Cooking

Cooking Tips Will End Your Recipe Guessing

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Cooking is not made easy when youre still guessing. In fact, guessing at cooking increases the stress because guessing makes you unsure of the results to come. Im going to give you a little cooking help by offering some tips on how to end your guessing.

One of the reasons that you guess is because its hard to believe something until you can actually see it. But I want to help you to wrap your head around the idea that you have to believe it first and then youll see it.

Quantifying your portion sizes, temperature and testing are great ways to allow you to stop guessing. Lets go ahead and look at how that might work.

4 Ways to quantify your cooking and eliminate guessing:

Cooking Tip #1: Temperature

Temperature is important in cooking. Some foods will make you sick if you dont cook them at the right temperature. Other foods will be utterly destroyed if you cook them much above “medium heat”.

Use water as an indicator of temperature. Water evaporates at 212 degrees F, so if you are using a saute pan, if you sprinkle a little water in the pan and it evaporates, you know that the pan is at least at the boiling point of water. The quicker the water evaporates, the hotter your pan is. This works on the grill as well.

You can also test a small piece of your food to test for temperature. For example, maybe youre going to fry some chicken in oil on the stove, but you cant tell if the oil is hot enough or not. Dont ruin a whole breast by putting it into oil thats not hot enough. Instead, take a small piece of the chicken and drop it in the pan. Youll know right away whether the oil is hot enough or not to cook your food.

Cooking Tip #2: Test a Small Quantity

Sometimes, you just need to test a small quantity of something before cooking the whole thing. This is especially helpful in roasting. I can tell you that when I had my catering business, sometimes we would have to make hundreds or thousands of crab cakes in one big batch. Well, we would take one crab cake, cook it and test it. This would allow us to make adjustments on the rest of the batch and make a superior product! Cooking or roasting a small piece of something is a great way to see if your plan is going to work without sacrificing all of your ingredients during one of your guessing adventures.

Cooking Tip #3: Portion Size

Get a digital scale and begin to understand your raw portions sizes. Let me tell you a story about how I discovered the importance of this tip.

When I used to make spaghetti for myself and my wife, I would cook a whole pound of spaghetti, basically one whole box for the two of us. When we sat down to eat, because so much spaghetti was available, we ate more than we should. After finishing our meal, there was always spaghetti left over, we would put the leftover spaghetti in the refrigerator and a few days later throw it out because we wouldnt eat it.

With my digital scale, I started by weighing 8 ounces of dry pasta for the two of us. I cooked the 8 ounces and still had some leftover, so I adjusted it down until I knew EXACTLY how much dry pasta to cook for the two of us5.3 ounces is our perfect amount. Knowing this finally made cooking pasta easy, we dont overeat and we dont have leftovers.

How To Cook Chicken Legs on the Grill

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Grilled chicken legs are not only a delicious summer meal, but they are also economical as legs are one of the cheapest parts of the chicken. Just because they are cheap, does not mean they have to lack in flavor. Actually, the dark meat of poultry has more flavor as it contains more fat.

One of the biggest problems grilling enthusiasts face however is with cooking times and temperatures. One of the most frequently asked questions is: how long do you grill chicken legs?

It really isn’t possible to give an exact answer to this question as it really depends on the type of grill you are using, the grilling method and how big the chicken legs are.

It really is an excellent idea to invest in a good quality cooking thermometer. I personally own a voice alert electronic thermometer. It really is a fantastic little cooking gadget and I would be lost without it. It is extremely accurate and eliminates all guessing, and guessing is not an option when cooking meat, especially chicken.

CHICKEN GRILLING METHODS

Boil the Chicken Legs First

The goal with this method is to cook the meat all the way through before it goes on the grill. This greatly reduces the risk of any food born illnesses and also cuts down the grilling time significantly. The downside to this method is a serious lack of flavor. Since you will be cooking the meat on the grill for a much shorter period of time, the meat will not have a chance to pick up that delicious grilled flavor.

Marinate Then Grill

Marinating your chicken legs first is always a good idea. Not only does it give your food a fantastic flavor, but it also keeps the meat moist during the cooking process. For the best results, marinate the chicken over night. Below is an excellent marinade that I use often and it is quite versatile. It works well with seafood like shrimp and scallops as well.

