Mastering the kitchen involves understanding healthy fat profiles, variety-specific grain preparation, and safe food handling techniques.
French fries are a delicious and versatile side dish. They go great with everything and are easy to prepare. The only problem is that they are usually prepared using oil, which makes them high in fat and calories. To enjoy french fries without the guilt, prepare them without oil and bake them in the oven.
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Discover how to make delicious cakes without using eggs. Learn the steps to replace eggs with bananas in your favorite cake mix, and find out why this method is perfect for vegans and those on a cholesterol-restricted diet.
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Acidic cooking and baking ingredients, such as vinegar and lemon juice, give dishes a sour or tart taste. Certain fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes, release acid when they are exposed to heat.
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If you forgot to add baking soda to your cake recipe, you may want to get out the bowl and whisk again. Baking soda is one of several types of leavening agents that allow your cake to rise in the oven, yielding a light, tender crumb.
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Cooking with a convection toaster oven produces faster cooking than in a regular oven by using fans to force heat through the oven and surround the food rather than the heat coming only from the top or bottom. Pork chops, a lean cut of pork loin, are succulent and juicy when broiled in a convection oven.
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Organ meats like beef kidneys aren't popular in the United States, though French chef and cookbook author Jacques Pepin says that kidneys can be a tender and flavorful cut if prepared correctly. Unlike lamb or veal kidneys, beef kidneys are large and tough and require long braising over low, moist heat to become soft.
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The dark color and rich, sweet flavor of baked beans comes from adding a bit of molasses to the recipe. Molasses is the residual by-product of the sugar manufacturing process. The goal is to remove as much sucrose or table sugar out of sugar cane, beets or sorghum as is possible in a cost-effect manner.
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When you work with variety meats such as chicken gizzards, you have a lot of fibrous, tough tissue to contend with. You have to break down that tough tissue before using a dry-heat cooking method like frying to prepare them, and this can take hours if you go the low-temperature, slow-cooking route.
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Shake 'n Bake is a type of flavored breadcrumb mix from Kraft Foods. It gets its trademark name because of the way that you prepare chicken, namely, by shaking pieces of chicken in a bag filled with the breadcrumbs and then baking them, rather than frying them.
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Cook a homemade lasagna for dinner and you'll cut back on the salt and preservatives found in the frozen lasagnas you'll find at the grocery store. You can use whole wheat noodles and low-fat cheese to make a homemade lasagna healthier.
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Pizza just isn't pizza without a crust that is crispy on the outside and soft and bread-like on the inside. You achieve this pizzeria result by greasing your pizza pan properly. Greasing the pizza pan reduces the chances of sticking and gives the crust the proper flavor and texture.
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Dark nonstick pans have become a very common sight in kitchens. While you still have to grease the pans in many cases, the nonstick coating makes it that much easier to extract the food from the pan.
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Making homemade gravy is one of the most daunting challenges that a new cook can face. Getting the thickness right, making sure there are no lumps and not scorching it are all hurdles. Once you’ve leapt those, you still have to figure out how to season your gravy.
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Bacon can be time-consuming -- and messy -- to prepare for a large breakfast or brunch get-together. By precooking the bacon the day before, however, you can serve a large amount, without the hassle of preparing the bacon as your guests arrive.
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Baking potato wedges is a healthier alternative than frying them in oil. You have two choices when making the wedges: white or sweet potatoes. Regardless of which potato you select, baking the wedges will keep them crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.
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Pesticides are chemicals intended to prevent infestation of fresh produce by pests. Produce pests include insects and bugs, birds and some mammals, microbes, weeds and plant pathogens, among others. While pesticides prevent infestation, they also pose a threat to human health because they can be harmful when ingested.
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Barley is a nutritious whole grain, rich in fiber and nutrients such as protein, folic acid, calcium and niacin. Pearl barley, processed to speed cooking time, lacks the fibrous outer hull. However, it still provides generous amounts of fiber, believed to help maintain healthy cholesterol and prevent heart disease.
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You're not going nuts if you've noticed that buying whole almonds and processing them yourself is cheaper than springing for ground almonds. The problem is knowing how much to purchase. Once they are processed into finer-sized pieces, almonds have more volume than they did in their whole form.
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Omelets range from simple to extravagant, depending on the filling, but they don't have to be difficult to prepare. Cooking an omelet in the microwave is a simple and time-saving way to create this popular breakfast dish.
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Soaking chicken in buttermilk produces moist, tender meat with a flavorful tang. Buttermilk is traditionally used as a marinade for bone-in fried chicken, but it can also improve your pan-fried chicken breasts.
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