Chef

Cooking Secrets That Will Turn You Into A Master Chef

by admin on May 20, 2013

Cooking
cooking

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Anthony took some random shots of me while I was cooking yesterday.

Learning how to cook requires dedication, patience, and a willingness to eat the batches that aren’t quite ready for prime time. Learning new techniques for cooking is a life-long learning experience and your education begins here. We’ve compiled a few tips to help you on your way to cooking success.

When cooking any recipe, use the best ingredients that you can afford. Splurge a little on imported cheeses or better quality meats when you can, so that you can experience a restaurant, quality-tasting meal at home. To enhance the experience even further, try to creatively plate up the meal with a little thought, for something different every now and then.

Add flavor to boring roast chicken. Rather than using a roasting rack, place thick slices of onion in the bottom of the pan, and place the chicken on top of them. The chicken juices will be absorbed by the onion, creating a caramelization on the bottom of the pan. After roasting, remove the chicken, add a little water to the pan and cook on high heat for a few minutes. This will create a tasty sauce for your chicken.

If you are planning to sauté garlic, you will want to slice it instead of mincing it, which will reduce the chance for it to burn. Following certain procedures will not only improve the taste of your dishes in the kitchen but will increase your effectiveness and efficiency in getting the job done.

If you plan on seasoning the food you are going to make, try to add seasoning in stages. This will bring out the most taste, and help you to layer your spices on the food of your choice. Inject seasoning into your food to maximize its appeal and taste.

Frozen vegetables should only be used as a last resort in home cooking. Though they are cheap and usually available year-round, they fall far short of fresh vegetables in several important areas. Frozen vegetables have lost some of their healthy vitamins and nutrients. They often have unhealthy food additives. They also tend to taste worse than their fresh counterparts.

Keep a few cut up, washed, and prepared vegetables in your freezer. This will reduce your prep time when you’re cooking a recipe. Onions and peppers are great to freeze. Just buy them fresh, wash and cut them when you have time, and store them in individual zip lock bags.

Know the gender of your eggplant! There are both male and female eggplants, and it pays to know the difference. The seeds of an eggplant can be very bitter. A female eggplant’s seeds have a tendency to be more bitter than those of a male eggplant. You can identify a male eggplant by its base – it will be smooth and round, whereas the female base is more oval in shape and deeply indented.

The best part of cooking is that you can eat your mistakes. Don’t be scared about trying something new. Even Julia Childs and Wolfgang Puck have made complete failures of dishes at one point or another. Cooking is all about learning and experimentation until you learn what works for you, so give it a shot!

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Become A Professional Chef With These Tips

by admin on May 12, 2013

Rinsing Lettuce – Cooking Sausages
cooking

Image by justin
Cooking without indoor plumbing. Not so bad! Tasted great.

Some people find successful cooking to be virtually effortless, while others consider cooking to be an elusive art. Becoming good at cooking isn’t difficult if you educate yourself a little and persevere. Learning to cook is an extremely useful skill to have as everyone has to eat! This article includes some great tips for the beginner cook and for the experienced cook, as well.

Make sure you store all of your spices in cool and dark places. Make sure they are not over the stove. Humidity, light and heat, will cause them to lose their flavor. That will not make for a good tasting meal. Get a spice rack and store it in your pantry.

When storing ingredients that you will use for cooking it is a good habit to stock them in large quantities and freeze them in plastic bags. This will make preparing food easier and faster. For example, when preparing vegetables, you can just pull them out of the freezer and simply boil them.

When you are seasoning a salad, add a small dose of olive oil in addition to natural sea salt. This will help to give your salad a crunchy appeal even after you add the dressing. Keeping your salad as crunchy as possible will create a feeling of freshness upon consumption.

Make sure that if you are planning a party with friends and family, to have each course planned out in advance. You should have an appetizer course, salad course, main dish and dessert. Breaking your meal into courses will give people a chance to digest and appreciate what you have cooked for them.

An easy way to experiment with combining savory flavors in the kitchen and not spend a lot of money in food waste, is to turn your ideas into an omelet. Eggs, especially egg whites, are fairly flavor-free and provide a great “canvas” on which to “paint” the ingredients you want and then combining into a dish. Small batches of scrambled eggs that you can fold your ingredients into, will also give a neutral background for your flavor taste tests.