Citrus Herb Marinade

Ingredients:

4 Chicken Legs

1/4 Cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 1/2 Tablespoons of Fresh Lemon Juice

1 1/2 Tablespoons Fresh Orange Juice

1/3 Cup of Freshly Chopped Parsley

1/3 Cup Freshly Chopped Cilantro

2 Cloves of Garlic Minced

1 Teaspoon of Salt

1/4 Teaspoon of Freshly Cracked Black Pepper

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except the chicken legs. Add chicken to the bowl with the marinade and toss to coat. Refrigerate for several hours, over night if possible.

LETS GET GRILLING

I have found that the best method for cooking chicken legs on the grill is to first sear the meat and then finish the cooking process over indirect heat. The result is a nice moist chicken leg with a delightfully crispy skin.

Step 1: Remove chicken from marinade and rinse. This is to remove any ingredients from the marinade that are stuck to the chicken. If left on, this can burn. Coat the chicken with some oil to prevent it from sticking to the grill.

Nutrients saved with pressure cooking

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A lot has improved in the last 20 years with the modern day pressure cooker. They’re most definitely safer than Grammies pressure cooker, and theyre built with style. Even though the pressure cooker was first built around 300 years ago, it’s become the leading cooking method for today. When food is cooked with pressure, it’s cooked the healthiest way possible. Food comes out tastier and faster than any conventional method. Meats come out tender and juicy, and vegetables are colorful and their flavors are intensified. Pressure cooking makes it easy for even the busiest cooks to prepare meals. With a 70% reduction in cooking times, your time spent slaving over the stove-top can be spent on more important things. Use your pressure cooker to make complete casserole style meals, or cook several foods at the same time and have a home cooked dinner served in minutes.

Nutrients

How meals are cooked can have a huge impact on their nutrient content. Cooking your food in an open pot of boiling water is the most effective way to destroy the vitamins. To conserve the most nutrients feasible, many experts recommend that you use as little water as possible. You should also cook your food as rapidly as you can because many vitamins are sensitive to water, heat and air exposure. Water used for cooking can dissolve and wash away water soluble vitamins, while the high temperature deteriorates them. Many vitamins including “B” and “C” are water soluble and the simple act of washing them takes away some of the vitamins. Fat soluble vitamins such as “E” and “D” are stored and metabolized with the fat in our bodies. Fat Soluble vitamins are not as sensitive as water soluble vitamins and are not cooked away so easily.

It is crucial to select the best cooking method that optimizes and keeps the nutrients in food. In a study published by Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, experts looked at the effects of different means of cooking broccoli. Up to 97 percent of specific antioxidant compounds were ruined by microwaving, while steaming the broccoli caused only 11 percent loss. Therefore, any cooking that lessens the time, temperature, and water will help to retain nutrients. Pressure cooking under steam is one of the best methods because it minimizes time and calls for little water.

The super-heated steam which is created by high temperatures within a pressure cooker, makes the food cook swiftly, and intensifies the natural flavors. This enables cooks to use less salt, sugar, and use less costly herbs and seasonings and also get a far better taste. Pressure cooking creates an airless atmosphere that holds more nutrients than other cooking methods. When food is cooked with less liquid, more vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients are preserved and not boiled away during cooking. The procedure of cooking in a steam environment is virtually a fat-free method of cooking as well.

As a rule, accelerated cooking approaches are much better for preserving nutrients than slower methods. Any type of cooking alters food in some way, and more nutrients are wasted when food is subjected to heat, light, moisture and air. The order in which nutrients are typically preserved from quickest to slowest is: Pressure Cooking, Microwaving, Steaming, Stir-frying, Poaching, Roasting, Baking and Broiling.

There are a few tips you can utilize to maintain nutrients. Leaving vegetables in larger portions will minimize the surface area of food. That way fewer vitamins are damaged when they are subjected to air. Always cover your pot to hold in steam and heat. This will also assist in decreasing your cooking times. Leftover cooking water can be used for: sauces, stews, soups or vegetable juice.

It’s not tough to see why a lot of people are beginning to catch on to pressure cooking. They’re efficient, save electricity, lock in nutrients, safe to use, designed to last and highly flexible.

