Cooking Hints & Tips Archive 43
Cooking Tip: The flesh of fresh fish should always be firm and should adhere firmly to the bone. Fresh fish should be firm and the flesh should spring back when touched.
Cooking Tip: Smell the fish. It should have a fresh sea aroma to it. If it has a strong fishy smell, it is not fresh. Ask at the counter when the fish came in.
Cooking Tip: If you are shopping at a grocery store buy fresh fish or seafood on your way out of the store, take it directly home, and cook it within 24 hours. Take along a cooler to keep it cool going home.
Cooking Tip: Keep the fish as cold as possible until you are ready to cook it, store seafood in the coldest part of your refrigerator. When you are ready to cook the fish, rinse it with cold water.
Cooking Tip: Fresh fish or seafood is marketed in a number of ways. The best way to buy fish for preparation ease, is in fresh fillet or steak form. Fillets are normally bone free and steaks are usually cut into serving portion sizes making your prep time shorter.
Cooking Tip: Au Jus is a French phrase describing meat served with its own natural juices. The term is used to describe the serving of meat, most often prime rib roast, surrounded in or served with a container of the natural juices that were produced as drippings while the meat was being cooked. It is not thick like a typical sauce or gravy.
Cooking Tip: Beef broth is a liquid resulting from cooking vegetables, meat or fish in water. The term is sometimes used synonymously with bouillon.
Cooking Tip: Beef stock is stock is the strained liquid that is the result of cooking vegetables, meat, or fish and other seasoning ingredients in water.
Cooking Tip: Avocado Oil is vibrant green in color with a has a soft nutty taste and a mild avocado aroma. This is a very healthy oil with a profile similar to olive oil. This oil can be used for very high temperature applications.
Cooking Tip: Macadamia nut oil is cold pressed from the decadent macadamia nut, extracting a light oil similar in quality to the finest extra virgin olive oil.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 tablespoon cajun spice in a recipe, use 1/2 teaspoon white pepper, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/2 teaspoon onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1/4 cup oil for sauteing in a recipe, use 1/4 cup melted margarine, butter, bacon drippings, shortening, or lard.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 tablespoon dijon mustard in a recipe, use 1 tablespoon dry mustard mixed with 1 teaspoon water, 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon mayonnaise, and a pinch of sugar.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 cup sifted all-purpose flour in a recipe, use 1 cup and 2 tablespoons cake flour.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 1/3 cups almond paste in a recipe, use 1 3/4 cups ground blanched almonds plus 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar plus 1 egg white plus 1 teaspoon almond extract plus 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 6 ounces melted semi-sweet chocolate in a recipe, use 2 squares unsweetened chocolate, 2 tablespoons shortening, and 1/2 cup sugar.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 cup sour cream in a recipe, use 3/4 cup milk, 3/4 tsp lemon juice, and 1/3 cup butter.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger root in a recipe, use 1 tablespoon candied ginger that is rinsed and finely chopped.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 medium whole lemon in a recipe, use 2 tablespoons lemon juice and 2 teaspoons lemon zest.
Cooking Tip: To substitute for 1 teaspoon allspice in a recipe, use 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves.
Cooking Tip: A fast and easy way to remove leaves from cabbage is to cut around the core at the base of the cabbage. Remove the core and grasp each individual cabbage leaf at its base, rather than at the leaf's outer edge. Gently lift the cabbage leaf from the cabbage.
Cooking Tip: To shred cabbage by hand, quarter and then core the cabbage. Separate the cabbage quarters into stacks so leaves will flatten when pressed lightly. Use a large knife to cut each stack of cabbage diagonally into thin shreds. To chop the cabbage, turn the pile of shredded cabbage widthwise, then cut the cabbage shreds into a fine dice.
Cooking Tip: For a crisper cabbage for salads, shred the cabbage and soak it in salted ice water for 15 minutes and then drain.
Cooking Tip: Avoid cabbage with wilted or decayed outer leaves or with leaves turning decidedly yellow. Worm-eaten outer leaves often indicate that the worm injury penetrates into the head. Separation of the stems of leaves from the central stem at the base of the head also indicates over-age.
Cooking Tip: Choose firm cabbage heads that feel heavy for their size. Outer leaves should look fresh, have good color, and be free of blemishes.