To save on fat when cooking, use applesauce instead of butter. A cup of applesauce is equal to a cup of butter. This will reduce fat and calorie contents of your dessert recipe. It will also make your recipe moist and delicious. Most people won’t even be able to tell the difference.

If you want to optimize the amount of juice that you get from a lime, put it in the microwave for 10 seconds. This will allow the liquid to flow easily when you cut the lime, so that you can add this to your favorite meals. Use this trick anytime you serve a lemon or lime.

As stated previously, cooking isn’t all that difficult, especially if you arm yourself with some knowledge. Improving your cooking skills can be very rewarding in numerous ways. Just imagine the compliments you will receive from your friends and family as you serve that new dish you created yourself. By using some of the ideas presented in this article, you’ll be well on your way to becoming the kind of cook you’ve always wanted to be.

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Cooking Secrets That Make Everyone A Great Chef

by admin on April 25, 2013

Trick to cooking perfect hard boiled eggs, especially for potato salads, pasta salads, egg salad or even breakfast with toast. Perfect hard boiled eggs is no…
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Cooking has many benefits. Cooking saves money, as you can spend less on fast food and casual dining restaurants, and eat less expensive, home meals. Cooking is healthier than fast food, as you can use less oils and fats to prepare food. This article can help anyone learn to cook.

To keep cookies from spreading while baking, chill unused dough and cool off cookie sheets between batches. If cookie dough is allowed to reach room temperature before baking, either in the bowl or on the pan, then the ingredients in the dough are doomed to expand. To get a dense yet still moist cookie, just chill the remaining dough between batches and cool an already used sheet in cold water before returning to the oven.

Wash fruits and vegetables even those whose skin you don’t eat. For foods like melons, avocados, and other foods that you cut into, it is important to wash the skin before cutting. Any bacteria and dirt on the skin can attach to your knife and be transferred onto the edible portion of the food.

Cooking with fresh, raw cloves of garlic can easily create an overpowering smell that can linger on your kitchen, clothes, and nose, you need not worry about removing the smell from your hands. After your are finished with the garlic, you should rub your hands on your stainless steel sink for half a minute before you attempt to wash them with soap and water.

If you love to cook but have minimal space for a library of cookbooks in your kitchen, consider purchasing a small laptop or netbook exclusively for kitchen use. You can keep your own recipes and notes on the computer, pull up thousands of recipes online, and listen to your favorite radio stations or TV shows as you cook.

When roasting a chicken or turkey, maximize the flavor and juiciness by stuffing the cavity with halved or quartered lemons, onions, shallots, garlic cloves or oranges. These foods will add a great, subtle flavor to the meat while providing extra moisture as they roast in the oven. Simply remove the items from the cavity prior to carving the bird.

When preparing foods for picky kids, try changing up your presentation. Place foods in unexpected containers like muffin tins or silicone cupcake liners, or cut fruits, cheese and sandwiches into fun shapes to make them more enticing. Eggs can be cooked in a metal cookie cutter to make breakfast more interesting.

To lighten up recipes that call for sour cream or mayonnaise, substitute plain Greek yogurt for half of the creamy ingredient. This thick, rich version of yogurt is full of protein and is often non-fat, so you can skimp on calories without altering the rich texture of your salad dressing or other recipe.

As stated before, there are many benefits to cooking, including financial and health benefits. Using the sound advice found in this article, you can create fantastic dishes that will save you money by avoiding spending money on restaurants, and make you healthier, by using fresh ingredients that are low in fat.

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Bring Out Your Inner Chef: Cooking Tips And Ideas

by admin on January 27, 2013

Cook
cooking

Image by wƒuad
Peter Cook, a member of Archigram Group, one of the most influential architecture group.

During Datum KL’09, KLCC
2009

F3+Ektachrome100

a bit bigger

With so many different resources available for cooking, it can seem like there is an information overload — leaving you feel extremely overwhelmed. However, just by using these simple tricks you can quickly and easily learn ways to prepare and serve high quality food that the whole family will enjoy!

