Cooking Hints & Tips Archive 23
Cooking Tip: When selecting garlic, it should be big, plump and firm, tight silky skins with its paper-like covering intact, not spongy, soft, or shriveled. A single bulb of garlic usually contains between ten and twenty individual cloves of garlic. The individual cloves are covered with a fine pinkish/purple skin, and the head of cloves is then covered with white papery outer skin. When preparing garlic for cooking, remove any green sprouts from the center of the garlic clove, as the sprouts add an unpleasant bitterness.
Cooking Tip: Store fresh green beans in the refrigerator, tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, for up to 5 days. Before cooking, wash beans and trim stem ends.
Cooking Tip: Keep frozen asparagus in the freezer until you are ready. Do no defrost before cooking. If the asparagus defrosts, cook it immediately. Do not refreeze! Make sure you use the asparagus within eight months.
Cooking Tip: Fully ripe sweet corn has bright green, moist husks. The silk should be stiff, dark and moist. You should be able to feel individual kernels by pressing gently against the husk. Fresh corn, if possible, should be cooked and served the day it is picked or purchased.
Cooking Tip: When purchasing spinach choose leaves that are crisp and dark green with a nice fresh fragrance. Avoid those that are limp, damaged, or spotted. 1 pound of fresh spinach leaves will cook down to about 1 cup cooked spinach.
Cooking Tip: Grinding or crushing herbs and spices immediately before cooking releases the aromatic flavor of the herb or spice and will deepen the flavor of any dish.
Cooking Tip: Never store herbs and spices next to or above the stove. To tell if a herb or a spice has lost its flavor, smell it. If it has no aroma, it should be discarded.
Cooking Tip: Unless a recipe specifies a length of a sprig, a sprig is about a 4-inch piece of stem with the leaves still attached.
Cooking Tip: When buying spices and herbs from a large bulk bin, make sure there is plenty of aroma.
Cooking Tip: Most herbs and spices are sold both whole and ground. It is preferable to buy whole spices and grind them yourself in order to get the most flavor.
Cooking Tip: Coddled eggs are made by very briefly immersing an egg in the shell in boiling water (to cook in water just below the boiling point) to slightly cook or coddle them. The best eggs for coddling are the freshest eggs you can find. If eggs are more than a week old, the whites thin out. Whites of fresh eggs will gather compactly around the yolk, making a rounder, neater shape.
Cooking Tip: The simple and classic boiled egg, is one of the finest and easiest edible delights known on earth, with just 70 calories, and full of nature's most perfect form of protein. It used to be that people were scared of eating eggs because of the cholesterol in the egg yolks. Now research has found that eggs also raise the good cholesterol that bodies need.
Cooking Tip: Deviled eggs have their roots in ancient Roman recipes with the first published recipes for stuffed, boiled eggs were from medieval Europe. In the 17th century, this was a common way to prepare eggs. they were not called "deviled" until the 18th Century, in England.
Cooking Tip: While salmonella is destroyed in properly prepared hard-cooked eggs, after cooking, spoilage can occur more quickly than in fresh shell eggs. Cool hard-cooked eggs quickly after cooking, refrigerate them in their shells promptly after cooling, and use them within one week.
Cooking Tip: Eggs are a perishable food and need to be refrigerated. Keep eggs in the original carton in the coldest part of your refrigerator. Throw away any eggs that are cracked, broken, or leaking. It is best not to wash eggs before storing or using them. Washing is a routine part of commercial egg processing and the eggs do not need to be rewashed.
Cooking Tip: Clams can be frozen either in the shell or shucked. To freeze the clams in the shell, place the live clams in moisture-vapor resistant bags. Press out excess air and freeze. To freeze the clam meat, shuck the clams, then clean and wash the meat thoroughly. Drain and pack in freezer containers, leaving 1/2-inch head space. Seal, label and freeze.
Cooking Tip: Watercress should be stored at 35F degrees. Keep it moist and wrapped in plastic.
Cooking Tip: Nutmeg is unique among spice plants, producing two distinct spices. The seed is dried, shelled and sold either whole or ground as the spice nutmeg. The outer fleshy network is also dried and ground producing the spice know as mace.
Cooking Tip: Oyster Mushrooms grow in clusters, and range in color from off-white to shades of brown. Subtly tasting like an oyster, their chewy texture are more suited to cooked dishes.
