Both salted and unsalted butters are made of same churned milk or cream and the difference is exactly what it says in each’s name, one contains salt and the other doesn’t. One other difference is that salt in butter also acts as a preservative increasing the shelf life of the butter. How is choosing the right type of butter in cooking important? By adding salted butter into a recipe you will lose track of how much salt is actually added into the recipe vs how much was needed.
If you try to sauté all the vegetables together in one go you will increase the chances to overcooking or even burn them. As discussed earlier that overcrowding is a NO NO anyways, so it’s best to sauté your vegetables in stages. Every vegetable has a different sauté time depending on how hard or soft the vegetable is, therefore having info about the vegetable is important before you begin to cook. Vegetables that hard like carrots will take more time to sauté, Medium firm one’s likes celery will take less time than hard ones and soft vegetables will take just a couple of minutes to sauté.
Adding any type of ingredients to a pot or a pan in quantities that it overwhelms the container will result in an unappetizing dish. Filling the cookware to its capacity will lower the cooking temperature inside, make your food stick and the food will be cooked unevenly. You have to give your ingredients space they need while cooking helping the heat to circulate resulting a more flavorful and rich textured dish. To avoid overcrowding the pan, you can either use a larger pot or cook the food in batches.
One by tossing the pasta in cold water and then turning the flame on or the second way by putting pasta into already boiling water. So, which one is the right way to go. You might have heard that it will make no difference on how cold or hot the water is before tossing in the pasta, but the reality is that it does depending on what type of pasta you are using. Pasta is generally cooked in 2 stages. Hydration and Gelatinization. A dry pasta needs to be hydrated first in the pot after which the Gelatinization or the actual cooking starts, whereas fresh pasta is already hydrated which only requires the second stage of gelatinization or the actual cooking of pasta.
We’ve all seen our moms crack the eggs on the rim of the bowl and it seems to work right. Well not really. Cracking eggs on an edge or rim of a bowl can cause more shell shatter and increase the chances of tiny shards of egg shell making way into the dish. Not fun to find bits of egg shells while chewing food. Also if you are cracking the egg right over the bowl, when it shatters, where do you think the shattered pieces of egg shell will land? Bingo. Inside the bowl. Always crack eggs on a flat surface like your countertop. Rap the egg on the countertop on its side in one sharp go (Not too hard) and split it open into the bowl.
We all have been dressing our salad’s with vinegar, making pickles but never thought of this easy cooking tip. This is my cooking tip of the day. Certain types of acids like citric and acetic acid can bring amazing flavors to your dish that you thought was not achievable. So next time you feel that you dish did not turn out the way you wanted, don’t throw it in the trash, instead add a spoon of either lemon juice or vinegar and feel the food brighten up.
Seasoning the food while cooking is art few cooks master. It can brighten up your food and bring it to life or worse make it bland and tasteless. How to do the balancing act between too much and too little seasoning. The recipe you are cooking will have instructions for a precise amount of seasoning, but it’s very important to get the right balance of seasoning to make your food taste the way you want it to. The seasoning amounts in the recipe should be changed and corrected during cooking to get the perfect balance because the ingredients in the recipe will have a huge effect on the flavors.
We all have been in situations where for some reason we forget to defrost the meat that has to added to the recipe. Although it is generally safe to cook meat straight from frozen but it’s not considered as ideal to avoid any chance of bacteria contaminating the food. It’s always better and safer to cook meat after thawing it. Frozen meat cooked straight in the pot can take much longer to cook and more likely not reach the required core temperature during cooking comprising the taste.
Using the right size and type of cookware for your recipe is one of the single most important steps you will do before you begin to cook. Some recipes, in addition to the ingredients and directions, have mentioned the type of cookware needed. This will save you the trouble of deciding what pot, pan or skillet you will need. But if you are unsure then here are a few things to keep in mind while selecting the cookware before cooking a recipe. How deep a pan or pot is will determine how fast liquids will evaporate, so if you plan to cook soup, rice or pasta then a deep pot is the way to go.
