031. Chicken Piccata, Pan Sauces, Dense Bean Salads

Get ready to fire up your culinary curiosity because the latest episode of Culinarily Yours’ Cooking Like a Pro podcast just went live! This week, Chef Cal and Christa DeMercurio (aka Mrs. Chef!) serve up a flavorful chat all about chicken piccata, mastering pan sauces, getting creative with leftovers, and making cooking a true family affair.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you tune in:

5 Keys to Level Up Your Cooking:

1. Pan Sauce 101
   Discover how to capture every bit of flavor with deglazing and learn the basics of making a killer pan sauce (spoiler: stop washing away those tasty brown bits at the bottom of the pan!).
2. Chicken Piccata, Step by Step
   Find out how to make perfectly juicy, evenly cooked chicken piccata—plus simple tips for thickening and finishing your sauce just right.
3. Intuitive & Mystery Box Cooking
   Learn how to trust your palate, freestyle with leftovers (hello, spaghetti Bolognese remix), and get creative without a recipe using “intuitive cooking” tricks.
4. Family Cooking Projects
   Bread, homemade ice cream, pasta, pickles, butter—Christa and Chef Cal share activities that get the whole family involved (and happy to taste test!).
5. Dense Bean Salads 
   Dive into the viral “dense bean salad craze” and how to whip up healthy, protein-packed salads that last all week… with a quick work-friendly lunch you’ll want to try.

Let's Connect!

I'm Christa DeMercurio. I started as a stay-at-home mom who relied on cookbooks, measuring everything and following recipes to the letter. But watching my chef husband move effortlessly in the kitchen, I knew there had to be a better way.

So, I learned—studying his techniques, practicing his methods, and mastering the strategies that keep professional kitchens running smoothly. Over time, I became confident, capable, and free from recipes controlling my cooking.

I’m here to help you do the same. On Cooking Like a Pro, together we share everything you need to cook with confidence, save time and money, and actually enjoy being in the kitchen—without the stress and frustration.
P.S. I still reference cookbooks and internet recipes too!

❤️Culinarily Yours, Christa DeMercurio (Mrs. Chef)

Email: christa@culinarilyyours.net

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Chapters

• 0:02 Intro
• 0:41 Deglazing your sauté pans
• 2:05 Chicken Piccata 101
• 8:49 Mystery Box Cooking
• 14:35 Veggie Makeovers
• 15:18 Upgrading Your Flavor Game
• 19:18 Family Projects
• 24:34 Dense Bean Salads

Transcript

Christa DeMercurio:
Hey, food fans. Welcome to Cooking Like a Pro with Chef Cal and me, Mrs. Chef his wife, Christa DeMercurio. We're dishing out culinary intuition, insights and imagination to spice up your meals and make cooking more fun.

Christa DeMercurio:
On today's episode, my Chef husband and I discuss how to make chicken piccata while learning the basics of a pan sauce, mystery box cooking, family cooking projects, and dense bean salads. Let's dig in. Today's episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.

Chef Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, one and all, to Cooking Like a Pro. You have found us here, Chef Cal and Mrs. Chef Christa. I was talking with the Mrs. And I'll say, okay, well, what would you like to talk about on the. On the show today? And. And she mentioned a term that we've used before, but I really want to kind of break it down, and that's the term deglazing. Is there a particular reason that you wanted to chat about that?

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, I think it's interesting that deglazing happens because you have glazed the pan. I don't think people think about that, that you've developed a glaze off of any type of meat or whatever that those bits. Is it the fond that's across the bottom? Everything sticks to the bottom. That is flavor that you want to capture and keep. And I think a lot of people probably just take the meat out of the pan, sit it on the plate, and then wash everything else down the sink.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, you don't want the flavor going to the sink. And the idea of deglazing, when you thicken up a stock, you know, boiled beef bones or chicken bones or turkey bones or clam shells, whatever it is, and drive that flavor out and then thicken that up. Then we refer to that as a. Is a sauce. But you can make a sauce in the pan through this process of deglazing.

Christa DeMercurio:
So called a pan sauce.

