Are you being driven nuts by cooking for your own family? Cooking is not an activity that should make you feel hopeless! In this article, you’ll find a collection of great tips that will help take the stress out of making meals. After you try these tips, you will be wishing you knew about them a long time ago!
Nearly any recipe benefits from using fresh ingredients rather than the frozen or dried version. Use fresh ingredients as often as you can; they offer more flavor and tend to be less expensive as well.
Try ketchup as a batter ingredient in fried foods. You can dip chicken into ketchup prior to dipping it into breadcrumbs. This will enhance the moisture and flavor of your chicken. The ketchup makes your fried foods tangier, which will make your friends and family wonder how you achieved such a flavor infusion.
Does it upset you to discard fruit that is moldy? Have you ever thought to just remove the moldy section by cutting it out? Unfortunately, there’s no safe way to save a piece of fruit that is partially rotting. The mold and spoilage that you can see is only part of the problem with marginal-looking fruit; even the parts that appear pristine can be unsafe to eat.
Wooden skewers should be soaked in water for a minimimum of thirty minutes before they are used. That way, you won’t be able to burn them as easily. Keep food from falling off of your skewers by using two parallel skewers instead of a single one.
When preparing a pasta dish, you should add salt to the boiling water before adding the noodles. Adding salt at this stage will ensure that the pasta absorbs it completely. Salting pasta after cooking is often unsuccessful because the pasta will not absorb the salt then, it will only sit on top of the noodles.
While it’s natural to want to impress guests with a fancy meal, stay away from new recipes when you will be serving someone important. Whether it’s a loved one, in-laws or a boss, you still want to give off a good impression with your cooking. Guarantee success by preparing something you could cook with your eyes closed.
If you are preparing dried beans, avoid adding garlic or salt until they have softened. This is especially important if the dried beans you are using are old. When you add salt or garlic before beans have softened, it can prevent them from cooking the rest of the way properly. Add the seasonings once your beans have cooked some of the way, so they will turn out like you are planning.
Trussing means to tie a string around the turkey’s wings and legs, pulling them closer together. Trussing will cook your bird more evenly when you tie the legs and wings to the bird closely. If the legs and wings aren’t tied together, the tips could burn, cooking much more quickly than the main part of the turkey.
There is a secret to thicken up your weak sauce. Mix one tablespoon of starch from corn and two tablespoons of water together in a bowl. Thicken your sauce by stirring in this solution. When adding, do so gradually and continue to stir so as to avoid making your sauce too thick.
Always check to see if your utensils are clean if you are about to cook. If there is any food left on the dish after you wash it, it could contaminate the next dish you use it in. There is a possibility this may introduce bacteria into the food.
Cooking for your family can seem like a little too much sometimes. There are many things that you may do to simplify your cooking process. When you go into the kitchen, just feel relaxed.