Nutritional health is achieved through the therapeutic use of whole foods, safe culinary preparation, and understanding the metabolic impacts of specific dietary frameworks and ingredients.
A well-roasted duck breast offers your palate a remarkably appealing combination of flavors and textures. The meat itself is dark, lean and flavorful, while the golden skin provides a crisp and richer complement.
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Cooking very tough meats, such as lamb shank, involves some compromises. You'll earn the richest mouthfeel and tenderest texture by slow-cooking them at very low temperatures, either dry or in a flavorful liquid. Yet, the most savory flavors come from high-temperature cooking methods such as grilling.
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Venison is a lean and well-flavored meat, much lower in saturated fats than mainstream alternatives such as beef and lamb. That makes it a fine choice for grilling or slow-cooking, but venison alone is too lean to make a decent sausage.
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Meats have traditionally been roasted at relatively high temperatures, ranging from a moderate 350 degrees Fahrenheit, to well over 400 F for especially small or tender cuts such as pork tenderloins. Tougher and fattier cuts, such as the shoulder, benefit from long and slower cooking at relatively low temperatures.
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Countertop slow-cookers are an unusually convenient way to prepare meals. Their slow, gentle cooking can tame even the toughest cuts of meat, and allow aromatic sausages and cured meats to infuse their flavors into the rest of the dish.
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Just about the only thing better than a ripe, fresh, juicy apple is that same apple and a few of its friends baked into a pie. Of course, much of that fresh juice will cook out of the apples as your pie bakes and will need to be thickened to prevent the pie from boiling over or developing a soggy crust.
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Farmer's markets and upscale groceries are fine places to find interesting and unusual vegetables, from exotic imports to variations on old familiar favorites. White beets fall into the second category, a pale vegetable that lacks the signature coloration of its commonplace cousins.
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Pigs are among the most adaptable and self-reliant of domesticated animals, and native or feral wild pigs are correspondingly common in much of the world. In the U.S. most wild pigs are feral descendants of escaped domestic animals, though European wild boar is farmed for sale to pork enthusiasts.
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Although purists might argue that barbecued ribs are best cooked over charcoal, a propane grill is easier for novices to handle. Keeping charcoal at the low temperature required for ribs is a challenge, requiring skilled manipulation of the vent and draft.
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The intense heat of a charcoal or gas grill gives foods a deeply savory flavor, but it isn't always the most practical way to cook. A ridged stovetop grill pan isn't an ideal replacement, but it's still a useful tool for preparing chicken and other meats when your outdoor grill isn't an option.
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Cooking seafood on a regular basis is an appealingly low-stress way to eat healthier. Fish is a good source of high-quality protein, and even relatively fatty fish are low in saturated fats and high in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Of course, your choice of preparation methods matters as well.
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Tender white-fleshed fish are the seafood equivalent of chicken, a mild and tasty ingredient that lends itself to a remarkable range of preparation methods. The best of them, such as catfish, have a moist and delicate texture that's equally at home in the finest of restaurant meals or the simplest homestyle fish fry.
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Banana squash is the offensive lineman of the vegetable garden, a behemoth that frequently tops 100 pounds and can easily grow to more than 3 feet long. Although its size makes it impractical for most home gardeners, it works in the favor of cooks.
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If you're already a health-conscious diner, eating better is usually about small incremental changes rather than a radical alteration of your diet. For example, replacing the butter in your cookies with vegetable oil can become part of your larger strategy to cut saturated fats.
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Working with fresh crabs can be awkward. They're highly perishable once they're killed, and require a degree of cleaning and preparation. If they're still alive they'll defend themselves vigorously, at some hazard to your fingers.
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The chuck, or beef shoulder, contains a large number of mostly small muscles running in several different directions. Appropriately, they're known by a similar variety of names in different parts of the country. For example, two different roasts are sold as inside-blade, depending on your butcher's preferences.
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Lobster tails are often sold raw and frozen in the shell, but it's less common with whole lobsters. They're ordinarily pre-cooked and then blast-frozen at the processing plant, to preserve the fresh and delicate flavor of the lobsters and make them more durable for shipping and storage.
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Some of the toughest cuts of beef, such as the bony neck neck, are also the most richly flavored. They require long, slow cooking to tenderize the dense muscles and stringy connective tissues, but that's a good thing.
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Cuts of beef -- from the delicate tenderloin to the flavorful but leather-tough shank -- vary widely in flavor and tenderness. Often, a tough large cut contains one or two small muscles that are unusually tender, which can be separated out by a careful meat cutter.
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Soft, creamy puddings are an easy dessert to like, combining sweet, rich flavors with a cool and silky-soft texture. Most recipes use a starch thickener -- typically flour or cornstarch in the United States -- to bring the pudding to a suitable consistency.
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