Chef Cal:
Pan sauce, exactly. So let's talk about. Let's just go over an item maybe people may have heard before. It doesn't really matter about the specifics of it, but we're going to talk about chicken piccata. Okay. So that way we can kind of break it down into a particular recipe. So we're going to take this chicken breast and we're going to pound it out nice and even. One thing about chicken is that it's especially breast.

Chef Cal:
There's not a lot of fat in it, so it can dry out. You do not want to overcook it. So you want to pound that out to where when you put the chicken in there, it's the same thickness all the way across.

Christa DeMercurio:
If you don't, you've got this big lobe with a big thick center and little itty bitty thin, teeny, tiny edges.

Chef Cal:
Exactly, exactly. So you want to pound that out and say, generally speaking, we will usually lightly flour. You can or you can't. Lightly flouring will help two things. Caramelize the exterior of the product you're sauteing. And it'll also, you know, help tighten up a little bit of starch component. So it'll help tighten it up and also actually helps keep it from sticking a little bit as well. So we're gonna take this chicken, we're gonna get a pan, and then we're gonna have our.

Chef Cal:
Our oil just barely coating the bottom. And we're going to get that to a point where it starts to glisten. You can put your hand over it and feel how hot it is. Maybe put your hands five or six inches above it, See, if it's hot, you can flick a few little drops of water. If you do flick water into it, you want your fingers to be moist, not wet. Just dip them in water, kind of flick it off a little bit, and then flick into your pan. You don't want a lot of water going in there because it will splat.

Christa DeMercurio:
And you'll have a mess all over your kitchen to clean up.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, exactly.

Christa DeMercurio:
Also, thick bottom pan or a cast iron or a carbon steel pan. We're not talking a little thin pan. You need something that's got a good thick bottom on it.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, I definitely want to cook with thick bottom pans, regardless of the material. So basically, we're going to put this chicken breast down. It's lightly floured in a medium hot pan of oil. We're going to let that cook till it just starts to brown. We're going to add our garlic and our shallots. They're chopped up. And then we're gonna flip that chicken over and then we're gonna deglaze it. Now, in this case, with the chicken piccata, I would deglaze with white wine.

Chef Cal:
If you don't wanna deglaze with wine, you can deglaze with a mixture of water and lemon juice.

Christa DeMercurio:
So deglazing. Just so people understand, you're taking that glaze and by adding a liquid to it, you are pulling up all of those bits and flavor that are stuck to the pan and creating this flavorful sauce.

Chef Cal:
Exactly, exactly. So nothing's going to waste so we need to glaze Again, as Mrs. Chef mentioned, it's just pulling all that flavor in, into that. Whatever that liquid, that broth is. And then, you know, you're cooking the chicken until it's ready, and you're going to add the rest of your ingredients. So in this case, with the chicken piccata, it would be a little bit of fresh lemon juice. It'd be your capers, a little parsley if you want, maybe a little salt and pepper, white pepper. And then go ahead and remove the chicken when done.

Chef Cal:
And then you're just going to reduce this down, and we're going to add a little bit of cream. Now, here's where it can be a little bit tricky, because when cream thickens up, it will. Excuse me. When cream reduces, it will thicken up. And so you have to bear that in mind as well. But if we wanted to tighten this up a little bit because maybe there was a little. It was a little looser than we wanted, then we would add a. What's called a beurre manier.

Chef Cal:
Now, beurre manier is kind of literally in French. It means kneaded butter. Like kind of kneaded together. K, N, E E, D. Kneaded together. And you just throw a little. Little pieces of it in there. You know, maybe the size of your pinky fingernail, not very big.

Christa DeMercurio:
They're kind of like little roux balls.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, balls of roux, except uncooked.

Christa DeMercurio:
Okay.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. And then you're going to allow those to go ahead and tighten it up. You can do that also by maybe taking a butter pat and just rolling a butter pat in flour and throwing it in there. Butter pat. I think a lot of people know what those are. They're just the little pats of butter you get. Maybe if you go to a, I don't know, steakhouse and order a baked potato, maybe it comes with something like a butter pat.

Christa DeMercurio:
So probably like a. What about a tablespoon of butter you would add.

