Cooking Articles
Gas Grills Give Warm Parties To Your Friends And Families
(category: Cooking, Word count: 464)
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Gas grill is a device or surface, always fueled by gas and is used for cooking food. If you want to warm up your weekends by cooking delicious dishes for your family and friends, then you should immediately get a gas frill for yourself. When you want to purchase gas grills, you can either arrange the grills as per your choice right in the shop or allow the mechanics to choose the grills for you.
Advantages of gas grills
Gas grills are advantageous, as they do not lead to air pollution. Since they are quite small in size, so you can fix them almost at any corner of your home. Unlike the electric grills, the gas grills do not require electrical points near to the place you want to install the grills. The gas grills are flexible and can be carried from your home to the garden to prepare food for al fresco parties. There is even no risk of receiving electrical shocks in case of mishandling.
Factors needed for choosing the gas grill
For those who want to purchase the gas grill, here are some tips that will help you choose the gas grill. While you are purchasing the gas grill, you should pay attention to the quality and try to get a grill with ceramic briquettes and lava rocks. Choose a gas grill with double heat control so that you can easily control the burners. Try to look for a model with drip tray so that cleanup becomes easier. The gas grill should contain heat-deflecting panel so that heat can spread evenly.
While you should avoid gas grills with side burners as it only increases the price, you should get the side shelves nevertheless. The side shelves are very handy for containing plates and other containers.
The main factor to be considered for gas grills is the nature of the grills. You can get gas grills with hinged, stainless steel grate and wider bars as it prevents less amount of food to get spilled over the flames. If you are opting for porcelain-coated steel grates, then remember they are easy to clean but have a typical tendency to break if falls down. Cast iron grates, on the other hand, require much more maintenance because they have a tendency to rust, but they assure to sear meat in an excellent way. You can choose a gas grill with any of the following types of grill that will suit your purpose best.
You can cook a whole range of barbeques in the gas grills. Ranging from searing meats, roasting fishes, to preparing sandwiches, burgers, pastries and cookies, gas grills serve your purpose of treating people with delicious culinary delights.
Why Do Make Ahead Recipes Work So Well To Reduce Your Dinner Party Stress
(category: Cooking, Word count: 83)
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One of the "tricks" I find most useful for hosting stress-free dinner parties is to make some of the recipes ahead. I find that too many last minute jobs can overwhelm me, so I plan ahead to eliminate as many as possible.
The more dishes you can prepare a day or some hours before guests ring your doorbell, the more you reduce your stress. Here are some reasons:
What To Serve As The Main Course For Your Dinner Party
(category: Cooking, Word count: 331)
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Choosing the best meal to serve as the main course for a dinner party is often a dilemma. Hosts and hostesses want to make sure that they do not serve foods to which the guests may have an allergic reaction and when dealing with different cultures, they want to make sure the food is not offensive. For example, you would not serve pork at a meal where some of your guests practiced the Muslim religion. You would not serve roast beef or chicken if you know that some of your guests are vegetarian.
Fish is a dish that always goes over well at dinner parties. Try a fish dish that is not common, such as halibut. The dinner party that earned me the best compliments was one at which I served a recipe called Snappy Halibut Skillet. Along with being easy to prepare, it is quite tasty. There are many variations of this recipe, but the one that my family and guests prefer is as follows. You will have to increase the recipe for the required number of guests. This one is based on a dinner party for 10 people.
Ingredients
1 1/2 tsp. Thyme
2 1/2 lb halibut (allowing 1/2 lb. per serving)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion chopped in small pieces
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
1 can stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup green onions
Sprinkle thyme on both sides of each halibut fillet and cook over medium heat in hot oil. Test the fish to see if it flakes easily with a fork. This will tell you that it is fried. Remove the fish to a warming plate.
Using the same skillet, cook the garlic and onion until they are tender. Stir the cornstarch into the stewed tomatoes and then pour the mixture into the skillet. Cook until thickened. Return the fish to the skillet and let it heat through with the sauce.