You can make a quick and inexpensive meal out of some leftovers by adding pasta and rice to vegetables, meat or salad fixings. They cook quickly and are cheap, so use them to stretch the contents of your refrigerator. Toss in a few sauteed peppers or onions to make an even, fuller meal.

Avoid the temptation to press your hamburger patties too tightly when shaping. Though you may feel that this will help them to hold their shapes better, in reality, this just provides denser, dryer hamburgers once cooked. Also, don’t press the patties down with a spatula when cooking, as this simply drains the juices.

When you’re finished with the wine, don’t discard the wine cork. For safety, you can use a no longer needed wine cork on the end of a sharp knife before you put it away in your kitchen drawer. This will prevent anyone in your household from getting unnecessarily cut when reaching for it.

When frying frozen foods it is sometimes best to let them defrost. When water combines with hot oil it has a tendency to spark up violently, and since frozen foods generally have frost, or frozen water on their outside the interaction of the two, ice and oil, can be extremely dangerous. Unless directions explicitly say otherwise always let things reach a medium temperature with one another.

You don’t need to use all that much water when boiling pasta. Your pasta does not need to swim. Add enough water for the pasta to swell up, but it takes much longer to bring a big pot of water to boil than it does for half of that amount, and your pasta will still be soft and pliable when you’re done.

When it comes to cooking a good habit to do after preparing garlic is to rub your hands on the stainless steel sink vigorously for about 30 seconds. This will remove the unwanted odor from your hands. Washing them less than 30 seconds will not take all the odor away.

Get the most juice out of lemons. Fresh lemon juice is much more tasty than the kind that comes out of a bottle, but it is sometimes surprising how little juice you can get out of a lemon. Heat the lemon in a microwave for 20 seconds on high power. Then, roll the lemon on your cutting board using as much pressure as possible. This way, you will get about twice the amount of juice out of the lemon, and your dish will be much more flavorful!

Now that you have read about these great cooking tricks, you can begin to enjoy cooking and spend less time worrying. These tips will not only save you time but also a lot of money. When you put them to use today, you can enjoy having an overall better cooking experience.

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Think You Can’t Cook? Think Again! Simple Tips Every Chef Needs To Know

by admin on January 3, 2013

A general saying that has been passed down for many generations is that if you like to eat, then you need to know how to cook. Many people like to eat food, but not all of them know how to cook. The tips found in this article will help any food lover who wants to cook.

When you are going to have baked potatoes for your dinner you should use a potato with a high starch content. Starchy potatoes will make for a fluffier backed potato. Also look for potatoes that have a smooth skin that do not have any sprouts they are fresher and better to eat.

Use fresh carrots often in your cooking. They are versatile and easy to obtain. Carrots are very rich in vitamins and minerals that can help to keep you healthy. One of the best ways to sneak there goodness into your recipes is to use carrots in place of sugar.

Plan your meals in advance. One of the biggest time wasters is engaging in the “what am I going to fix for dinner?” debate. Often, we could have dinner on the table by the time we fuss with examining the options. Over the weekend – or whenever your free time occurs – think through the upcoming week and loosely plan four or five meals you know your family will enjoy. This advance planning allows you the time to stock your fridge and pantry with the items you need.

Whenever you make stock for soups or stews, make it in large quantities, and freeze the extra. That way, the next time you want to whip up a quick soup or stew, the most time-consuming part is already done. You just have to pull a bag from the freezer for a quick and delicious meal.

Don’t be afraid to play with recipes and change the ingredients you don’t like. Recipes are not the Bible; they are simply guidelines for preparing a dish. If you do not like an ingredient like oregano for example, replace it with thyme. Most of the time, the dishes flavor is preserved, and you’re happier knowing you don’t have to eat something with a flavor you dislike.

Go easy on the herbs and spices. Do not over-season your foods. Spices and herbs are meant to compliment your food, not overpower it. Try with the least amount, and add more only after you have tasted the effect of a small amount. Too much seasoning can easily be worse than not enough.