Chef Cal:
No, I would probably be. Well, again, it's gonna depend on the amount of liquid that's in there. And you're not gonna drown the chicken in wine. So there's probably not gonna be all that much. So you're probably talking more like a half a teaspoon. And then especially with the cream, it's gonna reduce. So we've got our capers, our garlic and shallots went in first. We flipped over our chicken, we added our white wine, we squeezed it with a little bit of lemon, flip it over, squeezed it with A little bit of lemon juice, a little salt and pepper, a little bit of cream.

Chef Cal:
Remove the chicken when done, when cooked all the way through. 160, 155 and rising. But you want a finish temperature of 160, so it's nice and juicy. And then you're just making your pan sauce. And again, that's when you're going to add your beurre marnier to kind of tighten it up. Again, in this particular idea or recipe, rather, we're using cream, so that's going to reduce. But let's say this was a, you know, a steak, and you're making a little bit of a demi glace or brown sauce. You wouldn't have any other thickening agents in there.

Chef Cal:
So then you would just, you know, you might take it just a little bit more than this recipe. But. And then I just let. Now, remember, we're adding raw flour, so you want that starch flavor to cook out of the. Out of the flour and just reduce it. Here's one key, if you can remember this kind of generic thought when it comes to cooking, is anytime you thicken something up, doesn't matter what it is, anytime you thicken something up, soup stock sauce, doesn't matter. Anytime you thicken it up, you want to reduce the temperature. You reduce the temperature and allow it to just kind of simmer out, cook that starch flavor out.

Chef Cal:
But in the main reason for that is the fact that it's just easier to burn, you know, if you got that really high temperature because you're sauteing, you know, or you might want to use the term pan frying. But again, you want to reduce the temperature and allow that sauce to finish. And you're all set with chicken piccata.

Christa DeMercurio:
Now, what else could you use besides cream? Could you add some cheese to thicken it up?

Chef Cal:
Yeah, you can thicken it up with some cheese, but cheese wouldn't be an ingredient for chicken piccata, but it could be used for a variety of things. So there you go, deglazing from the why, how, and win Cooking Like a pro. Chef Cal, Mrs. Chef. We will be taking a break and back in just a moment. Welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro. And hey, moving right along, we had a great discussion of deglazing. We're going to follow that up with Cooking Without a Recipe.

Chef Cal:
And the reason I wanted to chat about this is a lot of times we're just not going to take the time to pull out a recipe. And also we're going to get to a point where we've understand a recipe enough and we've developed it, where we're very comfortable and confident with it, that we might want to just go ahead and make something and then kind of just, you know, change it around a little bit.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, I think that's the great thing about making those pan sauces and deglazing that you can pinch it something like they got some meat. You could deglaze it with a variety of different things, tighten it up, put it on the plate. Boom, you can have something different every night.

Chef Cal:
We actually refer to that as intuitive cooking. Intuitive cooking. Basically, you're exploring different flavors and different ideas, different thoughts, way things might kind of fall together. Different techniques, different things that you've learned, and then just kind of taking and making it your own. The other day was cooking around the house and looking at what we happen to have.

Christa DeMercurio:
Mystery box.

Chef Cal:
Mystery box. There you go. And I actually used four things up that were leftovers. We had some leftover spaghetti, and we had a little bit of parmesan cheese. We had, like, a half a tomato. We had a little bit of salsa, and we had a couple pieces of a meatloaf. So what I did is I took this spaghetti, and I just heated that up and added the salsa. I took that little half a tomato, I diced that up, and threw it in there.

Chef Cal:
Again, we don't want any foods going bad. We want to make sure that we use up our inventory. We don't want to throw anything away, because that's a 100% waste. So, again, we had the spaghetti. We had this diced tomato, this salsa, little parmesan cheese. I diced up that meatloaf. Actually, I broke it up with my fingers, added some pepper flakes, a couple strips of bacon, and a little bit of cream, and we just took our spaghetti and turned it into Bolognese.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. So basically, you kind of extended the sauce by giving it a little more of a bulkier meat sauce.

Chef Cal:
Yep, exactly. So a Bolognese is an Italian meat sauce made with beef and pork. So bacon would be the pork component. But so you got. We had two totally different dishes with the start of just one. So we just made spaghetti. And it doesn't take taste a whole lot like spaghetti because we took it in a different direction.

Christa DeMercurio:
It was very good. That was our lunch today.

