Posts Tagged ‘Cooking’

Save Time and Energy by Cooking

Cooking every day can be a difficult task especially if you are a working mother. Many mothers or families in general have a different approach to cooking that can be very useful. The way to manage a fast passed career oriented lifestyle and a family is to cook few times a month and store the food for later. In other words cook smart. Unfortunately, cooking a good family meal requires both time and energy. A few wise moms are using a concept that has become known as once a month or freezer cooking to assist them when they don’t have enough time and energy to cook sometimes.

The plan is to cook once a month; you can take it literally or not. You can do it twice a month but the idea is the same. Similarly you can do the cooking in one day or two days but either way the concept is the same. Many working mothers who have tried this technique have concluded that not only does it help by always having something nice and home cooked for dinner, for more details visit to www.bread-bakers-assistant.com but also helps families stay within their budget. The reasons are that they don’t spend money on cooked meals and that they can plan their shopping in advance when grocery stores have sales.

The most important aspect of saving time and energy by cooking only once a month is to plan ahead. To do this you will need to set aside a day or two for the cooking, days that are free. You will also need to plan ahead and decide what the cooking will entail.  In other words decide on what you will cook what recipes you will use so you can do the necessary grocery shopping. Make sure you have planned for a whole day of uninterrupted cooking. The reason is, for more details visit to www.chef-123.com distractions or other chores you might want or have to do can steer you away from the task at hand; the task of feeding a family for a month.

First thing is first and that’s why you should create a menu and thus figuring out all the ingredients you will need. It is a advised that you do the shopping, or have someone do the hopping for you on a day other than the one you will be doing the cooking. You can also save money by planning your meals for the month according to the sales circulars and coupons you have for the week in order to stretch your budget a little further. It is also advised that you stock up on containers to use to store the food in the freezer. You can do this by storing individual portions or even family portions depending on what you are accommodating for. You should also make sure that the recipes you are using for your once a month cooking marathon are recipes that freeze well. Regarding the cooking session itself, planning is again the key for success. Make sure the kitchen is tidy, that all your appliances are in working order, that you have all the tools to use to cook and you are set. Use all your appliances, for example do one dish on the stove top, another in the oven, one more in the microwave and so on. Keep in mind that if you don’t have enough time to do something it probably is because you don’t have the right tools to do it.

A blender, a juicer for sauces and deserts, good sharp kitchen knifes a digital scale are only a few examples. Use technology to save time. Remember time is money, that’s why you considered once a month cooking in the first place. Once you do it once you will never forget how to do it again. Save time and money with once a month cooking. In order to be able to cook once a month you need to have the right time management skills and the right cooking tools and appliances. Here are some you might want to consider.

Advantages of cooking with a pressure cooker

Cooking has become a chore for many women in today’s high speed society. For many families where both the husband and wife have to work in order to meet the financial obligations, the scarcity of time has caused cooking duties to become a problem. But as is widely accepted in everything that we do in life, access to the right tools can make even a difficult task easy and the use of a pressure cooker may simply be the tool that every modern household kitchen needs. In this brief article, we will explore the advantages that pressure cookers offer and once you read, you might very well be motivated in utilizing pressure cookers in your own kitchen. Because increasing the pressure causes liquids to boil at higher temperatures, a pressure cooker allows for water, which the basic liquid used in cooking, to boil at a temperature higher than the normal boiling point of two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit. From a practical standpoint, this means that your cooking time to cook the same food will be much lower. This is a huge advantage in our time strapped society. Anything that will cut down on the time to cook foods is a highly welcome idea and pressure cookers offer this characteristic. Another advantage of using pressure cookers is that because foods cook faster, lesser energy is consumed in the process and with the rising costs of energy, this is another advantage. Additionally by using less energy, you will be performing your part in conservation and green living. A third advantage is that when cooking foods with a pressure cooker, there is no chance of burning the foods. Many foods get burnt during grilling or shallow or deep frying. This issue is avoided when cooking foods with a pressure cooker. Additionally, you avoid all of the dangers of cholesterol and other fats from cooking oils when you boil vegetables and such in a pressure cooker. Now that you have learnt the advantages of using a pressure cooker, it is time to change your mind and employ one of these simple gadgets in your own kitchen

Mexican Traditional Cooking Techniques

Mexican foods, like many other foods, can be boiled, grilled, or fried. These are modern Mexican cooking styles but Mexican traditional cooking techniques were rather different.

