When you are able to cook meals for your family, you can control all the ingredients and make sure the food they consume is healthy. A dish prepared by your own hands is a dish that will be truly enjoyed. However, not everyone has the skills necessary in order to cook good meals. Read on for some useful tips that can help to improve your culinary skills!
Regardless of the recipe, you can always bet that a fresh ingredient is better than its dried or frozen counterpart. Fresh ingredients are often inexpensive, and can help bring a lot of flavor out of your dish.
Buy a high-quality meat thermometer to check the cooking temperature of your meats prior to removing from the stove. Each type of meat has a minimum recommended internal temperature to be considered safe for consumption. If your meats are not cooked to the proper temperature, bacteria can stay alive within the meat and make you and your family sick if they are consumed.
Get the specific sort of potatoes your recipe calls for. These vegetables are defined in three ways, either mealy, waxy or all-purpose, so choose accordingly. The best choice for potatoes to mash are the mealy type, which have a dry texture and flavorful taste. The russet potato is one of the most common of the mealy variety. A good all-purpose potato good for anything you cook is the Yukon Gold. Waxy potatoes are good for steaming or boiling because their shape is maintained. Falling within the waxy category are standard white and red varieties.
You can make remarkably flavorful dishes by making your stock yourself. Extra stock can be stored in the freezer and used later. By freezing stock, you ensure that you have tasty homemade stock ready to add to any dish. By making and having your own stock on hand, you will know it doesn’t contain preservatives.
By doing any prep work the day before a big meal, you can make the actual cooking process faster and less stressful. Look at your recipes before starting and clue in on the steps that can be done ahead of time without having any spoilage issues. Many different prep tasks can be finished a day or so before cooking the meal. More complex recipes become quicker and more fun this way.
Cooling Rack
You should consider drying your tomatoes on your own. Prepare by cutting ripe tomatoes into half-inch-thick slices or slicing Roma tomatoes in half down their long axis. Put the sliced tomatoes onto a cooling rack, and lightly salt the cut-side. Place the cooling rack on a cookie sheet and dry in a 190 degree oven for up to 10 hours. Finally, place your dried tomatoes in freezer safe bags and store in the freezer. Zing up your dried tomatoes and conserve them at the same time by canning them in olive oil and herbs. The tomatoes will need to be refrigerated and should be consumed within a couple of weeks.
Always purchase the freshest garlic available if you plan to be cooking with this wonderfully aromatic seasoning. Fresh garlic has a sweeter taste than old garlic. If it isn’t soft, bruised or shriveled and it has some firm skin then you know that the garlic is fresh.
Use a generous amount of salt in your pasta water when making pasta. Seasoning added while it cooks will “set” in the pasta. Pasta that has been salted after cooking may not retain the flavors used in the seasoning and sauce.
Measuring and chopping ingredients before you begin cooking can save you time. You can frequently get your ingredients ready one or two days before you cook your meal. Sometimes, preparing ingredients early can make a big difference in flavor. You may never go back to cooking the old fashioned way once you see how much time advanced prep saves.
Try to prepare your ingredients before you cook to ensure that your cooking environment is a stress free area. This will ensure that you don’t end up in a mad search for an ingredient while your meal is burning. It doesn’t take any longer to prepare before you cook than while you cook, but it does make the experience easier and faster.
Golden Color
When baking crust for pie or tarts, leave them in the oven to bake a little longer than you planned. The crust should have a nice golden color to be fully cooked. This golden color means that the sugar used in the crust has caramelized, giving the crust a crisp and sweet flavor.
Use space-saving stackable racks for cooling. These stackable racks will free up much needed counter space when baking. This is why you should use these cooling racks so that you can have more space. Your cookies can cool on the rack, but you will still have full use of your kitchen surfaces.
Cooking Oil
Measure the amount of cooking oil you use! If you measure the amount of cooking oil you use instead of just dumping some into a pan, you are far less likely to overdo it. This technique gives you greater control over the amount of oil you want to use.
Save leftover meat and bones from poultry. Rather, cut up the meat and store it in an airtight container in the freezer. It will keep fresh for several weeks which you can use for sandwiches or if you prefer a salad.
It is possible to lower the fat and calorie content of mashed potatoes without impacting the taste or texture by replacing some of the potato content with cauliflower. Cauliflower’s subtle flavors blend in with the potatoes and other ingredients easily. Cauliflower has the same texture and color as potatoes, offering you a perfect way to add another vegetable to your dish while cutting calories.
As you can see, cooking can be easy. With the right techniques, creating delicious dishes for family and friends can suddenly become a breeze! Now that you have been introduced to these great tips and tricks, you just need to make the time to go and give them a try!