Cooking Hints & Tips Archive 31
Cooking Tip: When mincing garlic, sprinkle on a little salt so the pieces won't stick to your knife or cutting board.
Cooking Tip: Microwave garlic cloves for 15 seconds and the skins slip right off.
Cooking Tip: Microwave a lemon for 15 seconds and double the juice you get when squeezing.
Cooking Tip: Lettuce keeps better if you store in refrigerator without washing first so that the leaves are dry. Wash the day you are going to use it.
Cooking Tip: Buy mushrooms before they "open." When stems and caps are attached snugly, mushrooms are truly fresh.
Cooking Tip: Let raw potatoes stand in cold water for at least half an hour before frying to improve the crispness of french-fried potatoes.
Cooking Tip: To keep cauliflower white while cooking add a little milk to the water.
Cooking Tip: For a juicer hamburger add 1/2 cup cold water to 1 pound ground beef before grilling.
Cooking Tip: A roast with the bone in will cook faster than a boneless roast - the bone carries the heat to the inside of the roast quicker.
Cooking Tip: To slice meat into thin strips, partially freeze it and it will slice easily.
Cooking Tip: Cider vinegar is an all-purpose one usually made from fermented apple cider, with a rather pungent taste.
Cooking Tip: White wine vinegar is made from white wine. It is mild and mellow, and it works well with delicate flavors.
Cooking Tip: Red wine vinegar is made from red wine. It has a robust quality that is best paired with strongly flavored foods.
Cooking Tip: Rice vinegar is an all-purpose one made from fermented rice. It is delicate, mild, and slightly sweet.
Cooking Tip: Balsamic vinegar is dark, sweet, pungent, and tart. It can be used by itself or combined with oil.
Cooking Tip: When buying dates, avoid ones that are sticky or ones that have crystallized sugar on the surface.
Cooking Tip: Fresh dates should be firm and springy, and should have a fresh smell, not sour.
Cooking Tip: Fresh, soft dates should be kept in plastic bags in the refrigerator, and will keep for several weeks.
Cooking Tip: Dried dates should be firm, but not hard. Dried dates will keep for up to a year, refrigerated.
Cooking Tip: Store dates at 65°F, in a dry place. Dates contain up to 70% sugar by weight.
Cooking Tip: Acids help proteins coagulate, so adding either vinegar or lemon juice to water used for poaching eggs helps keep the eggs from spreading out.
Cooking Tip: To eliminate cooking odors, boil a teaspoon of white vinegar in a cup of water.
Cooking Tip: White vinegar will remove many fruit, tea and coffee stains.
Cooking Tip: Pure vanilla extract is characterized by its delicate, fruity sweet, spicy flavor and aroma. Resinous, woody, pruney, floral/perfumey, and rummy notes are also commonly associated with vanilla.
Cooking Tip: Vanilla is used principally for ice cream, soft drinks, eggnogs, chocolate confectionery, candy, tobacco, baked goods, puddings, cakes, cookies, liqueurs, and as a fragrantly tenacious ingredient in perfumery.
Cooking Tip: Ice cream should be stored at 0°F to -10°F to maintain its texture.
Cooking Tip: When ice cream is stored below -13°F it remains stable indefinitely and will not form any ice crystals.
Cooking Tip: The best temperature for scooping ice cream is 8The best temperature for scooping ice cream is when it is at 8°F to 12°F.
Cooking Tip: Store-bought ice cream should be stored no longer than 1 month in its original container because its container is not moisture-vapor resistant. If stored longer than 1 month, it loses volume and the surface becomes waxy and sticky. The flavor may also change. If ice cream must be stored longer, over-wrap the container with freezer paper or plastic wrap.
Cooking Tip: Homemade ice cream is difficult to store for any length of time because it becomes grainy. Commercial producers of ice cream add extra milk solids and/or gelatin to their products to prevent this.
Cooking Tip: Store walnuts in the refrigerator up to 6 months, or in your freezer for longer than 6 months.
Cooking Tip: Walnuts go rancid when exposed to warm temperatures for long periods of time.
Cooking Tip: Heat causes the fat in walnuts to change structure, which creates off odors and flavors.
Cooking Tip: Fresh walnuts smell mildly nutty and taste sweet. If your walnuts smell like paint thinner, you know they're rancid and you should throw them away.
Cooking Tip: Walnuts will keep indefinitely in the freezer.
Cooking Tip: If bananas ripen before they are picked, they lose their taste and texture.
Cooking Tip: To ripen green tip bananas quickly keep them at 70°F with very high humidity and no air circulation for 2 or 3 days.
Cooking Tip: The best storage for ripe bananas is at 65°F with 80% humidity and very good air circulation. They should keep for a week or so like that.
Cooking Tip: Do not keep green bananas below 59°F. The skin will turn a dark brownish color and they will develop an off taste.
Cooking Tip: The average banana contains 0.6 grams of fat.
Cooking Tip: Grapefruit ripen completely on the tree. They can be left hanging on the tree for up to a year before harvesting.
Cooking Tip: Salt makes a grapefruit taste sweeter. It is an excellent source of Vitamin C. One serving provides 80% of the recommended daily value for adults.
Cooking Tip: It takes 12 to 15 grapefruit to make 1 gallon of grapefruit juice.