In ancient times, Mexicans did not have ovens. Instead, they would cook Mexican food over an open fire, which was the most common out of all the Mexican traditional cooking techniques.

The food would be placed in iron pots before cooking. This Mexican cooking method is similar to how we cook food on the grill these days. The Aztecs steamed and boiled their food in two handled clay pots before the Spanish introduced iron cooking pots. These two handled clay pots were called xoctli. The pot would be filled with food and then heated over an open fire. A lot of foods were fried and Mexican cooking features frying to this day.

Today in the present, it is a lot easier to cook Mexican dishes. It takes less time to prepare the foods. If someone wants to make homemade tortillas, there are iron pans that make it easy. Flans are made simply using spring form type pans. Long ago, it was a long process to make masa, which is a dish that includes a certain type of corn that has to be grinded. Nowadays you can purchase a metal grinder that helps grind the masa.

When you are making Mexican cooking recipes, the oven is perfect for many of them. You can bake meat, fish, and vegetables easily. You can also cook foods in a pot of water with added spices. A lot of Mexican recipes can even be made in a crock pot or slow cooker. Large steaming pots simplify the tamale cooking process. They take a long time to cook so a large pot means you can cook more at once, instead of in smaller batches.

Grilling Mexican food is another way to enjoy it. Foods used to be cooked this way many years ago and it was called “barbacoa.” With this Mexican cookery method, meat was wrapped in banana leaves and cactus leaves and steamed over boiling water in a large pit. If you want to learn how to cook Mexican food, this is not the easiest technique for a novice! Food cooked in this way would have tasted similar to our grilled food of today. Fajitas are a good example of a perfect Mexican food to grill.

Mexicans many years ago used “metate y mano,” which was a large tool with a concave surface, made from stone or lava rock. This utensil was used to mash the ingredients together. A “molcajete” is another ancient Mexican cooking tool, which translates as a mortar and pestle. You would learn about these ancient cooking tools in a Mexican cooking class, although we use different utensils today.

Cooking almost always requires stirring somewhere in the preparation. Wooden spoons have been around for many hundreds of years and are still widely used. There are different types of spoons today, depending on whether you are moving meat around in hot oil or stirring a thick sauce.

There is a rich history behind Mexican food and Mexican traditional cooking techniques. The methods might have changed through the ages but the food is still traditional. Food tastes different when cooked in different ways and there are plenty of Mexican recipes to try out and enjoy.

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Top Cooking Accessories to Make a Quick Meal

If you are too tired to cook a full meal by the time you get home from work, being able to cook a quick meal is a great skill to have. If you end up ordering in far more often than your budget can stand simply because it takes too long to cook a fresh meal from scratch, there is good news; it does not have to be that way. There are so many time-saving gadgets, tools and accessories that can help you make fresh, delicious meals in minutes. Whether you combine them with the new breed of fresh-packed convenience foods or use them help you make up your own “convenience foods”, cooking and kitchen accessories can make your entire life far easier.

Food Preparation

One of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive parts of cooking great meals is the preparation time, the time spent cutting, slicing, dicing and otherwise getting ingredients ready to cook them. Great tools can put a serious dent in the amount of time it takes to prepare your food for the oven or the grill.

Cutting fruits and vegetables is much easier when you are using tools that were designed specifically for the job. The handiest food prep tools to have in your arsenal include:

- Stainless steel wire cutters to hold things like tomatoes and onions still so you can make uniform slices for burgers, sandwiches and bagels

- 5-in-1 Egg Slicer, which makes it easy to slice, dice, chop and wedge hard-boiled eggs – and other things like strawberries, onions and mushrooms

- Apple Corers, melon slicers and pineapple corers make short work of cutting up fruits in uniform slices or wedges and getting rid of the core. A must if you like serving fruit salad or fresh melon to your family for breakfast or dessert

Cooking Faster – Or Slower

If you thought your only option to cook things fast was the microwave, you haven’t seen some of the handiest cooking gadgets available. There are ovens, slow cookers (yes, for quick meals!), electric skillets and more. Here are just a few of the ways that you can take advantage of cooking accessories to get healthy meals on the table for your family fast.

