Anyone can learn how to cook. You can shop for ingredients, and follow a recipe’s instructions, right? Are simple pots and pans stored in your kitchen? If so, then you are ready to begin! These tips are here to help you improve your cooking skills and prepare great dishes.
Try putting some cauliflower in with your mashed potatoes to cut some calories and fat. Cauliflower’s neutral taste means that it blends easily with the flavor of the potatoes, butter and milk. Cauliflower has the same texture and color as potatoes, offering you a perfect way to add another vegetable to your dish while cutting calories.
To reduce the amount of stress you experience when cooking a complicated dish, you can prepare some of the ingredients the night before you need them. Get the ingredients ready, chop the veggies, measure and prepare the spices and herbs. It’s also a great time to make sure you have everything that is needed. When the time comes to prepare the meal, you will now only need to assemble the ingredients and cook it.
Cooking processes that take quite a bit of time, like boiling, may allow nutrients to leach from the vegetables. To retain their nutritional value, saute or steam them. Better yet, eat them raw.
To make your French fries crisper, try leaving the raw potatoes in some cold water for half an hour before you fry them. By leaving the potatoes to soak up cold water, the fibers are reinforced. This makes it so when you fry them, they’ll withstand the heat better and won’t break down completely.
Rinse diced onions with cold water if you are planning on making salsa and serving it later. Fresh onions can emit sulfurous gas. Your fresh salsa can get ruined by sulfurous gas. When you rinse the onions with water and dry them, you neutralize the gas.
Is fresh basil something you cook with often? Put some fresh basil into a glass. Add some water to cover the stems. Place it on your kitchen counter to keep it fresh for weeks! Change the water from time to time so that the basil grows roots. Trim the basil once in a while so it grows even more and stays fresh.
Always use silicon, rubber, or nylon spatulas and spoons when you cook with non-stick cookware. If you use a utensil from wood or metal, it will ruin your nonstick pans over time because it can destroy the coating. This certainly doesn’t sound appetizing, and it can also be dangerous.
Try utilizing a stacking cooling rack. If you are making a large amount of cookies or baked items, laying them out to cool will take over your kitchen. These racks utilize the vertical spaces in your kitchen. Using the vertical space lets your cookies cool while you still have usable space to work.
Apples are a popular ingredient during fall and winter, but unless they are stored properly, they spoil quickly. Warm air is the enemy of apples; store them in a cool area or even the refrigerator. Quickly remove any apples that are rotting, because they will cause the other apples to spoil quicker.
There are several types of potatoes, and they are not all the same. Waxy potatoes are good for potato salad or boiled potatoes but aren’t good for making french fries, baked potatoes or mashed potatoes. Russet potatoes are more suited to those applications because of their fluffy texture.
Cooking can be a helpful skill, a fun hobby, or even a profession. There are many ways to cook food, and a great way to learn some of these ways is to learn from someone who is good at cooking. Next time you’re in the kitchen, give these tips a try.