While cooking food guarantees sustenance, the culinary arts offer something far more gratifying. With the right tools and information anyone can produce wonderful meals. This article will address a few ways that you can improve your cooking.
For a delicious take on pie crusts, bake them for longer than the recipe calls for. Go past the usual pale tan color and take them to a caramel gold. The crust changes to the caramel color only after the sugar has had time to caramelize. This will give the crust the sweet flavor you want.
There’s an easy way to save thin sauces. Mix one tablespoon of starch from corn and two tablespoons of water together in a bowl. While stirring, introduce the liquid into your sauce while it is simmering. Be sure to slowly add the starch solution to your sauce until you achieve the desired thickness.
When preparing meals at home, you must use sharp knives for best results. Blunt knives are frustrating to use and they can also be very hazardous. If you have to work on forcing a dull knife to go through something, you’re much more likely to accidentally cut yourself in the process than with the one quick, clean cut of a sharpened knife.
There are many dishes you can make with apples, especially in cold-weather months. But if stored improperly, well, one bad apple does spoil the bushel. Place apples in plastic bags and keep them in a cool place. Make sure you check them periodically, however, because even one spoiled apple can cause the others in the bag to rot very rapidly.
Raw potatoes should rest in chilly water for approximately 30 minutes. This will help them to be crispy and delicious. Letting sliced potatoes soak up additional cold fluids reinforces the fibers in the vegetable, so that when you deep fry them, they can better withstand the heat without breaking down completely.
Do you cook often with fresh basil? Store the basil in a jar. The stems will then need to be covered with water. This will help to keep it from going bad for quite a few days. You can even grow new basil plants if you feel like changing the water every day or so. The stems will sprout roots; that’s the wonder of plant life. You can encourage the basil’s growth even further by trimming it back from time to time, keeping it fresh and healthy even longer.
Freeze sauces by pouring leftovers into ice cube trays. You will then have it readily available for when you need to make a quick and easy meal. All that needs to be done is to warm it up in a pan. Have no fear, for the sauce will taste great even after being frozen in the trays!
There is so much more to cooking than just plating food and presenting it to people for consumption. It is a fun activity, and can be delicious as well. Occasionally, things may not turn out the way you had hoped, but hopefully this article will limit the frequency of those occurrences. Use these guidelines in your kitchen in order to guarantee yourself culinary success.