Cooking Tips
More Cooking Tips Picks
Tips for Cooking Asparagus
Serve your family asparagus and you will all benefit from the high amounts of potassium, vitamin B-6, thiamine and fiber. This vegetable is also a leading source of folic acid, a vitamin that is important for women who might become pregnant because of its role in preventing neural tube defects in babies. Make the asparagus more appealing to younger members of your family by cooking it properly. Overcooked asparagus has a slimy texture, while undercooked asparagus has a tough texture and woody flavor.
What Are Some Cooking Tips?
It’s easy to fall into a rut and serve the same 10 dinners on rotation. But if your loved ones are vigorously protesting the same meals, then it's time to expand your culinary horizons. Whether you consider your time in the kitchen a chore or a respite from the craziness of life, trying new foodie tips will switch up your old routine.
Tips on Cooking Efficiently
Efficient cooking requires having the right tools and planning. Keep your kitchen clean and well organized, with items such as potholders, tongs and stirring spoons near the oven within easy reach. With an organized area, you can save time and energy at every step in the cooking process, leaving you more time to spend with your family between meals.
Italian Cooking Tips
Italian food often gives your family a sense of homeyness and comfort with its warm pastas, rich sauces and steaming vegetables. The variety of Italian foods also means you can usually find something even picky eaters will try. Choose whole-grain pastas as the base for your Italian meals to add nutrients to your cooking.
Pasta Sauce Cooking Tips
Wholesome pasta dinners can be a breeze to toss together, even when you and your family are pressed for time. Stick with whole-grain noodles, including some fun pasta shapes like ziti or rotini that are eye-catching to kids. Boil your noodles and refrigerate for up to three days to save a couple of steps on the night you serve your spaghetti or fettuccine dinner. Pasta sauce cooking tips help you turn a simple topper into a delicious but quick dish.
Tips on Cooking With Grass-Fed Beef
A cow’s natural diet consists of grasses, but most modern agricultural operations feed their cows a corn-based diet to fatten them up. According to Stanford University, corn diets can make cows sick, unless they are dosed with high amounts of antibiotics to stave off disease. In contrast, grass-fed beef enjoy a natural diet. Serving beef from grass-fed cows to your family can provide them with certain health benefits.
Cooking Tips for Outdoor Grilling
Outdoor grilling offers a fast, easy and fun way to cook meals for the whole family. It’s simple to create low-fat dishes on the grill, as grilled foods don’t require a lot of fats to retain their juices. Cook meat, fish, poultry, vegetables and even fruits on the grill. Avoid heating up the house with your oven or stove on a hot day by making dinner outside.
Safety Tips for Cooking With Children
Cooking is a way for kids to connect with their food and nutrition, learn valuable life skills and fuel their creativity. Cooking also allows kids to contribute to the family in a tangible way. Teach kids the safety rules and assign tasks that are age-appropriate. Inviting kids into the kitchen is messy, but it can be fun as well. Design your kitchen to be kid-friendly and enjoy the time spent together.
Tips on How to Cook a Spiral Ham
Spiral-sliced hams are already cooked and sliced for convenience. The spiral cut gives you slices of equal thickness. Spiral-sliced hams make an ideal menu choice for moms on busy holidays because they are tasty and easy to prepare. The ham is already cooked, so be careful not to dry it out during the heating process.
Tips for Cooking With Chocolate
In the quest to find out who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, more than one mom has confronted a child with a telltale ring of chocolate around his mouth, only to be amused by the response, “not me.” It's easy to extol the virtues of chocolate, as moms and their progeny are equally convinced of its magical properties. While chocolate certainly holds a special place at the dessert table, try experimenting with it in a variety of ways.
Cooking Tips for the Beginner
Don't let the fact that you are a beginner cook stop you from preparing home-cooked meals. Making a tasty meal doesn’t have to be a huge feat. Experiment in the kitchen, and enlist the help of family members along the way. A few cooking tips are all you need to master kitchen basics and begin your journey to becoming an excellent cook.
Tips for Cooking Hamburgers on a Grill
The process may seem simple enough: Fire up the grill, throw on the hamburgers and get the kids ready to eat. However, as with any type of cooking, cooking hamburgers on the grill requires that you pay attention to detail and technique if you want to get it right. Follow a few tips to ensure that at your next barbecue, your family enjoys burgers that are plump, juicy and delicious, and not burnt, dry and tasteless.
