Having to cook and dish up meals every day can get a little humdrum at times. To improve your outlook, you should consider some options, such as learning more about healthy cooking. Not only is healthy cooking about putting a meal on the table, it is also a fun and creative activity that you can enjoy. Here are a few great healthy cooking guidelines to get you started.
Stored Correctly
When you store your spices and herbs, keep them in a place that is cool and dark. Your spices and herbs will lose some of their flavor when exposed to light, humidity and heat. When stored correctly, your spices can stay spicy for up to a year. Spices that are raw, or whole, can keep the original flavor for as long as five years, though it usually falls somewhere between three and five. If stored correctly, they will remain fresher longer.
One thing that you can do is to bake a pie or tart crust longer to optimize quality. It will help if you achieve a darker, more delicious golden caramel color, rather than stopping when the crust is still pale. The caramelizing of the sugar in pie crust gives it crispness and extra sweetness.
Before preparing a nice meal for friends and relations, be sure to make a good plan. Make sure you have everything you need to make your food. Organize everything so you can start healthy cooking, including the spices and utensils. Taking the time to prepare yourself will guarantee that the meal will be a success.
It is absolutely essential that you have sharp knives whenever you cook. Dull knives are not only difficult to cut things with, but they are also very dangerous to use. Cutting vegetables with dulled blades can be difficult, and can result in the knife slipping, and cutting you instead.
A lot of people usually use apples for healthy cooking things in the winter and fall months, yet a lot of people store them incorrectly and they spoil quickly. Warm dry air causes apples to rot, so put them in plastic bags with loose ties in a fridge or cool basement. Watch your apples so that you can catch any rotten ones, a rotten apple will make the others spoil.
They will act somewhat like a sponge that soaks up all the water. Instead, you want to wet a clean cloth and use that to wipe the mushroom off.
The smell of garlic can transfer to your hands easily. To get rid of the odors that garlic and other pungent ingredients leave on your hands, rub them around the inside of your stainless steel sink. This will remove the scent from your hands and stop it from transferring.
Do you have a difficult time deciding how long you should grill your meat? A good quality, digital, meat thermometer is a good investment for your kitchen as it can tell you precisely the internal temperature of the meat, and this will let you know when it is cooked to perfection. If you are grilling a thicker piece of meat (over 1.5 inches), close your grill while healthy cooking to save some time.
Chicken Broth
You should use chicken broth when you are healthy cooking your vegetables. Using chicken broth will prevent the vegetables from sticking in the pan as well as add some tasty flavor at the same time. Chicken broth costs very little, and can be bought at most any grocery store.
If you want to lose weight and eat healthier, cut back on the amout of oil that you cook with. Adding unnecessary butter, oil and lard can increase your intake of fat. Nonstick healthy cooking sprays are a great substitute which ends up giving you the same result except in a healthy way, as opposed to the oil which is unhealthy.
Skewers should always be soaked in cold water for a minimum of 30 minutes before they are used in healthy cooking. By soaking, you can prevent the skewers from burning while healthy cooking your food. Try using two skewers parallel to one another instead of just one skewer.
Read nutrition labels when you buy foods. There are ingredients that may be unhealthy. Pay special attention to carbohydrate and salt content, as eating too much of these can be especially dangerous.
To avoid getting overwhelmed when preparing a dinner, make preparations a day in advance. Make your sauces, cut your ingredients or marinate meat the day before. You will be more relaxed and better prepared to cook the following day.
Many popular veggies and herbs have a strong residual odor that can remain on cutting boards well after use. Make a small mark with a marker on one side of your board to remind you which side is for sweet items and which is for sour.
You can make stock ahead of time to add to other dishes. You can make this in large batches, and freeze some for later use in resealable freezer bags. By doing this, you’ll always have great tasting homemade stock when you desire to create soups or other types of dishes. Preparing your own stock in advance will reduce your need to use cheap over-salted options instead.
Healthy Cooking
Now that you have the knowledge you need, it’s time for you to practice what you have learned! Through healthy cooking, you can educate yourself on different types of food, while still having a great time. You will also find out more about your tastes and preferences. As healthy cooking becomes more pleasurable to you, you’ll start to get creative with it, and your food will start to taste better and better.