best quick cooking tips
Source of Recipe
"The Best Kitchen Quick Tips" by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine
Recipe Introduction
We'd all like to know the quickest and easiest way to get a kitchen task done.
there are 534 tricks, techniques and shortcuts in one place
List of Ingredients
It contains the most useful tips with illustrations, that have appeared in the magazine since it started in 1993.Recipe
Here are a few suggestions from the book:
Softening butter in a hurry: It can take a long time for a stick of chilled
butter to reach the right temperature for creaming. Many cooks are tempted
to use the microwave, but this is an imperfect solution because the edges of
the butter often begin to melt before the center is really softened. If you
are in a hurry, cut the butter into tablespoon-sized pieces. It will be soft
enough to use in about 15 minutes. If, despite all precautions, your butter
is still too cool, a quick remedy is to wrap a bowl with a warm, damp towel
and continue creaming.
Cutting crusty bread: Artisan breads have heavy crusts that can be difficult
to slice neatly. Often the bread knife fails to cut all the way through the
bottom crust. Turn the loaf on its side and cut through the top and bottom
simultaneously. The crust on the side of the bread, which is now facing
down, is often thinner and easier to slice.
Blending peanut butter: Fans of natural peanut butter (without sugar or
other stabilizers), tahini or other nut butters know that the butter often
separates into a dense, solid mass beneath a layer of oil. So, before
spreading, it has to be stirred. The solution is to turn the sealed jar
upside down and allow the oil to rise again to the top. As the oil passes
through the nut butter, the solids will absorb some oil and become soft
enough to spread. Flip the jar right-side up and the peanut butter is ready
to use.
Judging when cream is properly whipped: Many recipes instruct the cook to
whip cream to either soft or stiff peaks. The way to tell when you should
stop beating: Cream whipped to soft peaks will droop slightly from the ends
of the beaters. Cream whipped to stiff peaks will cling tightly to the ends
of the beater and hold its shape.
Rescuing burnt cookies: When baking lots of cookies, as for the holidays,
it's inevitable some of the cookies will end up over-browned or even burnt
in some spots. This cookie-saving tip works well with lightly tinged
cookies, but not thoroughly burnt ones: Grate the burnt layer off the
bottoms with a grater/zester.
Applying chocolate shavings: If chocolate is too hard, it can be difficult
to pull off thick shavings. Even if you do cut off nice shavings, the warmth
from your fingers can cause the pieces to melt as you try to place them on
the cake.
Here's how to avoid both problems: Warm a block of bittersweet or semisweet
chocolate by sweeping a hair dryer over it, taking care not to melt the
chocolate. Holding a paring knife at a 45-degree angle against the
chocolate, scrape toward you, anchoring the block with your other hand. Pick
up the shavings with a toothpick and place them as desired on frosted cake.
Shaving parmesan: To achieve paper-thin slices of parmesan, which make a
nice addition to salads, employ your vegetable peeler. Run a vegetable
peeler over a block of parmesan. Use a light touch for thin shavings.
Storing bacon: If you don't use up a pound of bacon before it becomes
rancid, freeze it.
Freezing is the best way to preserve bacon, but if frozen in the original
package, it's impossible to later remove a few slices at a time.
To solve this dilemma, roll up the bacon in tight cylinders, each with two
to four slices of bacon. Place cylinders in a zipper-lock plastic bag and
place bag in freezer. When bacon is needed, simply pull out the desired
number of slices and defrost.
Creating a silky look on cake frosting: Professionally decorated cakes seem
to have a molten, silky look. To get the same appearance at home, frost as
usual and then use a hair dryer to blow-dry the frosted surface of the cake.
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