All about Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking

by Molly Stevens

Book Overview

The art of braising comes down to us from the earliest days of cooking, when ingredients were enclosed in a heavy pot and buried in the hot embers of a dying fire until tender and bathed in a deliciously concentrated sauce. Today, braising remains as popular and as uncomplicated as ever. Molly Stevens's All About Braising is a comprehensive guide to this versatile way of cooking, written to instruct a cook at any level. Everything you need to know...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393052303
• ISBN13: 9780393052305
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 481 Pages
• Weight: 2.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 8.2" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

This book's James Beard and IACP Awards were well deserved!

This is one of the best cookbooks I've ever had. My collection is now up to about 300 cookbooks, and this one ranks right up at the top. The organization is fantastic. In terms of usability, it is also excellent. Each recipe has the hours it will take to cook along with the serving size right in front. The directions could not be any clearer. The recipe chapters are organized by food type - vegetables, seafood, poultry and game, beef, veal, pork, lamb. The recipes are easy. The author explains not only how, but why each step is taken. The recipes we've tried have turned out GREAT and our guests have been very impressed with the dinners we've served from this book. I especially appreciated the explanations of the different types of cookware at the beginning of the book. A lot of topics I had questions about she answers -- types of meat cuts, braising vs. crock pot/slow cookers (she has about the same opinion of slow cookers as my Mom, who is another great cook - that it can be easy but generally has inferior results) and she has a nice resource section for purchasing items. I also liked the wine suggestions. The photography is beautiful. This is a good book for both beginners and experienced cooks because it explains things in great detail and has the standard favorite recipes, but it also has a great selection of more unusual recipes that I've not seen in other cookbooks. I'll be giving lots of these as gifts at Christmas.

Community Comfort Food

Coming together to eat from a communal pot a delicious meal with conversation, author Molly Stevens discovered was a significant part of her family and her life, thus this wonderful book. On top of all this, the wonderful aromas generated over the hours of sumptuous, slow cooking provide additional blessings of braising meals. Her inspiration came from all over the globe, from informal to classic recipes. Find, experiment and find wonderful culinary community experiences in this collection. I have already with the following: Pork Riblets in Vietnamese Caramel Sauce; Country-Style Pork Ribs Braised with Mango, Lime & Coconut; Osso Buco all Milanese; Short Ribs Braised in Porter Ale with Maple-Rosemary Glaze; Chicken Do-Piaza (Indian Spiced Chicken Smothered in Onions); Tuna Pot Roast with Tomato, Basil & Capers; Creamy Braised Brussels Sprouts; The Simplest Potato & Leeks Braise. With each delectable recipe comes great, thorough instructions, as well as wine/drink recommendations. Additionaly, there is frequent sidebar discussion on technique, ingredient, e.g. "using banana leaves." An excellent source listing as well as fantastic "An Opinionated Pantry." This is large (421 pg.) resource that is easy and fun to use and will bring great response from your diners.

My current favorite cookbook

I purchased this cookbook when it first came out and have made numerous recipes all of which were great. A few of my favorites so far....Pork roast w/ apricots, cardamom & ginger; Zin Pot Roast; Veal shanks with rosemary and honey and whole chicken braised with pears & Rosemanry. The instructions, ingredients, and style of the recipes rank high in my opinion. Molly Stevens has produced a cookbook that offers sophisticated yet uncomplicated one dish meals glamourous enough for the best of company.

Exceeded my expectations ...

This was somewhat of an impulse buy for me as I was looking for a new book that I could get some Atkins-friendly recipes. Some of my favorite recipes are braises so I'm glad I was drawn to this book. I have been very happy with the recipes I have tried so far: "Savoy Cabbage Gratin with Saint-Marcellin Cheese", "Soy Braised Chicken Thighs with Star Anise & Orange Peel", "Vietnamese Braised Scallops" and "Monkfish Braised with Cherry Tomatoes & Basil". I was pleased with the section on what sorts of cookware can be used to braise. And I found the author's detailed instructions of cuts of meat to use ... with illustrations to be particularly helpful. The color photographs were appealing. My only quibble would be in the actual quality of the book itself ... no dust jacket.

Excellent Book on Most Useful Cooking Technique

Braising is the quintessential French cooking technique, as typical of Western Europe as stir-frying is of the Far East. Molly Stevens has given us an excellent book `All About Braising' which adheres to the very basic cooking principle that if you pay close attention to all the little details of good ingredients, your cooking will invariably improve. So, the book is almost as much about identifying and buying the best ingredients for braising as it is about braising itself. The name `braising', based on `brazier' and heating on hot coals mislead me for years when I knew more about French than I did about cooking and before I started reading about cooking in earnest. I imagined it was a type of grilling when it's only real connection to hot coals is the very old technique of placing coals on the top of Dutch Ovens cast with rimmed lids to accommodate the coals. It is also easy to confuse braising with stewing. Braising is a very well-defined method characterized by browning a relatively large cut of protein or vegetable, followed by cooking over a low, all-around heat with liquid extending about 1/3 the way up the height of the primary ingredient. The braising container is tightly lidded so that vapor does not escape the cooking pot and designed to encourage condensation to drip back down on the braised food. Some braising vessels are also designed to leave little very little headroom between the primary ingredient and the lid. Stewing is a much less well defined technique which does not require a lid and is generally done with much more liquid and smaller pieces of food than a braise. The list of classic `comfort food' braised dishes is long and familiar to Western foodies, headed up by coq au vin, sauerbraten, braised lamb shanks, and osso bucco. And, these are just the headliners. Ms. Stevens gives us chapters on braising vegetables, seafood, poultry, beef, veal, pork, and lamb. I was not surprised to find recipes for braising vegetables as sauerkraut and other cabbage dishes are well-known braise ingredients, but I was surprised to find braises for fish and some veal cuts. Fish is great for all the fast cooking methods such as sautés, grills, broiling, and poaching. Overcooking is the most common danger with fin fish and shellfish cookery. But, the virtue of braising is that it is the premier cooking method for infusing a protein with flavor from the braising liquid and it is typically done at a relatively low temperature. That means that the principles behind poaching fish apply also to braises, in that you can cook fish to about 160 degrees Fahrenheit and keep it there almost indefinitely without its drying out. As braising is a very clearly characterized cooking method with a long tradition behind it, it is not surprising that their many different cookpots have evolved to accommodate the method. Almost all of us foodies have an adequate arsenal of Dutch ovens made of either naked cast iron or the traditional French enameled cast iron.