My New Favorite Way To Cook
- Tamara Efstratios Swan
- Jul 22, 2020
- 4 min read
Here’s something I haven’t done on the blog for a while!
A favorite recipe of mine.
Honestly, this might take the cake over any other recipe because it’s super simple easy to clean up and extremely flavorful.
We all know it’s really hard to keep healthy meals on the table every night. Between a busy work schedule, kids, homework, and other obligations, many of my clients have expressed the difficulty they have figuring out how to cook a painless healthy meal.
Luckily, I found this amazing technique! The best part? It’s actually super helpful in keeping extra fats and carbs out of your meals!
This technique I’m talking about? “En Papillote” or, “In Paper”. Basically, what you do is create a pouch of parchment paper that contains the entire meal and allows it all to cook together in steam, evenly spreading all of the flavors together.
Why do I love this technique so much?
Healthy Results!
Because all of the food cooks together in a steam filled packet, there's no need to add any additional fats or oils to your meal. By reducing the added fats or oils in your cooking, you’re quickly and easily dropping the calorie count of the meal. Which, in turn, helps you lose fat and get lean quicker!
Simple Process!
This is quite possibly, the easiest way to cook a meal. Prep, assemble in paper, fold, put in oven, eat! It honestly takes longer to prep the food than it does to assemble and cook. Say goodbye to multi step cooking processes!
Flexibility!
The beauty of this technique is that it’s completely limitless. You can literally combine any combo of veggies, protein, and flavors together in the packet. If you’re like me, you’re going to experiment with this option and find a bunch of new favorite combos.
Easy Cleaning!
My least favorite thing about cooking, by far, is dishes. I’m sure you can relate to that. The best part of cooking en papillote is that cleanup is super simple. Because everything is self-contained in the parchment, cleanup is as quick as rolling the parchment up and tossing it in the trash.
So there you have it. My reasoning for loving this technique so much. You might be thinking “Well that’s cool and all, but how do I do it?”. Got you covered friend!
Read on below!
Prep the Packet
Cut Four 12” x 16” pieces of parchment paper and fold in half.
Pick Your Protein
As I said before, you can honestly pick any protein for this process.
Chicken is probably one of the best choices as the steam adds so much moisture to the chicken that it almost falls apart. Use thinned breasts of chicken or pound the chicken in to thinner pieces for quicker cook time.
My favorite choice is fish (Salmon specifically) but I’ve used red meat, shrimp, pork and even tried some vegetarian meals with this process.
Have fun with it and pick your favorite.
Veg-Out!
Simply put, veggies are amazing when cooking en papillote. Just as above, you can probably cook any veggie possible with this process. The biggest thing to keep in mind when cooking veggies is that you need to ensure the way you cut your veggies will allow them to still fit within the packet.
You want to ensure that everything finishes cooking at the same time. So, thicker veggies like potato's, peppers, cauliflower / broccoli or asparagus need to be cut smaller to cook all the way through.
Flavor it up!
Pretty straight forward step here, pick your favorite flavors.
What’s important about this step is to ensure that whatever flavor you pick has enough moisture to create steam.
Depending on the protein and veggies you picked, you may need to use flavorings that include more moisture. If you’re using drier ingredients, I sometimes like to add a tablespoon of water, red wine, or broth to the packet.
Wrap it!
Take your pre-cut parchment and unfold it. Arrange your veggies in the center of one of the halfs of parchment. Season, and top with your protein.
Fold the bottom half of parchment over the protein and veggies. Start folding and crimping the ends of the parchment together from one end to the other end. You want to make sure these are tight folds that will completely seal the packet so none of the steam escapes.
I personally like to use ¼” - ½" folds to ensure everything is sealed completely.
Bake Away!
Place your beautiful little packet of food on a baking sheet, place it in the oven and cook per your recipe / protein. There’s really no way to check if the food is cooked because you don’t want to poke holes in the packet as its cooking, so it’s sometimes better to cook it a bit longer than normal.
Serve the packets directly on a plate and tear open just before eating.
That’s how easy it is.
Now, on to my favorite recipe for this technique!
Lemon – Dill Salmon
Ingredients
1 medium zucchini
1 medium yellow squash (summer squash)
4 Salmon filets (6 oz each)
4 Tablespoons vegetable broth, divided
kosher salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
8 small fresh dill fronds/sprigs, divided
1 medium lemon
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400*F
Place 4 squares of pre-cut parchment paper on your counter.
Cut Zucchini, Squash and Lemon into even 1/8” thick “Rounds”
Add Zucchini to the center of each packet in an even flat layer
Add Squash on top of the zucchini.
Add one salmon filet to each packet with the skin-side down so that it covers the vegetables as much as possible.
Evenly drizzle each packet with about 1 tablespoon vegetable broth
Season with salt and pepper, to taste
Add 4 dill fronds to each piece of salmon, placing some on sides of salmon and some on top.
Add 3 slices lemon over the top of each piece of salmon.
Seal the parchment paper
Place them on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until salmon is tender and cooked through and vegetables are crisp-tender.
I hope you enjoyed the recipe and the process of cooking En-Papillote. Let me know what you think and share some of your favorite recipes!
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