The culinary arts use hundreds of techniques, recipes and ingredients to produce an infinite number of delicious meals and dishes. Some are easy to pick up, while others require study and practice. These tips can help even true beginners to turn out tasty meals.
Slice your meat very thinly for stir-fry dishes. This may take some time and effort. Take the meat out of the freezer once it gets firm, place a sharp knife at an oblique angle and start slicing.
Do you often throw away moldy fruits and feel bad about it? Do not cut the rotten part and eat the rest. No, it’s not okay to remove the moldy parts. No healthy method of saving any fruit that is partly rotted exists. The mold may have grown deeper than can be seen, and eating it may make you quite ill.
Tomatoes can be easily dried. Prepare by cutting ripe tomatoes into half-inch-thick slices or slicing Roma tomatoes in half down their long axis. Place them cut-side up on a rack that you use for cooling, and add a little salt. Place the cooling rack on a cookie sheet and dry in a 190 degree oven for up to 10 hours. Store in plastic bags in the freezer. You can pack dried tomatoes in a jar stuffed with organic olive oil and your favorite freshly cut herbs. Use them within two weeks of refrigerating.
It is extremely important that your knives are always sharp. Dull knives don’t get the job done, but in addition, are actually dangerous. You’re less likely to cut yourself chopping up a vegetable with the clean, fast strokes of a sharp knife, than when you are forcing and wiggling a dull knife.
When serving salad to guests, always offer the dressing on the side rather than pouring it directly on the salad. Some people like to put more salad dressing on their salads than other people do; let your guests put their own salad dressing on. Also, try and include different types of dressings.
When you’re trying to cook with an ingredient that’s new to you, learn a little about it first. A little research can show you a whole new world of different foods. You can have much more fun when cooking if you do some prep work and research ahead of time.
Do not use any kind of wine in your cooking that you haven’t tasted on your own. If you use a kind of wine you’ve never tasted before, you may mess up the flavor of the dish you’re working on. There are wines available that are used just for cooking purposes.
Simplify measurement of sticky foods with cooking oil! Dip the measuring spoon in cooking oil and the food will slide off your spoon more easily. This method works well for peanut butter as well as honey.
It is quite easy to over-salt a recipe because you haven’t tasted it, but don’t worry! You can chop up some raw potatoes, and insert them into the sauce, letting them simmer in it for approximately fifteen minutes. Those potatoes will absorb all the extra salt. If the base of your dish is tomatoes, then just add more to offset the saltiness. Allow then to cook till tender and you should be good to go!.
One of the best cooking tips you can find is to use your imagination. You do not have to use a recipe word for word, add a few steps of your own. With a little resourcefulness in adding extra ingredients, reducing or altering the amount of spices, or substituting one type of meat or vegetable for another, you can often create a meal that tastes far superior to the original. That is the mark of a real chef!
Making a wonderful meal need not be a tangled web of recipes and complicated techniques. By keeping it simple, you can create healthy and quick meals that taste really good. Try these tips for improving your understanding of cooking techniques and preparing fantastic meals!