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121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapters: 1. General Cooking Tips 2. Sauces and Seasonings 3. Meat, Chicken and Fish 4. Barbecuing 5. Fruits and Vegetables 6. Pasta, Rice and Potatoes 7. Baking 8. Microwaving 9.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter 1: General Cooking Tips 1. Add a little zest. When a recipe calls for a “zest” of a citrus fruit, it’s referring to the colorful outer part of the skin, not the inner white part, which is known as the pith. The zest contains all of the aromatic citrus oils and provides a hint of citrus tang to the recipe. A simple method of obtaining a fine zest is by rubbing the fruit against the smallest holes of a cheese grater. 2. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family into a pan that is not perfectly clean, otherwise the resulting build up could lead to burned food. 7. Stop water from boiling over. To keep pans from boiling over when cooking, add a thin layer of butter around the rim of the pan. This works well for rice, pasta and potatoes. 8. Avoid oozing egg whites. Do your eggs ooze out some of their whites when you boil them? This is because every egg contains an air pocket at the larger, rounded end.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family whether the oil is hot enough for frying, throw in a drop of water or even a small piece of what you’re cooking. If it bubbles rapidly then you know it’s ready. 14. Get the right temperature for deep frying. Does your oil always seem to be the wrong temperature? A simple way to find out if your oil is hot enough is to use a bread cube.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family large plastic bag with a zip closure. Set the bag on a plate or in a shallow bowl and refrigerate, turning the bowl occasionally to distribute the marinade. 21. Reduce grease splatters. Few things are messier than splattering grease. And if it gets on your skin it can be painful. Reduce grease splatters by sprinkling hot grease with salt prior to adding the food to be fried.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter II: Sauces and Seasonings 23. Make perfect gravy for turkey. Looking for the perfect gravy to have with your holiday turkey? A great tip from the pros is to use tea! Boil a large pot of water and when you put the turkey in the oven add two orange pekoe tea bags. Let the tea steep on top of the stove until the turkey is done then add it to the juices in the pan. Thicken with a mixture of flour and water or cornstarch. 24. Keep chicken broth handy.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 30. Using pre-made tomato sauce. Store bought tomato sauce is an easy alternative to making your own. But sometimes it is too acidic or too salty for the dish you’re using it in. A great tip to cut the acidity of tomato sauce is to add about one-eighth of a cup of sugar. To reduce saltiness, add a little cream. 31. Use wine to add a unique flavor to dishes. Wine is another way of flavoring your dishes, just like herbs and spices.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family is stock enriched with more meat and vegetables and then concentrated and clarified. Now you know! 34. Quickly and easily thicken gravy. Once the roast or turkey is cooked, there’s always the task of making the gravy and waiting while it thickens. Luckily, there is a quicker way! Thicken your gravy by adding a tablespoon of instant mashed potatoes. Start there, and add more if needed until it’s the right consistency. 35. Dried herbs versus fresh ones.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter III: Meat, Poultry and Fish 40. Choose perfect cuts of red meat. Red meat such as beef, pork and lamb should have a moist, red surface with no signs of drying or surface film. The fat should be a creamy white color and should not be dry. Look for even, well-cut meat that is free from sinew and excess fat.