Cooking Tips for Vegetarian Foods
Whether you are a strict vegetarian, vegan or simply want to add a few vegetarian meals into your cooking rotation, you can make full-flavored healthy meals for your family as easily as any meat-based dish. As long as you serve a variety of vegetables, grains, legumes, seeds, nuts and beans, your family should get the protein they need without meat, and in many cases without animal products at all.
Cooking Tips for Roast Beef
Roast beef is an easy dish to make for your family because it doesn't require a lot of preparation. With some cooking methods, you can put it in the oven and ignore it for several hours. Easy doesn't have to mean bland, however, especially if you start with a fresh, high quality cut of beef.
Tips for Cooking With Soup
Soup makes an effective base for a wide variety of other dishes. Whether you use your own soups made from scratch or select canned or packaged soups as a base for other entrees, you can add complex flavor to your meals with the simple single ingredient of soup. You can also make new soups from your meal leftovers to turn them into filling lunches for next-day dining.
Tips on Cooking with Curry
Curry is commercially available in both powder and paste form. The spice consists of several spices combined, most notably turmeric, cumin, coriander, fenugreek and chilis. The exact composition varies among manufacturers, but Indian-type curry powders are often heavier on cardamom, while Thai-style curry seasoning is heavier on chilis and sometimes ginger. Introduce your family to many types of curry to find the flavors that everyone will enjoy.
Cooking Tips for Marinated Meat
Marinating meat is an easy way to add favor and moisture. Use a zip-top bag for easy, mess-free storage of the meat as it marinates. That way, you can shake it up and redistribute the marinade as often as you want before you cook it. Choose from a wide selection of marinades at the grocery store, or make your own. Either way, your family will love the moist, tasty meat you serve.
Wok Cooking Tips
Wok cooking makes it possible for busy cooks to put a meal on the table in under 20 minutes. The versatile tool fries and steams food quickly, and, in a pinch, doubles as a boiling pot. Vegetables retain their bright colors and much of their nutritional value. Adapt recipes to your family's tastes and create your own dishes from fresh vegetables and meat.
Cooking Tips & Techniques
Cooking for a family can be a time-consuming daily task, so becoming familiar with a few basic cooking tips can save you time and energy. Oven-cooked meals often take less attention than stovetop cooking, but stovetop preparation can enhance flavors and often offers faster overall cooking times, depending on how food is prepared. In either situation, cook your food to the USDA-recommended safe temperatures of 160 degrees for ground meats, 165 degrees for chicken, and 145 degrees for whole meats, including beef and pork, as well as whole fish fillets or steaks.
Cooking in the Kitchen Tips
Cooking for your family doesn't have to be a chore, and you can make dinner, breakfast and every other meal easier on yourself with a little planning ahead. You don't have to be an all-out gourmet, but stealing a few tricks from professional chefs can make your life easier as you work to keep your busy family fed.
Tips on Cooking Fish
All types of fish cook very quickly, so if you’re looking for a lean and tasty protein for your family that’s fast and easy to cook, look no further. Avoid any fish that smells fishy; that means it’s old and won’t taste good. Delicate fish bake well in the oven with sauce and vegetables to keep them moist; just set a timer, as fish tends to overcook easily.
Tips to Cook a Pork Shoulder
Pork shoulder is an inexpensive cut of pork with ribbons of fat that make it very tender when cooked slowly, but tough with other cooking methods. Sometimes the shoulder is broken down into two pieces: Boston butt and the picnic shoulder. The Boston butt cut is more commonly found in stores because the picnic shoulder is often smoked as a ham. Cook and serve any pork shoulder in a wide variety of ways.
Cooking Tips for Gas Grills
Of the 75 percent of U.S. households that have grills, 61 percent rely on gas grills. While they cannot instill the same smoky flavors in foods that charcoal grills can, gas grills allow for a greater degree of convenience, making them ideal for busy moms. Unlike with a charcoal grill, you can fire up a gas grill with the turn of a knob and the push of a button. Despite this convenience, mastering the art of gas grilling still poses its challenges. Fortunately, there are several cooking tips for gas grills that can help.
Tips on Using a Cookie Press
You and your kids can make fancy cookies at home for a fraction of the price with a cookie press. Not only that, it’s a nice bonding activity that your entire family can enjoy. These aren’t as quick as drop cookies, like chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies. Once you get comfortable, the pressing process will go much more quickly, however. If you have multiple cookie presses, you and your kids can race each other.
Deep Fryer Cooking Tips
Tempura, fried chicken and doughnuts lend themselves to deep fryer cooking. Likewise, homemade fries fresh from the deep fryer beat frozen potatoes every time. Use beneficial oils heated to the proper temperature . Deep-frying is not a project for younger kids and teens should be under close supervision when they're using the appliance.
