It wasn’t until I moved to France that I started to appreciate Julia Child’s cooking skills. The woman was a genius. Although her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is mammoth, her cooking tips are still as good as they were the day she first shared them.
What Julia can’t do with an egg isn’t worth knowing. As for her famous beef bourguignon, trust me when I say you don’t want to skip any of the steps. It doesn’t taste the same if you do.
Anyone who utters the phrase, “People who love to eat are always the best people,” knows what they’re talking about. Every time I step into my French country kitchen, I hear Julia’s voice telling me what to do. But which Julia Child cooking tips are the best and the ones I swear by whenever I cook?
12 Fabulous Julia Child Cooking Tips
There are so many things to love about Julia Child. She didn’t give a hoot what people thought of her; she just did what she loved. She completely revolutionized the way American housewives cooked through her love of French cooking.
From her quotes to her tips, I try to follow her advice when I’m in the kitchen. She also had an affinity for France, with her house in Provence, and was a strong advocate of seasonal eating, a way of life that is prevalent where I live.
I hope after reading these tips, you’ll fall a little bit in love with Julia the way I have.
Don’t Crowd the Pan
If there were a piece of cooking advice to listen to, it’s this tip. It’s quite simple: don’t crowd the pan. If you sauté mushrooms, give them room to breathe.
The science behind this technique lies in allowing heat to circulate freely around each piece of food. When too many items are added to a hot pan, the temperature drops, and the food begins to release moisture. Instead of evaporating quickly in a hot pan, the moisture lingers and steams the food, preventing browning and resulting in soggy, flavorless food.
Keep Your Knives Sharp
Before Julia entered my life, I had never sharpened a knife. It never occurred to me that I needed to. But Julia was adamant about the necessity of keeping kitchen knives sharp.
Sharp knives require less force to cut through ingredients, reducing the risk of the knife slipping and causing injury. Dull knives crush rather than slice, negatively affecting the flavor released from ingredients like herbs and onions.
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Always Heat Your Pan Before Adding Ingredients
Before I fell in love with cooking, I was always in a hurry to finish the job; heating the pan was an extra step that slowed me down. However, Julia soon changed my mind. By heating the pan, you’re laying the groundwork for achieving the desired texture and flavor in many dishes.
Letting the pan heat up first allows ingredients like meat and vegetables to begin cooking immediately upon contact, sealing in juices and ensuring a good sear. Julia often used this method as a teaching point to explain why some dishes didn’t turn out as expected when home cooks skipped this step.
Dry Your Meat Before Searing
There is more than one use for a paper towel. According to Julia, you should pat your meat dry with one before popping it in the pan and searing it. When placed in a hot pan, dry meat reacts instantly to the heat, searing effectively and locking in flavors.
This adds a caramelized exterior, which is particularly important in beef bourguignon, where searing the beef is essential before slow cooking.
Season Your Pans
Julia didn’t have access to non-stick pans like we do now, so her tip for stopping things from sticking was to season them. She loved copper and cast-iron pans, and doing this maintained the quality of the cookware. Seasoning a pan, particularly a cast-iron pan, involves coating it in a thin layer of oil and heating it to create a non-stick surface.
She demonstrated this technique in episodes of her cooking shows. She would often show viewers how to properly season a new pan by heating it with oil until it smoked, then letting it cool and wiping it down, embedding the oil into the surface of the metal.
Use the Right Amount of Heat for Different Fats
Before Julia, I had no idea that different fats required different amounts of heat. Fats like butter have a lower smoke point and can burn quickly if the heat is too high. She advised adding a splash of oil to butter when sautéing to combat this.
The oil raises the smoke point of the mixture, allowing for higher cooking temperatures without burning the fat.
Save the Scraps
Julia and my mom have something in common: they waste nothing. Everything that can be salvaged and used for something else will be in Mom’s kitchen, and Julia was the same. This was particularly the case regarding kitchen scraps like vegetable peelings, meat trimmings, and bones.
She often emphasized the value of these leftovers in making rich, flavorful stocks and broths, which could serve as the base for numerous recipes. So now, nothing gets thrown away if there is any possible way to use it.
Use a Bouquet Garni for Flavoring
Bouquet Garni is found everywhere in French supermarkets. It’s a small bundle of herbs tied together with string or enclosed in cheesecloth. This allows the herbs’ flavors to permeate the food during cooking and is easily removed before serving.
Julia often used classic combinations like thyme, bay leaf, and parsley in her bouquet garni, adjusting the selection based on the dish. Bouquet garni is now a regular addition to anything I put into my slow cooker.
Make Garlic Paste for More Flavor
If chopping up garlic is too much, you can get crushed garlic pastes in tubes from any supermarket. However, in Julia’s day, this wasn’t the case. In fact, garlic wasn’t regularly used in many American households until recently.
But naturally, Julia had a solution. She would dice garlic finely, then crush the garlic into a smooth paste using the flat side of a chef’s knife and a bit of salt. The salt acts as an abrasive, helping to break down the garlic and drawing out moisture, intensifying the flavor.
Treat Ingredients with Care
In France, cooking is an art form, and Julia fully embraced this notion. She understood that each ingredient, whether a prime cut of meat or a simple vegetable, should be treated with attention to detail to preserve its integrity and enhance its flavor.
For example, when working with fish, she taught her viewers to handle them delicately to avoid breaking the fillets. She tossed apples in lemon juice to prevent browning and gently folded egg whites into the batter to maintain lightness. She gave her ingredients the respect they deserved.
Don’t Be Afraid of Making Mistakes
Julia once said, “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking, you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” So don’t be afraid to make mistakes; it’s the only way you’ll learn.
It’s the best cooking advice you’ll ever hear. This philosophy was a cornerstone of her teaching, aiming to demystify the art of cooking and make it accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
Clean as You Go
Nothing is worse than creating a culinary masterpiece only to be faced with a mountain of cleaning up after using every pan in your kitchen. Let’s face it: none of us wants to clean up after a good meal. We want to sit and salivate in our fullness.
Julia emphasized that keeping your cooking area and utensils clean while you cook saves time during and after meal preparation. During her cooking shows, she would often wipe down counters, wash dishes, and put ingredients away as she finished with them.