Cooking Tips

Chef’s Secrets to make life easier in the kitchen

• To grind nuts quickly, crush them with a rolling pin or wooden mallet in a Ziploc bag.
• To freeze foods for easy separation such as berries, spread on cookie sheets until frozen and pack in containers.
• When cooking with herbs, use twice as much fresh as the dry counterpart.
• Brush soy sauce on meat before broiling for a rich brown color.
• To keep boiled potatoes white, add a teaspoon  of lemon juice or vinegar to water.
• Put lemon on fish after cooking, never before, to keep from getting mushy.
• If soups or stews are too salty, add a few slices of potato. Boil a few minutes and remove.
• Before peeling oranges, cover with boiling water and let stand 5 minutes. The bitter white membrane can be removed more easily.
• Nuts keep up to one year in the freezer.
• Keep popcorn in your freezer for betting popping.
• Coat raisins with flour to keep them from sinking to the bottom of muffin and cake batter.
• For soup with rich flavor and color, brown bones, onions, celery and carrots in oven first.
• Forming meatballs is easier if hands are first chilled with an ice cube.
• Raw mushrooms, kiwi and strawberries can be sliced evenly and quickly with a egg slicer.
• To cut fresh bread, heat the serrated knife.
• Shave chocolate with a potato peeler for a quick dessert garnish.
• Make a cardboard ring to keep the rim of plate clean when spraying salad dressing or dusting desserts with powdered sugar.
• Marinate hard cooked eggs in beet juice before making them into deviled eggs.
• Roast peppers quickly with a blow torch.
• Peel garlic easily by chopping off the ends and hitting the clove with the back of a knife on a cutting board.