I bet you didn't know that those unpopped kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bowl are known as "old maids."
Posts with tag how to
Tip of the Day: clean the "bloom" off chocolate
As someone who eats a tiny bit of chocolate every night before going to sleep, and thus always has several half-eaten bars lying around, I know all about chocolate "bloom."
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Tip of the Day: make your whites whiter, keep your colors vibrant with vinegar
Did you know that vinegar can keep cauliflower snow white and broccoli as green as grass?
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Tip of the Day: How to peel and eat boiled eggs
Frustrated by those tough-peeling egg shells? Here's how to making shelling those eggs a breeze!
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How to keep greens fresh
Clotilde over at Chocolate and Zucchini has a lovely spring-appropriate post about how to keep greens fresh. "Keeping one's greens fresh and happy seems to be the culinary equivalent of keeping one's skin young: it's a losing battle, but everyone hopes to find the magic technique," writes the ever-witty Parisienne. Clotilde likes to rinse the greens several times, removes excess moisture with a salad spinner, lets them sit in the spinner to dry for 20 minutes, then stores them in a sealed plastic container lined with paper towels. Her blog commenters have chimed in with dozens of their own helpful tips. I'll try to remember this for next time, as I've just finished cleaning rotten spinach goop out of the crisper drawer again.
Tip of the Day: An easier way to cut peppers
Looking for a quick, easy and less messy way of coring a bell pepper? Well, you've come to the right place!
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April Food Day: Fake food
Would you like a slice of cake? It's made out of plastic! April Fool's! In honor of the day of jokes, hoaxes and pranks, I've compiled a little list of where to get and how to make fake foods:
Brownie Point Blog has the most amazing tutorial on how to make edible fake sushi - salmon nigiri with Rice Krispie treat rice and dried cantelope salmon, shrimp made of hand-painted homemade marshmallow. Seriously realistic-looking, seriously cool.
Leelee's Creations offers hundreds of high-quality fake foods - fake fried chicken dinner, scented plastic cinammon rolls, Popsicles made out of soap, a $185 three-tiered faux wedding cake.
Fake Foods sells just what the name suggests - fake wedges of Swiss cheese, plastic kale leaves, an entire 16-inch "Vegetable Party Tray."
At Jerri Blank's website, funny lady Amy Sedaris shows you how to make a fake chocolate-frosted cake (spackle, plaster of Paris and a hat box)
Check out Craft Gossip for a tutorial on food-shaped candles - a fruit salad candle, a hot fudge sundae candle, etc.
Any other great faux food sites out there?
The art of homemade butterscotch
I have always been a sucker for butterscotch. When I was a kid, I would always choose one of those hard, orange butterscotch candies over a piece of chocolate. One those rare occasions when my family went out for ice cream sundaes, I would choose vanilla ice cream with hot butterscotch syrup drizzled over top (my mother, being a chocolate person herself, never understood my choice). While I don't always make the same selection these days (I did come around to chocolate sometime in my teens), I still love the flavor of real butterscotch.
Yesterday on Simply Recipes, Elise published a guest post written by Shuna Fish Lydon of the blog Eggbeater on how to make homemade butterscotch. The post comes with step-by-step pictures, which are extremely helpful for those of us who are never sure if the sugar/butter/cream mixture has cooked to the proper consistency. She makes it sounds really easy, which is at once both encouraging and a little dangerous, as the last thing I need in life is the ability to make butterscotch on demand.
Tip of the Day: season a new cast iron pan
If you haven't discovered the joys of cast iron, now's the time to start. It's cheap, distributes heat evenly and, if properly seasoned, is nonstick. Seasoning the pan involves filling in the invisible cracks and pores in the pan's surface by sealing on a layer of grease. Here's a quick method for seasoning a new pan:Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Rub pan with a thin layer of lard or vegetable shortening. Place pan upside down in oven with rack positioned beneath it to catch extra drippings. Cook for 2 hours.
Repeating this seasoning method several times helps create a better nonstick surface. Also, try to wash out the pan while it's still warm and dry with a paper towel to preserve the seasoning.
High altitude cooking
I never thought High Altitude Cooking would be my problem. I always looked at the "for high altitude" adjustments in cookbooks and smiled a pitying smile for the poor schmucks living like mountain goats in funny, square-shaped states like
Well, now I'm about to leave Chapel Hill, NC (elevation 486 feet) for half a year in Santa Fe, NM (elevation 7,000 feet), which means that without some tweaking, my pasta will remain raw and my cakes will sag like busted trampolines. Naturally, I'm a little freaked out.