If you plan on making an elaborate meal for dinner, prepare a few elements of the dish that can be refrigerated or left out the night before you want to cook. This eliminates stress and frenzy in the kitchen so you can focus on giving your family a meal worthy of the finest five-star restaurants.

As stated before, you must know how to cook food if you like to eat food. Although not everyone knows how to cook food, it is easy to learn. If you follow the tips found in this article, then you can know how to cook to feed your hunger needs.

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Want To Become A Great Chef? You Must Read These Tips!

by admin on January 1, 2013

Cooking Sessions – Museu do Trajo – S.B. Alportel – ALFA – Outubro 2011 369
cooking

Image by _Raúl_
Cooking Session, no Museu do Trajo, em S.B. Alportel, dia 05 de Outubro

Whether you’re a brand new cook or an experienced one, there are plenty of sources of frustration in the kitchen. No matter what your cooking skills are like, little annoyances can make preparing a meal much more stressful. Here are some cooking tips that will help preparing your meals go a little more smoothly.

Invest some time reading recipes before you actually attempt them. You will save time, and possibly money. Understanding all the components needed for a recipe beforehand will not only allow you to make sure that you have them, but it can also prevent you from making mistakes that can waste your time and ingredients.

Put salt on your cutting board. It can be difficult to cut herbs on your cutting board. They tend to go all over the place. To keep this from happening, just sprinkle a little salt on your cutting board before you begin. This will work to keep them from slipping around.

To prevent the top layer of cheese from peeling off your lasagna or other casserole when you remove the foil, spray the foil with cooking spray prior to covering the dish with it. When you remove the foil so the cheese can brown, the cheesy layer will remain intact.

If you’re tired of sautéing the garlic, only to have it burn, try slicing it into strips instead of mincing it. It is much less likely to burn that way and you can always cut it down into smaller pieces after you have finished the sauté, if you need to.

When you are seasoning a salad, add a small dose of olive oil in addition to natural sea salt. This will help to give your salad a crunchy appeal even after you add the dressing. Keeping your salad as crunchy as possible will create a feeling of freshness upon consumption.

To check and see if biscuits, cakes, cornbread, muffins and other bread-like foods are finished, insert a wooden toothpick into the center. If there are any crumbs or batter stuck to the wood when you remove it, pop the food back into the oven for a few minutes to allow it to finish.

Try plunging your veggies in a container of ice water right after you blanch them so that they do not become pale and unattractive. The ice water will allow them to settle without losing their appetizing, bright colors. This is especially important when serving food at functions where pleasing aesthetics at the table are a primary goal.

If you want to keep your cookies fresh in the cookie jar, a good way to do so is to crinkle up some tissue paper at the bottom of the jar. The paper will absorb all of the moisture instead of your cookies, keeping them fresh and ready to eat.

There are plenty of things you can do to take the stress out of cooking. Now that you’ve read this article, you have plenty of advice you can apply the next time you head to the kitchen. Now that you have these tips, you may find you’re willing to try cooking something a little more challenging.

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For Chef Catrice Davis-Ford, veggie preparing is acquainted

by admin on November 23, 2012

For Chef Catrice Davis-Ford, veggie cooking is common
Some of the things we do is selfmade potato salad, pasta salad, coleslaw. And this (she points to a scoop of what looks like hen salad) is far more like the Waldorf hen salad. It's a standard (mock) chicken salad, and I just added some dried …
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For nearby vegetarians, eating options grow
Salads and desserts are fantastic at Blue Dolphin as effectively, making it yet another eye-catching destination for vegetarian diners in west county. Café Bretton gives guests an intriguing pasta dish, also. Fiocchi (minor pasta purses) with Tomato, Ricotta …
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Tavolata Provides Vegetarians a Flavor of The Italian Table
Its menu modifications often, but during a current go to a nice variety of small plates, salads, and soups had been readily available as vegetarian starters. Toby and I shared the burrata (hand-spun mozzarella stuffed with curd) for a 1st study course and its …
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How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food

