Cooking might be something you do in order to prepare your food for your daily meals, but the truth is that methods of cooking in nutrition is much more than that. Cooking is a way to show creativity, scientific knowledge, and people skills all at once. Enhancing your cooking skills means enhancing your life. Try these methods of cooking in nutrition, and make your meals, and life, that much better.
Methods Of Cooking In Nutrition
Ensure that you are getting the most out of your chef’s knife by holding it properly during use. The thumb and the index finger should be on either side of the blade, at the point where it meets the handle. This will give the ultimate in control, when slicing through ingredients.
Take care when storing chocolate for use in cooking. As a rule, only buy as much chocolate as you can use within a few months. Chocolate contains fat, and under the wrong conditions it can turn rancid. Store in a cool, dry place away from sunlight. A kitchen cupboard away from any heat sources is ideal. Keep the chocolate wrapped in foil or plastic and store it away from anything with a strong smell, as it absorbs odors easily.
Whenever you are cooking and you feel the need to add more oil, the best way to add oil is to add it through the side of the pan. By doing this, the oil will be heated when it gets to the ingredient that is being cooked. This is a good tip to remember.
After you have cooked a meal for someone, never rush them into eating as you should always take your time and engage in conversation to give your body a chance to digest. Part of the meal is the smells and aromas it gives off while the other part is your actual consumption.
To save on fat when cooking, use applesauce instead of butter. A cup of applesauce is equal to a cup of butter. This will reduce fat and calorie contents of your dessert recipe. It will also make your recipe moist and delicious. Most people won’t even be able to tell the difference.
When heating oil on the stove top to use for frying, use a low setting and slowly turn the burner up to reach the desired temperature. Most foods do not require much more than 350 degrees, for the oil to fry it to a nice golden brown and not end up burnt to a crisp on the outside, while raw on the inside. If you crank the temperature setting knob to its highest point, you not only run the risk of spattering and burning yourself, as well as the food you are trying to fry, but you are also wasting time while you wait for the oil to cool down enough to use. Oil heats up quickly, but it is very slow to cool down, once it has gotten too hot.
Know the gender of your eggplant! There are both male and female eggplants, and it pays to know the difference. The seeds of an eggplant can be very bitter. A female eggplant’s seeds have a tendency to be more bitter than those of a male eggplant. You can identify a male eggplant by its base – it will be smooth and round, whereas the female base is more oval in shape and deeply indented.
Many people love the taste of garlic, but cooks are more ambivalent about it because its scent sticks to the hands. If you have a stainless steel sink or other utensil, rub your hands over the inside of the sink to remove the smell. This works for onions as well. Not only does this clean your hands, but it also stops the unwanted smells from getting into other foods you are about to handle.
You should use real butter when you are cooking for your family. There are some people who choose to use margarine when they cook instead of butter because it is more affordable. They may not know that they are feeding their family something that contains hydrogenated oils and trans fats that are unhealthy.
When you are cooking pumpkins, first stand the pumpkin upright and then cut it in half directly down the middle. Put each half on a separate baking sheet, upside down. Sprinkle the baking sheet with water, and bake the pumpkin for an hour at 350 degrees.
When applying seasoning to meat and fish, always remember to season evenly and thoroughly. Shake or grind the shaker as if the seasoning is snow falling from the sky. Doing so will allow the meat to be evenly coated with spices and seasoning and prevent clumps or over seasoning.
Make sure that prior to cooking, your utensils are sparkling clean. If your utensils are not completely clean, you run the risk of introducing old food residue into whatever you are cooking. Bacteria will develop and spread on unclean utensils.
When you are making casseroles, roasts, and other things that may stick to the bottom of a baking sheet, you should line the bottom of the pan with foil. This is a good idea because after you are done cooking you can throw the foil away and you will not have a lot of cleaning up to do.
Put vegetables in cold water after you blanch them. Blanching – also known as boiling – a vegetable can be a tasty way to prepare them. Unfortunately, it can quite literally “blanch” your veggies. While this is only an aesthetic problem, it can be easily avoided. By putting the vegetables in cold water after blanching, they will retain their green color.
Don’t store your spices above the stove. While many traditional kitchens place the spice rack above the stove for convenience, this practice can actually reduce the flavor and shelf life of your herbs. Humidity, heat, and light can all cause spices to lose their flavor, and above the stove ensures they are exposed to all three.
One of the fun things about cooking is that it is always new. There are always new recipes to try, new skills to learn, and new ways of doing things. You can truly enjoy the art of preparing a meal and it’s something that you get to do every day of your life.