Heat to Hot - cooking tips

Like many of you, I am always looking for a shorter way to do things.  I was convinced, as most younger people are, that many of the rules and regs that others imposed on me, were truly unnecessary.  In the winter, preheating your car before leaving made sense (it can get really cold in Iowa), but checking your mirror every time before you leave made no sense to me at the time.  There are a lot of valid shortcuts in Math and sewing and I have even celebrated a few cooking shortcuts in a prior post, but when it comes to heat and pots and pans. there is a rhyme to this reasoning. 


Here are some great pointers i picked up from Discuss Cooking.  It is a free site where you can ask questions and as the title says, discuss cooking.  It is more for foodies, but you can find some answers to those basic questions you never thought to ask.  :)

It is unnecessary to preheat a Teflon pan, but it doesn't hurt either.

The caramelizing from putting foods into an already heated pan will add another dimension of flavor.

Preheat an empty pan for about 3 minutes or so.

Add the required amount of oil and heat for another couple of minutes.

Add meat/poultry/whatever you are cooking. If it is meat or poultry do not turn over until the meat/poultry has naturally "unstuck" from the bottom of the pan. In other words, don't force a piece of meat/poultry from the bottom of the pan.

Plus, cooking time is more accurate. If you start with a cold pan, the initial start of your cooking time could be off by as much as 5 minutes, and when making something like a chicken breast, that 5 minutes could make all the difference.  If you sear that breast first and then roast it, you will have 2 different methods of cooking applied to the same food, each bringing out the flavor of the food in a different way.