Scones- Kitchen Appliances

For the scones lab we started by sifting our dry ingredients together. Next we cut in the butter and mixed the wet ingredients with dry. After this we put the mixture on a floured surface and kneaded it a couple of times, then we took our scone mixture and cut it in four pieces. Next we put some sugar on our scones and put them on a jellyroll pan in the oven. I would say we did a good job as the scones ended up tasting really good, and everyone was happy with how they turned out. A challenge from this was having a fire drill in the middle of our lab, and having to leave in the middle of cooking, but we managed well and things went back on track when we came back.

I personally find the jellyroll pan to be the most useful, because most other things can be done without the appliance we have for them, but the jellyroll pan is hard to replace, as it is almost essential for baking anything in an oven. For example when making the scones, without a jellyroll pan the scones wouldn’t hold their shape and would seep through the racks in the oven. Jellyroll pans are most commonly made of aluminized steel, as this material resists rusting and evenly distributes heat. Unfortunetly the jellyroll pan is somewhat of a one trick pony and can’t be used for much more then its original purpose: to hold food items while they are cooking and to prevent them from sliding off the pan.

Sources: https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-jelly-roll-pan.htm

Omelettes- Knife Skills

For the omelette lab we started by sautéing our vegetable mixture Mise En Place. After the vegetable mixture was finished cooking, we poured the egg mixture we made (egg and milk) into a frying pan and let it cook for about a minute. Next we added our sautéed vegetables and grated cheese onto halve of the egg and flipped the egg over the vegetables and cheese. We left it to cook for another minute before taking it off to cool. I would say our group did great job as our omelettes turned out great, the egg was fluffy, and the vegetables and cheese really complimented the omelette. A struggle that did occur was when I was flipping the omelette, I thought we were supposed to flip it over and then add the filling but lucky I remembered that is wrong and fixed it, this still left a fold but it still turned out well.

In this lab we learned some basic knife skills, and how to medium dice cut vegetables, like mushrooms, potatoes, and onions. The first thing we learned was how to hold a knife, the proper way to hold a knife is with your index finger and thumb on the blade with the rest of you fingers griping the handle. Next we learned how to properly cut with a chef knife. To do this you rock the knife back and forth while cutting the vegetable and make sure that the tip of the knife never leaves the cutting board. The reason we use different knife cuts when cooking is because it can change the texture but also the look of something we cook. For example when making soup if we dice the vegetables really small then the soup will have a different texture then if we cut the vegetables in bigger chunks. Knife cuts can also affect the final look of a dish as there are many different ways to cut food products.