Alfredo And Who On Earth Was He
(category: Cooking, Word count: 555)
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If you ask for Pasta Alfredo in a restaurant in Italy all you get from your waiter is a stare. Why is one of the most famous "Italian sauces" for pasta unknown in its country of origin? The answer is simple: because in Italy Pasta Alfredo doesn't exist.
Yes, Italians make a dish of pasta, fettuccine dressed with nothing else than good aged parmigiano cheese and a lot of butter, but is such a simple preparation that Italians don't even consider it a "recipe".
Waverly Root in his famous book "The Food of Italy" (New York, 1971) wrote: "FETTUCCINE AL BURRO is associated in every tourist's mind with Rome, possibly because the original Alfredo succeeded in making its serving a spectacle reminiscent of grand opera. It is the same ribbon shaped egg pasta tat is called tagliatelle in Bologna; but the al burro preparation is very Roman indeed in its rich simplicity. Nothing is added to the pasta except grated cheese and butter - lots of butter. The recipe calls for doppio burro, double butter, which gives it a golden color."
Who was Alfredo then? Alfredo di Lelio, this was his full name, was an inspired cook who proposed this new exciting dish in the restaurant he opened in Rome in 1914. It was a high gourmet preparation in the Roman tradition of simplicity. Apparently he created his Fettuccine all'Alfredo when his wife lost her appetite during her pregnancy. To bring back her appetite he prepared for her a nutritious dish of egg fettuccine with parmigiano cheese and butter. That probably gave him the idea for his "triple butter" fettuccine.
He was an extravagant character who used to personally serve his paper-thin fettuccine with golden forks, apparently donated to him by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, the famous silent movie stars. In the fifties and sixties, Hollywood discovered Rome. Paparazzi photographers took photos of actors such as Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, or Sophia Loren in front of a plate of Fettuccine all'Alfredo, making his restaurant famous all around the world. The restaurant is now run buy his grandson, and the golden forks are still used to serve this dish for special occasions.
Samuel Chamberlain, journalist and food writer, met Alfredo in the late fifties and wrote in his book "Italian Bouquet - An Epicurean Tour of Italy" (New York, 1958): "Finally there is the great Alfredo, showman par excellence, who draws an endless file of amazed and hungry tourists to watch his calisthenics over a dish of hot noodles. The King of Noodles has come out of retirement, and now wields his golden fork and spoon at ALFREDO ALL'AUGUSTEO, at number 31 on the Piazza Augusto Imperatore. His Maestosissime Fettuccine all'Alfredo are most majestic, without a doubt. [...] You have to visit this place at least once, we suppose, just to say you have seen this elderly, melodramatic good-hearted clown in action."
So, forget the heavy cream, the parsley, the garlic, and all the other stuff suggested in the hundreds of Alfredo recipes that circulate around. Take down from the shelf that pasta machine, prepare your fresh fettuccine (you can substitute fresh fettuccine with excellent dry egg noodles), and enjoy the simple Maestosissime Fettuccine al Triplo Burro the way Alfredo himself would do them.
Where There S Smoke There S Flavor Smoking Foods On Gas Grills
(category: Cooking, Word count: 370)
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Today's grillers are hungrier than ever for more flavorful foods, as evidenced by the steady increase in the sales of wood chips and wood chunks over the last several years (according to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association).
"When you add particular kinds of wood smoke to your food, you are taking advantage of a technique that most people associate with charcoal. Actually, it's just about as easy to control wood smoke with a gas grill, and the results are fantastic," says Chef Jamie Purviance, author of "Weber's Real Grilling."
As one of the country's top grilling and barbecue experts, Purviance offers consumers useful tips when smoking meats, fish and vegetables on gas grills:
Choosing a Smoking Flavor. "The world of barbecue has its traditional pairings of certain woods with certain meats, like hickory with pork and mesquite with beef. Those traditions wouldn't last if they didn't taste great, but keep in mind that there are many flavors of wood and foods, other than pork and beef, that improve with a touch of smoke," says Purviance. Purviance suggests smoking with hardwoods provided they are sold dry and untreated. Avoid softwoods, like pine and fir, because they are too resinous for smoking.
