This is my new favorite series on this website. I think about it a lot and I’m very happy about it because I want people to live.

Specifically, the people I want to help live are those kind and gentle souls, the reasonably thrifty and law-abiding, the sensitive, intelligent and decent people who happen to have little or nothing in the way of culinary skills. In the current climate, I consider these fine people to be at-risk.

I’ve worked in the foodservice industry, and I’ve read long and learned books about the economics and ethics of food. Food has a way of making fools of the wisest philosophers. There are a million ways to produce food, and every single one of them is wrong. In the end, nobody cares about economics or ethics; everybody still needs food.

One way of looking at the food problem is, you need sufficient calories and essential nutrients. Suppose you had a candy bar that boasted 1500 calories and a full day’s supply of every essential nutrient? In theory, that’s food for a day and if you had 500 of those candy bars you could go 500 days. In practice, your appetite would soon fail and malnutrition set in. Food isn’t mere nutrition; food is flavor, variety, novelty, maybe a bit of spiritual or artistic investment.

This is not a recipe thread. You can find millions of recipes on the internet. Instead, this is about fundamental cooking technologies and techniques. There will be recipes, but only to illustrate cooking techniques. If you acquire just a handful of home cooking techniques, your options for survival increase exponentially. This series will focus on those skills which are easiest to acquire and which do the most good. (I assume no prior knowledge or experience. If it come across as condescending, relax. I’m not condescending to you, I’m condescending to someone other than you.)

Just about every kitchen has a range, an oven, and a microwave. You’ll also need a cutting board and a kitchen knife. The first knife you need is what’s called a French knife or Chef’s knife. It looks like this:

A stiff blade with a curved cutting edge, and room under the handle for your knuckles. Typical blade length is around eight inches. There is little advantage to a longer blade, unless you want to chop huge quantities. My personal favorite French Knife has a seven-inch blade and is very handy. There are other specialty kitchen knives used for boning, filleting, paring, or slicing bread. In a pinch, you can do anything you need to do with the French knife.

(Knife Safety: All people who earn their livings in kitchens have suffered cuts and burns to the hands. These injuries are generally not consequential, but they hurt. I can’t think of anything more discouraging to a person taking his first timid steps into the art of cookery, than getting a nasty cut. If you haven’t worked with a French knife on a cutting board before, it’s not rocket science but there are things to learn. Proceed slowly and thoughtfully as you learn how to move the knife.

The toe end of the French knife remains in contact with the cutting board at all times. It works like the blade of an ice skate to guide and position the knife on a cutting line. The cutting is done by the middle and heel end of the blade by working the handle up and down, always keeping the toe of the knife in contact with the board. With each cut, the toe end of the knife is used to steer the knife to the next cutting line. By getting these motions into a rhythm, you can rapidly produce regular slices/strips/chunks/etc.

Never Swing The Knife In A Chopping Motion! It blunts the edge, batters the cutting board, and it’s the prime cause of really bad cuts in the kitchen. Keep that toe end down on the board.)

Pro Tip: If your cutting board slides around when you’re trying to work, lay a damp dish towel under it. Solid!

Now you can cut stuff up. It still needs to be cooked. Your range and oven give you various options, but if you’re tired from all that cutting and you don’t really feel like working over a hot stove, get a Crock-Pot aka Slow Cooker:

It’s a heavy ceramic vessel that sits in a little electric heater on your countertop. For someone with an extremely limited budget of knowledge or patience, the Crock-Pot is a game-changer. From one session of prep work, a crock pot can produce several meals’ worth of food. Student Stew is a favorite of college attendants on a budget. Dice some meat and cut up a bunch of vegetables: onions, carrots, potatoes, celery, broccoli, green beans, asparagus, etc. Pile all that stuff into the Crock-Pot, cover with tap water, activate the switch and forget about it. In a matter of hours, it will be food to last you maybe a week.

In addition to making stew from just about any ingredients you can scrounge up, the Crock-Pot is excellent with beans, dried peas, and lentils.

The Crock-Pot works by maintaining a simmering temperature just at or below boiling. Because it doesn’t get to a real rolling boil, it cooks foods gently and never boils over or boils dry. It cooks so slowly that overcooking isn’t much of a concern.

Crock-Pots range in capacity from two to five quarts. Five quarts is a lot of food. If you live alone and cook five quarts of beans, they’ll go slimy long before you can eat them all. Of course, you can freeze cooked beans for later. But the smaller pots are about right for day-to-day use.

One thing you can’t cook with a Crock-Pot is rice. There’s a special appliance for that, and you’ll never guess but it’s called a rice cooker. Like the Crock-Pot, the rice cooker is a countertop appliance, available in various sizes, inexpensive to buy amd foolproof to operate.

Now you have a way to cook rice and beans, and that’s a bit of a survival breakthrough. Rice and beans can be bought cheaply in bulk and stored indefinitely without spoilage. Best of all, rice and beans together provide every one of the essential amino acids. In theory, you can get by without any other protein.

One more common countertop appliance that can give you lots of options is the Instant Pot. The Instant Pot runs considerably hotter than a Crock-Pot; without liquid, its cooking surface can sear meat or caramelize onions. With liquid, and the lid latched shut, the Instant Pot works like a little pressure cooker and probably tops out around 240 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve barely encountered this thing in the wild, and I don’t own one, but I know there are unlimited Instant Pot recipes on the internet, so you can cook a wide variety of delicious meals with a minimum of doubt and difficulty.

Circling back to that Student Stew, the basic concept is put meat and veg and liquid in the pot, and turn it on. Here are some refinements that will make a better stew:

• Use a store-bought broth or stock instead of water. This goes whether you’re making stew, beans, rice, anything where the liquid won’t be discarded. I like an unsalted bone broth, and I have several gallons of the stuff in my larder. Check the label when you buy; some store-bought stocks, especially chicken, are too salty.
• Roast root vegetables and onions. You can cut small potatoes into eighths and toss them in oil until coated, with maybe some paprika or black pepper. Put them on a sheet pan skin-side down and roast at 350 for about half an hour. Onions and carrots can be roasted in the same way; they don’t need to be oiled. The potatoes develop a slightly chewy “skin” and all the vegetables develop more sweetness than they would from being simmered. Of course, the roasted vegetables will be cooked before they go in the pot, so put them in at the end, when the liquid is fully simmering and the meat is almost done.
• Sear the meat. Next week, we’ll talk about Sizzling and Searing.

That’s Slice and Simmer 101. We’ll cover more specific knife techniques later, and we may hear more about the Instant Pot. I mentioned stock here, some other time I’ll explain how to make your own.

See you next week for Sizzle and Sear!