Kitchen Tip: Cleaning Grill Pans

Grill pans are a great kitchen tool but a hassle to clean, as greasy and/or charred stuff often gets stuff in the ridges. Here's the best way I've found to clean one:

Rinse off the pan under hot water. Sprinkle it liberally with baking soda and place it on a stove burner.

Pour water onto the pan and turn the burner on high.

Let the water boil. As it boils off, you may want to (carefully) pour on more water, depending on how caked the pan is.

Turn off the burner and CAREFULLY carry the pan to the sink. Pour out the water and run hot water onto the pan. Let it cool a bit, then use a scrubber brush with a handle to scrape off the remaining goo.

Rinse the de-gunked pan and return it to the burner. Turn it on high again and let it go just till the water burns off. Let the pan cool and put it away.

Tip: Chicken Skin Compromise

Here's a little trick I came up with recently to find a happy medium between skin-on (= fattier) and skinless (= flavorless) chicken.

When roasting leg/thigh pieces or bone-in breasts, I remove the skin from the raw chicken (kitchen shears help with this, or you can just slide your fingers under the skin, peel it back, and pull).

But! Then I throw the skin into the roasting pan and let it render (i.e. melt) while the oven is preheating. I then season the chicken parts and once they are ready to go in the hot oven, there is a nice little layer of grease to toss them in. That way, they don't stick to the pan, and they have some schmaltzalicious flavor, but you're not just straight-up eating the skin. There! Now everyone is happy!

N.B. When roasting an entire chicken, I leave the skin on. I'm not a psycho.

Shown above: Seasoned chicken legs (Detail view of this meal)

Experiment: Pork Dumplings

Chinese-style fried pork dumplings have been an idée fixe of mine lately, thanks in part to the unbelievable ($4.75 for eight) ones from Eagle City, my much-beloved (especially when hung over) Chinese-Mexican restaurant on Fulton St. I made my own variation on these dumplings--using purchased square wonton wrappers, I’m not THAT ambitious--and was pretty thrilled with the results. (Read: I ate about 17 in a sitting.) Here's what to do...

Mush together in a big bowl (use your hands, don’t be afraid) about a pound of ground pork or ground chicken (this is a total non-exact-measurements-required recipe) and some chopped garlic, chopped ginger, a little soy or teriyaki sauce, a handful of chopped chives (or chopped scallions), kosher or sea salt, and a scattering of red pepper flakes.

Set up a small finger bowl of cold water. Bring a steamer to a boil. (I used a metal steamer and found that brushing the bottom with a little canola oil kept the dumplings from sticking to the bottom and tearing.)

Place a table-teaspoon (i.e., not the measuring kind) full of pork mixture diagonally across a square wonton wrapper. Using a basting brush or your fingertips, run water from the finger bowl around all four edges of the wonton wrapper. Fold in the two corners on either side of the longer side of the oval of pork filling. Fold in the other two sides and press them together; fold over the triangular tip onto the side of the dumpling. Repeat until filling is gone. (You can keep remaining wonton wrappers refrigerated, tightly wrapped in plastic, for several months.)

Place your finished dumplings in batches in a steamer. You should probably be able to tell they’re done when they turn kind of wrinkly and translucent, but you will want to grab one with tongs and cut into it to make sure they’re done. It doesn’t take more than about 5 minutes.

You can, if you like, follow up the steaming by frying them in a pan of bubbling-hot canola oil, turning to the other side after a couple of minutes, then draining on a paper bag or paper towels. Obviously, I did this.

I served these with a salad/salsa of cucumber and finely diced red onion salad tossed in lime juice with fresh basil and cilantro; sauted green beans with garlic and ginger; brown rice; and, of course, soy and duck sauce packets from my trusty Eagle City. Considering the armada of dumplings that $3 worth of pork and $3 worth of wonton wrappers produced, this might actually be the first time I’ve succeeded in making a dish from scratch that is cheaper than ordering the equivalent from them.

Brining and Dining

Above: A next-day-leftovers lunch of brined pork chop, grilled apples, green beans sautéd with shallots and garlic, and sour cream mashed potatoes with chives and parsley.

Brining is one of my most favoritest foodie techniques. It is super-easy, impresses people, and makes cheap supermarket meat taste like grass-fed-free-range-Niman-Ranch-whatever. It only takes a few minutes to put the brine together, cool it, and throw the brining meat into the fridge, but you can let the flavors develop anywhere from overnight to a week.

The fundamental of brine is not even a recipe, just a ratio: You want 8 cups of water to each half cup of salt. (For a Thanksgiving turkey, you'd want about 32 cups of water.) To this, add something sweet (honey, molasses, or maple syrup), probably about as much as the salt. Heat the water in a pot on the stove until the salt and sweetener dissolve. Then add a bunch of stuff. Here are some suggestions regarding said stuff; I tend to use some or all of the following, depending on what I have in the house:

• Garlic cloves
  
• Peppercorns
  
• Dried chili peppers (add while the water is hot so they will reconstitute, or un-dehydrate)
  
• Chili pepper flakes
  
• Thyme sprigs
  
• Bay leaves
  
• Cumin seeds
  
• Mustard seeds
  
• Cilantro sprigs
  

Let the brine cool, throw some meat into a gallon-size or larger Ziploc bag (it’s a good idea to sit the bag in a bowl in case of leakage), and pour in the brine. Meats I like to use include pork loin, pork chops, and turkey breasts—or, as mentioned above, an entire turkey, which tends to require a vessel on the order of a lobster pot rather than a Ziploc. Refrigerate. And wait.

As I said above, you can let the brining meat refrigerate overnight or even a week, what with salt being a preservative and all. (If you do this and get sick, please don't bother suing me, I don’t own so much as a lobster pot to brine in.)When you're ready, you can roast your tenderloin/breast, grill your chops, or prepare the meat however you normally would. Just be aware that brining makes it cook somewhat faster. No, I don't know why. What do I look like, Alton Brown to you?

Welcome to Brooklyn Girls Cooking!

Welcome to the Brooklyn Girls Blogging site. We are two ladies who love to cook and eat, and we are on a mission to make cooking easy, fun, and accessible for all those who may be intimidated by it. (Or simply to share tips, tricks, techniques, and recipes with those who already love to cook.) We're more fun and more foulmouthed than Martha Stewart, so whether you're a foodie or have never set foot in your kitchen, you will probably find something to amuse you here.

Meet Your Bloggers

ALYCE

KITTY

As you can see, we both get very excited by food. Perhaps to an unhealthy extent. Anyhoo, now that we've introduced ourselves, toss out your takeout menus and roll up your sleeves. It's time to start cooking!