Archive for the ‘Cool Cooking Tips’ Category

If you have stopped making your own mayonnaise because the recipe you followed tasted bitter, let me see if I can persuade you otherwise.

Just about every recipe I see in magazines and even some cookbooks suggests using olive oil, and that’s what creates the bitterness. Crazy isn’t it? It just goes to prove my theory that most food writers don’t actually eat the stuff they write about.

Use grape-seed or sunflower oil instead for a perfect mayo that fluffs up with no trace of bitterness.

photo credit: quinn.anya

Poultry drumsticks carry a lot of fat just under the skin. While this does provide some welcome flavor it also provides you with some very unwelcome calories and trans-fats. So it’s best to remove the skin prior to cooking. You can replace the flavor with a good marinade.

Now, chicken skins are very slippery and hard to grip, especially after removing the first one. Get round this by having a tablespoon of salt on the chopping board and dipping your fingers into it before gripping the skin. Pull the skin from the blunt to the sharp end and it will come off quite easily, especially if you chop of the knuckle with a cleaver first.

photo credit: Sandy Austin

If your hard boiled eggs develop green rings in them, please read on; your life is about to be changed :0)

The rings are caused by sulphur and they are created by overcooking the eggs to the point where they are practically indigestible. Follow this method for perfect eggs every time. Put them in a pan of cold, salted water and bring to the boil over moderate heat. Remove the pan from the heat once the water has boiled and cover it. Leave it to stand for twenty (20) minutes, take out the eggs and plunged them into ice cold water.

That’s it. No rings will form, they will be easy to peel and they will be far more digestible.

Try not to get caught up in the brown sugar versus white sugar debate – it’s nonsense. Sugar is a carbohydrate with little or no nutritional value except as an energy source. Brown sugar is not more nutritious than white. In most cases it is white with some molasses or caramel added back in.

Try this. Put some brown sugar in a fine sieve, run cold water through it and watch it turn white. True raw sugar won’t do this but the nutritional value remains the same. It’s still fattening and will still rot teeth if eaten in excess.

We use brown sugar in cooking mainly to add flavor and sometimes a little moisture, but for no other reason. Don’t be conned into higher prices because you have been told brown sugar is better for you.

For adding ‘last minute’ flavor to soups and stews, or just to make a bacon roll for breakfast, use your microwave. Put the bacon in a single layer between two sheets of kitchen paper and cook on high for 1 minute. Take out of the paper immediately, or it will stick. Need it crisper? Cook it longer.