Chef Cal:
So, again, so it's playing around with things. It's being, you know, experimenting, being experimental. And one of the things that helps you is kind of learning how to layer those flavors and kind of understanding what the different Flavors are. Now, remember, we have what our tongue picks up. Our sweet, our sour. Right. Our salty, our bitter, and then our umami. Those are the five things that it picks up.

Chef Cal:
And then just think, okay, what do I want to add to this? And then think of an ingredient. Okay, just taste it. Taste something that's in front of you. Say, you know what? I wish this was a little sweeter. Well, so add some honey. You know, maybe it's got a variety of other things, but maybe you want to add some honey. Maybe you want to chop up and add a dried date to it. I mean, something that's got a lot of sweetness to it, but as opposed to just adding sugar.

Chef Cal:
Sour. If you wanted to add some sour components, you could add, you know, mustard is mostly all vinegar, so that's gonna be sour. So will any type of vinegar. A little bit of red wine vinegar. So you take a taste of dish and say, ooh, I'd like some sour. Well, maybe put a little splash of vinegar in there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, the Internet, basically, I took leftovers from three different meals, just like you did. We had asparagus with one meal. We still had a couple portions leftover. We had polenta with another meal, still had several portions left over. And then I took those two things and combined them with yet a third item from another meal with some fish and pull together a whole different meal. But taking three different components from three different meals and just mixing together and then changing the flavor of the polenta a little bit. I put a little bit of miso paste in it to give it a little more umami flavor. And then I add a little bit more water, a little more stock to get it, make it a little looser so you can take something and then just change it just a little bit.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Let's say you want to add bitter. You want to make something a little more bitter. Let's say you have a nice salad, but you're like, gosh, you know, this salad has all these components, but maybe just a touch of bitterness. Well, maybe then you mix in some greens, mix in some sprouts, you know, give it that a little bit of that. That fiery, peppery kind of a spicy kind of a flavor. If you want something to be umami, remember umami? Is that that description of a flavor that is kind of meaty? And a couple of things that we always think about and that are kind of go to's when it comes to umami are bell peppers and mushrooms and mushrooms. Yeah, both those work.

Chef Cal:
They just. I mean, if you ever grilled like a portobello mushroom. You do it right, that thing's coming out like steak.

Christa DeMercurio:
Especially if you barbecue it, smoke flavoring on it. Well, now they're doing cauliflower steaks, too.

Chef Cal:
Cauliflower steaks?

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, they're a big new thing.

Chef Cal:
Well, so there's a, you know, just think about, you know, the cooking process. For example, if you're going to a cauliflower steak, I would blanch it first, season it, and then grill it. One of the things about grilling things that are completely raw or cooking things from a raw state is they may not cook all the way through. Like in the middle, it might be a little more, you know, texturally challenged than the outside. Might be a little crunchy. You want it al dente all the way through. And you can control that by just simply blanching it first.

Christa DeMercurio:
And that's where combination cooking gets to be a lot of fun. Adding two different cooking methods to one item.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, so, yeah, you just have to learn all the cooking methods and you're set.

Christa DeMercurio:
And that is in the veggie cookbook. We talk about combination cooking and that a lot.

Chef Cal:
The vegetable makeover. Yeah. We have an ebook that you can get by going to Culinary how exactly they find that. Explain it to someone like me that doesn't even like an iPhone.

Christa DeMercurio:
Go to culinaryours.net and there's right there, this pop up. You can get a discount. You can also go into our shop and buy it. Very easy. Just click in there, add your email.

Chef Cal:
And yours, you know, hey, go on to culinary yours and just kind of fish around and look around. I know we have a barbecue. It's not quite barbecue season, but we do it. It will be here eventually.

Christa DeMercurio:
And yeah, that's like the barbecue sauce I was talking earlier. Taking one base flavor and then taking it in a little different direction. Taking a barbecue sauce and maybe adding some ginger to it. Taking some barbecue sauce, adding a little bit of peach jam to it. So that's the same thing with when you're learning to come up with things out of the blue. Taking one base item that you are comfortable with and then maybe adding one additional little flavor to it that might take it in an Asian direction or in a Mexican direction or in an Italian direction, but take something that's base and neutral that you're comfortable cooking and then go a different route with it.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. You know, and think about the protein. And I mean, is it a protein that works well as far as a sweeter item like pork, you know, pork chops and Applesauce. So you could use pork. And whether it was grilled apples or chopped apples or an apple compote or pineapple or any other type of fruit, you know, anything that's got that sweetness. Because pork just, you know, and chicken. Chicken will absorb that well or, you know, marry together well. I think the pork's probably better.