According to Purviance, hardwood chips and chunks fall into three categories of flavor intensity: pungent (mesquite, hickory and pecan), moderate (oak, maple and alder) and mild (apple, cherry and pear). "Beef, lamb and pork handle the pungent woods really well," he adds. "For the moderate woods, I like fish, pork and poultry. It's amazing what a handful or two of oak chips can do for chicken pieces. Very quickly they pick up a deep wood-fired flavor without any bitterness. The mild woods have an even sweeter, fruitier quality, which works beautifully with chicken and also with vegetables."
Prepping the Wood. Not quite ready for grilling, wood chips should be soaked in water for at least 30 minutes; chunks need at least a one-hour soak. Soaking ensures that chips/chunks will smolder rather than simply burn. Thoroughly drain and loosely fill the gas grill's smoker box, such as the one featured on some Weber Summit
Breadmakers For Easy Baking
(category: Cooking, Word count: 587)
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A bread maker is a home appliance that has revolutionized the process of making breads. First manufactured in 1986 in Japan, breadmaker since then moved its way to homes in the United States and United Kingdom. By means of a breadmaker, automatic baking has become possible and more convenient.
As with ordinary baking, ingredients must first be measured according to the recipe. The mixture is then poured into the bread pan that is placed in the machine. The breadmaker will then take some hours to bake the bread by first turning the mixture into dough and eventually baking it. The process of making dough is helped by a built-in paddle. Once the baking is done and has been allowed to cool down, the bread is then freed from the bread pan. The paddle at the bottom of the loaf should be removed from its place.
Breadmaker breads are much easier to get spoiled as compared with the commercial breads due to the absence of additives. However, it is possible that sourdough starter may be added to the ingredients to prolong the shelf life of the breads.
Breadmakers have built-in timers that may be set for easier baking. Other machines can be programmed to only prepare the dough and not to bake the bread later, in this case the dough is baked in an oven. Breadmakers have other uses as well. They may be set to make jams, pizza bases, wheat-free loaf, cakes, and pasta and in some instances, mochi- a Japanese rice bread.
Considerations in choosing a breadmaker:
- the over-all capacity of baking loafs
- the quality of bread produced
- the duration of time it takes to make one loaf
- the featured programs
- type: may either be single loaf breadmaker or multi loaf breadmaker
However, like with normal baking there may arise several problems concerning the quality of the bread produced. These may either be caused by the process of baking or the quality of breadmaker itself.
Doughy loaf
This problem basically concerns the temperature of the breadmaker. The built-in thermometer must read 190 F. Once the baking is over and the loaf is still doughy, you may choose to continue baking it in a conventional oven or wait till the breadmaker cools down and start the whole process over.
Small bread
Lack of liquid added to the dough. The problem starts with the dissolving of the yeast. If too little liquid is used, the yeast may not be stimulated to produce the necessary carbon dioxide, which is instrumental in making the dough rise. Without this, the loaf may become dense and will be much smaller.
Collapsed or flat-topped bread
Collapsing is mainly due to too much addition of liquid to the dough. The yeast in this case is overly stimulated, producing more gluten than the dough may withhold. This leads to the collapsing of loaf structure.
Bread sticking in the breadmaker pan
This can be resolved by brushing the breadmaker pan with oil before adding the water into the dough. This works well in the majority of conventional ovens as well.
Too much rising of the loaf
This problem may be controlled with the use of salt. Adding one half teaspoon of salt may be sufficient to keep the rising of the bread in balance.
One need not be an Einstein to run a simple machine such as the breadmaker. For more instruction and self-help tips, users may check the manual of the machine.
