Cooking Hints & Tips Archive 48
Cooking Tip: To substitute honey for sugar in recipes, start by substituting up to half of the sugar called for. With a little experimentation, honey can replace all the sugar in some recipes.
Cooking Tip: When baking with honey, remember the following: Reduce any liquid called for by 1/4 cup for each cup of honey used. Add l/2 teaspoon baking soda for each cup of honey used. Reduce oven temperature by 25° F to prevent over-browning.
Cooking Tip: Because of its high fructose content, honey has a higher sweetening power than sugar. This means you can use less honey than sugar to achieve the desired sweetness.
Cooking Tip: When measuring honey, coat the measuring cup with non-stick cooking spray or vegetable oil before adding the honey. The honey will slide right out.
Cooking Tip: To retain honey's wonderfully luxuriant texture, always store it at room temperature; never in the refrigerator. If your honey becomes cloudy, don't worry. It's just crystallization, a natural process.
Cooking Tip: Soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes before using them so they won't burn during cooking.
Cooking Tip: If you prefer metal skewers, which have a long life, use square or twisted types, which will hold the food better than round ones.
Cooking Tip: To keep food from slipping off during cooking and turning, use two parallel skewers rather than a single skewer.
Cooking Tip: If you're using a wooden skewer, as you thread the food move the pieces close together, with no space showing.
Cooking Tip: If you're using metal skewers, you can leave small spaces between the pieces.
Cooking Tip: To peel thin skin fruits and vegetables easily, place in a bowl and cover with boiling water, let stand for one minute then peel with sharp paring knife.
Cooking Tip: For an easy dressing for fruit salad, try a grated orange rind and orange juice added to sour cream.
Cooking Tip: Cream won't curdle when pour over fruits if you add a pinch of baking soda with the cream before serving.
Cooking Tip: If you add a small pat of butter when cooking fruit for jams and jellies, you won't have any foam to skim off the top.
Cooking Tip: If you have a problem with fruit jellies not setting, place the jars in a shallow pan half filled with cold water, then bake in moderate oven for 30 minutes.
Cooking Tip: Place overripe tomatoes in cold water and add some salt. Overnight they will become firm and fresh.
Cooking Tip: To keep the chiles fresh for a longer time, remove the stems before storing.
Cooking Tip: In general, many fresh commodities must necessarily be shipped in firm condition, such as pears, avocados and tomatoes. Better retailers are conditioning these products to just the stage of ripeness the consumer likes - by the time they arrive at the point of sale.
Cooking Tip: In general, never cut a fruit or vegetable until it is ready to eat. Another general rule-of-thumb; never attempt to cause the ripening of a product while under refrigeration. Ripen first, then refrigerate.
Cooking Tip: Buy mature fruit. A green peach or nectarine, for example, will not ripen but merely soften some and wither. A cantaloupe picked too green will soften but will not be sweet and juicy.
Cooking Tip: Baking powder and/or baking soda is used as leavening in many cookie recipes. Baking soda helps neutralize acidic ingredients. Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable and there is no substitution for baking soda.
Cooking Tip: Baking soda is used as a leavening agent when a recipe contains acid ingredients. Baking soda, an alkaline ingredient, plus an acid ingredient, such as buttermilk, vinegar, molasses or sour cream creates a chemical reaction to form carbon dioxide gas in a baked product making it rise and become light and porous.
Cooking Tip: Heat is not necessary for the baking soda chemical reaction, so the reaction begins as soon as liquid ingredients are added. Therefore, products leavened with baking soda should be baked immediately after mixing or the gases will escape and the product will not rise.
Cooking Tip: The best pasta is made of 100% semolina (the label will say durum wheat semolina or semolia). Pasta made from durum wheat retain their shape and firmness while cooking. When cooked properly they do not get mushy or sticky. Pasta that are not made with semolina produce a softer noodle and will not hold up well when tossing. Use these pastas for casserole-style dishes.
Cooking Tip: You may substitute for another type of pasta in recipes; but if you want to use another type, remember that as a general rule, it is best to substitute one pasta type with another of similar characteristics. It is important to match the shapes of pasta to the sauce. Flat pastas are best with thin sauces; other shapes have nooks and crannies to catch pieces of chunkier sauces.
Cooking Tip: An egg stored under refrigeration for one week will be fresher than one stored at room temperature for just one day.
Cooking Tip: The inside of an egg may be bacteria free, while due its porous nature, the shell may hold a high bacteria count.
Cooking Tip: A recipe calls for fresh herbs and you have only dried. In that case, use 1/3 the amount called for.
Cooking Tip: A recipe calls for dried herbs and you have only fresh. In that case, use 3 times the amount called for.
Cooking Tip: Bouquet garni are little bundles of parsley, thyme, and bay leaf tied together with twine or wrapped in cheesecloth. These packets are added to soups, stocks, sauces, braises, or any other dish with a lot of liquid and a long simmer.
Cooking Tip: To bake the perfect potato, rub butter over potatoes before baking to prevent skin from cracking and to improve the taste.
Cooking Tip: To save leftover wines, freeze them in ice cube trays. They can be used for any dish you would season with wine or can be also used in coolers.
Cooking Tip: Freeze red and green maraschino cherries in ice cubes. You can also do this with cocktail onions, mint leaves or green olives for martinis.
Cooking Tip: Cottage cheese can be used in place of sour cream when making dips. Just place it in the blender until it is creamed.
Cooking Tip: Cream cheese can be colored with liquid food coloring as a filler for dainty rolled sandwiches. Try a different color for each layer and slice as you would a jelly roll.
Cooking Tip: To tenderize chicken and give it a unique flavor, try basting it with a small of amount of white wine while it cooks.
Cooking Tip: When stuffing a turkey, place a piece of cheesecloth inside the cavity before the stuffing. When you remove the cloth, the stuffing will come out at one time.
Cooking Tip: Defrost a chicken by soaking in cold water, this will draw out any blood residues and will leave the breast very white.
Cooking Tip: Have you ever wondered how restaurants serve very tender, moist chicken breasts all the time? They submerge the breast in buttermilk for 3-4 hours under refrigeration before cooking.
Cooking Tip: You can thaw fish in milk. The milk will draw out the frozen taste and provides a fresh caught flavor.
Cooking Tip: When tossing a salad with a basic vinaigrette, always make the vinaigrette at least 1/2 hour ahead of time and let the mixture sit to allow the flavors to marry. Pour the vinaigrette down the side of the bowl, not directly on the greens, for a more evenly dressed salad.
Cooking Tip: If your cake recipe calls for nuts, heat them first in the oven, then dust with flour before adding to the batter to keep them from settling to the bottom of the pan.
Cooking Tip: If you put onions in the freezer 15 minutes before you chop them, you'll reduce the spray of vaporized onion oils - which means your eyes won't tear when you cut the onions.
Cooking Tip: When baking and you need to cut in the butter, an easy way is to keep the sticks of butter in the freezer. When needed, use a cheese grater to grate the butter into fine pieces.
Cooking Tip: Create your own colored sugar by placing granulated sugar in a plastic bag. Add a few drops of your favorite food coloring and shake to blend. Pour out into a plate and let dry, then use.
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.
Cooking Tip: Choose kale with small leaves as they will be tender and offer a slightly sweeter taste. Make kale leaves a regular addition to your salads.
Cooking Tip: If you are an avid juicer, you already appreciate the natural liquid vitamin content in plenty of green foods. By all means juice up the kale.
Cooking Tip: Kale is rich in chlorophyll and provides much needed fiber so lacking in the daily diet of processed food eating Americans.
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.