Cooking Tip: There are two types of papayas, the Hawaiian and Mexican. The Hawaiian varieties are pear shaped, weigh about a pound each, and have yellow skin when ripe. The flesh is bright orange or pinkish, depending on the variety. The Mexican varieties are much larger then the Hawaiian types and can weigh up to 20 pounds and be more than 15 inches long. Although the flavor is less intense than the Hawaiian varieties, they are still delicious and enjoyable.
Cooking Tip: Apricots develop their flavor and sweetness on the tree, and should be mature but firm at the time that they are picked.
Cooking Tip: Look for plump apricots with as much golden orange color as possible. Stay clear of fruit that is pale yellow, greenish-yellow, very firm, shriveled, or bruised. Apricots that are soft-ripe have the best flavor, but they must be eaten immediately.
Cooking Tip: Apricots bruise easily and decay. Keep away from heat and sun. Ripen at room temperature and then refrigerate at 35F degrees.
Cooking Tip: Fresh apricots can be frozen to last throughout the year. Cut ripe fruit into halves, place on a baking sheet and freeze. Once frozen, store in a plastic freezer bag for six months to a year. Thaw in the refrigerator.
Cooking Tip: Apricot puree is a substitute for oil or water in many high-calorie, high-fat recipes. Simply puree canned apricots in a blender or food processor until smooth. Unlike prunes (which can darken some baked goods) or applesauce (which may cause recipes to be watered down), apricot puree reduces the fat content and adds a touch of flavor.
Cooking Tip: Wash artichokes under cold, running water. Pull off lower petals and cut off bottom stems (cut flush with the base). Cut off about 1/2 inch of the pointed top of the artichoke. Trim tips of leaves with scissors to remove thorns. Dip in lemon juice to preserve color.
Cooking Tip: Always use a stainless-steel knife and a stainless-steel or glass pot when preparing artichokes. Iron or aluminum will turn artichokes an unappetizing blue or black. For the same reason, never let aluminum foil come in contact with artichokes.
Cooking Tip: Roasted garlic is a delicious appetizer. Squeeze the pulp out of the cloves and spread on the bread of your liking or serve with bruschetta and/or tapenade. Roasted garlic is also excellent used in your baking. It is milder than raw garlic. In fact, raw garlic is two to four times stronger in flavor. Garlic becomes very mellow and easy to spread after cooking.
Cooking Tip: Tomatoes don't develop adequate flavor unless allowed to ripen on the vine. Seek out locally grown tomatoes whenever possible. They may not be as attractive as store bought, but beauty, of course, is only skin deep. Fragrance is a better indicator of a good tomato than color. Use your nose and smell the stem end. The stem should retain the garden aroma of the plant itself.
Cooking Tip: Never refrigerate fresh tomatoes. Cold temperatures make the flesh of a tomato pulpy and destroys the flavor.
Cooking Tip: The word "ham" means pork which comes from the hind leg of a hog. Ham made from the front leg of a hog will be labeled pork shoulder picnic. Turkey ham must be made from the thigh meat of turkey.
Cooking Tip: Hams may be fresh, cured, or cured-and-smoked. The usual color for cured ham is deep rose or pink; fresh ham (which is not cured) has the pale pink color of a fresh pork roast; country hams and prosciutto (which are dry cured) range from pink to mahogany color.
Cooking Tip: Hams are either ready-to-eat or not. Ready-to-eat hams include prosciutto and fully cooked hams; they can be eaten right out of the package. Fresh hams must be cooked before eating; these hams will bear the safe handling label.
Cooking Tip: Raw pork must be stored in the refrigerator at 400F degrees or lower and used within 3 to 5 days of the "sell by" date on the package, or it should be frozen.
Cooking Tip: Ham can be cooked without thawing first. You will need to increase the cooking time when starting with frozen meat. Larger cuts, such as roasts, will require up to 1 1/2 times the cooking time of an unfrozen cut.
Cooking Tip: Fresh dill leaves can be kept in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. To freeze, chop finely and mix with water; freeze in ice-cube trays. Dried leaves and seeds should be stored in airtight jars in a cool, dark place. For best flavor, use fresh dill leaves. Since cooking diminishes the flavor of fresh dill, add just before serving. Dried leaves do not retain much flavor, so it can be used generously in your recipes. When mincing fresh dill, preserve the flavor by snipping it with scissors rather than cutting.