Cooking For Crowds Shouldn T Be A Frightening Proposition
(category: Cooking, Word count: 675)
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Most people balk at the idea of cooking for large crowds of people. With images of huge stockpots boiling over and becoming chained to a hot stove and oven for countless hours on end, it's no wonder that so many people avoid the idea of cooking food for large crowds with more tenacity than they avoid being last in the dinner line.
The good news is that it doesn't have to be the frightening proposition that so many make it out to be. When it comes to cooking for a large crowd, the planning phase is the most important. You absolutely must plan your meals when feeding a large group of people. This goes far beyond the notion of spaghetti or fried chicken as the meals you are planning. You need to know how many servings you will need. While obviously you never know how hungry people will be or who will eat how much when it comes to cooking for a large crowd it is a good idea to always plan for a few extra mouths in case some need a little more than you may think (you might want to double servings for teen and college aged men that will be dining).
You need to know at least a general number of servings to prepare and adjust your recipe in order to accommodate those needs. Some people find it much simpler if they can double or triple recipes rather than scaling them to specific serving sizes. If this works best for you then by all means incorporate this practice when cooking for crowds. One thing you must be aware of is that you will need to include in order to create the meal you are planning.
Having the proper ingredients and the proper amounts of ingredients is more important in bulk recipes than is often necessary in smaller recipes as there is less leeway when it comes to creating the proper consistency. You should keep this in mind when making purchases for your cooking for a large crowd event.
Some people find the best route to take when it comes to cooking for crowds is to keep everything as close to their normal cooking routine as possible. This would mean that instead of cooking one really huge pan of lasagna for a triple sized crowd, they would instead cook three normal sized pans of lasagna. This accomplishes two things really and is something you may wish to keep in mind despite the extra time spent in the kitchen.
First of all, if something goes, wrong only one third of the meal is in shambles rather than the entire dinner. Second, you have a greater possibility of finding consistency issues before the baking begins if you are using measurements and cooking containers that you are familiar with and comfortable using. It is always best to discover errors and omissions sooner rather than later when it comes to cooking as very few ingredients can be properly added after the fact.
While cooking for crowds may send some into dizzying spells with heart palpitations it helps if you take a few deep breaths, sit down, plan your menu, plan your meals, make a list of your ingredients, and cook in a manner that is comfortable for you. If you would rather get it all over with in one fell swoop, then by all means do just that. If you are more comfortable making multiple dishes of family favorites then that is probably going to be the best course of action in order to meet your large crowd cooking needs.
Most importantly you should remember when cooking for crowds is that you might have just earned yourself a well-deserved night off afterwards. Cooking for crowds is time consuming and should be approached when well rested (if that is even possible) for the best results. There is something that is actually very satisfying about knowing that you have fed a crowd and fed them well.
Cleaning Trout How To Clean A Trout Fish
(category: Cooking, Word count: 529)
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Cleaning trout. Does that bring back memories! I think I was about 9 years old when I first learned how to clean trout. It is really pretty easy. A little practice and you will soon be cleaning trout with ease. If at all possible, use clean, running water to rinse the trout as you clean.
Scaling the trout.
For this step, you will need a fish-board with a clip to hold the tail or you can hold the tail with your hand. You will also need a fish scaler or use the unsharpened side of a good sturdy knife (short blade is best). With the trout held firmly by the tail, scrape very firmly from the tail to the gills several times on both sides. This will remove the scales so you don't have to deal with them later. No one wants to find them in a bite of grilled fish!
Gutting the trout.
To properly gut the trout without tearing into the stomach or intestines, you will need a sharp, short bladed knife. The short blade gives you better control. The first cut you want to make is just at gill level from the belly side. This results in a cut between the jawbone and the tongue. Do not cut through the spine. Next, place 1 or 2 fingers inside the trout's mouth with the palm of your hand pressed firmly on the top of its head and your thumb in the gill to hold it solid. Then, carefully, begin to slit the trout's belly starting at the anus and working your way up to the cut under the gills. You need to be careful not to cut into the guts themselves, as this will foul the flesh, making it inedible. Keep your knife just under the skin. To pull the guts out, hold the trout firmly with your thumb under the jaw and your index finger in the mouth. Then get a firm grip on the guts and pull them out. All that is left to do is to scrape your thumb along the spine in the gut cavity to clean out the bloodline.