  • Vegetarian
  • Cook
  • Recipe
The ultimate one-stop vegetarian cookbook-from the author of the classic How to Cook Everything. Hailed as "a more hip Joy of Cooking" by the Washington Post, Mark Bittman's award-winning book How to Cook Everything has become the bible for a new generation of home cooks, and the series has more than 1 million copies in print. Now, with How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian, Bittman has written the definitive guide to meatless meals-a book that will appeal to everyone who wants to cook simple but d

List Price: $ 35.00 Price: $ 17.85

Customer Reviews

660 of 669 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars This is the one I've been looking for!, October 29, 2007
By 
Denise Patterson (Carmel, IN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food (Hardcover)
Let me start by saying I'm a busy working mom of two. I grew up eating Hamburger Helper and hot dogs, so I didn't learn to cook until I was an adult. My dad's had triple bypass and my mom's having gastric bypass, so we're trying to learn from their mistakes and eat not entirely vegetarian, but definitely a more plant-based diet. I'm sure all this sounds familiar to a lot of people!

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is exactly the cookbook I've been trying to find for a long time. It has the simple, everyday recipes that I sometimes need, combined with a LOT of wonderful vegetarian dishes from ordinary supermarket ingredients. How about Peanut Soup, Senegalese Style? Or Korean-Style Noodles in Cool Bean Broth (in less than 20 minutes for when the kids are whining for dinner) Mustard Cheese Fondue?

This book is written in Bittman's typical `theme and variations' style, with a basic recipe (like for waffles) and then a sidebar or list following the recipe that gives variations (like a list of things you can add to waffles for flavoring). The great thing about this is that it means you rarely have to reject a recipe because you don't have the exact ingredients, just go with a variant. The only quibble I have with it is, it's sometimes difficult to keep track of what you are supposed to sub out & sub back in when you have a crying toddler on your ankle.

A basic cookbook should also walk you through basic techniques and ingredients. I was a little surprised to see the vegetables chapter was nearly 200 pages. Then I looked through it and realized a lot of that is guidance on how to select and prep the various vegetables. It's also helpful that he includes substitution suggestions - I may be out of broccoli, but if I can make the same recipe with green beans, then I can forgo the trip to the store one more day.

Another nice thing about this cookbook is, unlike most vegetarian cookbooks I have seen, it doesn't rely heavily on unusual ingredients or meat substitutes. It seems like there has to be a happy medium between burgers & fries on one hand and stuff you've never seen before. Surely we can make a healthy diet based on basic veggies, fruit, grains, and legumes, and that's JUST what this book focuses on.

But it doesn't matter how great the book is if the recipes aren't good! So I tried a few. The Spicy Autumn Veggie Burgers (we made less spicy for the kids) were terrific with a dollop of peach chutney, although the kids preferred ketchup. I was pleased at how quickly they came together too. The Glazed Carrot Soup the kids ate without any complaint at all. And oh my the Apple "Fries"!!!!

Because I'm sure people are wondering - yes, he has another cookbook called How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian that came out several years ago. This is NOT just a remake of that slim volume. This is a completely new book. (Why his publishers wanted to do two books with titles the same except for a colon I'll never know.) There's no exact overlap with How to Cook Everything, that I saw - even for recipes like Waldorf Salad, that are essentially the same in both books, there is some slight variation and different text that shows that this was re-written, not just a cut-and-paste job.

