It’s that time of the year again, and you are probably anticipating a big get-together with your friends and family. Whether you are hosting it at your home or going to a friend or relative, you are most likely trying to work out what you could contribute to the festivities.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, you could make some ornate cakes, desserts, salads, or even contribute the roast. But if you are a working mom, you are probably frantically busy, and with the kids home on vacation you have even less time on your hands to stand for hours in the kitchen, cutting, chopping, baking, and mixing. Therefore you need to find something that tastes great but is easy to make and involves little preparation.
The ideal solution to your problem is to make some cupcakes for Christmas. Cupcakes are extremely simple. All you need is to find an easy one-bowl recipe for making the batter, pour this into the little paper holders, and then put these into the oven. It’s as easy as one-two-three! But that is not the end of the story. When you take your little creations out of the oven, you can put a pretty frosting on the top – maybe with some hundreds and thousands or chocolate chips, and you will have made a delicious contribution to your family’s celebration.
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If you are faced with the prospect of cutting up a whole chicken and this is something you’ve never done before, you could be completely overwhelmed. However, the truth is, cutting a whole chicken is not as difficult as you might think. The key is to have a really sharp knife! Whole chicken is much cheaper than buying one already cut up, so if you’re on a tight kitchen budget, this can really help save you some money.
Begin by washing your hands with soap and water. Remove the giblets and the neck from inside the chicken. The giblets are the liver, heart, and gizzard. Some people like to eat these pieces too, but many throw them away. You’ll find them wrapped up in paper inside the check body and the neck cavity.
Rinse the chicken inside and out under cold water. Place the chicken breast-side up on your cutting board. The first thing you will do is remove the wings. Keep the knife close to the chicken body and it’s easier if you hold the tip of the wing away from the chicken.
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How to choose quality food is one of a cook’s most important lessons. The quality of the ingredients that go into a meal determine its taste, texture, aroma and healthfulness. This is especially true of choosing the correct cut of meal for any dish.
Most industrialized countries today have a federal department responsible for inspecting the quality of meat. For example, in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspects meat for contamination by germs or chemicals. Only meat that passes this inspection can be sold. Since some bacteria can still be present, raw meat also comes with safe handling instructions on the labels.
Beyond its wholesomeness, choosing the right cut of meat for a particular dish involves learning how meat is graded, where it comes from on the animal, and how it should be cooked. The following guidelines refer primarily to beef, although some guides also could apply to pork, goat or game meat. Poultry and fish have different standards.
First, check the quality grades; meat inspectors often assign the grade of “prime” to the best quality meat. Prime grade meat has the biggest mixture of lean and fat, or marbling. This ensures that the meat will tenderize as it cooks, making prime cuts best for dry-heat methods such as roasting, grilling or broiling. Some lesser grades of steaks and roasts can also cook well in dry-heat methods. However, meat that is less juicy should be marinated or braised (cooked in a covered pan with a small amount of liquid) to give it flavor and tenderness.
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Like its neighbor to the west, Mexico, the island of Cuba has been a land where many cultures have collided with one another. The distinctive culinary traditions of Cuba are the delicious result of this interaction.
Spanish explorers strongly influenced on Cuban cuisine, as they did for many countries in the Caribbean, Central America and South America. Cuba’s food history also has been affected by African tastes. The Spanish were influenced by the Moors, African Muslims who ruled parts of Spain for several hundred years, while African slaves who served as cooks for Cuban gentry added their own touches to native cooking. French colonists who fled slave uprisings in Haiti also added their own culinary arts to Cuban dishes.
Using both indigenous foods and those introduced by conquerors like the Spanish and immigrants like the French, Cuban cuisine evolved into a food form with its own distinct flavor identity and cooking style. In particular, Cuban cooking resembles the “country” or peasant styles of many other cultures, in which cooking is taught by the senses and by oral tradition. New cooks learn to cook from veterans and are taught to prepare food in time-honored ways that still allow self-expression and innovation.
In other words, it’s almost impossible to write down a recipe for any authentic Cuban dish, because hardly anyone cooks by measurements. A “pinch” of this, a “dash” of that, a deep whiff to gauge the aroma and lots of tasting are the elements of Cuban cooking. This tradition has resulted in simple yet filling dishes that can be left to simmer on a stove for hours while the work is done. Fussy sauces that take a lot of attention to detail are non-existent. What’s more, deep-frying is almost unheard-of in Cuban cuisine.
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Indian food has become incredibly popular all around the world in the past two decades. In fact, a few years back a British survey found that Britons had actually become addicted to spicy foods as a result of eating so much curry and vindaloo!
Despite its reputation for complexity, Indian food can be surprisingly easy to make at home by learning just a few simple techniques. For example, a good first step is to assemble an Indian spice rack containing turmeric, curry, ginger, cardamom, red chili powder, coriander, carom seeds, cloves and nutmeg. If unsure about how to use these spices individually, another option is to buy some commercially prepared garam masala, a mixture of these spices that takes the guesswork out of how to blend them.
Indian cooks often toast their spices to intensify their flavors in a dish. Toasting spices is best done with a cast iron skillet. Place spices into a skillet over medium heat, and toast for about 2 minutes, stirring often to keep them from burning. They’re ready when they give off a strong aroma and turn darker. (The aroma can be overwhelming to cooks who aren’t used to toasting strong Indian spices, so be careful).
