Mastering the kitchen involves understanding healthy fat profiles, variety-specific grain preparation, and safe food handling techniques.
You only need to keep and eye on the clock to cook durum wheat semolina pasta to al dente and take advantage of its toothy texture. Almost all dried pasta comes from durum semolina, a coarsely ground hard wheat flour with a high gluten content.
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Mousse is meant to have an ethereal, light consistency; in fact, its quality is gauged by its airiness. But tastes differ, and cooks who favor a rich, pudding-like consistency often find classic French mousse a bit light on the palate.
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Baking fresh ravioli opens up a whole new world of "pasta-bilities" you don't get with dry pasta. Fresh ravioli has a chewy bite and more flavor, even though it doesn't cook to al dente.
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A heavenly combination of New York strip and tenderloin fillet, T-bones stand out among other steaks, and are best cooked naked -- oven-broiled with nothing more than some oil, textured salt and coarsely ground pepper.
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Despite their name, charcoal steaks have nothing in common with charcoal. You don't have to cook charcoal steaks on a charcoal grill, a gas grill or over a fire, for that matter; an oven or broiler works just fine. Charcoal steaks are flatiron steaks with the center seam of cartilage intact.
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Crock-Pots are synonymous with long braises and slow stewing -- cooking methods that hold meat above 210 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours -- but if you monitor the internal temperature of a roast, you can remove it when it reaches medium rare, or 130 F.
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"London broil" refers to a classic dish of marinated flank steak, but that doesn't stop supermarkets from labeling any leftover tough cut of meat "London broil." The classic London broil technique comprises marinating a flank steak in dry red wine, oil and aromatics, then grilling it and slicing it across the grain.
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Sirloin medallions, also called petite sirloins, differ from their full-size counterparts in both thickness -- they measure between 3/4 and 1 inch thick -- and width, at about 3 to 4 inches wide.
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You won't find a more effective sweetener than stevia -- it has 30 times the sweetening power of sugar -- but when you cook with it, you have to substitute for more than sweetness.
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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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Pork-jowl bacon doesn't differ much from pork-belly bacon, except for one thing: technically, it's offal. Although you wouldn't know by its appearance -- both jowl bacon and regular bacon are cured and smoked -- pork-jowl bacon comes from the inside of the pork cheek, just below the eye.
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Most cooks take advantage of carryover cooking, which simply means removing meat from its original heat source before it reaches the desired internal temperature to let residual heat finish the job.
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Boudin sausage doesn't require much cooking since the sausage-maker has already taken care of cooking it for you before you purchased it. Boudin blanc, the Cajun classic, is a basic forcemeat, a charcuterie term that refers to a mixture of ground meat and fat held together with a binder.
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Making homemade raspberry extract uses the same technique as making raspberry-infused vodka except you repeat the process several times to concentrate the flavor.
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Eggplant as a stand-alone dish doesn't respond well to freezing. With porous, spongy flesh combined with natural tannins, you inevitably end up with a thawed piece of mushy vegetable matter with a bitterness that overtakes its nuanced flavor. But prepared eggplant dishes like baba ghanoush can handle it.
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Learn how to cook a hen in the oven with our simple braised hen recipe. Discover the best way to tenderize tough chicken meat and enjoy a delicious, flavorful meal with minimal effort.
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Substituting butter for oil in brownie mix adds complexity and character to an otherwise predictable result. Brownie mixes give you a lot of latitude when it comes to fat substitutions.
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Start to Finish: 5 minutes for American sliced bacon, 1 hour for English bacon Servings: 4 to 6 Difficulty: Easy
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Cabbage consists mainly of delicate, thin-walled cells that rupture when the moisture they contain freezes rapidly. You can freeze cooked cabbage rolls, but it is likely they will fall apart into a soupy puddle when reheating them.
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Cream of Rice cereal is simply rice ground into granules, but it can be a lot more if you know how to work with it. Cream of Rice cooks in fewer than five minutes if you're serving it as a stand-alone dish.
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