What's in the Holler

Sunday, March 4, 2012

A Few Ideas to Simplify Your Cooking

A Few Ideas to Simplify Your Cooking
* When boiling milk, first stir in a pinch of baking soda. This will help keep the milk from curdling.

* Add one teaspoon of lemon juice to each quart of water when cooking rice, this will keep rice fluffy.

* For crisper salads: Place a saucer upside down in the bottom of the salad bowl before filling with salad. Excess moisture will run underneath the saucer and this will help keep the salad crisp and fresh.
* Crisper salads 2: place a screen disk in the bottom of the bowl before adding the salad ingredients.

* Tasty flavored whipped cream: First whip cream then add 2 Tablespoons of flavored Jell-O and continue beating on slow until the whipped cream is right consistency

* Leftover ham: Lay ham slices in a baking dish then cover with maple syrup. Refrigerate overnight then fry the ham in butter the next morning

* You can substitute crumbled cornflakes for bread crumbs when making meatloaf.

* Cookie & Cake Decoration: Keep a small amount of sugar in small glass jars, add a few drops of food coloring and shake jar. Keep several colors on hand.

* Pickle Juice uses: Use sweet pickle juice to thin salad dressing or make French dressing with instead of vinegar, more delicious.

* Cook vegetables with one or more bouillon cubes instead of salt–improves flavor. Tossing in a few garlic cloves when boiling vegetables makes things tastier too.

* Salt added to flour used for thickening gravies, etc., will help to prevent lumping.

* Keep brown sugar in a closed container with an apple in it, the brown sugar will stay soft and moist.

* Grate orange and lemon peel before peeling. Dry and add to spice cake or any cookies or puddings. The dried grated peel will keep well in a covered jar.

* Wrap parsley in foil first, then freeze. Shave off as much as needed, rewrap and return to the freezer. It will retain its flavor and freshness.

* To keep peeled potatoes from turning dark without putting them in water, wrap in paper towel and wet under the faucet.

* Baking bread? Do not preheat. When you light your oven, pop in the bread pans immediately and you’ll be amazed at the resulting lightness Of the bread.

* Toast oatmeal in the oven before adding to other ingredients when making oatmeal cookies-–delicious!

* Add two teaspoons of vinegar to Jell-O and it will keep the Jell-O from melting when you serve it.

* Lemon juice or vinegar in water where cauliflower is cooked makes it keep its white color.

* A tablespoon of minute tapioca sprinkled in apple pie will absorb excess juice while baking.

* Add one teaspoon baking powder to mashed potatoes to make them fluffy.

* Have a small bowl of melted butter and just brush on corn on the cob with a pastry brush. If you have a metal bowl you can put a chunk of butter in the bowl and set on grill to melt while meal is grilling.

* For bananas that are ripe and ready to eat but you have too many, peel the bananas and freeze them then dip in melted chocolate and freeze again, these make a nice treat!


AzureGreen- Celebrating All Paths to the Divine


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