My mom bought me this cookbook, Pie in the Sky: Successful Baking at High Altitudes by Susan G. Purdy, which includes recipes like Mile-High Lemon Meringue Pie and Paradise Peak Chocolate Soufflé. I haven't used it yet, but I'm still safely at sea level. According to Pie in the Sky, 34 out of 50 states have towns or cities at elevations greater than 2,500 feet, so apparently High Altitude Cooking is a common condition. Does anyone have experience with high altitude cooking or baking? Tips?
Speaking of spices, make Dean & Deluca's spice rack at home
Oh, how I love a good DIY, and it's not that I happen to love sitting in my garage all weekend making things. It's that I am now on a very strict budget and can't go around dropping $150 at Dean & Deluca on a highly coveted spice rack!
A reader over at Apartment Therapy sent the blog her DIY Spice rack project that in the end, cost all of $40, and that's with the spices included! The shelving is from Ikea, the metallic tins are from Bed, Bath & Beyond, and the spices from a local spice store. I am sure that any of us could put something like this together, and what makes this even better than the Dean & Deluca version (aside from the incredible price differential) is that you can customize it to exactly what you like.
How to make potstickers (with pictures!)
When it comes to food like potstickers, I tend to stick to the ones that you can find in the freezer section of Trader Joe's. I've had times when I've been vaguely curious about wonton skins and thought briefly about experimenting with them, but I've always quickly come to my senses and purchased the pre-made ones instead.
However, this post from Alanna and Alex over at Two Fat Als makes me sort of intrigued. They took pictures to document their entire process and it just doesn't look too hard. And the results look delicious!
Leftovers: Tips for storing the food that remains
Thanksgiving dinner is over, the kitchen is littered with dishes and you've got to figure out how to store a half carved turkey, a quart of gravy, a leftover loaf pan of stuffing and three half eaten pies. Not to mention Cousin Melissa's pumpkin soup that she served inside a hollowed out pumpkin. Here are some tips on how to get everything into put away and tucked in the fridge. - Think about your storage options before the big day. Check your supplies of foil, plastic wrap, zip top bags and reusable plastic containers before you start cooking to ensure you'll have enough to get you through.
- Choose the right-sized container for the job. Refrigerator space is at a premium after big holiday meals, so using appropriately sized bowls, jars and bags will keep the jigsaw puzzle easier to solve.
- Make sure that your storage devices are airtight and leak-proof so that your food will stay fresh, aromas won't mingle and you don't end up with candied yam juice coating the shelves with a sticky sheen.
- If you use old yogurt containers or other, non-transparent vessels for your leftovers, label the carton with a sharpie. It will make the hunt for the last of the green beans much easier and when it is empty, the writing wipes off with a little bit of rubbing alcohol.
- Make sure that your turkey is totally unstuffed before you stash it in the fridge, because it can take too long to thoroughly cool otherwise, encouraging the growth of dangerous bacteria.
- Remember that it's never a good idea to store food in aluminum cans, so transfer the leftover cranberry sauce to a different container.
Some turkey brining dos and don'ts
The first year I brined my Thanksgiving turkey, it was something of a disaster. I didn't plan ahead well as to what I was going to brine my turkey in and so ended up using a tall, blue plastic garbage can that I had stashed away in my hall closet (I scrubbed it well before committing any edibles to it).
I started out by pouring my brining liquid into it and then plopping my turkey in. Of course there was too much liquid, so I had a flood of brine pour out all over my kitchen floor. I vividly remember standing there, bailing out the brine with a small sauce pot. Then, after I had cleared a space in my fridge for brining turkey, the weight was too much for my plastic fridge shelf, and I ended up cracking the bottom shelf. I ended up lining the shelf with a wooden cutting board which seemed to give it enough support and the refrigerator didn't fall apart overnight.
Thankfully, it was all worth it in the end, because I ended up with tasty, juicy bird that all my guests enjoyed. That taste has kept me brining and happily I've gotten better at it through trial and error. I've learned to use double layers of the large zip top bags (both Glad and Ziploc make them) that are designed for storing sweaters as the brining vessel. I've also gotten the brine recipe down to a science and you can find it after the jump.
How to make your favorite Halloween candies at home from CHOW
I never actually could quite understand the fascination with re-creating certain store-bought candies and chocolates at home. Snickers bar. Twix. Even Marshmallow Peeps. I'm pretty sure that if you're trying to re-create it, it's going to taste exactly the same (that's the point of re-creating, right?), and yet it's so much easier to just spend $1.99 on a whole bag at the store.
Still, the folks over at CHOW have taken the time to put together recipes for making their own versions of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Almond Joy, Twix, and Snickers, even including instructions for how to wrap them. II guess the point is that their versions also use higher-end ingredients, making their Snickles, Almond Jay, and Twixt, oh-so-ooh-la-la.
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