In short, I'm very happy with it. I've cooked out of it every day since I got it and I'm sure this will be one of my `go-to' cookbooks for years to come.
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570 of 598 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars It's o.k., but the same problem I always have with Bittman, January 25, 2008
This review is from: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food (Hardcover)
I'm a vegetarian of 15 years (with a meat-eating but open minded fiance) and an avid home cook. I got this book for Christmas and have slowly been exploring it. It's an interesting book and there are a lot of recipes that I'm tempted by, but it's the same problem I have with "How to cook everything": something is always wrong with the recipe. For example, his kosher pickles: the first time I tried making them with his measurements, the pickles were inedibly salty (and I love salt!) I'm now working with about a third less salt than he recommends and it's getting better. And that's what I always find with his recipes: they give you a promising start but require some major tinkering before they are really good, and I don't usually feel up to committing to that sort of trial and error. I am a passionate fan of Debbie Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone." As an example of the difference, this week I had a dinner party and I made her cauliflower salad with green olives and capers even though I'd never tried it before, and it was a hit. Having used her book so much, I trust her recipes to be at least decent right out of the gate. I would never serve a Bittman recipe that I hadn't made before to guests because there are pretty good odds that the initial recipe needs some changes.
That being said, I'm certainly not sorry that I have this book. It has a good section on condiments that I'm sure I'll make use of fairly often, and it's a good cookbook to have on hand if you're tinkering in the kitchen and want some perspective on your technique. It's really more of a reference book than an book of recipes, and in that it is useful. But if you want ideas for delicious, satisfying vegetarian food, get "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone."
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357 of 380 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent General Cookbook for Liberal Vegetarian. Buy It!, November 20, 2007
By 
B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food (Hardcover)
`How to Cook Everything Vegetarian' by New York Times culinary columnist, Mark Bittman, is an important entry into the best vegetarian cookbook sweepstakes. Please be clear that this green covered book is far larger and far better than the yellow covered subset of his earlier best-selling `How to Cook Everything'.
Since I gave that yellow subset a bad review, a kind commentator pointed out that what is a person to do if they are vegetarian, and don't need to know how to make veal parmesan, meatballs, or fried chicken! This volume clearly answers that question.
The competition for this book is Deborah Madison's classic `Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone'. An encyclopedic companion to both would be Crescent Dragonwagon's `Passionate Vegetarian'. If space and finances permit, I would suggest you own all three volumes.
The difference between Bittman and Madison may lie primarily in the fact that the former is a culinary journalist and the latter began her career as a professional chef. So, Bittman has a better eye for communicating to a larger audience while Madison is better on some of the basic truths of cooking. Her discussion of soups and stocks is especially brilliant.
Bittman addresses the largest possible `vegetarian' audience, which includes the most liberal, who consume eggs and milk products. But he is quite effective in identifying for the vegans among you which recipes are free of all animal products, both in icons accompanying each recipe and in a master list of recipes at the back of the book. Eggs are so prominent that the index contains a full page, that's four columns of small print, of entries under egg related recipes. Under cheese recipes, there are two pages, eight columns of fine print of recipes. Bittman explains this in the section on vegetarian substitutions when he gives easy replacements for butter, milk, and cream, but says that virtually nothing can replace eggs and most cheeses in traditional recipes. I am puzzled and grateful that Bittman does not suggest using synthetic lecithin in the place of eggs in recipes. Lecithin does not even appear in the index of this book. This substitutions section also has some really great suggestions for omnivores in the realm of less saturated replacements for butter and flavored butters.
This is a full service cookbook. I am especially impressed by the fact that he starts out in the same way as James Peterson in his recent textbook, `Cooking'. Both begin with a description of `The Ten Essential Cooking Techniques'. Being a teaching book, Peterson's sections on each method are longer, running to three large pages compared to Bittman's two to three paragraphs. But, if you are vegetarian, Bittman's book is still more useful, as much of Peterson's space is dedicated to cooking animal protein. Another interesting contrast to Peterson is that while the teacher uses series of photographs to illustrate techniques, Bittman uses black ink drawings. And, amazingly enough, the latter is generally the more successful technique, as nothing is out of focus and there are never any obscuring shadows, and only the essentials of the technique are depicted.
A common technique in many of Bittman's recipes is to amend each recipe with several variations, as when he suggests five fillings for sweet crepes and six fillings for savory crepes. Hard on this section is '10 Other Ideas for Pancakes' and seven `Pancake Variations'. Bittman also spends much time on teaching us the range of ingredient types, and general ways to handle each type. For example, we get `A Lexicon of Salad Greens'. This material is even more important for the vegetarian, as they need to seek the greatest possible variety of tastes and colors in the vegetable world. A vegetarian salad repertoire which knew nothing beyond iceberg lettuce would be dull indeed. Bittman does better in this area than the salad queen, Alice Waters, in her excellent `The Art of Simple Cooking'.
Bittman's mastery of communication is best represented by his many cross-indexing of recipe types, as he does in a sidebar of lettuce cups and wraps, giving the names and page numbers of fourteen recipes scattered throughout the book which use this technique. The centerpiece of this cross-indexing is the `Recipes by Icon' in the back of the book which tick off those which are `Fast', `Make Ahead', and `Vegan'. A similar feature is the list of forty menus for Breakfasts, Brunches, Lunches, Dinners, and Holiday Dinners. For his vegetarian audience, this is far more useful than for omnivores, who have a far greater choice of protein types.
Every trend in the book is magnified in the excellent chapter on pasta, noodles, and dumplings. Every sidebar seemed to offer not ten, but up to 50 variations on all sorts of stuff. I was momentarily disappointed to find no recipe for making fresh pasta in the first 10 pages of the chapter, but there it was, of page 474 and the following 21 pages. Everything you... Read more
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Learn To Cook Like A Professional Chef