Cooking Tip: Regular butter is made up of butterfat, milk solids, and water. Clarified butter is the translucent golden butterfat left over after the milk solids and water are removed. Clarified butter is =butter that contains only pure butterfat. It has a higher smoke point than regular butter, thus allowing you to be able to cook at higher temperatures, and won't spoil as quickly.
Cooking Tip: Clarified butter and ghee are not the same. Ghee is clarified butter that has been cooked longer to remove all the moisture, and the milk solids are browned in the fat and then strained out. This gives a rich nutty taste. Ghee has a longer shelf life, both refrigerated and at room temperature.
Cooking Tip: >Truffle oil is top-quality olive oil that has been infused with either white or black truffles. Both types of truffles have an earthy, mushroom like flavor. Before commercial truffle oil was introduced in the 1980s, chefs in Italy and France traditionally made their own by steeping tiny bits of fresh truffles in high-quality olive oil.
Cooking Tip: Truffle oil is more of a flavoring or seasoning (that gives a burst of flavor) and should only be used lightly on your foods or dishes. The best use for truffle oil is summed up in one word, drizzle over foods. Experiment by adding a little truffle oil to some of your favorite dishes.
Cooking Tip: Bottled truffle oil loses aroma over time as it is a truffle extract infusion. This delicate oil loses characteristic aroma quickly, so store in the refrigerator. Most unrefined oils will keep for 3 to 6 months if properly stored in a cool dark location. The refrigerator is the best place to store unrefined oils.
Cooking Tip: Asparagus is a hardy perennial vegetable native to the seacoasts of Europe and eastern Asia, where it has been cultivated for over 2,000 years. Early settlers brought asparagus to North America, where it has been grown in home gardens since colonial times. Commercial asparagus production began in this country in the middle of the 19th century.
Cooking Tip: The underground portion of the asparagus plant consists of a network of rhizomes, fleshy storage roots, and fibrous roots. Fleshy roots serve not only as storage organs for the carbohydrates received from the fern, but also as the site of fibrous root development. Fibrous roots, which live for one or two seasons, function in the absorption of water and nutrients from the soil.
Cooking Tip: The word asparagus comes from the Greek "asparagos," meaning shoot or sprout. Asparagus spears are edible shoots that develop on rhizomes when the soil temperature is warm and the water supply is favorable. The spears, if not harvested, develop into ferns 4-6 feet tall. Carbohydrates and other compounds necessary for plant growth and development are produced in the ferns throughout the growing season. These substances are translated to the fleshy roots, where they are stored and used to produce spears the following spring.
Cooking Tip: Asparagus plants are dioecious, meaning that male and female flowers are produced on separate plants. Female plants are somewhat less productive and shorter lived than male plants because of the energy allocated to seed production. Thus, in a given planting of dioecious hybrids or plants from open-pollinated sources, the ratio of male to female plants initially is 50:50. As the age of a planting increases, the ratio of male to female plants increases.
Cooking Tip: Select bright green asparagus with closed, compact, and firm tips. Also look for cut ends that are not dry. Select asparagus stalks that are about the same thickness so cooking will be uniform. Thickness does not influence quality. If the tips are slightly wilted, freshen them up by soaking them in cold water.
Cooking Tip: Serving lobster tails to your dinner guests or loved ones is always a special treat, so you want them to taste great. Be careful and buy the best product you can afford and buy from a reputable source. As lobster tails usually come flash frozen, you need to know which ones are the best to buy.
Cooking Tip: Most of the frozen lobster tails that you will find on the market come from a spiny clawless species of lobster, of which there are around 45 different species all over the world.
Cooking Tip: Let frozen lobster tails thaw in the refrigerator 24 hours before cooking. Cooking un-thawed tails will result in tough meat. Lobster will thaw faster if placed in a plastic bag and immersed in water while in the refrigerator.
Cooking Tip: If you a really in a rush to thaw the frozen lobster tails, you can use a microwave with a defrost setting to thaw the tails. Just be careful so that you don't start cooking the Lobster tails this way.
Cooking Tip: When lobster tails are defrosted, insert point of kitchen shears between the meat and the hard shell. Cut the shell down the center of the back with scissors, leaving tail fan intact. Do not remove the under shell. Run your little finger between the meat and the shell to loosen from each other. Lift uncooked tail through the slit to rest on the top of the shell.
Cooking Tip: Saffron is the stigma of the crocus flower, which originally came from Asia Minor. Almost three-quarters of the world's production of saffron is grown in Spain, specifically in the region of Castilla-La Mancha. Spanish saffron is prized for its high quality, and commands twice the price of saffron produced in Iran.