To behead or not to behead.
This last step can be a matter of personal preference. Removing the head of the trout. Some people like it left on, but, personally, I don't like my food looking back at me.
To do this, you need a good sturdy knife. The same one you used to cut the belly open will work. Just be sure to rinse it good first. To cut the head off, grasp the trout firmly in the middle with your thumb in the gut cavity and the rest of your hand wrapped around it. Hold the trout so that the head is pushed down on your cutting surface. With your knife, make a firm slicing motion through the spine at gill level, preferablywith the gut cavity up. Once this is complete, rinse the trout and you are ready to proceed with the rest of your trout cleaning.
Of course, you could use my favorite method to clean a trout. Filet it!
Tips For Spicing Up Seafood
(category: Cooking, Word count: 587)
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The allure of exotic spices launched Columbus on his journey of discovery. Today, home chefs can explore new taste sensations by using spices and other flavorful ingredients to add a new world of flavor to fresh fish and seafood.
"There's nothing like the fresh flavors of herbs and spices for cutting unhealthy calories without sacrificing taste," said Red Lobster Executive Chef Michael LaDuke, who offers the following simple tips for enhancing the natural flavor of fresh fish and seafood:
World of Flavors: An easy recipe that turns fresh fish into an exotic dish is topping tilapia with a mixture of soy sauce, lime juice, orange juice, fresh ginger, garlic and cilantro. To produce a richer flavor, make the soy sauce mixture at least 24 hours in advance and refrigerate the sauce overnight. Serve the sauce at room temperature or slightly warmed. With its sweet, mild taste and firm, flaky texture, tilapia will soak up the flavors and take on a deliciously Asian flair.
If you prefer a delicately flavorful fish such as halibut, complement its medium-to-firm texture with bold spice blends such as curry or chili.
Healthy Oils: The key to making flavorful oils for a simply elegant and heart-healthy meal is to add herbs and spices, such as basil, garlic, salt and pepper, to olive oil over a low heat on the stove, similar to making tea. This allows you to adjust the intensity of the flavor. After heating the olive oil, strain the mixture and remove the herbs and spices. For a special touch, place the olive oil on your table surrounded by sprigs of the fresh herbs and spices.
Be adventurous! Add a variety of flavorful herbs and spices to your oil mixture, such as exotic peppers, chives, dill, lemongrass or mint. If you serve olive oil over salmon, you'll also enjoy the heart-health benefits of essential omega-3 fatty acids found in this delicious fish.
Cooking With Wine: Wine is not only good for drinking, it's also great for cooking. Pour white wine, such as a Sauvignon Blanc, over a firm white fish like mahi-mahi and season it with chili powder to intensify the flavor. Mahi-mahi is light enough to bring out the crisp citrus taste of this popular wine. But remember, your sauce will be only as good as the wine you choose, so always cook with a wine you enjoy drinking.
Adding Some Zest: Add the tangy flavor of citrus by generously squeezing lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit juices over your favorite fish or seafood and garnishing with freshly grated zest. When using fruit zests as a garnish, it is best to slightly poach them beforehand in sugar water, as raw zests can taste bitter.
For quick, tasty meals, make a citrus butter ahead of time by combining melted butter and citrus juices, cooling the mixture and storing it in the refrigerator until ready to use. Citrus juices mixed with melted butter also make great dipping sauces for succulent lobster and shrimp.
Studies show eating fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, including mackerel, lake trout, herring, sardines, albacore tuna and salmon, at least twice a week is good for the heart. Using an array of herbs and spices offers endless opportunities to bring out the best in all varieties of fresh fish and seafood.
Red Lobster serves guests fresh fish entrees with bold flavors, savory seafood dishes that include shrimp, crab and scallops, as well as the company's signature, live Maine lobster.
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