Cooking Tip: Prepare lemon grass by peeling off and discarding one or two layers of the woody exterior leaves. Use only the lower 5" of the stalk. Thinly slice the lemon grass, then crush or mince it to use in recipes. The actual blades of Lemon Grass are very tough (great for tea), but not so good for chopping and tossing into things you're going to eat. Use the tender white inner hearts. Add the outer blades to vegetables and fish is a good way to use the rest of the plant. Using it this way is the same as using bay leaves - great for flavor and accent, but tough to actually eat. They definitely need to be taken out before serving.
Cooking Tip: Peppermint is the premier mint for flavoring candy, gum, and other sweets. Commercially prepared oil or extract are better for these uses than anything you can concoct at home from the fresh herb. For most culinary purposes, garden peppermint is a bit strong. When to do use it, harvest only the young leaves. The older leaves and the stems tend to be bitter. Spearmint and curly mint are more versatile for culinary uses. Milder than peppermint, they enhance all sorts of meat, fish, or vegetable dishes. All the mints are best used fresh and should be stored only briefly, in plastic bags in the refrigerator. They may be frozen in ice-cube trays. Dried leaves should be kept in an airtight container in a cool, dark place.
Cooking Tip: Pure saffron is made up of tiny, bright-red threads. The redder the saffron, the higher the quality. The tips of the threads should be a slightly lighter orange-red color. This will show that it is not cheap saffron that has been tinted red to look expensive. Saffron is very sensitive to light and moisture. Store it in a container away from sunlight. If stored properly, it will last for years. Saffron absorbs other flavors and odors very easily. If you choose to transfer the saffron to a new container, make sure that the container is very clean and odor-free before using.
Cooking Tip: Choose fresh thyme that has good green color; avoid those that are wilted. Packaged seasonings lose quality after a while. Try to buy from a store that restocks its fresh herb section fairly often. Refrigerate fresh thyme in damp paper towels over wrapped in plastic. Stored this way, thyme will keep for up to one week. Store dried thyme and ground thyme in a cool, dark, dry place. Dried thyme will keep up to one year, ground thyme up to six months.
Cooking Tip: Hens that produce omega-3 enhanced eggs are fed a special vegetarian diet that consists of canola, linseed and flax seed which in turn results in these eggs being higher in omega-3 fatty acids than conventional eggs.
Cooking Tip: Fertile eggs are simply eggs that can be incubated and developed into chicks. Fertile eggs have higher production costs so they are more expensive for the consumer and they also spoil more quickly than non-fertile eggs.
Cooking Tip: There is no difference between white and brown eggs. The color of the shell is determined by the breed of the hen. White shelled eggs typically are from hens with white feathers, while brown shelled eggs are typically from hens with brown feathers. The only difference between white and brown eggs is the color.
Cooking Tip: Though not required, most egg cartons also contain a "sell by" date beyond which they should not be sold. In USDA-inspected plants (indicated by the USDA shield on the package), this date can't exceed 30 days beyond the pack date which is within USDA regulations. Always purchase eggs before their "sell by" date.
Cooking Tip: The freshness of an egg is not only determined by the date when the egg was laid, but also by the way the egg has been stored. Proper handling and storage is perhaps the most important factor in determining freshness. If a freshly laid egg is left at room temperature for a full day, it will not be as fresh as a week old egg that has been refrigerated between 33F and 40F degrees. from the time it was laid.
Cooking Tip: For a buffet, arrange and serve food on several small platters rather than on one large platter. Keep the rest of the food hot in the oven or cold in the refrigerator until serving time. This way foods will be held at safe temperatures for a longer time. Always replace empty platters rather than adding fresh food to a dish that already had food on it.
Cooking Tip: You can freeze mashed fresh, ripe avocados if you want to have an emergency supply. To freeze, mash the avocados with a fork. Add one teaspoon lime or lemon juice per avocado and mix well. Thaw the frozen avocados in the refrigerator or place the container in a bowl of cool water to accelerate thawing.
Cooking Tip: The filet mignon is a cut taken from the heart of the beef tenderloin that has outstanding taste as well as texture. They're the most tender steaks you can buy.
Cooking Tip: When baking biscuits, place the biscuits 1 inch apart for crusty sides and place them close together for soft sides.
Cooking Tip: Butterscotch is a blend of butter and brown sugar, whereas caramel is a mixture produced when granulated sugar has been cooked until it melts and becomes a thick, clear liquid that can range in color from golden to deep brown.
