braise

For sure steam, fry, boil, braise are more clear-cut as cooking techniques, but the others – infuse, sauce, pickle… while perhaps not seen as a culinary technique in western cooking very much are techniques in Chinese cooking.

Soups, stews, fortifying rich pan sauces, cooking grains or beans, reducing into demi-glaces, to braise or poach proteins or vegetables, in risotto, to glaze produce, in stuffings or fillings — the list truly goes on and on.

There’s a fine line between a stew, a braise and a soup, and it’s quite subjective: Sometimes only a few spoons of broth make the difference.

You can braise the chicken to make a more concentrated sauce, which is delicious over buttered noodles.

The pot is deglazed with water, less than you would use in a soup, but more than for a braise.