Chef Cal:
I don't use a lot of fruit when it comes to beef. I might use, you know, currants or maybe raspberry. Yeah, raspberry is a good one for beef, you know, but just kind of understanding what works. I think a lot of this really comes down to kind of the art of seasoning, you know, learning balance. You know, be thinking about when you taste it, because remember, you're going to taste this before your guests are going to taste it. So if there's a time to change it or fix it or adjust it, it's before you serve it. So I know that everywhere I've ever worked, I put containers of tasting spoons all over the kitchen because I want people to taste it. Just because I've made something countless times.

Chef Cal:
I don't know, maybe the tomatoes aren't as ripe as they usually are when I do this, or maybe it's a different type of. Maybe even a canned tomato than normal or a different season where something might be fresher or something might be. Be less fresh. So. So be thinking about those things. But think about how am I going to balance this? Does it need more salt, Acid, fat? Heat? Does it need more heat? Oh, this would be great if we needed more heat. Well, we. Well, there's a big difference in heat if I'm going to add Tabasco sauce versus the heat if I'm going to add some chili flakes versus the heat if I'm going to add some sambol leek or versus the heat if I'm going to add some.

Chef Cal:
Some garlic paste. So, you know, you have to kind of be. Be thinking about if I'm going to add heat, am I going to do it by adding some crushed ginger?

Christa DeMercurio:
And you don't have to add a whole lot. Oh, no, you don't have to. You know, the. The pasta made today, it was a tad warm for me, was with me with the chili flakes. It was right on my top of my heat index. But I don't think it would have tasted as good without that little bit of heat, because it does just get your taste buds going and wanting to, you know, drink and eat more and.

Chef Cal:
Well, and I think if you're going to satisfy, you Know, if you're going to have a flavor profile that's satisfying, I think that satisfaction comes in a balance of everything. It's not overly salty, overly bitter, overly, you know, sour, overly umami or overly sweet. I mean, there's a balance, and that's what you're looking for, is you're looking for that balance. That doesn't mean it might not be on the sweet side if it's a dish that's meant to be sweet. But either way, you want it to be balanced, and you don't want any.

Christa DeMercurio:
Too much of any flavor because you get those taste buds being overwhelmed. I just can't eat any more of this. It's probably why at the end of time, we get to dessert. We're so looking for something else to eat because we had so much salty or so much sour. It's like, I just need a little something sweet to take me in a different direction so I'm not overwhelmed with too many flavors in one direction.

Chef Cal:
So things to think about. And we're going to go ahead and take another break here at the bottom of the hour. Again, we really appreciate you listening. Cooking Like a Pro. And we are going to be back in just a moment. Welcome back. Welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro. What Something else I wanted to talk about was cooking projects, because I think this can be a lot of fun and make those on the weekend when you have time.

Chef Cal:
You have time to Little extra time to make something fun. You might be making something that's gonna, you know, go through it later on in the week, but things like. Like bread. I know that you like to make bread. I know Mrs. Chef likes to make bread.

Christa DeMercurio:
Not a midweek thing to make.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. It's not something that you want to make when you're rushed.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, no. It takes time.

Chef Cal:
But also making pasta. Now, making pasta is real simple. It's really easy, and it's also real fast. But it's fun, and it's something that the family can do together. And one of the things that I make sure that I've always done as a cook, as a home cook, is to show my family what I'm making, because I want them to be able to know for the rest of their lives that this is how you make a cheesecake or this is how you make, because that will stick with them, and their menus will start to expand.

Christa DeMercurio:
How about making pizza?

Chef Cal:
Making pizza. Another thing, because you're making a dough just like you're making bread. And depending on whether you want to make a deep dish, I Mean, you can almost use a focaccia bread. Some of the other things that we do as families. Tamales. Tamales is always a family thing. Something that's just fun, kind of like a crab feet, a Wellington. We talked about that last week.