Cooking Tip: Saffron is the world's most expensive spice. Each flower provides only three red stigmas. One ounce of saffron is approximately 14,000 of these tiny saffron threads.
Cooking Tip: Each flower for saffron, which blooms for one week of the year, produces about three stamens, which must be picked by hand. The best saffron is harvested seasonally and carefully dried in the sun or over a low fire.
Cooking Tip: Saffron is best when fresh and loses its potency over time. The tiny red threads of saffron must be handpicked from the center of the crocus flower. They leave behind the yellow stamens which have no taste. This spice comes either powdered or in threads.
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.
Cooking Tip: Agave nectar is a syrup made from the agave plant. Called agave, agave syrup or agave nectar, this liquid sweetener is similar to honey but has a thinner consistency and a slightly more intense flavor. Agave nectar has a low glycemic load so it won't elevate blood sugar levels as quickly as white sugar.
Cooking Tip: Agave nectar comes from the agave plant of which there are over 100 different species. It grows in the volcanic soils of Mexico where it has been used by natives of Mexico for many centuries. Aztecs prized the agave plant and believed it was a gift from the gods. Both the flowers and nectar of the agave plant are edible and for the Aztecs it was an important food source, harvested after winter and eaten as a vegetable.
Cooking Tip: Commercial sweetener made from agave nectar was developed in the 1990s in Mexico. All commercially available agave nectar comes from. Mexico - it is currently the only country producing it.
Cooking Tip: When the agave plant is 7 to 10 years old, the nectar is harvested from live plant. This process is similar to how maple trees are tapped. The top is cut off, and the core, called the pina, is hollowed out. The cap is then replaced and nectar is allowed to gather in the center for several days. The liquid is then removed for processing.
Cooking Tip: Agave nectar is either regular or raw. The nectar is boiled down to concentrate its sweetness. To be considered raw, it is not been heated beyond 118 to 120°F. This way, raw agave nectar is still filled with living enzymes.
Cooking Tip: Aztec Indian legend held that cacao seeds had been brought from Paradise and that wisdom and power came from eating the fruit of the cacao tree. Because of a spelling error, probably by English traders long ago, the cacao beans became know as the cocoa beans.
Cooking Tip: Not all chocolate is heart healthy. White chocolate, which a Harvard researcher points out is not really chocolate at all, and milk chocolate may expand the hips rather than help blood flow. And none of the instant cocoa mixes in the local grocery store contain the flavonoids that improve blood vessel function.
Cooking Tip: A large part of chocolate's allure lies in the taste - a deliciously rich concoction that satisfies the most intense craving. But several chemical reactions are also at work. For one thing, chocolate stimulates the secretion of endorphins, producing a pleasurable sensation similar to the runner's high a jogger feels after running several miles.
Cooking Tip: A 1 1/2-ounce square of chocolate may have as many cancer-fighting antioxidants as a 5-ounce glass of red wine.
Cooking Tip: Eating 2 ounces a day of plain chocolate with a minimum content of 70% chocolate solids can be beneficial to health, providing protection against heart disease, high blood pressure, and many other health hazards as well as essential trace elements and nutrients such as iron, calcium and potassium, and vitamins A. B1, C, D, and E.
Cooking Tip: Kale is overflowing with essential nutrients such as calcium, lutein, iron, and Vitamins A, C, and K. Kale has seven times the beta-carotene of broccoli and ten times more lutein. Kale is rich in chlorophyll and provides much needed fiber in the daily diet.
Cooking Tip: The icing on the Kale are the naturally occurring photochemicals sulforaphanes and indoles which research suggests may protect against cancer.
Cooking Tip: The naturally rich sulfur content of kale helps boost the body's detoxification enzymes, potentially by altering gene expression. Sulforaphane is formed when cruciferous vegetables such as kale are chopped or chewed. This triggers the liver to produce natural enzymes which function to detoxify cancer causing chemicals, to which we all are exposed on a daily basis.
Cooking Tip: Kale descends from the wild cabbage which originated in Asia. Kale is thought to have been introduced to Europe by the Celtics where it remained a staple. Kale was eventually introduced to the USA during the 17th century by early English settlers.
Cooking Tip: A leafy green vegetable starting to gain widespread attention, kale belongs to the Brassica family, a group that also includes cabbage, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts. Choose kale with small leaves as they will be tender and offer a slightly sweeter taste.
