General Cooking & Baking Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 08-28-2024

When crafting that perfect salad, you need to know how to select the best green for the bowl and whisk up a simple and delicious salad dressing. If you’re in a hurry, you need tips for pulling together a quick and easy salad, too. Get your salad bowls ready — here are some tips to get started! Listen to the article:Download audio

Article / Updated 10-20-2023

Family hungry and nothing to cook? Make sure that never happens again. If you always keep these staples in your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer, you’ll never again be stuck with no option but takeout. You can certainly add to these lists, but these essentials can always help you make a good meal. For items you use regularly (such as bread, eggs, and milk), plan to restock about once a week. Pantry Baking powder Baking soda Bread Brown sugar Canned beans (pinto, white, or black) Cereal (hot or cold) Chicken, beef, or vegetable broth Cider or white vinegar Cocoa powder Coffee and/or tea Condiments: ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, soy sauce, pickles, and pickle relish Cornstarch Dried herbs: Basil, bay leaves, oregano, rosemary, tarragon, thyme, and parsley Flour Granulated sugar Ground spices: Black pepper, cayenne pepper (or red pepper flakes), chili powder, cinnamon, cumin, curry powder, ginger, dry mustard, nutmeg, and paprika Jam, jelly, or preserves Pancake syrup Pasta Peanut butter Powdered sugar Rice Salt Tomato sauce, paste, and canned tomatoes Vanilla extract Vegetable oil Refrigerator Butter Cheese (hard and soft) Eggs Fresh fruit Fresh vegetables, including leafy greens Meat, fish, poultry, or tofu to last three to five days Milk Yogurt and/or sour cream Freezer Frozen fruit, for smoothies and sauces Frozen vegetables you will actually eat Ice cream or frozen yogurt Meat, poultry, and/or fish to last about a week

Step by Step / Updated 09-26-2023

Most home cooks can get along with three versatile knives: a 10- to 12-inch chef’s knife, an 8- to 10-inch serrated (bread) knife, and a small paring knife.

Step by Step / Updated 09-26-2023

If you really want to go to town with this pots-and-pans thing, you could probably buy a hundred different ones, each with its own specialized function. But is your kitchen really that big? You can do just about any cooking chore with some basic pots and pans However, if you want to take it to the next level, you may consider acquiring some of these additional handy pans. They aren’t essential, but they are pretty cool — and some of them even give you the opportunity to spout French to your guests. Who’s not impressed by that?

Video / Updated 09-26-2023

Hone your knife skills and learn how to separate a whole chicken into eight pieces so you can leave the expensive, precut chicken pieces at the grocery store. Master the simple steps needed to cut a whole chicken into thighs, drumsticks, wings, and breasts. You’ll feel like a real kitchen pro!

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-15-2023

Cooking for yourself is a skill anyone can do, whether you are 16 years old or 96 years old. Making your own meals from scratch can be immensely satisfying while also saving you money, allowing more control over your nutritional intake, and providing an outlet to express your creativity. Being able to shop, prep, cook, and feed yourself is the ultimate in self-sufficiency that will bring you energy and joy for the rest of your life.

Article / Updated 09-11-2023

Recipes are full of culinary codes like abbreviations and weird measurements (how big is a pinch?). Deciphering between the different cooking abbreviations and their proper units of measurement can help make sure your dish comes out exactly as planned. You can find common abbreviations for measurements here, as well as conversions of various ingredient measurements. Common cooking abbreviations Although some recipes spell out measurements, a lot of cookbooks use abbreviations. Oftentimes, different books will use different abbreviations, which can cause confusion when putting together a dish. For example, the tablespoon and teaspoon abbreviations may look very similar and can be mistaken for one another: a lowercase t can stand for teaspoon an uppercase T can stand for tablespoon Adding a tablespoon (T) of garlic when the recipe only requires a teaspoon (t) can spell disaster! Find the common cooking abbreviations and their corresponding units of measurement below: Common Abbreviations for Measurements in Cooking Cooking Abbreviation(s) Unit of Measurement C, c cup g gram kg kilogram L, l liter lb pound mL, ml milliliter oz ounce pt pint t, tsp teaspoon T, TB, Tbl, Tbsp tablespoon Common cooking conversion measurements Now that you have the abbreviations all sorted out, it’s time to learn the most common conversion measurements in cooking. Understanding these cooking conversions can help you quickly follow recipes, convert based on your available cooking equipment, or even allow you to do quick math to slightly alter recipes according to your liking. This table lists common conversion measurements in cooking. Conversion Measurements in Cooking Unit of Measurement : Equals: Pinch or dash less than 1/8 teaspoon 3 teaspoons 1 tablespoon 2 tablespoons 1 fluid ounce 1 jigger 1 1/2 fluid ounces 4 tablespoons 1/4 cup 5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon 1/3 cup 12 tablespoons 3/4 cup 16 tablespoons 1 cup 1 cup 8 fluid ounces 2 cups 1 pint or 16 fluid ounces 2 pints 1 quart or 32 fluid ounces 4 quarts 1 gallon