Safety Tips for Cooking on an Open Fire
Whether you’re cooking for your family during a camping trip or in your backyard, follow basic fire-safety guidelines to prevent dangerous accidents. For example, warn your children not to walk or run near the fire. Note that a lack of visible flames doesn’t mean a fire isn’t still hot, so warn everyone to stay clear even after you extinguish it.
The Best Way to Cook a Tri-Tip
The tri-tip is a delicious and strong-flavored cut of beef that can be surprisingly hard to find, given that there are only two per cow. Cooks don't agree on the best way to prepare a tri-tip, but it's clear that roasting, broiling, frying and baking all produce a tasty meal with exquisite flavors. If you're lucky enough to find a tri-tip, cook it in the way that your family prefers and add flavorful touches to make the perfect meal.
Tips on Preparing and Cooking Cranberries
With their bright red color and tart bite, cranberries bring boldness to meals, especially during the dark winter months. If you have a few extra fresh berries, use them in holiday decorations that you make with your kids. When cooking, use the right ratio of ingredients to ensure that cranberry recipes turn out sweet enough to balance the puckering flavor of the raw berries.
Healthy Cooking Tips for Your Family
Healthy home-cooked meals allow you to introduce nutritious foods to your children. Although many people cringe at the word "healthy," cooking nutritious meals does not require you to sacrifice flavor. A few changes in the way you prepare meals for your family can ensure that they are getting the nutrients they need and not overindulging in foods with empty calories.
Cooking Safety & Hygiene Tips
Foodborne illnesses caused by improperly cooked or stored food are easy to avoid with a few basic precautions. Most of the steps, like keeping your work area clean, stem from common sense. Others may not be so intuitive. Always err on the side of caution if you're unsure about whether or not a food is safe to eat.
Cooking Tips for Pork Spare Ribs
Barbecue masters brag about their ribs, rubs and marinades, and competitors keep their top secret cooking tricks under wraps. A few simple tips and techniques take the mystery out of cooking pork spare ribs. Creating your own seasoning mixes and sauces that appeal to your family spices up the finished product.
Cooking Secrets and Tips
Most cooks have their own rosters of cooking secrets, some passed down from generation to generation, ensuring success each time they prepare a dish. Learning to plan ahead is one of the most important secrets for reducing the amount of time you spend in the kitchen. Mastering a few techniques goes a long way, too.
Tips on Making Cut-Out Cookies
Moms spend a lot of mental time figuring out how to make special memories for their children. But when we grow up, it's important to remember that some of the best memories come from time spent with mom and dad just throwing a ball in the yard, playing a board game or covering ourselves in flour as we make cut-out cookies together.
Simple Cooking Tips for Fresh Tuna
Several types of fish are classified as tuna. Some varieties make great fresh meat entrees. Cooking and serving fresh tuna adds a good source of protein and other nutrients to your family's meals. Armed with some advice about how to buy top quality fresh tuna and how to cook it to its best advantage, you can add fresh tuna to the meal rotation in your household.
Dehydrated Vegetables Cooking Tips
Most moms are familiar with cans of vegetables and bags of frozen veggies, but you might not be aware of how convenient dehydrated vegetables can be. Dried vegetables don't require any special storage space like frozen foods do, and they can last for months in your pantry. While they're not useful for veggie trays or other places where fresh vegetables shine, dehydrated vegetables can be used in many dishes.
Tips on Cooking Flank Steak
Flank steak doesn’t hold quite the audacious reputation as a juicy porterhouse or T-bone steak. Nonetheless, it’s a source of inspiration in the kitchen, particularly when it comes to the effect it has on your family budget and the kitchen timer. If you’re unfamiliar with flank steak, don’t shy away from sales at your local grocery store; buy what you can afford and freeze what you don’t need. When you start craving a tasty cut of beef, you’ll have an inexpensive buy waiting for you in the freezer.
Cooking Tips for Mashed Potatoes
While mashed potatoes may seem like a straighforward side dish to make, they have the potential for turning out lumpy and flavorless. Whether you’ve messed up mashed potatoes in the past or you want to wow your guests with some marvelous mashed potatoes the next time you serve dinner, follow some cooking tips to help you make this classic side dish more than just a spongy medium for gravy.
Healthier Cooking and Fitness Tips
Ensuring children eat healthy foods and get enough exercise is a priority for busy mothers although it can often be a challenge. Thankfully, there are a variety of quick, easy tips that help make meals more nutritious and assist you in promoting a healthy, active lifestyle that the entire family can embrace together.
