KITCHEN TIPS
Page 1
- Recipes are only a guideline.
- Take the time to actually read recipes through before you begin.
- Take away the stress by doing the prep the night or day before.
- Feel comfortable replacing ingredients with similar ingredients that you like.
- If you're cooking for someone important, never try a new recipe or a new.
ingredient at the same time. - Taste as you go.
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- The smaller the item, the higher the baking temperature.
- For example, if you bake mini chocolate chip-toffee cookies at 500 degrees F for only 4 minutes, they're perfect!
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- Store spices in a cool, dark place, not above your stove.
- Humidity, light & heat will cause herbs & spices to lose their flavor.
- Season all of your food from start to finish.
1. Seasoning in stages brings the most out of your ingredients.
2. It also gives you the most flavor.
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- Use a coarse microplane to shave vegetables into salads or vinaigrettes.
- You can create an orange-fennel dressing by adding grated fennel & orange zest to a simple vinaigrette.
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- Homemade vinaigrettes have fewer ingredients & taste better than bottled ones.
- No need to whisk them instead just put all the ingredients in a sealed container & shak
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- If you want to make a healthy dairy creamy dressing you don't need to use a lot of mayo.
- Instead substitute half the mayo with Greek-style yogurt.
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- Always make stock in a large quantity & freeze it in plastic bags.
- That way, when you want to make a nice soup or boil veggies, you can simply pull the bag
out of the freezer.
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- Don't use oil in the water when boiling pasta because it will keep the sauce from sticking to
the cooked pasta. - Cook pasta 1 minute less than the package instructions.
- Cook it the rest of the way in the pan with sauce.
- After you drain pasta, while it's still hot, grate some fresh Parmesan on top before tossing
it with your sauce - this way, the sauce has something to stick to
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- After making eggs sunny-side up, deglaze the pan with sherry vinegar.
- Then drizzle the sauce on the eggs to add another dimension to the dish.
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- Smash garlic cloves inside a resealable plastic bag with the back of a knife.
- That way, your cutting board and knife won't smell.
- When you’re going to sauté garlic, slice it rather than mincing since it's less likely to burn
that way.
- After working with garlic, rub your hands vigorously on your stainless steel sink for 30
seconds before washing them - It will remove the odor.
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- If you find you need more oil in the pan when sautéing, add it in a stream along the edges
of the pan. - So that by the time the oil reaches the ingredient being cooked, it will be heated.
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- When you deep-fry, hold each piece of food with long tongs as you add it to the oil.
- Hold it just below the oil's surface for five seconds before releasing it.
- This will seal the exterior & stop it from sticking to the pot or the other food.
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- When chopping herbs, toss a little salt onto the cutting board.
- It will keep the herbs in place.
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- After cutting corn off the cob, use the back side of a knife (not the blade side) to scrape
the cob again to extract the sweet milk left behind. - This milk adds flavor & body to any corn dish.
- Lay the corn horizontally on a board, then cut off the kernels.
- Run the back of your knife over the empty cob to extract the milk.
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- To get nice, crispy caramelization on roasted vegetables, simulate the intense heat of an industrial oven.
- Bring your oven up as hot as it goes.
- Then put an empty roasting or sheet pan inside for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Toss the vegetables, try carrots or Brussels sprouts, with olive oil, salt & pepper.
- Then put them on the hot pan.
- This method will give you the high heat you need to caramelize the sugars in the
vegetables quickly.
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- When making mashed potatoes,
1. After you drain the potatoes, return them to the hot pan,
2. Cover tightly & let steam for 5 minutes. - This allows the potatoes to dry out so they'll mash to a beautiful texture & soak up the
butter or margarine more easily.
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- For an easy weeknight meal, save & freeze leftover sauces from previous meals in ice
cube trays. - The cubes can be re-heated in a sauté pan when you need a quick sauce.
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- When making meatballs or meatloaf, you need to know how the mixture tastes before you
cook it. - Make a little patty & fry it in a pan like a mini hamburger.
- Then you can taste it & adjust the seasoning.
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- When you're browning meat, you should blot the surface dry with a paper towel so the meat doesn't release moisture when it hits the hot oil.
- Too much moisture makes the meat steam instead of sear & you will lose that rich brown crust.
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- Instead of placing a chicken on a roasting rack.
- Cut thick slices of onion, put them in an oiled pan, then place the chicken on top.
- The onion will absorb the chicken juices.
- After roasting, let the chicken rest.
- Then make a sauce with the onions by adding a little stock or water to the pan & cooking it
for about 3 minutes on high heat.
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- When you roast a whole chicken, the breast always overcooks & dries out because the legs have to cook longer.
- This is a really simple way to keep a chicken breast moist.
1. Separate the breast and the leg.
2. Season as you normally would & roast as you normally would.
3. But remove the breast sooner than the leg.
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- When you grill, pull your steaks out of the refrigerator 1 hour ahead of time
- This will bring them to room temperature.
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- Use parchment paper for lining pans.
- It makes all of your baked goods easier to remove from pans & it also makes cleanup easier.
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Kitchen Directory | Kitchen Tips - Page 2 | Kitchen Tips - Page 3
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