by admin on September 6, 2012

Cooking
cooking

Image by Alan Bell
Cooking nite at J & S

The economy is not in the best shape right now, which may be preventing you from going out to eat as much. Chances are, however, that you still crave and enjoy a variety of foods that you have only experienced in a restaurant setting. Use the tips below, to learn how to create dishes to fulfill your cravings and budget!

Choose the correct apples when making apple pie. The best apples for an apple pie should always have a firm texture and slightly tart flavor. Good varieties include Granny Smith, McIntosh and Jonathan. If you are unsure of which apple to choose, ask the produce manager for an all-purpose baking apple.

After you have cooked a piece of food in the oven, you should give it several minutes to rest before serving. The last thing that you will want to do is serve any part of your meal that is too hot, which will ruin its overall quality for the person you are serving.

Experiment with different breadings for everything from chicken to vegetables to appetizers. To add an extra dimension of flavor to breaded foods, try using coatings other than the usual breadcrumbs or panko. Get creative! Cereals like corn flakes, toasted o’s, and crispy rice work well too. Don’t forget to try crushed crackers and cookies as well.

If you’ve forgotten to soak your beans over night, quick soak them instead. Just put the beans in a very large pot and cover with water. Bring this to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about two hours. This method is just as effective as an over night soak and can save you time.

Buy tough cuts of pork or beef instead of steak. Steak is expensive. While it might be one of your favorite foods, you probably are not willing to pay for it as often as you would like. Consider buying a tough cut of pork or beef instead. Cook it low and slow to get it tender.

Damp paper towel and a plastic bag can extend the life of your greens. If you wrap your fresh herbs or fresh greens with a damp paper towel and then place them in a plastic bag, they will last longer. They will normally stay fresh three to four days longer if you do.

To sear a rib-eye, T-bone, strip or other steak to perfection even when you can’t fire up the outdoor grill, flip a cast-iron skillet over and broil the steak in your oven. Heat the skillet in a hot oven prior to placing the steak on its surface, and cook to your preferred level of doneness.

Don’t get caught out when entertaining. If you are entertaining 8 or more people, aim to serve four different kinds of hors d’oeuvres. Each from one of the following categories: fish or shellfish, meat, vegetables and cheese. Bite-sized pieces are ideal, with the exception of veggies for dipping. When figuring out the amount of hors d’oeuvres, try to offer 6 pieces per person per hour.

Do not let the economy make you despair! The tips above, will help you become a better cook so you can prepare all sorts of dishes, meals and desserts! You do not have to go to culinary school, in order to cook delicious, economical meals for you and your family.

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How You Can Become A Master Chef

by admin on August 25, 2012

Cooking Green Curry
cooking

Image by lejoe
Cooking tonight. Mmmh!

Learning how to cook is a great way to take control of your life. Cooking skills can improve your health, shrink your food budget and impress friends and family. Whether you are a stranger to the kitchen or an experienced stove-top jockey, there are always new cooking tips and techniques to learn. This article has a few such tips to get you started on sharpening your cooking skills.