Cooking Tip: Grapefruit is available all year, with most abundant supplies from January through May. Pink- or red-fleshed fruit is most common, but white-fleshed varieties are also available.
Cooking Tip: Grapefruit often have skin defects such as scale, scars, thorn scratches, or discoloration. This usually does not affect how the fruit tastes.
Cooking Tip: Cherries should be stored at 35°F. Keep away from cooler fans so they don't dry out.
Cooking Tip: Be sure to rinse fresh cherries with plenty of water before eating them. Most cherries are sprayed with insecticides.
Cooking Tip: Cherries taste best if eaten at room temperature. Generally speaking darker color cherries are sweeter.
Cooking Tip: Most sweet cherries found in food store are produced in the Western States and are available from May through August.
Cooking Tip: Red tart cherries, also called sour or pie cherries and used mainly in cooked desserts, have a softer flesh, lighter red color, and a tart flavor. They generally are shipped to processing plants and are sold frozen or canned.
Cooking Tip: Peaches must be picked fully mature, they do not get sweeter after being picked; they will get softer and juicier, but not sweeter.
Cooking Tip: Cling or clingstone peaches have a pit to which the flesh 'clings'; freestone peaches have a pit from which the flesh is easily pulled away.
Cooking Tip: The juice from canned peaches can be drained and thickened with flour or cornstarch to make a fruit sauce for ice cream or pancakes.
Cooking Tip: Bake, grill, or broil peaches and serve along with your favorite meat or fish dinners.
Cooking Tip: Freeze a can of peaches in the freezer then open and blend in the blender for a great summer dessert sorbet.
Cooking Tip: Kale, a close kin to collards, should be be used within 2 or 3 days, as these greens wilt, turn yellow and become bitter very quickly. Even if the leaves look nice and green, they will have an unpleasant taste after a day or two. Keep unwashed in a plastic bag in the coldest part of the refrigerator.
Cooking Tip: One cup of kale provides more than the daily requirement of vitamins A and C. It is also a good source of calcium and fiber.
Cooking Tip: With long ruffled leaves that resemble large parsley sprigs and hues that vary from lavender to chartreuse, kale has a mild cabbage-like taste and delicate texture.
Cooking Tip: Like most cooking greens, kale can grow in colder temperatures and withstand frost - which actually helps produce even sweeter leaves. Kale can also grow well in the hot weather in the southern United States and in poor soil. Kale is an excellent source of vitamin A, folic acid, and vitamin C and contains both protein and fiber.
Cooking Tip: Kale is available year-round though it is most flavorful and abundant during the winter months. It is best to select small, deep-colored kale bunches with clean leaves. Avoid kale with dry leaves as well as that with dry, browned, yellowed or coarse stems. In the marketplace kale should be kept refrigerated or on ice (or in an outdoor market in the winter).
Cooking Tip: The flavor of ginger is characterized by its unique combination of lemon/citrus, soapy and musty/earthy flavor notes. It is warming to taste.
Cooking Tip: The powdered, dried form of ginger has a more spicy, intense flavor and is often used in baking.
Cooking Tip: Ginger is supposedly more effective than Dramamine in combating motion sickness.
Cooking Tip: Ginger is available year-round. When selecting gingerroot, choose robust firm roots with a spicy fragrance and smooth skin. Gingerroot should not be cracked or withered. It can be stored tightly wrapped in a paper towel or plastic wrap (or put into a plastic bag) in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks and like galangal, gingerroot can also be placed in a jar of sherry and refrigerated for 3-6 months.
Cooking Tip: Peel skin from gingerroot and gently peel the skin beneath (that closest to the root is the most flavorful). Gingerroot can be sliced or minced (minced gingerroot gives the most pungent flavor). Ginger is popular in Asian cuisine where it is used both fresh and dried. Ginger can also be found crystallized, candied, preserved and pickled.
Cooking Tip: Strawberries should be a bright shade of red and the caps on the berries should be green and fresh looking. Berries that are green or yellow are unripe and will taste sour.
Cooking Tip: Perhaps the most popular of all the berries, strawberries have the most vitamin C of the berry family.
Cooking Tip: Strawberries have been known since the time of the Greeks and Romans and cultivation of strawberries began in 1624.
Cooking Tip: Commercial strawberry growing in America began about 1800 on the east coast of the United States. Strawberries moved west with the pioneers and now there are more than seventy varieties of strawberries, many of which are grown in California and Florida.
Cooking Tip: Strawberries are usually available fresh year round with a peak from April to July.
Cooking Tip: Large or older carrots can have a slightly bitter taste. To avoid this, slice lengthwise and remove the core.
Cooking Tip: To store carrots, cut the tops off and place them in a plastic bag in the vegetable crisper in your refrigerator.
Cooking Tip: Avoid carrots with green tops, they will be bitter. The green color is caused by sunlight and is usually the result of heavy rain washing the soil away.
Cooking Tip: Carry raw carrots in a sack lunch, to your next picnic, or in the car when you are on the go.
Cooking Tip: There are many different ways that you can eat raw carrots, and the choices are almost endless. They can be eaten whole, in sticks, cut into rounds, and chopped or shredded in salads.
