French Cooking Recipes & Mastering the Art of French Cooking

In this lesson, we will teach you the key methods and techniques used when cooking foods which are submerged in liquids. This lesson covers essential, yet fairly simple, foundational techniques that are applicable to many food preparations. Though simple, their importance is often overlooked or simply not understood.

There are many types of moist-heat cooking methods. Generally, moist-heat cooking methods can be broken down into three categories: submersion, combination, and steaming. This lesson focuses on submersion cooking, which includes poaching, simmering and boiling.

Combination Cooking involves both dry- and moist-heat cooking. Braising, stewing and pot-roasting are all combination cooking methods which are excellent for cooking tougher (but often tastier) cuts of meats. These types of cooking methods require long, gentle cooking to turn tougher cuts of meat into those fork-tender dishes that we often refer to as “comfort foods”.

In this lesson, you will learn the few key steps and fundamentals to combination cooking. Understanding these key basics will help you stew, braise or pot roast without the need for a recipe.

Braising is a combination cooking method used to slow-cook ingredients, primarily tougher cuts of meat, over low heat to yield fork-tender dishes.

In this lesson, we’ll walk you through the entire braising process from start to finish. While we focus specifically on braising meats, other types of ingredients can also be braised. We’ll help you understand the key steps required to build layers of flavor into any braised dish and how the sequence of these fundamentals can be applied to many braised preparations.

Stewing is a combination cooking method where bite-sized pieces of tough meat are slowly cooked in a liquid until fork tender.

In this lesson, we’ll walk you through the entire stewing process from start to finish. We’ll help you understand the key steps required to building layers of flavor into any stew and how the sequence of these fundamentals can be applied to an endless combination of ingredients.

Pan sauce is an à la minute sauce made in the same pan in which ingredients, especially meats, have been sautéed, seared or pan-fried. The flavors can range from simple to quite complex.

In this lesson, you will learn the essential steps for making a pan sauce. Soon you’ll be able to make some of those delicious and fancy restaurant sauces…without a recipe.

Butter sauce is also called a beurre blanc sauce (“white butter”) or sauce blanc. It is a classic French butter sauce that is often served at fancy restaurants. It is considered by some to be a bit more challenging sauce because it has a tendency to split. Beurre blanc or butter sauce goes well with many vegetables and lean meats and is especially delicious in fish recipes and seafood recipes.

In this lesson we will show you the few key steps required to prepare a perfect beurre blanc or butter sauce.

This lesson covers the key fundamentals required to make great stock every time. Making stocks is such an essential tool for any cook because so many delicious recipes use stock as a base ingredient. We will focus on white chicken stock in this lesson and then apply the techniques used here to other stocks. In subsequent sections, we will make sauces, soups, braised dishes and fancy pan sauces with the end result of your efforts here.

Learning how to sauté is an important task for any home cook or professional chef. It is one of the fastest and most common dry-heat cooking methods used to cook bite-sized pieces of food in a pan.

When learning how to sauté, there are a few things you need to understand before you can master this cooking technique. In this lesson, we will cover these key steps required for sautéing success.

The omelet is one of the fancier ways one can enjoy eggs. For many, it’s a Sunday brunch favorite where they can watch a chef make it right before their eyes. Served plain and simple, or filled with your favorite ingredients like a cheese omelet, a perfectly-cooked omelet can be a sublime eating experience.

In the professional cooking world and in culinary schools, the ability to make a perfect omelet is also a sign of a well-trained chef. The great thing though is that while it does take a bit of practice, making a great omelet is within everyone’s reach.

In this lesson, we will teach you the key steps required to ensure omelet success each and every time.

Eggs are extremely important and versatile in cooking. While they are often eaten on their own, eggs also play an important role in many of the dishes that we prepare and eat every day. Despite their importance in cooking, many people don’t know a lot about eggs. So, before moving on to the vast number of uses for eggs, let’s focus first on egg basics.

In this lesson, you’ll learn about the anatomy of an egg, how to determine freshness and two of the five methods of cooking eggs – boiled eggs and scrambled eggs. Gaining a better understanding of egg anatomy and basic egg cooking will help prepare you for subsequent lessons involving eggs where we look at sunny up, over easy and poached eggs.

Emince is a culinary term referring to a type of knife cut that means to thinly slice.

Julienne is a French culinary term referring to a knife cut that means to cut into thin match-stick like strips.

Lardon is a French culinary term referring to thin strips of bacon cut approximately 1/4-inch thick.

Mirepoix is a French culinary term that refers to aromatic vegetables. These vegetables are used at the beginning of the cooking process to build the flavor profile of a dish, whether making things such as stock, soup or sauces. Most often, mirepoix consists of onion, carrot and celery; however, any vegetable can be used to create specific flavors.

Mise en Place is a French culinary term used in cooking school and means "setting in place". It's the act of gathering and preparing all of your ingredients before you start cooking so you will be organized during the cooking process.

Brunoise is a French culinary term referring to a knife cut that means to first cut the ingredient into julienne and then into a fine dice. The terms is used by professional chefs and in cooking school.

This instructional cooking video on The Water Test | Heating the Pan, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Pan Frying .

This instructional cooking video on Browning the Meat for Braising, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Braising (Combination Cooking).

This instructional cooking video on Making a French Butter Sauce, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Make a Butter Sauce.

This instructional cooking video on Cooking Food by Sauteing, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Saute.

This instructional cooking video on How to Scramble Eggs, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Cooking Eggs | Part 1.

This instructional cooking video on How to Poach Eggs, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Cooking Eggs | Part 2.

This instructional cooking video on Introduction to Pan Sauces, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Make Pan Sauce.

This instructional cooking video on Positioning Your Guide Hand , is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Handling a Chef's Knife.