Take a whole new approach to cooking with a NuWave counter top oven. The NuWave cooks foods up to 50% faster than a traditional oven – and it can cook from frozen for those nights that you forgot to defrost something for dinner. It’s big enough to hold a 10 lb turkey – or a 16 lb turkey if you choose the deluxe model.

Another countertop oven choice is the 9-in-1 Oven. It may look like a toaster oven, but it’s so far beyond that. You can toast, roast, broil and bake inside, and the top is a non-stick griddle/grill! It even comes with a rotisserie so you can roast a chicken or a roast on a spit. The convection setting cooks foods fast!

How does a Slow Cooker speed up your meal times? Take five minutes in the morning to drop a chicken and some spices into your slow cooker, set it on low and get to work. When you get home in the evening, your meal will be cooked to perfection and ready to serve. All you have to do is set the table and dish it up! Choose a Slow Cooker with easy cleanup features like a dishwasher safe removable insert and save even more time.

One last indispensable cooking appliance is a countertop griddle like the Electric 4-in-1 Grill/Griddle. Grilling is so much healthier than frying, but firing up the grill can seem like a whole lot of work for a quick meal. An electric grill can make it so easy to grill steaks, chops and even vegetables. Pick a multi-purpose grill and you can make Panini, stuffed sandwiches, pancakes, eggs and more.

Quicker Cleanup

Most people would agree that getting food to the table in only half the time with the same taste would be a great improvement. Cleaning up after the cooking sometimes takes longer than the meal. Invest in a few handy gadgets to make cleanup time much easier and quicker.

One of the best ways to reduce the amount of time you spend cleaning up spills in your oven is to keep those spills from getting there in the first place. A silicone oven liner will catch the spills and keep them from baking on. Just pull it out, wash it and put it back in. The oven liners can be cut to fit any size oven, and are even available to fit your toaster oven.

Keep your stovetop clean, too. It’s easy to do with a Ceramic Spoon Rest or a lid and spoon rest that holds your cooking utensils and keeps them from dripping on your stove. Add burner bibs made of spun fiberglass that will keep all those boilovers and spills from baking onto your stove surface, and the cleanup is as easy as popping them into the dishwasher.

Food Processors: Cooking Hobby More Crafty Now

Being a woman is it self a tough job. You have to juggle between being a caring mother, a loving wife and a successful professional. With your entire hectic schedule you can not deny cooking. If cooking is your hobby, this article is a must read for you. When it comes to cooking, food processors are as versatile as your multidimensional personality.

For people who love to serve friends at home food processors are the best buy. Even if you’re just cooking for your family, it can save time as here you are empowered with the option to combine several functions in one appliance. If you entertain often, this appliance is definitely a lifesaver. Before purchasing one for your kitchen analyse your need for a food processor. If your kitchen remains busy in preparation of food for large number of people and regularly packed with the slicing, shredding, chopping and other functions of then this appliance is a must.

Before purchasing a food processor you should consider the capacity you need. The processors are available in different capacities. If you usually have to make large quantities you should go for 2-a, or 7-c, otherwise the processors of smaller capacity are the best pick. Need for extra slicing or shredding discs should be considered before the purchase. Most food processors come with extra discs. Special features like mini bowls, feed chutes, number of speeds, pulsing function and whether blades are reversible should be taken into consideration.

Food processor is definitely a marvel of superior technology that takes care of blending, kneading, shredding, slicing and grating simultaneously. Even making juices become well with this appliance. Splendidly designed to complement the superbly designed interiors of your kitchen, the food processors handle every task amazingly and in a hassle free manner. And it is so easy to handle, even your kids can efficiently handle it. The available options are many. You can compare and buy at an affordable price. So, shop around before purchasing a food processor. Buy this appliance and increase not only the decorative aspect of your kitchen but also the efficiency.