Chef Cal:
Something that's going to be a little more complicated, but you can make it together and you can have some fun and learn, you know, learn as a family. Things like homemade sauerkraut, kimchi, even condiments or sides, you know, work real well. Like in our family, we've always made our own pickles. I know that Mrs. Chef has always made her own pickles, too, with. With dad and bread. Butter pickles. The best.

Chef Cal:
Bread and butter pickles and olives. Mom and dad used to always make. Make olives. We were. We were raised on our own homemade olives. But again, it's just find something and make that like a. A project. Make that some kind of a fun family event.

Christa DeMercurio:
I think the most memorable thing I can remember growing up is when we got out the ice cream churner.

Chef Cal:
There isn't. I've never found an ice cream that was made in a retail setting or in any business that tastes as authentic as making a French vanilla ice cream. And remember, ice cream is just custard that is churned to add, you know, creaminess and air to it. Not as much creaminess as a gelato, but homemade ice cream, it's got that unique cream flavor that you just can't really get.

Christa DeMercurio:
There's a different iciness to it. And depending upon the maker you use, you know, we have a donvie one that you can't really find too much anymore. That's a hand crank that you use in the freezer. You can get one that's an attachment to your kitchenaid. I remember the old. The bucket one. She'd have to put the ice and the salt in.

Chef Cal:
Rock salt and ice.

Christa DeMercurio:
I think it was the rival. And it had the thing that went across the top and locked in. They sit there.

Chef Cal:
It's like a wood. Like a wood bucket.

Christa DeMercurio:
It was like a wood bucket.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, that was the best.

Christa DeMercurio:
It was on the counter.

Chef Cal:
Actually. My mom's brother Richard used to always make the. I remember he always made the homemade ice cream. And, you know, it just sets off everything else. You know, the pie a la mode that's coming along with it, or the cake a la mode to have that. That wonderful flavor of homemade ice cream is. And again. And that's a real fun project, you know, especially in the.

Chef Cal:
In the old days, because you had to take turn cranking like one kid, you know, couldn't crank it all. But you know, the salt, you know, I think that'd be something that'd be fun to do not to with the modern version of an ice cream churner.

Christa DeMercurio:
But find an old fashioned hand crate. That's why I like the Donald Macon one. You could do it by hand. It takes time, it takes an hour. You trade off every couple of minutes and who's going to get to turn the crank?

Chef Cal:
Making your own butter, another simple thing that, you know, I always think of like the people out on the prairie, you know, I don't know why that is, but returning butter with, you know, with the just putting using just, you know, fresh cream. Like I know that we used to get extra cream in our milk. It used to the just massive cream because our milk was delivered in glass bottles and left on the porch, you know, and back in the day and this was just the best milk ever. And I remember that we were, we would get so much calcium out of that that when we quit getting the fresh milk, I was talking to my dad and he told me the story about how many challenges we started having with needing, with a lack of calcium because our bodies were so used to getting that, that fresh cream. This amazing stuff. Amazing stuff.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. If you can find raw milk. Raw milk is amazing.

Chef Cal:
We're going to take a quick break. Cooking like a pro. We'll be back in just a moment. Welcome back. Cooking like a pro. Hey, we have made it this far. You've made it to the final segment. We appreciate you, you listening and cooking like a pro again.

Chef Cal:
Chef, Cal and Mrs. Chef and Mrs. Chef here has been wanting to talk about something that she came across and she call it a bound salad. Now real quick, before I let her take over here, the salads, we categorize them when we're training into things that we call like lettuce salads. So anything that has a lettuce base to it. And then we have what's called bound salads. These are salads that are bound in something. They're bound together by generally something like, you know, mayonnaise.

Chef Cal:
They're bound together so they're, they're like, you know, potato salad, macaroni salad, those, those type of things, coleslaw. So, so those are what we call bound salads. Now one of the things that you're seeing a lot now, and I think this is really that trend of people desiring to eat healthy and also experimenting and some different things out there because there's just so many different things. You go. And these are all real healthy alternatives.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. There's a new thing that kind of went wild on TikTok and it's. I checked today. It's still going pretty wild. She's got like almost 3 million followers. Her name was Violet Witchell and she started something called the dense bean salad craze. And so I grew up with the. The traditional three bean, green bean, kidney bean, and garbanzo in a vinaigrette.

