Cooking Patterns > Cooking Tool Patterns

Stovetop Cooking

Tips and Tricks

1. You can interchangbly use canola oil (a type of vegetable oil) or olive oil for almost every meal that requires oil
2. If you’re not sure what temperature to cook at, but you really need to cook the food, not just warm it up, keep the temp at medium-high (7-8)

Temperature Settings

Here are the settings for the knobs on your stove:

• Low: 1-3
• Medium: 4-6
• Medium-High: 7-8
• High: 9-10

Simmer

Simmering is a cooking method that uses moderate heat to gently soften foods while slowly combining seasonings and ingredients. It’s often used for soups and curries. The definition of simmer is to cook a liquid just below the boiling point.

To most easily gauge a simmer, simply watch the amount of bubbles rising from the bottom of the pot to the surface of your liquid. At a low simmer, only a few, tiny bubbles will rise to the surface intermittently, accompanied by little wisps of steam. At a full simmer, more small bubbles will start to form under the surface, and bubbles will break the surface more often, though still only occasionally.

In contrast, when you boil a liquid, expect to see large bubbles throughout the pot, rapidly breaking the surface. There will be much more rolling motion in the liquid and larger amounts of steam.

Here is what simmering looks like:

Knob settings for boiling and simmering:

• 9-10 (high) – Boil
• 8 (medium-high) – High simmer
• 7 (medium-high) – Low simmer