Sweet potatoes are high in vitamin A and beta-carotene, unlike their starchy white counterparts. Though they seem to take forever to cook, a microwave oven allows you to cook a sweet potato in a fraction of the time it takes in a conventional oven.
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A baked potato can be part of a nutritious meal when you make healthy topping choices, but you'll have to make some minor adjustments when baking a potato at altitudes 3,000 feet above sea level or higher.
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Pierogies, Polish dumplings typically filled with creamy potatoes, can be boiled, baked or steamed, but pan-frying makes the pasta exterior crispy so it contrasts well with the creamy filling. The potato filling is often accompanied with other ingredients, such as cheese, onions or traditional sauerkraut.
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Crock-Pot preparation works well for deer roasts because the low heat and slow cooking process result in a tender, melt-in-your-mouth roast. Typically, red meat is recommended to eat in moderation, but venison is naturally lean, making it a healthy alternative to beef.
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If you are going to go through the time, effort and mess it takes to make crepes, go ahead and make extra ones that you can refrigerate or freeze for later use. Then when you have a craving for a crepe, simply reheat it and add your choice of toppings or fillings.
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Karela juice, a juice extracted from bitter gourd, is sometimes difficult to find in stores so you might try growing your own gourds and making the juice yourself.
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Adding pudding makes a boxed cake mix extra moist, so each bite melts in your mouth. Try vanilla pudding with anything from a yellow cake mix to a spice cake. Even lemon pudding adds a refreshing citrus flavor to white and yellow cake mixes, while chocolate pudding goes well with any chocolate cake mix.
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A crusty baguette tastes best when eaten within a few hours of baking and goes stale quite quickly due to its small size. In addition to a lack of flavor, stale baguettes becomes rock hard and difficult to chew due to a process called retrogradation.
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Chicken cubes cook more quickly than whole chicken pieces, and can be used as the base for a wide range of healthy dishes, such as a chicken stir fry or a topping for a dinner salad. You can purchase boneless, skinless breasts -- the leanest cut of the chicken -- and cut them yourself before cooking.
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Corn on the cob is best served hot immediately after it finishes cooking because it can become tough and lose flavor. There are several options you can use to keep the corn warm, depending on the amount of time until serving, the amount of corn you cook and the available equipment.
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Master the basic technique of cutting chickens into cubes and you can make anything from chicken shish kebabs to chicken pot pie. Some recipes call for raw chicken to be cut in cubes before cooking, while recipes such as chicken salad might use cubed cooked chicken.
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A George Foreman grill has two grilling plates that allow you to cook a New York strip steak twice as fast since you don't have to flip the steak during the cooking process. This steak, cut from the short rib primal just behind the ribs, is a relatively lean cut, but with enough fat marbling to keep it juicy.
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Steam cooking highlights the delicate sweetness of scallops without the extra calories from butter or oil that is typical of seared or fried scallops. While steaming is one of the easiest and quickest ways to prepare scallops, it's also easy to overcook the scallops, making them flavorless and rubbery.
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Convection ovens make chicken wings significantly healthier because the fat is able to render away from the chicken. The dry heat environment created by the oven's fan also works well for creating crispy skin that easily soaks up sauces such as barbecue or buffalo.
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Without thoroughly washing spinach before eating, your meal will likely feature the unwanted taste and texture of gritty sand in each bite. This nutrient-packed super food grows best in sandy soil, but the tiny sand particles tend to hide in the wrinkles and creases of spinach leaves.
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The hardest part of making an apple pie is achieving a flaky pie crust with perfect proportions of fat and flour, but ready-made pastry crust gets the crust right every time. Rolled or folded pie crusts are usually sold in packs of two so you have a bottom crust for the pie plate and a top crust to cover the apples.
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Mojo marinades, used in Latino and Caribbean cooking, are made with citrus juice, vinegar and spices for a light, tangy flavor. The Goya brand makes a line of mojo marinades for chicken, beef and pork dishes.
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Outback is best known for its searing hot steaks, but their steamed mixed vegetables stand out as a healthy, yet flavorful menu item. The vegetables in the mix might vary seasonally, but generally include broccoli, carrots, squash and sugar snap peas.
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The microwave makes it much easier and faster to cook cubed potatoes, whether you want to prepare an entire potato dish in the microwave or add the potatoes to a dish to be baked, boiled or fried.
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Stuffed peppers can take several hours to make, standing over a pot of boiling water and baking, but the microwave makes a convenient alternative to save time and prevent your kitchen from overheating on a hot day.
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