How to Chop an Onion like a Pro

Onions and their family members (alliums) are like the underwear of the culinary world.  Chefs use them every day and they come in many different colors and varieties.  Just like knowing how to put on underwear is the first step to getting dressed, chopping up an onion is your first step towards dinner.

Knowing how to cut up an onion is arguably the most basic and necessary skill in the kitchen, but don't worry if the furthest you've pushed it was boiling some water.  Chopping an onion is not only easy, once you can do this, you'll be able to break down garlic, shallots, leeks, tomatoes, potatoes, and more.

This video covers...

1.  2 Methods to Chop an Onion (Grid & Quick Way)
2.  The culinary term "Chopping"
3.  Small dice, medium dice, large dice
4.  How this technique relates to other foods (shallots, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes)



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Back to Basics

For the first time on the Do You Even Cook, Bro? blog we're doing a themed month.  For the entirety of April I'll be dropping some of the most basic and necessary culinary knowledge needed to get cooking.  This means things like knife skills, the five mother sauces, and under-utilized techniques will be covered with multiple recipe tie-ins.

In fact, I will be adding a page solely dedicated to these techniques on the blog, ever-so creatively titled: Basic Skills.  Eventually, this area will be replete with information on stuff like how to dice an onion, julienne a carrot, make a velouté, in addition to charts showing average times for blanching, searing, etc. 

Now you'll have a place to look for the basics instead of having to dig through dozens of video recipes hoping to catch a technique on camera.  Putting all the prep work and simple stuff in one place will make you a more informed cook, as well as allow me to devote more time in videos to the advanced techniques that really deserve attention.

I hope you continue to enjoy the blog as we go back to the basics this April.

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This work bydoyouevencookbro.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Hoisin at Home - This Sauce Can Do it All

Of all the condiments that have never crossed your mind to make at home, hoisin sauce is probably at the top of the list.  After all, barring some sort of catastrophic event, you'll be able to get hoisin at the store, but is that a chance you really want to take in this crazy world?  Even if you only cook a meager amount of Chinese food, hoisin's applications are many, and this homemade version will stay in the fridge for a long time. 

Still, you might be wondering what kind of person makes this at home.  Oh, I don't know, maybe someone with a sense of curiosity and culinary wonder.  Maybe you're gluten free, don't eat refined sugars, or the idea of modified corn starch irks you.  Or maybe, just maybe, you're planning on making char siu (Chinese BBQ'd pork) and you need some hoisin for the marinade (hint, hint). 

Spicy Hungarian Goulash with Sriracha

Bison Goulash with Nokedli and Roasted Cabbage

As one of Hungary's national dishes and a symbol of the country itself, goulash (Hungarian spelling: gulyás) is a pretty big deal to my Uncle Gyula.  No, not because his name looks like someone with dyslexia tried to spell goulash the Hungarian way, but because he's originally from Budapest.

After spending some time as a political prisoner in 1959, shortly after the Soviet tanks rolled into Hero's Square and Janos Kadar became a household name, Gyula managed to escape to America with some luck, a couple stolen bicycles, and possibly some divine intervention-- I mean, the man had to crawl his way through minefields with a spoon, for Pete's sake!

Gulyás simmering on stovetop

While America was a bit of an adjustment for my uncle (he was once kicked off of a public beach because he had a DIY swimsuit; skimpy by American standards), Gyula settled into life Stateside and is now enjoying retirement.  Unfortunately, he has not been back to his country of birth despite the fall of communism, so food and the occasional Magyar newspaper are the only remaining links to his own culture.

Gyula's stories about his escape and life under communist rule have always intrigued and inspired me.  For this reason, I decided I needed to feed the man some down-home Hungarian cooking.  Currently, Uncle Gyula enjoys his position as my official judge for anything Hungarian, barring cabbage.  As a child during WWII and an adolescent/young adult during communism, he says he ate enough cabbage in 19 years to last multiple lifetimes.

In regards to this particular recipe, it is worth noting that as some of the top consumers of capsicums in the world, Hungarians aren't afraid of a little fire in their food.  Therefore, I wanted to see how my homemade sriracha got along with an authentic gulyás.  The result: the Gyula approved recipe shared below.