Video / Updated 08-15-2023

Eggs really should never be hard-boiled (in their shells), but rather hard-cooked; rigorous boiling causes eggs to jostle and crack, leaving the whites tough. The following steps show you how to prepare and peel hard-cooked eggs. Steps for preparing and peeling hard-cooked eggs Place the eggs in a saucepan and add cold water to cover them by about 1 inch. Use a pan large enough to hold the eggs in a single layer, with no eggs on top of each other. Cover the saucepan and bring the water to a boil over high heat. You want the water to start boiling as quickly as possible. Turn off the heat. If your stove is electric, remove the pan from the burner. Let the eggs stand in the covered pan: 12 minute for medium-sized eggs, 15 minutes for large eggs, and 18 minutes for jumbo-sized eggs. No peeking under the cover! You want to keep the heat in the pan to cook the eggs. Carefully drain the eggs in a colander and run cold water over them.

Video / Updated 08-14-2023

Chopping food means to use your chef’s knife to cut it into pieces. Those pieces don’t have to be exactly uniform, but the recipe will often tell you whether you need to chop something finely, coarsely, or somewhere in between. Another word for chopping something very finely is mincing. You’re most often asked to chop or mince veggies or herbs. To chop or mince, hold the knife handle in a comfortable manner and cut the food into thin strips. Then cut the strips crosswise (as thickly as desired), rocking the blade with your hand and applying pressure on top. Your best bet is to grip the handle with one hand and place your other hand on top of the blade. Chopping an onion Want to practice chopping? Many recipes call for chopped onions, so they’re a good place to start. Follow these step: Chop off the stem, and then cut the onion in half lengthwise through the bulbous center and peel back the papery skin. Leave the root end intact. As you slice through the onion, the intact root end holds the onion half together while you slice and chop. Place each half cut-side down and, with your knife tip just in front of the root end, slice the onion lengthwise in parallel cuts, leaving 1⁄8to@@bf1/4 inch between the slices. Make several horizontal cuts of desired thickness, parallel to the board. Cut through the onion crosswise, making pieces as thick as desired. Finally, cut through the root end and discard. No matter how you slice it, an onion releases intense flavor and juice, which is why so many recipes call for chopped or minced onion. The fumes they emit when sliced raw, however, can be irritating to the eyes. To minimize chopped onion tears, use a sharp knife that reduces cutting time, and frequently rinse off the onion in cold water as you go. Better yet, have someone else cut it. Mincing garlic Mincing garlic simply means chopping it very finely. First, a quick explanation of terms: In your grocery store, you find garlic bulbs. (Buy garlic that feels firm and hard, not soft.) A bulb is covered by papery skin. When you peel it off, you discover that the bulb contains multiple cloves with thin skins. If you have difficulty removing individual cloves, take a butter knife and pry them out. Then, here’s what you do: Peel the cloves. To help you get the skin off easily, set the cloves on your cutting board, and lay your chef’s knife across them with the blade facing away from you. Hold the knife handle with one hand, and use your other hand to whack the side of the blade above the cloves. Doing so should break the skins and let you slip them off easily. Hold the garlic clove on the cutting board, with the knuckles of your index finger and middle finger leaning against the side of the knife blade. Keep your fingertips folded inward to prevent cutting yourself. Keeping the tip of your knife on the cutting board, pump the handle up and down while you move the clove under the blade. You’ve probably seen this technique used by the pros on cooking shows. Slowly move your knuckles toward the other end of the garlic as you mince. Using fresh garlic really is worth a couple extra minutes of prep time because the flavor is so superior to the stuff that comes pre-chopped in a jar. That ingredient works in a pinch, however, so it doesn’t hurt to keep a jar in the refrigerator.

Video / Updated 08-14-2023

A recipe that calls for you to prepare vegetables (or meat) might ask for you to julienne or cube them. Don’t let the French accent scare you: Julienned vegetables are as simple as they are attractive, and if you can julienne vegetables, cubing is a breeze. Julienning vegetables To julienne a vegetable, first trim the vegetable, like a radish or carrot, so it’s flat on all sides. Slice it lengthwise into 1⁄8-inch thick pieces. Stack the pieces, and slice them into strips of the same width. The figure shows an illustration of this technique. Cubing (or dicing) vegetables Think of a potato. Trim all the sides until it’s flat all around. Cutting lengthwise, slice off 1/2 -inch-thick pieces (or whatever thickness you desire). Stack all or some of the flat pieces and cut them vertically into even strips. Cut them crosswise into even cubes. Dicing is the same as cubing, except that your pieces are smaller: 1⁄8 to 1/4 inch, usually.