BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Hot & Spicy Food Do You Have a Food Prep or Cooking Tip to Share?

We all little short cuts and secrets that we use to make our lives in the kitchen easier and our foods tastier. I have a couple that are so simple.

When making rice, I use 'Quick Rice' and it comes out perfect every time. This is not the same as Minute Rice which is a name brand and different process. I use store brand 'quick rice' and it looks and tastes just as good as rice that takes longer to cook.

I keep instant potatoes in my fridge and use to thicken soups, stews and gravies. It works wonderfully well.

If you buy the snack puddings, keep at least eight of the cups. One fits into the other nicely and don't take up a lot of room. I use them to when making Jello, they help me keep the portions just right.

These little cups can be used for just about everything *except* holding hot liquids. They are pefect when used as a mold for rice or spinach. Just press into a snack pudding cup that has been sprayed with vegetable spray. The food will slide out nicely onto the plate.

When baking appetizers and snacks in the oven, I always line the baking sheet with aluminum foil and top with cooking spray. No clean-up!

Chloe,

That's really a good idea. I usally do one or the other. I like your way much better <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

By the way. Love your site.

Always pre-measure your items before startig to cook. Its a pain in the behind side to find out midway through a recipe that you don't have enough flour, sugar, whatever.

Pre-measuring is one of the best tips to give anyone. It makes it so much easier. Usually it is the prep time that takes the longest. It's also a great idea to do some of the prep the night before. If you are having a family dinner or some sort of entertaining, it just makes it a lot less stressful to cut up your veggies, defrost and marinade your meat overnight, toss up a salad, make your dessert all the night before, so that the next day all you have to do is throw it all together and pop it into the oven or whatever. This way you can spend more time socializing with your company rather than slaving away in the kitchen <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I also use the tin foil and spray when baking anything in the oven.

RE: pre-measuring.

This makes such good sense. While watching a cooking show yesterday, I realized that this is what most cooking show hosts do as well.

nice tips, thanks

Sometimes I get a back of lemons, limes, or oranges to put in a bowl as a centerpiece or decoration when company's coming. After the event I squeeze the juice into ice cube trays then keep the cubes in a zip lock freezer bag. It takes a bit of time, but I have it handy in about tablespoon portions for recipes, real margaritas, etc. Plus, the fruit looks nice on the table, mantle, or buffet. Nice change from flowers, and sometimes too many flowers around makes it look like a wake : )

I also buy a bunch of garlic and chop it in the food processor, put it in a jar, cover w/olive oil, and keep in the frig. It keeps a long time and I like having it handy after work.

Get a chef to teach you how to use a knife. Some cooking stores offer classes too.

Julie

Lemons, limes, oranges in a bowl is a wonderful idea. Once I went to a party and the hostess had put loaves of fresh bread in a large basket. I do love things like this.

Julie,

You are so right about using a knife properly. My problem was which knife to use to cut which food. I did an online search and found this great site from the USA Government. I printed it out and keep it with my cookbooks.

The site is pdf and has lot of pages, but well worth looking into and printing.
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I cut up my veggies when I first buy them, and then I freeze them. When it is cooking time, all the time consuming prep work has been done and it goes by so quickly.

Peeling ginger is so fast when you use a spoon bowl held with round part towards you and just scrape! Like magic it peels and doesen't take half the ginger away.

I learned this on the Thai site here on Bellaonline-so clever!

I recently bought a handy gadget that helps when making salsa. It's a Vidalia Chop Wizard. It has two different inserts to chop
onion or tomatoes. I really like it. The chunks of tomato look neat and the onion is smaller.

I too always use aluminum foil on my baking sheets. Easy clean up Also when baking cakes or pasta dishes I always put a tray lined with foil underneath so spills are not a problem.

good tips thanks for posting :)

Whenever I make curry, I grind tomatoes, onion, ginger garlic and all the spices together and fry it in the oil in spite of frying them individually, This saves a lot of time fuel and gives a better taste.

nice tips

I now keep a large cookie tray in my oven to collect spills. I got this idea from poster 'three spices.'