Almost anyone can manage to grill a decent steak or hamburger, but cooking chicken on the barbecue is more problematic. All too often it's overcooked and stringy, or charred on the outside but still raw at the bone.

Butter is a starring ingredient in many mashed potato recipes, but it adds 11.5 grams of fat per tablespoon to your recipe, and 7.3 grams of that are saturated. It's possible to create a creamy and rich pot of mashed potatoes without all the butter, however.

Firm, meaty, yellowfin tuna steaks can intimidate novice cooks, but this high-quality tuna is easy to prepare. The mildly sweet flesh of yellowfin tuna, also known as ahi tuna, is often served raw in Japanese sashimi.

If you don't have a setup for smoking meat, a smoker and barbecue grill, you might feel you can't have homemade smoked ribs or roast. However, you can do small-scale meat smoking in your oven with just a few supplies.

Similar to cooking with a microwave, infrared cooking uses electromagnetic energy, or EM, to heat your food. Infrared is a form of light energy, which is not part of the visible spectrum. With new models of infrared outdoor grills on the market, some are questioning the safety of these high-powered cooking devices.

It might not seem to matter too much how you slice your meat, but it can actually make the difference between an enjoyable meal and one that is just plain hard to chew.

Weisswurst is a traditional Bavarian sausage that gets its name -- white sausage -- from its pale appearance. Prepared from pork and veal heavily seasoned with parsley, onions, bacon, lemon powder, salt and pepper, weisswurst is sold pre-cooked and needs only to be heated through before eating.

Grilling fresh haddock brings out its natural flavor without adding fat, but it can be a frustrating endeavor. Grilled haddock fillets have a delicate texture and too often end up breaking apart and slipping through the grilling rack, no matter how carefully you try to prevent this.

Cut from the top of the sirloin, spoon roasts are filled with flavor and are one of the healthier cuts of red meat. The American Heart Association named the boneless top sirloin roast as one of the three types of beef that are low enough in saturated fat and cholesterol to carry the heart-check mark.

Trout, a fish that lives primarily in freshwater, is often breaded and pan-fried in a small amount of oil. But if you want to achieve major crunchiness, deep-fry it.

When major outbreaks of foodborne illness occur, news coverage tends to focus on the food's producers and manufacturers. It makes for good ratings and readership, but glosses over the fact that good food handling in the home can sharply reduce the risks.

With its firm and meaty texture, stripers -- better known as striped bass -- can be prepared in a number of ways. Though wild striped bass are found primarily in their native waters along the East coast, they are also farm-raised all over the country and both types are widely available.