Ask a Chef: A Q&A with our founder Tom

It’s a big, bad world out there, full of contradictory cooking advice. Luckily, our head chef Tom is here to answer the questions that matter! It’s time to ask a chef.

CEO and Founder of HelloFresh Australia, Tom’s a finalist on Masterchef and uses his inherent knowledge of food every day at HelloFresh, as he shows Australia that delicious food can be made using simple, healthy ingredients. In between running things at HelloFresh HQ, we found some time to sit Tom down to answer some of the most contentious cooking conundrums. First up: your questions on how to cook meat.

Do I really have to ‘rest’ steak after I cook it? It seems like a waste of time.

 

What are your tips for cooking meat?

All HelloFresh meat and fish is Cryovac sealed so it stays beautifully fresh without any added chemicals. Cryovac doesn’t use any added gases to preserve your meat – all of our produce is lovely and fresh, so we don’t need to extend it’s life by weeks and weeks. Because HelloFresh meat is sealed fresh so no fresh air can get in, I always take the meat out of the cryovac packaging and let it sit on the bench for a minute. The surface of the meat needs a minute to get used to fresh air again. For mince, I might leave it as long as 5 or 10 minutes, because the surface area is larger.

After that, you can also pat the surface dry with a paper towel to absorb any excess moisture. This will ensure a nice ‘sizzle’ when meat hits the pan! Make sure your pan has reached the desired temperature before you start cooking anything. For mince, you can rinse it gently under running water for a moment, or just pop it in the pan – any confinement odour the meat may have had in the packaging will disappear – think of it as stale air.