Cooking Hints & Tips Archive 49
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: 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: To keep the chiles fresh for a longer time, remove the stems before storing.
Cooking Tip: Handle with care. Fresh fruits and vegetables, because of their perishability, require constant attention to keep their fresh appearance. The less you handle them when purchasing, or in the home, the longer their life. Don't pinch, squeeze or poke them, for bruising leads to damage and damage results in more spoilage.
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: 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: Balsamic vinegar is a reduction made from grapes, but it is not considered a wine vinegar because the grape juice used is unfermented. The unfermented white sweet grape juice that is used is called must and comes from the Trebbiano grapes.
Cooking Tip: True aceto balsamic vinegar comes in 3.4 ounce bottles and sells from $50.00 to $500.00 per bottle. It must be aged a minimum of 10 year.
Cooking Tip: The better balsamic vinegars are aged 25 to 50 years Dark in color and syrup in consistency, they have a flavor that is a balance of sweet and sour. Tradizionale has a mellow acidity and a sharp aroma.
Cooking Tip: Traditional balsamic vinegar of Modena is only bottled in the distinct bulb-shaped, 100-milliliter bottle. Modena brands use red and silver labels to indicate aging of 12 and 18 years respectively. A gold cap indicates a minimum age of 20 years.
Cooking Tip: Good-quality balsamic vinegars have brown sugar or caramel added to mimic the sweetness of the besy-quality ones.
Cooking Tip: Ripen green fruit in a perforated plastic bag. The bag lets the air circulate but holds in the gases for ripening.
Cooking Tip: Don't add sugar to stewed fruit until they've cooked for about 10 minutes. Less sugar will be needed then.
Cooking Tip: If fresh veggies are wilted or blemished, pick off brown spots and sprinkle with cold water. Wrap in a paper towel and refrigerate for about an hour.
Cooking Tip: To speed up ripening of avacados and tomatoes, place in a brown paper bag at room temperature for a few days.
Cooking Tip: Place a slice of soft bread in a sealed container with the rock-hard brown sugar. It should soften in a few hours. Remove the bread and seal the sugar in an air-tight bag or container.
Cooking Tip: Garlic has been cultivated for thousands of years and is widely used for both its culinary and medicinal attributes.
Cooking Tip: Most garlic in the U.S. is grown in the mild climate of northern California. Varieties adapted to mild climates and then grown in cold climates often do not perform well and usually develop a very hot flavor.
Cooking Tip: Garlic is an adaptable species, however, and over thousands of years, varieties have been selected that grow well in cold climates, often with better garlic flavor than the varieties grown in mild climates.
Cooking Tip: Garlic is available year round, but is freshest between March and August. Garlic is available in forms other than fresh, such as powder, flakes, oil, and puree.
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. Why buy small ones that are a pain to peel? As with all ingredients for cooking, buy the best garlic you can afford.
Cooking Tip: Store spices in a cool, dark place. Humidity, light and heat will cause herbs and spices to lose their flavor more quickly.
Cooking Tip: Although the most convenient place for your spice rack may be above your stove, moving your spices to a different location may keep them fresh longer.
Cooking Tip: As a general rule, herbs and ground spices will retain their best flavors for a year. Whole spices may last for 3 to 5 years. Proper storage should result in longer freshness times.
Cooking Tip: When possible, grind whole spices in a grinder or mortar & pestle just prior to using. Toasting whole spices in a dry skillet over medium heat before grinding will bring out even more flavor. Be careful not to burn.
Cooking Tip: Because the refrigerator is a rather humid environment, storing herbs and spices there is not recommended. To keep larger quantities of spices fresh, store them in the freezer in tightly sealed containers.
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: Tahini is the equivalent of peanut butter, only it is made from 100% crushed sesame seeds. It can be used as a sandwich spread, or mixed with a variety of other seasonings such as garlic and onion or cayenne pepper for a tasty dip or salad dressing.
Cooking Tip: Cilantro or coriander not only has two common names, but two entirely different identities and uses. Cilantro, Coriandrum sativum, describes the first or vegetative stage of the plant's life cycle. After the plant flowers and develops seeds, it is referred to as coriander.
Cooking Tip: Peppermint and spearmint came to the New World with the colonists, who also used them medicinally. They drank mint tea for headaches, heartburn, indigestion, gas, and to help them sleep.
Cooking Tip: The term flambe is a French word meaning flaming or flame." Flambe means to ignite foods that have liquor or liqueur added. This is done for a dramatic effect and to develop a rich flavor of the liqueur to the foods without adding the alcohol.
Cooking Tip: Add a small amount of cooking oil to the water before adding pasta. It reduces the amount of pasta sticking together.
Cooking Tip: When making gravy from pan drippings, pour it into a tall, narrow jar. The grease will rise to the top for easy skimming and fat free gravy making.
Cooking Tip: Double the amount of the favorite casserole recipes you cook. Place half in a freezer container for dinner on a busy day.
Cooking Tip: Sprinkle a bit of salt in the frying pan before adding meat. It will cut down on the amount of grease splattering.
Cooking Tip: Place a layer of celery and onions under fish when baking. Besides adding flavor, it will prevent the fish from sticking.
Cooking Tip: A solution of 1 tablespoon baking soda to 1 quart warm water will remove most off odors from plastic storage containers. Simply give them a thorough dip in the soda solution, rinse with fresh water, and dry.
Cooking Tip: If you have a problem opening jars: Try using latex dishwashing gloves. They give a no-slip grip that makes opening jars easy.
Cooking Tip: Dip a new broom in hot salt water before using. This will toughen the bristles and make it last longer.
Cooking Tip: When making potato salad, add the dressing to warm potatoes for the best flavor. Once cooled, the potatoes will not absorb the dressing as well.
Cooking Tip: Noodles, spaghetti and other starches won't boil over if you rub the inside of the pot with vegetable oil.
