Everyone loves the idea of sitting down to a delicious home-cooked meal, but with today's busy schedules, it can be harder than ever to find the time to put one together. Fortunately, help is out there. The tested advice in this article will help you put together healthy meals for your family in a surprisingly, short time.
If you've forgotten to soak your beans over night, quick soak them instead. Just put the beans in a very large pot and cover with water. Bring this to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about two hours. This method is just as effective as an over night soak and can save you time.
It is important to know that just because a recipe does not call for a certain spice does not mean you cannot add it. For instance, you may feel that garlic would make the dish taste better, which may be true. So do not be scared, go ahead and add it.
When making homemade salad dressings it is a good idea to use extra-virgin olive oil. It has a fruity flavor that really adds to a salad. Extra-virgin olive oil can be somewhat expensive so it is important to buy it when it is on sale or with a coupon to make it more affordable.
If you are stuck trying to figure out what to cook for dinner during the week, consider building your meals around themes. "Mexican Monday" could mean burritos or a nice taco salad. How about "Tuscan Tuesday" featuring spaghetti and meatballs or maybe meatball subs? And "Fish Friday" offers lots of options for shrimp, salmon or even tuna. Bring the whole family into the fun by letting the kids pick a theme and help plan the meal that day.
When unpacking your groceries, place any unripened fruits in perforated bags. As they ripen, they will create ethylene gas. Putting them in a perforated bag will allow circulation of the air and keep the gas retained, thus allowing the fruit to keep it's delicious taste.
Make sure you season your meat and fish evenly. Sprinkle your salt and pepper over the food as though it is snowing. This will make it so you avoid clumping and avoid having parts of the meat without any seasoning. This will make for a tastier meal.
When cooking burgers, no matter what the type of burger, it is important to only flip it one time in order to retain all of the juices. If you don't do this your burger will most likely end up dry and will resemble a hockey puck! Don't let that happen to your burgers.
Cauliflower is white when you first place it in water, but it has a tendency to sometimes turn a grayish or yellowish color. To prevent that from happening and keeping your cauliflower perfectly white you should try adding a little bit of milk to the water while it is cooking.
When shopping for meat, always get the freshest cuts available. If you are shopping for meat at the butcher shop the meat is being fresh cut or ground. However, when shopping at the grocery store try to find out when the store typically cuts meat for the day and try to arrive near that time. Otherwise ask at the meat counter for a fresh cut or grind if you do not know the time of the last cut.
For an improvement to your pasta sauce, save some of the water used to cook the pasta. Use around a quarter cup and put it aside for your sauce. Put in some of the water when you mix the pasta and the sauce. Residual starch in the water adds volume and creaminess to the sauce of your choice.
Make homemade vinaigrette dressings instead of purchasing them from the store. Your homemade dressing not only tastes better, but it uses fewer ingredients and is often healthier. You can easily whip these up by just dumping all the ingredients into a sealed contained and shaking it up vigorously, and voila! You have delicious tasting dressing for marinades and salads.
Tenderize meat before cooking it. Especially tough portions of meat are best tenderized or braised, due to the stringy consistency of the meat. Identifying the correct cut of meat and matching it with the correct method of cooking can be very important, as you may end up with an extremely stringy "roast" steak.
When you are adding food to a slow cooker make sure that you add tender vegetables like mushrooms, peas, fish, and squash during the final half hour. This is important because adding them too early will cause them to disappear in to the dish. You will be able to taste them, but you might not be able to see them.
You should use two timers, one on a watch and one on the oven. By having a watch set up to beep when food is done, you do not have to worry about under or overcooking your foods.
To revive a milk-based sauce or side dish that has sat too long and lost moisture, simply add a little milk. Adding milk can make finished mashed potatoes fluffy and smooth again and can also make a pasta sauce lighter and less like a gravy without affecting the final flavor.
If you love to cook but have minimal space for a library of cookbooks in your kitchen, consider purchasing a small laptop or netbook exclusively for kitchen use. You can keep your own recipes and notes on the computer, pull up thousands of recipes online, and listen to your favorite radio stations or TV shows as you cook.
As you've seen, cooking a delicious meal for your family doesn't have to mean spending hours slaving away in the kitchen. There are any number of recipes you can use to whip together a great meal in a short time. Just remember what you've learned from this article and soon your family will be enjoying the fruits of your labors.
Orignal From: Cooking Can Be Easy! Try These Ideas!
No comments:
Post a Comment