From the article: Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Cooking
What are your favorite cooking tips or tricks? Do you have a special cooking technique other might find useful? Share your cooking tips.
Chicken 'n Dumplings
- I enjoy making Chicken and Dumplings, but don't like water-logged, doughy, or disintegrated dumplings. This little trick eliminates them! Make the dough for dumplings drier than that for biscuits (I use whole wheat flour and plain yogurt instead of shortening). Knead, roll, and cut the dumplings, but don't drop them in the broth the chicken and/or vegetables are simmering.* Instead, have a separate pot with two quarts of rapidly boiling water are ready -- and add garlic powder and sage to this pot if you wish. Cook the dumplings in this pot, transferring them to the main pot when they're done. After cooking all the dumplings, the remaining water (now thickened from cooking) may be added to the Chicken and Dumplings as well. Mangia! Leland Stone *I always add carrots, onions, and other veggies to my Chicken and Dumplings.
- —Guest Leland Stone
Lemon The Multipurpose Ingredient
- Lemons provide an unmistakable flavour to food and its juice adds zest of any food. Lemon juice is an excellent tenderizer for meats and poultry. Use it in meat marinades. Squeeze juice of fresh lemons on salads or other foods just before serving for maximum nutritive value. Give longer shelf life to lemons by coating their skin with oil and then refrigerating them in an airtight container or zip-lock bag. Addition of a little lemon zest greatly enhances the flavor of lemon in any dish. Fill a small mouthed bottle 3/4 with fine sugar. Pour strained lemon juice into the bottle upto the same level (sugar will settle down when wet). Keep the bottle in a warm place or out in the sun for a few days, shaking the mixture vigorously every day, until sugar has dissolved totally. You have yourself a bottle of pure lime cordial concentrate. Enjoy !
- —Guest Joey
Proceed thus:
- Always use the best and freshest ingredients and don't screw 'em up.
- —Slobberchops
to season or not
- i season with everything a little of this or that try it . try cajon with chines or french with mexeican the food police will not arest you excuse my spelling i am a lot better cook then speller but have fun with food.
- —Guest 4721butch
Herbs d'Provence
- We use sea salt (in moderation) and flavor w/Herbs d'Provence..a hint a lavendar and other aromatic herbs is wonderful on rice, etc. I also sprinkle some dried nosodium chicken broth in rice/veg water. On boneless chicken breasts, I use a Thai or Asian sauce sparingly to marinate..or if no time to marinate, just pour some on. When using outside grill, mix some olive oil in the sauce..keep chicken from sticking. So much fun to cook .. stay home..save $$$ l.h.
- —Helenbyrne
Seasoning!
- My husband and I are all about adding seasoning's to otherwise plain dishes. We put sea salt on everything. And lemon pepper is another favorite in our kitchen. Adding lemon pepper adds a nice touch of flavor and spice to almost any dish!
- —Guest GwendolynShea
Substitute salt with soya sauce
- For a healthier option we substitute the salt with soya sauce. Mushroom soya sauce is my favorite as it contains less actual salt than regular soya sauces and has a wonderful flavour.
- —Guest Jen
Salt and Heat!
- Season boldly yes! Whenever someone wants me to "fix" a dish, 9 times out of 10 it just needs more salt. The other big thing is to feel free to cook with high heat (when appropriate) - pay attention and cook foods over higher heat than you might be used to and notice how much more flavor you get (of course, you're also paying more attention, which helps too!).
- —Guest molly