1 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 47. Get crispier fried chicken. For crispier fried chicken, add a teaspoon of baking powder to your coating mix then coat and fry as you normally would. Remember to make sure that the oil is very hot before adding the chicken to avoid an overpowering greasy taste. 48. Don’t salt meat before cooking. One of the biggest faux pas when it comes to cooking meat is to salt it prior to cooking.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family The holes in the bottom of the rack allow the juices to drain away from the meat. The result is perfect meatloaf every time! 54. The different fat contents in ground beef. In most cases, regular ground beef is a better buy than medium or lean. And some foods – such as hamburgers – are more tender and tasty when made with regular ground beef because of the extra fat content. Any excess fat can easily be drained off.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter IV: Barbecuing 57. Barbecue the perfect steak every time. Ever have a hard time knowing whether a steak is cooked properly? Instead of poking it with a fork or cutting it open (both of which let the juices run out), learn how to tell by touching the outside. For an example of how a steak feels at the different stages of cooking, look no further than your own hand.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter V: Fruits and Vegetables 61. Quick and easy corn on the cob. The simplest way to cook perfect corn on the cob is to toss an ear into the microwave for three minutes. Then, remove the husks, add some salt and butter and enjoy. 62. Blanching vegetables. Blanching vegetables means to boil them for five or six minutes prior to using them in a recipe.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family parchment paper. Ensure that the vegetables are evenly distributed and not overlapping one another. 68. Ripen tomatoes overnight. Putting green tomatoes in a brown paper bag with an overripe banana can quickly ripen them. By the morning your green tomatoes will be red and ready to eat! 69. Perfectly steam vegetables every time. Steaming is an easy way to cook vegetables and is a great way to retain their water-soluble vitamins.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 75. Roast red peppers. Wash and place whole red peppers on the barbecue grill. Grill them on HIGH to char the skin all around. This takes 15-20 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when their skin is black and lifting away from the flesh in places. Then cool them in a paper bag to loosen the blackened skin. Simply peel them and remove the seeds.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter VI: Pasta, Rice and Potatoes 76. Cooking fresh pasta. Fresh pasta needs less water than dried pasta. To cook fresh pasta, have a large saucepan of rapidly boiling water ready. Make sure you have enough boiling water for the pasta to cook in. Add a little oil to the water, so the pasta doesn’t stick together. Add pasta to the pan, ensure the water stays boiling and stir slowly for 10 seconds to separate the pasta.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 82. Add flavor to rice. Instead of using plain water when boiling rice, try chicken stock, beef stock or even tomato juice. Serve it as is or add even more flavor by sautéing some vegetables in olive oil and garlic and adding them for a delicious and healthy side dish. 83. Reduce the stickiness of pasta and rice. The starch in pastas and rices often cause them to stick together. Avoid this by adding a splash of vinegar when boiling them.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter VII: Baking 89. Stop cheesecake from cracking. Cheesecakes often crack on the top because they lose moisture while they cook. If you’re adding a topping it doesn’t matter, but if you’re serving the cake without anything on top it’s nice to have it looking perfect. Avoid cracking by putting a small dish of water on the rack beside your cake while it is cooking. This will keep it moist and crack-free! 90. Make sure your yeast is fresh.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 95. Test whether your baking powder is fresh. Baking powder is a leavener that contains a combination of baking soda, an acid (such as cream of tartar), and a moisture absorber (such as cornstarch). Baking powder releases carbon dioxide gas bubbles when mixed with liquid, and this is what causes breads and cakes to rise.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 102. Get fluffier egg whites. Fluffy egg whites are a great way to add lightness to your baking. The fluffier they are, the more air they contain which makes for a better end result. For the fluffiest egg whites, never tap the whisk on the bowl containing the egg whites. The vibration will cause them to lose their fluffy consistency. 103. Avoid sinking in your baked goods.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter VIII: Microwaving 106. Defrosting frozen supermarket foods. Food that was readily bought out from the supermarket's freezer must be removed from its plastic wrapper first before putting it inside the oven. The same goes for those that were packaged using foam trays. The heat will melt the wrapper and will transport its chemicals to the food, thus making it already unsafe to eat. 107. Defrosting meat and chicken.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family 114. Cooking corn-on-the-cob in the microwave. The process is pretty easy and maybe easier than the boiling method. To prepare the corn, do not husk it. Simply peel back the husk and remove the silk. Then add several thin tabs of butter, salt and any other seasonings and close up the husk again. You want the husk to hug the cob throughout the cooking process, and you can use a rubber band too. 115. Time to cook corn-on-the-cob.
121 Cooking Secrets to Impress Friends and Family Chapter VIII: Convection Ovens 117. Differences between a Convection oven and Conventional oven. Both ovens by having a heating element that heats the air. The air then warms the top of the food and the container that is holding the food. The heat from the top of the food and container heat the inside of the food.
