Category: Video

In chillier seasons, clear soups keep us warm or help loved ones nurture us back to health from a cold. In warmer seasons, they make delicious light meals or harmonize our favorite garden vegetables.

Soups come in endless varieties, textures and complexities of flavor. The key to creating memorable clear soups is to understand the various stages of building these different dimensions.

The short video “Making Stock-Based Clear Soups” explains how to build flavor bases, leverage the bouquet garni and unite your favorite ingredients in a delicious warm dish.  (Access to this free video expires Oct 22, 2012.)

Note: Stock-based soups should not be mistaken for broth-based soups, which are generally more robust in flavor and can be consumed as broth alone. 

Equipment Tips

Home: Cold soup that is expected to be warm can be disappointing. A quick and easy way to warm your dishes (and help soup hold its heat) is to microwave them for a few seconds wrapped in a damp towel. Microwaves excite water molecules, so this method is more effective and heats bowls more evenly than putting them in the microwave alone.

Shopping: Invest in a reliable oven mitt. Serving soup too cold may be disappointing, but accidentally burning your hands trying to keep it hot is far worse!

Have a great day!

The Rouxbe Online Cooking School Team

Hands, ingredients, and equipment: Rouxbe has always been focused on showcasing close-up instruction of culinary skills and techniques rather than celebrity chefs or kitchen studios. But your front-row seat just got even better.

Rouxbe is excited to announce our new site-wide “Large Format” video player. We’ve developed this upgrade in conjunction with the upcoming release of our guided cooking courses.

Watch the short video “New Large Format Video Player” for an overview of the updates, or continue reading below for further explanation.

Have feedback? We’d love to hear your thoughts – good or bad. Please answer these two quick questions if you have time (http://tinyurl.com/RouxbeVideoPlayer).

I’m excited ­– and I hope you are, too!

Joe Girard
CEO and Co-Founder of Rouxbe

 

Video Upgrade Overview: Larger Views & Easier to Use

How and when will this change my viewing experience?
Starting today, the Rouxbe video player will display in a new, larger view. This upgraded view provides an optimal balance of comfort and beauty: It still provides the related videos and information you are accustomed to on Rouxbe, only in a cleaner, easier-to-use manner.

Like your old view? Don’t worry; you still have the previous two options available. Now, they are labeled as the “Navigation” and “Full-Screen” views. The default view will be the new “Large” format player.

What are the new features?
There are four key upgrades included in the “Large” format
1)    Full-site width
2)    Repositioned access to related videos
3)    Improved pop-up navigation of related videos
4)    Multi-view selection bar

(1) Full-Site Width
The new player will display videos in an 800-pixel-wide format to focus better on the beauty of the image and less on the technical controls (now hidden until you hover-over the image). This means that the image stretches across the entire width of our site. Below is a screenshot example of the video practice recipe “Chicken Saltimbocca” in this new format.

(2) Improved Drilldown (Pop-Up) Information
Just like before, each piece of related information (drilldown) will display as you watch. Only now, instead of being displayed at all times on the left-hand side of the video as a list, information will display on the underside of the video at the moment it’s mentioned. For example, in the image below, “What is Emincé” is the information related to a specific step in the practice recipe.

(3) Respositioned Access to Related Material (Video or Text Drilldowns)
At any time, you can click the arrow in the bottom-left-hand corner of the video player (next to the drilldown information) to see all the text or video material related to the chapter you are currently viewing. Clicking on this arrow will pause the video player so you don’t miss anything or lose your place in the lesson or video recipe.

(4) Multi-View Selection Bar (Other Views)
The two previous views of “Full-Screen” and “Navigation” are still available via the bottom-right-hand corner of the video player. The view selection bar is next to the volume controls that allow you to adjust the voice or music from the video. From left to right, the three view options are: “Navigation” (the classic view); “Large Format” (the new updated view); and “Full Screen.”

We hope you enjoy the improvements to our player. There’s a lot more in store, so stay tuned!

Have a great day!
The Rouxbe Cooking School Team

Roasted vegetables are undeniably delicious. Not only do they look beautiful, they also have an intensely sweet and earthy flavor that pairs well with any dish.

The flavors developed in roasting are the result of the science of dry-heat cooking. As hot air circulates, the surface of the food dries. Once the surface temperature of the food is close to that of the oven, the natural sugars within the food begin to caramelize.

Improve your roasting karma by watching the short video “Preparing to Roast Vegetables” and learn techniques for obtaining the most mouthwatering and enviable roasted vegetables.

Equipment Tips

Home: Roasting at the proper temperature is essential to obtaining consistent and accurate results. Make sure to test the internal temperature of your oven with an oven thermometer as it is quite common for ovens to be off by as much as 50 degreees Farenheit.

Shopping: Purchase parchment paper to line your pans for roasting. Parchment paper helps to keep all of the caramelized bits on the vegetables instead of sticking to the pan.

Have a sweet day!

The Rouxbe Online Cooking School Team