Next, learn a few basic recipes that focus on fresh vegetables, along with some dried fruits. Garlic, tomatoes and black raisins are very common to Indian cooking. Favorite vegetables include potatoes, eggplant, spinach, cauliflower, peas and beans, and they appear both as entrees and as side dishes. Most Indian dishes are vegetarian, or contain small amounts of poultry, lamb or fish near the coasts and rivers. Also, if the recipe calls for beef, you can be sure that it is an Indian Muslim dish, since Indian Hindus consider cows to be sacred and do not eat beef.
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Along with holidays and music, kosher food represents a key to Jewish faith and culture. Like the food practices of Hindus and Muslims, kosher food for Jews stems from their religious beliefs. “Keeping kosher” is not merely a cultural food practice; it is a way of life that symbolizes the Jews’ devotion to God.
Virtually any large European and American city has kosher food stores. These stores can be specific such as butcher stores and fish markets, or they can be all encompassing, including kosher grocery stores and delicatessens offering take-out food.
Religious Jewish women, who do most of the cooking for their families, know that shopping for kosher food means more than buying foodstuffs in certain markets. It also means checking all the foods for a sign known as a rabbinic seal. This mark indicates that the food has been prepared under the supervision of a rabbi. The rabbi will have inspected the food, but also the workers, their equipment and their methods of preparation to ensure that everything has followed all the religious laws of Kosher. Each country has a rabbinic association that supervises Kashrut, or the certification of foods as having followed the Jewish laws.
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Most amateur cooks may feel completely overwhelmed at the prospect of cooking a turkey for the family Thanksgiving dinner. Shouldn’t cooking a turkey best left to more experienced cooks? The truth is anyone can successfully cook a moist, succulent turkey that they’d be proud to serve at any family get together.
First you need to decide how big a turkey you will need to buy. It is wise to allot ? of a pound to one pound for each person who you will be serving. If you are buying a frozen turkey make sure you allow adequate time to defrost the bird. You will want to let the turkey thaw in your refrigerator for two to five days to ensure that it is entirely defrosted. Turkeys that are still frozen on the inside will not cook through and through.
Once your turkey is ready to be cooked, it is good to rinse the skin then pat dry with a clean cloth. The inside cavities will need emptied of the gizzards and neck that are sometimes stored in them. These cavities should be rinsed and dried as well. Pre heat the oven while you are preparing the turkey. One way to cook a turkey that makes the process simple, the cleanup faster, and almosts guarantees a juicy turkey, is by using oven bags. If you decide to use an oven bag, add a couple of tablespoons of flour to the bag and shake well to coat before placing the turkey inside it. Follow the instructions for baking times and cutting air vents on the packaging of the oven bag.
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While you may chuckle at the thought of not knowing how to boil water, some people will tell you how they ruined their favorite pan when it boiled dry! Basic cooking skills are something that everyone should know, even if they have never set foot in the kitchen. From making a grilled cheese sandwich to creating a five-course meal, you really have to start somewhere! Below, you will find some information on basic cooking skills that can get you started in the kitchen.
Sizzling Saut?
The word “saut?” means “to jump” in French and that’s the whole premise behind saut?ing meat or vegetables. You’ll want to use a frying pan and a bit of fat or butter to keep whatever you are saut?ing from sticking to the pan. Prepare your meat by trimming the excess fat and cutting it up into smaller pieces. Prepare the vegetables, such as onions and mushrooms, and dice them up, too.
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Paleontologists – scientists who study fossils – now think that a diet rich in meat protein led to the divergence of human species from our ape ancestors. Whether we actually hunted our prehistoric prey as some maintain or scavenged the rich marrow of bones left by other predators as others claim, the results were the same: Meat made humans what we are today.
Meat of all kinds remains a mainstay of human diets. For example, Americans consume around 185 pounds of meat per person annually, of which about 60 pounds is beef. Australians eat some 240 pounds of meat per person per year, consuming more poultry and much less lamb and mutton than they did 40 years ago. Despite their popularity, beef, poultry, pork and other animal protein sources are also the source of many unhappy food accidents in the kitchen when handled improperly.
Raw meat and poultry often carries a variety of bacteria such as Escherichia coli, more popularly known as E.coli, along with salmonella and staphylococcus aureus. All of these can make people seriously ill, and in some cases even kill them, especially small children and the elderly. That’s why food safety is an essential part of good cooking.
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Angel Food Cake: As the name suggests, this cake is exceptionally light and fluffy. The batter is made using just flour and sugar with well beaten egg whites.
Buttercream: This is a mixture of sugar, eggs and butter that is whipped until light and fluffy and used to fill and frost cakes.
Caramel: Used for glazing, making praline paste and giving decorative touches to several desserts, caramel is basically sugar cooked to about 320-350 degrees.
Cookie Types: As versatile as they are scrumptious, cookies are categorized by the way they are formed. Molded cookies are usually cut with a cookie cutter or shaped by hand; drop cookies are dropped from a spoon directly onto the baking sheet; piped cookies are formed with a cookie gun or a pastry bad and bar cookies are baked in sheets before cutting into bars or squares.
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