Rouxbe Online Culinary School

Courses > Steaming, Stewing & Braising

Your culinary journey starts here

12.0 CEHs

All Levels

10,080 Students

Course Overview

A great variety of dishes are cooked using moist heat methods – whether you are referring to soups, stews, steamed foods, or braised dishes. These are all beloved foods around the world because they evoke a feeling of sharing or community. In understanding the differences between specific most-heat cooking methods, you will be able to successfully understand and practice a great number of recipes from around the world – as many world cuisines use these methods. You will also use this knowledge and skills to perfect and hone old family favorites and to use as a way to explore new culinary creations.

Steaming and submersion are most methods that use hot moist vapor and hot liquid, respectively, to cook foods. Depending on the specific dish, these can be executed very quickly (i.e. steaming small pieces of fish) or over a longer period of time (slow poaching a whole fish). Combination cooking techniques of braising and stewing use dry heat to add color, flavor, and moist heat with extended cook times to break down fibrous matter or connective tissue.

Course Objectives

At the end of this course you'll be able to:

Learn how to steam food and control the temperature during cooking
Describe how to properly prepare ingredients for steaming
Visually identify the proper water temperatures for poaching, simmering and boiling
Learn how to poach and simmer and why these techniques are often more desirable than boiling
Learn the proper technique behind combination cooking methods such as braising and stewing
Understand what pot roasting is and how to make one

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Course Syllabus

Steaming, Stewing & Braising

This course focuses on moist-heat cooking methods. Using submersion methods, you will learn about and then practice braising, poaching, steaming, stewing and simmering. Moist methods provide a learning platform through which to create a variety of delicious dishes that all use the power of hot liquid or steam for their preparation.

Lesson 1

Course Orientation

Welcome to the Rouxbe Cooking School! This course will help you understand why knife techniques are critical for skilled cooking, establish your knowledge baseline and learn how you will take your knife skills to the next level.

Lesson 2

Steaming

In this lesson, you will apply the basics of the steaming technique.

Lesson 3

Submersion Cooking Methods

In this lesson, you will be introduced to submersion methods of cooking.

Lesson 4

Combination Cooking Fundamentals

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.

Lesson 5

Braising | Combination Cooking

In this lesson, you will learn the technique of braising.

Lesson 6

Stewing | Combination Cooking

In this lesson, you will learn that the technique of stewing is very similar to braising. There are just a few key differences, which we will cover in this lesson.

Lesson 7

Pot Roasting | Combination Cooking

In this lesson, you will learn the technique of pot roasting.

Lesson 8

Course Review

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Student Work

Below is a snapshot of real student photos from the course. Once you learn the foundational techniques of cooking, you too can begin to create an endless number of delicious dishes!