Cooking is a necessity of life, but it can become a hobby as well. We can all learn how to enjoy cooking if we know some of the good advice that makes it a pleasure and not a chore. The following article will provide some of that learning material to get you started.
Never throw away turkey leftovers. You can put them in meal-size containers and keep them in the freezer. This will keep the turkey fresh enough to make salads and sandwiches for a couple of weeks.
Certain fruits, including apples, pears, avocados and bananas, quickly turn brown as their cut sides oxidize. Using lemon mixed with salt water is the common way to stop this, but pineapple juice does a better job overall. The fruit doesn’t need to be soaked in it, because all you need to do is dip it in quickly.
Beans or tofu are excellent sources of protein that you may not have yet considered adding to your diet. Both are easily available to buy at almost every grocery store. Tofu can be seasoned and pan-fried, and then served in lieu of a meat dish. You can boil the beans with some herbs to have a flavorful protein packed meal, side or snack.
Save spicy or unusual spices for after you cook the meal. Pepper, garlic powder, cayenne seasoning, and salt are excellent spices. A lot of people have different preferences in taste when choosing spices. You can please everyone by making a variety of choices available to add at the dinner table. Each person can then have his or her own customized meal.
Make your own dried tomatoes. To be able to dry them yourself, cut the tomatoes half an inch thick, or you should cut Romas lengthwise in half. You should place them on cooling rack, and salt them lightly with the cut side up. Set the rack on a cookie sheet in an oven at 190 degrees for a 10 hours. You can store your dried tomatoes in a plastic bag in the freezer. Dried tomatoes could also be put in a jar with fresh herbs and topped up with olive oil. Kept in the refrigerator, these tomatoes will keep for a couple of weeks.
Do you often feel a bit guilty throwing out fruit that is rotten? Should you save fruits by cutting out moldy parts? It’s a shame, but partially rotten fruit can’t be saved without being unhealthy. Mold grows inward to places that you can’t even see and can make you sick so throw moldy fruit in the garbage.
The simplest way to prepare a pumpkin for cooking is to half it by cutting the pumpkin in half. Next, you want to use two cookie-sheet type pans. On each pan, place one half of the pumpkin with the side that is cut facing down. Sprinkle some water on the sheets and bake the pumpkin for about an hour at 350 degrees.
Strain the excess fat from soups and stews. If your stew or soup contains too much fat, simply allow the dish to cool after cooking it, and wait until the fat rises to the surface. Place a cube of ice on a spoon, and skim the spoon across the fat. The ice cube will attract the fat. You can also remove excess oil by blotting it with a paper towel.
Cooking is not only about feeding your family. Experimenting with new recipes can be an adventure and a delight to the taste buds. While every time you cook you should not expect to produce the perfect dish, you can expect those imperfect results infrequently when you apply what you are about to learn. Improve your cooking skills with the tips in this article.