What a beginner cook will do is put the pan or skillet on the flame, add oil and when you feel it starts to heat up then you add the food. Never start cooking this way without preheating the pan. Cooking without preheating your pan will result in a sticky pan in addition to having unevenly cooked food, be it, fish, meats or even a simple egg. It will take just a couple of minutes to preheat the pan so never skip this helpful cooking tip.
Storing cut vegetables can come in handy if you are short on time and want your ingredients ready to go when you start to cook. There is one major downside to store pre-cut vegetables in the fridge. They will turn brown and spoil faster losing valuable nutrients during the process. One great way to preserve the pre-cut vegetables is to store them in cold water.
Every year many people end up in the ER with knife related injuries in the kitchen. A dull blade is much more dangerous than you might think because it will require much more pressure to cut and slice increasing the possibility of the knife slipping onto your finger. A sharp knife will also make your cooking much more fun when you can just chop, slice and cut through your meats and vegetables effortlessly. Hone your knives at least alternate days to keep the blade in shape. FYI Honing doesn’t really sharpen the blade but basically keeps the blade aligned.
After you have done slicing, chopping or dicing, scooping them up can be a task and never gets scooped in one go without spillage. We all know that a food scrapper or a bench scrapper is exactly what you need to accomplish this scooping task. Not to worry if you don’t have one handy. You can the dull end of your knife to scrape the chopped ingredients to transport them. Don’t use the sharp blade end to scrape the contents off a cutting board as this can dull the blade or even damage it.
You know that annoying feeling while chopping or dicing, your cutting board keeps slipping messing up your ingredient. Here’s a simple and helpful cooking tip to solve this problem. All you need is a paper towel. Just wet it water, not soaking wet, just enough that it doesn’t move on the counter and place it under the cutting board.
So you have guests or family over for dinner and you got yourself a recipe online that looks delicious and you think everyone is going to love. When you are trying something new that you have not cooked before, it does not matter how good of a chef you are, there is possibility of things going horribly wrong. This is no time for experimentation.
Considering that the cell phones have becomes a constant accessory we take along anywhere and everywhere we go, it can easily turn into breeding grounds for all sorts of harmful bacteria. You don’t want to keep touching your phone while cooking and then touching food, as it can transfer germs into your food and also can cause a fire hazard if it gets close to the heat source. Cooking creates air pollutants from heating the ingredients at high temperatures which have an impact your phone as well. You don’t want oils and other ingredients all over phone. Don’t keep reading the recipe until the last minute. Always read the recipe you are going to prepare well before at least a couple of times to make sure you have everything you need when you actually start cooking.
“mise en place” which is French for “putting in place”. This basically refers to the best practices by a chef’s organization, discipline and good practices in the kitchen. Your kitchen station should be set in such a way that everything that you will need when you begin cooking from tools to ingredients should be an arm’s reach away making it easy to grab things you need easily when you are juggling many things while cooking.
Don’t experiment with the quantities of ingredients and get proper measuring cups and spoons to measure quantities. You don’t want to throw a dish you have botched the quantities of the ingredients trying to experiment. When new to cooking you need to be accurate and precise in the quantities of the ingredients you put in a recipe as this can make or break a meal. The best measuring cups and spoons will improve the accuracy in during cooking and baking food. Dry ingredients to be used in your recipe can be measured and well ahead of time and stored into a Ziploc bag.
Completing your preparation before cooking will save you a lot of time and money as you will be getting the ingredients before you really start cooking.
Start off with a clean set of hands, clean kitchen surfaces and clean equipment and also try keep things tidy as you go along cooking. The ingredients in your recipe that require to be cut, chopped, sliced and diced, should be done early to save you time when you actually start cooking.
Processed food are known to have come in contact with artificial compounds, pesticides and preservatives. It’s always best to use fresh ingredients when cooking to improve the quality of the meal and give a boost to your energy levels and overall health. When you start cooking with only fresh ingredients you will notice a huge difference in how the food will taste. Most of the time meals cooked with processed foods that use preservatives will tend to lose its natural flavor.
