Cooking is one of the toughest skills to learn. Use these tips to improve every meal you make.
If you want to use the meats and vegetables in your refrigerator before a shopping day, try using it in fried rice. Cold, day-old rice works great, but if you desire to use fresh rice be sure to use less water to make the rice drier. First, use a small amount of oil to fry the meat and vegetables. Next, add the rice to the mixture and use soy sauce, ginger and garlic according to your taste preferences.
If you find yourself with leftover homemade sauce, freeze the leftovers in ice cube trays. This makes it easy to prepare a quick meal by reheating the sauce using a saute pan. Nothing to worry about as the sauce will be fine even after it’s been sitting in ice cube trays.
Nonstick cookware will not stay nonstick for long if you use metal utensils to move your food, so make sure that you’re only using rubber, silicone, or any other utensil that will not damage the coating. Harder utensils, like wooden or metal ones, will scratch the coating, which will reduce the quality of your pan and get in the food. This is not only unappetizing, but possibly dangerous.
If you and your kids are getting bored with the same old bag of frozen sweet corn every night, mix it up. Take a page from Thai cuisine by mixing coconut flakes with your cooked corn.
Try to add some broths or other ingredients to recipes that call for liquid in place of what it asks for. Substitute plain water with juice, broth, or the water that you cooked your vegetables in. Some great replacements for milk are sour cream, yogurt and buttermilk. Using liquid substitutions in your cooking can increase nutrition and give a standby dish a new flavor.
When using knives to prepare your food, it is critical that they all have a sharp edge. Knives are actually more dangerous when they get dull, because they get harder to control. You could easily cut yourself if you are trying to cut something up with a dull knife.
If you are making cookies, and it requires the butter and sugar to be creamed together, the butter should be softened, not melted. If you went a bit too far and melted the butter, you can undo this by putting the butter in the freezer or refrigerating the dough once you mix everything up. Your cookies will not spread if you make sure your dough is cool.
When cooking a whole pumpkin, place the pumpkin upright first, then cut directly down its middle to create two halves. Once the pumpkin is cut, place it on a dampened baking sheet with the skin facing up. Sprinkle your baking sheets with a little water, and roast the pumpkin halves for an hour at 350 degrees.
Always drain and blot your ground meat after cooking to remove excess fat. The reason for the blotting is to remove the surface moisture. If you just let the moisture sit, it will affect how the meat cooks. The extra moisture will sizzle away. This will cause the meat to steam, instead of sear like you want it to.
A pie crust should be baked a little bit longer than you would think. Let the crust go beyond light tan to a deeper, golden shade. This indicates the sugar has turned to caramel. Your crust will have a sweeter and crispier flavor.
Now you can see that improving your cooking is fairly easy; all you need to do is give some of these tips a try. So take your newly acquired knowledge and get into your kitchen1 With your growing confidence, you may be able to create unique recipes.