Cooking Tips - 5 Ways to Create Magic in the Kitchen
Cooking Secret No.1 - Buy Top Quality Ingredients
Leading chef’s only use the freshest and best tasting food they can find. Even the best chefs in the world would have difficulty making food taste good from inferior products. However, this does not mean everything has to be made from scratch.
When buying pre-prepared goods always go for quality and freshness. If cost is an issue try smaller portions. It is better for your waistline and your health to have small servings of good quality food rather than a large serving of an inferior product.
A helpful tip when using frozen or canned goods is to use them up as soon as possible. Don’t wait until they are near the end of their shelf life, as there is already deterioration in quality by then.
Cooking Secret No.2 - Keep it Simple
Some of the best tasting meals in the world are the simplest. I find that they have fewer ingredients but just compliment each other superbly.
Adding too many ingredients to a dish can create a canceling of flavors. Like when making pasta sauce, where the onion in the dish overrides the garlic flavor. I prefer not to add onion to my pasta sauces so the full flavor of the garlic can be brought out.
The opposite is the case when making French Onion Soup. For a fuller bodied onion flavor, don’t add garlic.
Cooking Secret No.3 - Use Complimentary Foods
A secret to cooking well lies in combining complimentary foods, where one ingredient actually enhances the flavor of the other. One of my favorite combinations is tomato and basil. Whether you’re making a pasta sauce or just putting tomato on a pizza nothing compliments it better than the herb basil.
Another great mix is oats, brown sugar and cinnamon. Whether I’ve used this complimentary combination for an apple crumble topping or just for hot oatmeal it creates an unbeatable flavor
You can come up with more of your own complimentary food groups simply by taking note of what foods taste great together!
Cooking Secret No.4 - Use only the Best Equipment
Good equipment makes your work in the kitchen a breeze. Ask any craftsman and he will tell you the value of good tools. Go for quality, ease of use and buy the best that you can afford. If there were only one thing I would recommend investing in, it would be to get a good knife set and keeping them sharp.
Good tools not only make your life easier in the kitchen but can also improve the final result, like in the case of my stainless steel cooking pots. Everything I cook in them comes out better than average simply because the cooking utensils are better than average.
Cooking Secret No.5 - Collect Good Recipes
Good recipes can come from many sources other than a cookbook or finding them online. Most of my favorite ones have actually come from family and friends. The benefit of obtaining recipes this way is that I have usually been able to taste them for myself beforehand. Live cooking demonstrations sometimes offer free samples so that you can test to see if the recipe suits your taste.
Televised cooking shows and magazines are another way to collect good recipes. I keep organized by putting any loose-leaf recipes I collect in a plastic leaflet file folder.
I’m glad to have been able to share my easy to follow secrets for creating cooking magic. Remember that being selective and keeping it simple are the two main ingredients to creating magic in the kitchen.
Happy Cooking!
If you would like to print out a free copy of Jeannette’s favorite recipes, go to http://cookingmagic.blogspot.com/ Then click on “My Favorite Recipes” on the right hand side of the page.
Tags: cooking, cooking recipes, cooking tips, food, food recipes, free recipes, home cooking, recipesBraised Fish in Soy Sauce (Hong Shao Yu)
Braised fish in soy sauce is the basic craft of Chinese dish. The distinguishing characteristics are it looks red and glossy, rich in smell and thick in gravy. Both sides of the fish slice must be fried to become golden yellow, a thin crispy layer of skin should be left on the top before you take it out of the hot oil pot. This is the key step of forming the gloss, or you may have a dish that looks gloomy and gets torn to pieces during cooking process.
Ingredients:
a). For step 1:
- 4 ~ 5 slices grass carp (or other fish you prefer)
- 1 tablespoon cooking wine
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
b). For step 2:
- 5 slices of ginger
- 1 green onion (scallion). Chop into few pieces.
- 3 tablespoons oil
c). For step 3:
- 4 star anise
- A piece of cinnamon
- 4 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 2 cups of water
d). For step 4:
- 2 tablespoons cooking wine
- dash of monosodium glutamate
Method:
- Marinate fish in wine and soy sauce for over 2 hours for best result.
- Heat oil to 80%. Add chopped green onion and ginger. Add fish and fry till golden. Take out fish.
- Add c) to pot, boil it. Then simmer till thick. Pick out star anises. Add a big spoonful of ketchup and boil up.
- Put fish back to gravy from step 3. Add wine. Simmer till it becomes thick.
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Nutritional information:
Yield: 4 servings
Each serving provides:
Calories: 277.5
Protein: 20.1 g
Here is a photo:
http://www.news-blogs.com/_images/free_articles/braised_fish.jpg
Note: You may freely republish this recipe as long as author bio and active hyperlinks are kept intact. Thank you.
Jacklyn Chen - Webmaster of news-blogs.com, satellite info, and emobile-news.com. She is a full time mom who works very hard to make living with multiple web sites. For more information and articles about fine living, visit fine-living.news-blogs.com.
Tags: chinese recipe, chinese recipes, fish recipe, fish recipes, food, food recipes, recipe, recipesWhere To Find Ethnic Food Recipes
Most home cooks at some time or another find themselves getting interested in ethnic cuisine. The impetus might come from their heritage maybe grandma was a German immigrant or grandpa came from Vietnam. Or it could just be simple cook’s curiosity. All of us get tired of cooking the same old recipes over and over, and decide to move beyond, frequently into ethnic food recipes.
However, and this is especially important if you don’t already know anything about the particular cuisine you’re after, it can be hard to figure out if the recipes you’re cooking are authentic, or are even worth trying. You might pick an Asian recipe that sends you out hunting exotic ingredients for three days only to find that either the recipe was written poorly or the flavor is something you just can’t stomach.
Unless you want to sink a lot of money into cookbooks, your best source of recipe information is going to be the Internet. However, searching for Internet recipes can be fraught with peril. How do you know this recipe will work? Do you have any clue what it tastes like? Do you maybe have a picture of what the finished dish should look like?
This is where sites that allow user reviews of recipes are invaluable. We foodies are a verbose bunch, forever ready to share good recipes and tips and warn others away from the bad ones. On sites such as Allrecipes or Cooks.com, you’ll find ethnic food recipes with hundreds of reviews from users. Often, these reviews will include possible ingredient substitutions, problems inherent in the preparation and possible solutions and all sorts of other great information. It’s very similar to having a kitchen full of cooks ready to teach and advise you at all times.
While you might not want to trust just one or two reviews, you can feel fairly safe when you see certain ethnic food recipes have been cooked successfully by dozens of people. Pick the recipe, read the comments and forge ahead!
Andrew Krause is a Chef and Pastry Chef for over 30 years, at persent I own a Gourmet Bakery called The Cheese Confectioner.You can visit my site at http://www.andies.cashhosters2.com
NOTE: You are welcome to reprint this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the about the author info at the end).
Tag: food recipes