Christa DeMercurio:
Right.

Chef Cal:
Three or four beans. Yeah, Whatever in there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Or as I was growing up, a two bean salad. Because I could not stand garbanzo beans. I would just do kidney beans and green beans in mine.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, I would use the wax beans. Wax and green.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. So you have the different colors. You'd have the red and the white and the green. Yeah. But now.

Chef Cal:
But you. Wait a minute. Now you eat hummus like it's going out of style.

Christa DeMercurio:
I knew you were. Call me on that.

Chef Cal:
But why. Why are you calling out garbanzos here when you eat hummus?

Christa DeMercurio:
Me, a garbanzo that's whole straight out of the fridge has horrible texture to me. But if you grind it up with creamy garlic and oil and vinegar. Yeah. It's totally different to me. So.

Chef Cal:
Okay, all right. Back down salad. So, okay, so bean salads.

Christa DeMercurio:
Okay. So it's a bean salad as your base.

Chef Cal:
Okay.

Christa DeMercurio:
Instead of lettuce or potatoes or tuna salad, it's a bean salad. But then you start adding your extra proteins of meat, diced up chicken and steak and things like that. You can also add corn. Then you add cucumbers and tomatoes and toss it in a vinaigrette and just.

Chef Cal:
Pile it right onto a plate. Huh.

Christa DeMercurio:
And because, you know, think about how long a bean salad lasts in the fridge. It lasts a really long time.

Chef Cal:
So the crazy it does if it has vinegar in it. The vinegar's what?

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. So you have to have the vinaigrette with it to hold it. But a lot of times you'll make at the beginning of the week, portion it out, and you'll have salads throughout the week to take to work.

Chef Cal:
What other, I mean, grains I would imagine would be popular?

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, sometimes you can mix in some grains, maybe a little bit of pasta.

Chef Cal:
I think, I think of things like couscous, barley, variety of those. Israelian couscous is a real nice one. You can use quinoa. A lot of things out there that you can mix in there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, there's different beans. So one of the things that helps, though, is that they are canned beans. So it's quick and easy. You're not cooking beans from scratch. You're using canned beans. And I have a question for you.

Chef Cal:
Sure.

Christa DeMercurio:
Rinse the beans or not. Drain the beans or not. I always grew up learning that she would drain the beans and you would rinse them. But when you get into vegan cooking, what they call the aquafaba, the water that's poured off, is used in a lot of vegan cuisine. So in your mind, should a bean out of a can be rinsed?

Chef Cal:
Well, it's the same thought with mashed potatoes. You know, you boil your. Your potatoes, a lot of people will use that water. Same thing with pasta water. They'll. They'll use that as opposed to throwing it away. But I don't know. I mean, I think I would always dump it out.

Chef Cal:
I wouldn't rinse them because then you're rinsing flavor off. I would, I would dump and just let them, let them drain by their own weight. You know, don't rinse them off. Just dump them in a colander or a little china cap or whatever your draining divide vessel is.

Christa DeMercurio:
And there's a ton of different beans you can go with. You can go with a white bean, you can go with a cannellini bean. You can go with a kidney bean, a black bean. Black eyed peas. You can throw in some corn. Even though it's not technically a bean.

Chef Cal:
Nope. I mean, and peas. I mean, I think that, you know, the interesting thing about this, that where you can really add a lot of really cool flavors. And again, you're talking about things that are inexpensive beans. Probably the least expensive thing you can get besides rice. And rice would be something you can use in these too.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, you can take a different direction. So I just, for fun, pulled up a few different ideas. You can go to Mediterranean. You know, they're suggesting chickpeas and white beans, but it's got kalamata, olives, feta, capers, basil. Take it to a Mediterranean direction. If you want to do a Latin inspired, you could do black beans and quartz. You can add tomatoes and onions, cilantro, and jalapeno and avocado.

Chef Cal:
Okay. So there's lots of beans that you can do for that.

Christa DeMercurio:
Thank you so much for spending time with us. Until next time, we hope you'll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen. So we'll be with you again next week with food, flavor and fun right here on Cooking Like a Pro podcast.