consistency will deteriorate, they will become tough or burn.
Bird, especially fat (duck) and tender, young (chickens), can only be edged with foil on three sides and open at the top. In the same way, they can be wrapped and roots.
Full wrapping in foil, but without preserving tightness, is unacceptable. This inevitably leads to the outflow of juice from the product, to its drying and spoilage.
Tight wrapping is performed as follows.
For large pieces of meat and whole poultry, double foil (if it is of a thin type) is required, from which one sheet is folded. The food product is placed on one of the halves of this sheet and is freely, without stretching, covered with the other half, so that a free edge remains, which must be folded several times in order to form an airtight seam. Then the same seams are made on the other two sides. The longest side closes first, then both short ones. Thus, a package is obtained. This bag is carefully crimped around the product it contains.
When heated and the beginning of readiness, the bag is straightened, and the foil is inflated (heaving), but the tightness of the bag is not violated and its correct geometric shape (square or rectangle) is preserved. When fully prepared, the corners of this rectangle, and sometimes all the folds, turn black. But not a single drop of juice or fat flows out of the bag.
But it would be naive to think that the foil does everything by itself. The chef should give the dish a taste, aroma, typical for it according to the recipe, according to national traditions. This is why it is of utmost importance to properly prepare the product before placing it in the foil.
The main feature is that each product has its own preparation rules.
Meat and poultry, fish and vegetables behave differently in foil.
Meat... Meat is freed in a piece from everything inedible and from any damage, pollution, but not washed (cleaned, cut off the pollution). Even if the meat had to be washed, then before placing it in foil, it should be dried with a towel or wiped (rolled) with coarser flour (best of all with bran, if any). In addition, bone or bones must be cut out of the meat if they protrude from the meat, are not hidden by it or do not lie with it in the same plane. This is an exceptional feature of cooking in foil. The fact is that when baked, the bone will remain unchanged, and the meat will first increase slightly in volume, and then decrease, fall off. A change in the volume of meat will inevitably cause movement not only of soft meat, but also of the bone on which it is strengthened. And if the bone has even the slightest sharp protrusion, it will break through the foil even if the piece is displaced by 1 millimeter. An insignificant hole, imperceptible at first, will quickly break through under the pressure of steam from the inside, and this will lead to a breach of the tightness and damage the entire dish.
Bird... It is on this basis that the bird is firmly tied, stitched, before being placed in foil, to make it motionless.
And individual pieces of poultry, halves, etc., are beaten with a wooden hammer on bones, joints in order to knock down their sharp protrusions and break a strong connection with meat or weaken this connection.
Fish... They release only from the fins, tail, all protrusions from the carcass and everything that can burn earlier than the carcass itself is baked.
Vegetables... They are thoroughly washed and cleaned of any inclusions and damage. "They can be baked whole, keeping their natural shape, and in this case they are baked. But they can also be cut into thin pieces, slices, bars, as for cooking in dishes, and placed (not wrapped ) in a pre-prepared foil bag, in which case the vegetables are ready-made faster, but turn into boiled rather than baked ones.
Since food baked in foil must be completely ready to serve, it must receive all the necessary recipes before being placed in foil condiments, spices, salt, etc.... But there is also something non-unusual here.
a) Meat is not salted if it is baked in a piece. Minced meat products are salted, flavored with everything necessary according to the recipe (onion, garlic) and must be rolled in flour, which absorbs some of the salt.
b) The bird is flavored with dry spices, but not raw, vegetable, which can impair its taste in foil. She is not salted, or salted extremely moderately, imperceptibly if young.
c) The fish is salted several times more than usual, mainly with coarse salt (a handful, a tablespoon - one and a half per kilogram of fish). Simultaneously with the fish, an increased dose of bay leaves and onions is placed in the foil. At the same time, the packaging is not made of double foil, but single, but double - overlapping the seams of the previous shell, to ensure that the liquid formed during baking of the fish does not run out.
d) Vegetables are not salted or flavored with anything. But after cooking, they need seasoning with salt, oil, spices or sour cream, mustard, ketchup - depending on the nature of the dish.
As you can see, baking, this ancient method of cooking, is very simple and convenient. And the sealing used at the same time allows you to preserve all the best that is in the baked product.