Cooking Tips for Getting Rid of the Tomato Taste in Pasta Sauce
One of the keys to a successful pasta sauce is balance, just as you have to balance your daily duties as a mom. All of the ingredients and flavors should be in harmony, with no one dominating. In a tomato-based sauce, a common fault is that the tomatoes overwhelm the other ingredients. The result can be a sauce that is overly acidic, has a metallic taste or sometimes just lacks a rounded flavor. A well-balanced homemade sauce can use herbs and hidden vegetables to counteract those unpleasant flavors, while boosting nutrition for each pasta-loving child.
Tips on Cooking Canned Biscuits
The thwap of a can of biscuits opening against a kitchen counter can be enough to bring kids into the kitchen, eager to help unroll the package and place the doughy goodness into a pan. Biscuits aren’t just for dredging through gravy on a plate, though; they are also a handy staple that stretches your culinary talents as well as your pocketbook. Watch your grocery ads closely and when biscuits go on sale, combine the savings with a coupon and you’ll have the basis for several meals.
Tips on Cooking Pork
Pork has an understated, non-gamy flavor and is loaded with nutrients, the most prominent of which include protein, iron, selenium and vitamin B12. Small lean cuts of pork, such as chops and loins, cook in short order, while larger cuts like ribs and Boston butt take more time but deliver more pronounced flavor. Regardless of the type of pork dish you are preparing, certain techniques will ensure that you cook pork to perfection.
Tips on Cooking & Baking With Potatoes
Adding potatoes to a menu gives you endless options for tempting main dish casseroles and side dies. A tuber vegetable available in many different varieties, potatoes provide vitamin C, potassium and dietary fiber without fat. Kids often enjoy the mild and savory taste of potatoes in foods, so cook and bake with potatoes to make meals they’ll love.
Simple Vegetarian Cooking Tips
Many reasons lead families to choose a vegetarian diet, including health concerns, cultural beliefs or just personal preference. Even some omnivores find that taking a break from meat is a welcome culinary change of pace -- and a boost to the cash balance. Whether you have long been a vegetarian or your teen came to you with her choice to forego meat from this day forward, follow simple, economical tips for creating healthy vegetarian meals.
Tips on Cooking on a Propane Camping Stove
Camping with your family offers a few challenges, not the least of which is how to prepare hot meals in the wild. Using a propane camping stove can be a bit tricky if you are a novice camping cook, especially if you are accustomed to cooking on a flameless, electric stove top at home. However, cooking with a camping stove is considerably simpler than cooking over a campfire. This is because campfires, unlike camping stoves, produce irregular amounts of heat and are hard to control.
Tips on Cooking for Camping
Cooking while on a camping trip requires more ingenuity than cooking in your kitchen at home, as you do not have a refrigerator, microwave, full-size oven and other kitchen appliances at your convenience. However, by making use of the resources available to you, campground meals can amount to more than just roasted marshmallows and melted chocolate sandwiched between graham crackers. For best results, bring all of your perishable food items in a sturdy, watertight, well-insulated cooler and keep it out of -- and away from -- your tent. Otherwise, you may wake up to a bear clawing his way through your morning breakfast menu.
Tips on Cooking Stuffed Turkey
A holiday meal often features the traditional meal of stuffed turkey with all the trimmings. When the sights and smells of turkey and stuffing combine in the kitchen, mouths will water and guests will gather. Put on a tasty spread to celebrate a special family occasion, cooking a stuffed turkey to perfection.
Tips for Cooking with Children
When you prepare your meals, it's likely your kids are in the kitchen with you keeping you company. Why not teach them to cook, as long as you’re together? Kids who like to eat often like to cook as well. Spend a little quality time and get cooking with the kids.
Giant Cupcake Pan Cooking Tips
Almost everyone loves cupcakes -- and what's great in a small size is even better in giant size. Chances are you've seen the giant cupcake pans, available in both metal and silicone versions, in stores. These versatile pans help even novice bakers create whimsical, original cakes. A few tips and tricks before you start creating your giant cupcake can make the difference between disappointment and success.
The Best Way to Cook Moist Tri Tip
Tri-tip roast is a flavorful cut of beef with a rich marbling of fat, but it is less tender than a sirloin roast or a tenderloin. Slow-cooking or braising will make the tri-tip fall apart or turn it to mush. If you want a truly moist tri-tip roast that accentuates the rich, meaty flavor of the beef, grill it over medium heat.