Bestsellers In Fine Wine And Cooking

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Lisa Lillien writes Hungry Girl 300 Under 300: 300 Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner Dishes Under 300 Calories, intended to keep you healthy but also savoring some tasty dishes. Including some recipes for all the major meals, as well as some great tips for starters and sides, you can find a recipe that will be suitable to your taste buds fast. You can find some recipes like PB and J Oatmeal, Creamy Crab Cakes Benedict, Classic Cheese steak Salad, Dreamy Butternut Chicken Foil Pack, Burger-ific Mushroom Melt, some Big Apple Butternut Squash Soup, as well as some bacon wrapped hot dogs that will have your mouth watering in no time. Stay fit and healthy with these recipes, as they are not only easy on the taste buds but also easy on the diet, too, as they are all under 300 calories.

Gabrielle Hamilton write Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. This story of a chef tells the story of a budding chef who always dreamed of cooking but worked at a catering company without any flavor, was often starving, cooked at a summer camp, and was often fed by strangers, till she learned the importance of fear and hunger and the importance of sharing food with others. A chef and owner now of her own restaurant, as well as a trained writer, this story tells of the rise of a chef from harsh circumstances and her unique perspective on the importance of sharing food and recipes to others.

Neal Barnard writes 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart, a book written by a doctor meant to help with lifestyle choices, and helps teach about the benefits of a vegan diet, and the ways in which fatty animal based products can be replaced with things like vegetables and legumes and other things that can sustain a person and give them a properly balanced diet, as well. Also, the author insists upon strategies for quick results and allows you to have quick weight loss without depriving yourself.

The Editors at America’s Test Kitchen present Slow Cooker Revolution, a book that contains 200 recipes, that allow you to throw things into the slow cooker and then intensify the flavor of it by adding different ingredients, such as various spices and garlic. The book even hones in on details, such as microwaving various spices to really get the most out of the flavor and gives little tips that really improve a meal by enhancing the flavors of the dish and making things even richer and better than ever.

Gary Taubes writes Why We Get Fat and What to Do About it, a book about staying fit and questioning the reasons and factors that have led to American obesity. He also examines how various diets have failed to reduce this high level and proposes some solutions that are meant to help people lose weight, stay fit, try to lower their cholesterol and do so in a way that will keep people healthy and fit for a long time. That way, you can stay fit and stay healthy with a great book of tips.

Cast Iron Cookware – The Only Way to Cook

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When a gourmet chef steps into the kitchen to create a masterpiece, there are several elements that come into play to contribute to his ultimate work of art. One of those elements is the equipment he uses and specifically the cookware utilized to prepare his dishes. However, when one thinks of a gourmet chef, cast iron cookware does not come to mind. There is one thing that many food connoisseurs don’t realize: many of the fine dishes they have eaten have been prepared using cast iron pots and pans.

It has been used in cooking for hundreds of years. You can probably recall your grandparents using cast iron frying pans and skillets. Its ability to withstand extreme cooking temperatures makes it a fantastic choice for searing or frying, and its excellent heat distribution and retention makes it perfect for cooking stews and other dishes that require a slow, long cooking process. There are a number of different pieces of cast iron cookware, each serving a special purpose and making cooking a special experience. Types of pots and pans include Dutch ovens, frying pans, deep fryers, woks, flat top grill’s, griddles, and jambalaya plots. Each and every one of these pieces of cookware can find itself in the most elaborate of restaurants, as well as a campsite deep in the Rocky Mountains. But regardless of where it is used, it always gets the job done.

As you begin your quest with this type of cookware, keep in mind that preserving your cookware is very simple but it does require a bit more maintenance than other types of cookware. Because ordinary cookware cleaning techniques require scouring and washing, they are not recommended for a good piece of cast iron cookware. A dishwasher or scouring pad can remove the seasoning on a griddle or Dutch oven. As such, it should not be cleaned like most other cookware. Many who use cast-iron cookware suggest never cleaning cast-iron pans at all, but simply wiping them out after use or washing them with hot water and a stiff brush. Then again, other cast-iron aficionados advocate washing with mild soap and water, and then season the pan by coating it with a thin layer of fat or oil. There’s even a third approach that calls for scrubbing with coarse salt and a paper towel or clean rag. Any of these approaches will work fine as long as your cookware remains well seasoned, coated by oil or fat, and stored in a dry place.

Having and using cast iron cookware will benefit your family for generations to come. Your children and grandchildren will have an opportunity to go down to the creek and enjoy a good fish fry. At home, you most certainly will be able to wake up and enjoy the scent of cooking bacon and brewing coffee. Your life will never be the same once you invest in cast iron cookware.