#16: Why Saute?

Filipinos, being stove-top-cooking creatures, love dishes that involve sauteing. When my friends ask me to teach them how to cook most common Pinoy viands my first line is always "So long as you learn how to saute, you will be well on your way." That is because that is the foundation of most Pinoy favorites like afritada, menudo, kaldereta, guinataang gulay, pininyahan, tinola and of course adobo. The next thing you should know after that is an idea of how long your ingredients cook. The only rule there is, you place first the ingredients that cook longer, then add later the ingredients that cook faster (unless you need to sauté them).

Thanks to http://food.rlove.org for thepicture! 

So why sauté?



Sautéing involves heating a little oil (that is, around 3 tbsps)in a pan then adding to the oil your aromatic ingredients while quickly stirring. This is meant to release the flavor of the aromatics into the oil and so create a base for your dish. It has to be oil because it doesn't evaporate. The flavors, when it is infused in the oil, will not boil off anymore even if you stew your dish for hours. That's why I'm dubious about those supposed 10-minute meals where they just roll their panggisa (that's aromatics in Filipino) in not-so-hot oil and then just dump everything else in the pan? Then they make up for it by sprinkling a whole pack of cheat powder to make it good. Tsk,tsk...


(Okay, fine. I am not the culinary purist you may start to think I am because I use some cheat powder too, okay? But I do not depend on it for flavor and definitely do not use a whole pack at a time. Just a dash of it and only during desperate measures.)


Different dishes and different tastes call for varied sauteing results. Some dishes need your aromatics to just get soft and translucent. While some call for your ingredients to get caramelized. Caramelizing means you have to saute it long enough for the sugars to get drawn out. This will result in the browning of your ingredients and adding a bit of sweetness to your dish.


There is also this argument about which one to place in the pan first: the garlic or the onions? My late paternal lolo insisted that we have to make the garlic golden and a bit crispy first before adding the onions. His dishes turned out to be spectacular. However, there is another argument that you have to saute the onions first because it will avoid the browning of the garlic which will result in a bitter taste.


I do both. When it is Filipino dishes I'm cooking, I place the garlic first but I break my lolo's rule to get them golden. I just cook them enough to get the sides browned a bit then I add the onions. It seems that this style gives that sharper, toasted-garlic aroma to a Filipino dish which is expected to be garlicky anyway. But when I cook pasta sauces or other foreign dish, I add the garlic second because this time, it lends a fresher garlic taste. 


I have a third style that I use in my tinola and later on in one of my curry dish. When I cook Tinola (it's like a soupy cousin of the Hainanese Chicken), my dad taught me a very neat trick that gives my dish a definitive umph! He divides his minced garlic in two parts. He will toast the first half to a nice crisp and then sets it aside. Then the next half, he sautes normally with the onions and ginger. What he does with the toasted garlic is he sprinkles it on the dish after it is taken from the heat. Ay! Pagka-sarap ba! Try this new twist to your tinola. And as you sip that warm broth, I hope you'll find your own style and taste in sauteing your dishes.