A large variety of cooking approaches can contribute to a positive interaction with food. Some are easy to pick up, while others require study and practice. The following article will provide you with some easy and quick tips on how to be a better cook, no matter how skilled you are.
Many people tend to get stressed out when they have to cook for a family gathering, especially if there are going to be a lot of people attending. Instead of panicking and trying to complete the entire meal at once, do as much preparation as possible the night before the event. This involves measuring everything out, organizing your ingredients and marinating whatever needs to be marinated.
Stick to recipes you are comfortable with when you are cooking for important company. Don’t experiment with recipes or ingredients that you’ve never used before. This will allow you to cook with less stress.
For a delicious take on pie crusts, bake them for longer than the recipe calls for. Go past the usual pale tan color and take them to a caramel gold. The caramelizing of the sugar in pie crust gives it crispness and extra sweetness.
By staying organized while cooking you can avoid making mistakes, such as burning your food. Having all your kitchen tools handy and organized will help you turn out a good meal. Being unorganized can cause you to lose ingredients or tools that you need when you are cooking. This can cause a meal to be ruined which will put the money you spent on ingredients to waste.
Use softened butter instead of melted butter when you are creaming sugar and butter for cookies. If it did melt, just put it in the freezer until it hardens a little bit, or you can refrigerate the mixed dough, as well. Dough that’s cool prevents your cookies from over-spreading.
If you’re cooking in a nonstick pan, use a spatula made from nylon, rubber, or silicone. Using metal utensils can cause damage to the pan, which may cause you to end up with pieces of the coating in your food. Not only will this ruin your meal, it could cost you your life!
As can happen easily, putting too much salt into a dish doesn’t have to mean that it is ruined. Simply slice and peel a few raw potatoes and allow them to simmer in your sauce for around 15 minutes. Believe it or not, the potatoes actually remove the excess salt from your sauce. If you are preparing a tomato based dish and you get it too salty, simply add a few more tomatoes to help dilute the salt content.
To make sure you know when the food is done, set the timer on the oven, but set a watch timer as well. If you engage in another activity away from your oven, you will hear your watch timer beep.
Keep your spices and herbs in a dry cupboard. Flavor loss occurs when they are exposed to heat, light and humidity. This will keep them exposed to heat and other unfavorable conditions that zap all of their flavor.
This will help to keep your fruits fresh for much longer. In addition, you’ll get to enjoy out-of-season fruits when no one else can!
Do you feel guilty when you toss rotten, uneaten fruit in the garbage? Can you cut out the rotten areas or moldy areas and still eat the fruit? It’s a shame, but partially rotten fruit can’t be saved without being unhealthy. Discard the fruit, because the mold penetrated deeper than can be seen with the naked eye, and moldy foods can cause some people to experience health problems.
Making a wonderful meal need not be a tangled web of recipes and complicated techniques. Try to keep it simple and you can create wonderful, tasty meals that are fast and healthy! Implementing these tips will allow you to understand how to become a better cook.