Cooked turkey freezes beautifully, as does stuffing. When making a big holiday meal, be sure and make plenty so you not only have enough for turkey sandwiches, but to enjoy another turkey dinner in a month or two, without all of the work. Use a spare 9″ X 13″ pan that you line and divide with aluminum foil into two or three compartments. Cut some turkey for one compartment, add some stuffing in another and if you would like, leftover mashed potatoes can be put in the third compartment. Drizzle some gravy over everything you desire, cover with aluminum foil and freeze. When ready to enjoy turkey again, or perhaps when pressed for time and out of ideas for dinner, grab the pan from the freezer and place in the oven at 350 degrees. Remove the foil from the top of the pan after 45 minutes, bake uncovered for another 15 to 20 minutes and enjoy!

When cooking with herbs and spices, add them sparingly to your foods. The goal is to compliment the dish you are making, not to overpower its natural flavor. It is impossible to remove spices once you have added them, so start off with a small amount and then add more to taste.

While cooking is fun, generally, the cleaning up that follows, is not. To avoid having to deal with a big mess after a day of experimenting or meal preparation in the kitchen, keep your sink filled with hot soapy water (refreshing when necessary) and clean up as you go along. Besides keeping your end of day cleaning down to a minimum, you will also have clean hands as you touch and prepare food throughout the day.

Use cast iron pans to cook with. Cast iron cookware is great equipment to have not only because it allows food to cook evenly, but also because it makes cleaning up very easy ” food and grime wash right away. You can season your cast iron pan ahead of time to add flavor to the food.

When cooking stock, make it in a large quantity and store it in smaller bags in the freezer. Stock has a long freezer life and can be useful in so many recipes. Making a larger batch is no more difficult than making a small batch. You’ll save yourself time later by having a freezer store to turn to.

Feel free to make use of the tips that appeal to you. One of the greatest things about cooking for yourself is that it puts you in control of your diet. You are free to cook the way you want to. As you refine your cooking skills, keep looking for recipes and techniques that will help you to make the kind of food that you want to enjoy.

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Cooking 101 – Simple Tips And Tricks To Make You A Better Chef

by admin on June 17, 2012

91 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era. Learn how to make simple yet delicious dishes while listening to stories from the Depression. www.GreatDepressionCooking.com

In today’s declining economy, there is a bright spot for families. More and more people are cooking at home instead of eating out. Cooking food at home can bring families together. The enjoyment of a shared meal is an important aspect of our social natures that dates back to the beginning of time.

Trying to deep fry at home? Whenever your food is ready for the fryer, use tongs to gently hold the item just below the surface of the oil so that it has a sealed exterior and then let it go. If you toss it in without holding it for a few seconds, you might see your food stick to each other or to the fryer itself.

Make sure that the oil is hot enough, before adding food to it. By using oil that is not hot enough, you may not be cooking the food properly. You can make sure it has the perfect temperature by sticking a wooden spoon in it. If you see bubbles around the spoon, it is okay to put the food in.

While it is easy to just grab a spoon to scrape prepared, wet cake mix from the mixing bowl to put into pans for baking, do yourself a favor an invest in a good rubber scraper. A rubber scraper is made to be pliant, is curved on one side and straight on the other, just perfect for scraping the bowl of every last drop of cake and brownie mix. Using a rubber scraper gets all of the mix where it belongs in your baking pans and that quantity is what the baking time on boxes of mix are based upon. Too little mix in the pans leads to burnt goods when relying on the stated baking times.

To maximize the efficiency of the cooking that you do, always make your food in large quantities and when you are finished with the meal, store the meats in freezer bags. This will allow you to create a meal the next day for your family that is still fresh and tastes great.

One of the greatest things that you can do is to cook with family members or friends. When you cook with someone else, you will be able to pick up on tricks that they implement and will be able to better yourself as a cook. Talk to them to see how their thought process works, to elevate your expertise.

When shopping for meat, always get the freshest cuts available. If you are shopping for meat at the butcher shop the meat is being fresh cut or ground. However, when shopping at the grocery store try to find out when the store typically cuts meat for the day and try to arrive near that time. Otherwise ask at the meat counter for a fresh cut or grind if you do not know the time of the last cut.

Food and family are almost synonymous. Whether it’s the holidays, or just the evening meal, it is a wonderful thing to see the return of the home cook. The shared act of cooking a meal can only strengthen our families and improve our overall health in this society.

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