Whether you are cooking for one, or for a large family, you should make some time and learn how to improve your cooking skills. There are not only nutritional benefits to cooking at home, but there are also social and financial ones as well. Before trying to cook a complete eight-course meal for the entire family, learn the basics.
Twice a year, you should buy all new spices. If you keep them longer than this, they may lose their flavor. When you know you’re not going to be using a spice for a long time, give it away to someone in your family or to a friend before it loses its flavor.
Measure out your cooking oil! A simple way to reduce fat when you cook is to measure your oil, rather than pour it straight from the bottle. Doing this lets you be very mindful of just how much oil you are actually using in your cooking.
Stay organized when you are preparing a meal to avoid kitchen catastrophes. Keep your kitchen in order. A cluttered, unorganized cooking area will leave you scrambling to find things while your food gets more and more “well done”. You will end up burning things and throwing them away when simple organization would have allowed you to cook a wonderful dish!
Adding salt to the boiling water when cooking pasta will help flavor it while it cooks. This will help season the pasta as it cooks. Salting pasta after cooking will not be as effective in enhancing the flavor.
In many cases, you can mistakenly put too much salt into your recipe before you taste it, but this is not a lost cause. Throw some cut up potatoes into what it is that you are making, and let them cook for approximately 15 minutes. The potatoes will take in 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!.
For stir-fry dishes, meat should be sliced very thinly and on the bias. This may take some time and effort. Take the cut of meat out when it is a bit firm but has not become frozen and begin to slice it across the grain diagonally.
Before you start cooking, quickly inventory and gather all required ingredients, so as to to prevent unnecessary stress. This way, you won’t ever be in a situation where you need something quick but don’t have it ready. Not only does prepping your ingredients save time, it also saves significant stress throughout the cooking process.
To reduce fat and calories in mashed potatoes without sacrificing texture or taste, replace some of your potatoes with an equal amount of cauliflower. Cauliflower’s bland taste makes it easier for it to blend with the potatoes, so that you can’t taste it, and it picks up other ingredients. Cauliflower has the same texture and color as potatoes, offering you a perfect way to add another vegetable to your dish while cutting calories.
Try cooking with saffron if you are all about trying new spices. Saffron has a distinctive, slightly bitter taste that you can’t get from any other spice. A herb that is centuries old, but still incredibly celebrated, is saffron. It is incredibly expensive due to its popularity.
Cooking your own meals allows you to control the ingredients you and your family consume. Regardless of your favorite type of food, knowing how to cook it can make your life easier and more enjoyable. Fast food may be convenient on occasion, but it cannot compare to a meal prepared at home with love.