How many times have you dreaded going into the kitchen to make breakfast, lunch, or dinner? You might need a new perspective. Cooking can be enjoyable and relaxing if you try to see it in another way. Here are a few cooking tips that are sure to get your taste buds tingling and entice your inner chef to come out.
Try changing your sauces and spices for interesting and new foods. You can create drastically different flavors and dishes by using new marinades, sauces and garnishes. Ethnic food shops offer new and interesting foods you may not have tried before.
Proper preparation can save you a lot of time when you are cooking. It is sometimes possible to do some preliminary tasks in the days preceding the actual meal preparation. Sometimes the longer prep time results in deeply flavored dishes. After you try this technique once, you will want to continue doing it.
Vegetables are just better all-around the faster they are cooked. Using slow cooking methods can rob vegetable of their taste and nutritional value. The quick cook methods generally make the vegetables tastier and more nutritional. If you learn to cook vegetables for the right amount of time, it will help to keep them tasty and preserve nutrients.
If you plan to prepare potato skins or twice baked, loaded potatoes, use baking potatoes. This type of potato has a thicker skin, which stays crunchier during cooking. Red or new potatoes have too thin of a skin to hold the filling.
Using fat-free broth in your stew can really help to reduce calories, and make a healthier soup. Add many different types of vegetables and choose a cut of lean meat to add to the soup to make sure that you are keeping the it low-fat. Once the soup is done and ready to eat, let it chill in the refrigerator for a little while. The remainder of the fat will rise to the surface and congeal. Then you can skim off the firm fat layer and toss it. The calorie savings is around 100 per tablespoon you remove.
It is important for every cook to have their cooking supplies organized. If you don’t organize your supplies, you’ll constantly be wasting time looking for what you need. Put all the things that are the same in one place. For instance, put all your spices in one cabinet.
Be considerate to those who will be consuming your meals by reserving many spices for later addition. Some great seasonings to use are pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, and salt. Be careful though, as people can have very different tastes with regards to spice. Try not to add too many spices while you are cooking, and instead make them available for the diners to customize each dish to their liking. That way each person can make it their own.
Freeze sauces by pouring leftovers into ice cube trays. You can easily take them from the freezer when needed for a meal, and quickly reheat in a saute pan. Sauce cubes made this way are safe and will taste great!
Add chicken broth to vegetables when you cook them. Cooking vegetables in chicken broth is a low-fat, flavorful option. Chicken broth is economical and widely available.
To prevent wasting costly meat, test out your spice mixture on one small piece prior to adding it to the rest of the meat. Certain foods require special care when seasoning. Hamburgers, meatloaf and meatballs are examples of foods that need to be carefully seasoned. After seasoning the meat, do not cook all of it. Take a small portion and cook it so you can give it a taste before your final seasoning. Then, you could either cook it like that or add more seasonings accordingly.
Use the tips you just learned the next time you prepare a meal. Once you try them, you’ll be assured that cooking isn’t that bad after all! You could actually come to love cooking and the world of interesting dishes that it opens to you. Consider trying your hand at cooking.