Food & Nutrition: Culinary Techniques, Diets & Metabolic Health

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.

Chicken Biryani

How to Bake Chicken Biryani in the Oven

Chicken biryani is a Pakistani and Northern Indian dish. It combines rich seasonings with chicken and rice in a yogurt-based marinade. The resulting texture is creamy and delicate although a lot of spices and aromatics are used. Although there are several steps, the dish isn't too difficult.

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Social networking while cooking

Can You Use Grape Oil for Baking a Cake?

Because the saturated fat in hard fats like butter, shortening and lard are harmful to your health, you may want to use oil in your baked goods instead. Grape oil is low in saturated fat and has a light color and flavor that won't conflict with the other flavors in your cake.

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How to Avoid Contracted Glabellar Muscles

Frown lines can make you look older and stern. They are caused by small muscles between your eyebrows and in your forehead, an area called the glabella. Frowning and squinting contract those muscles, almost as if you are deliberately exercising them.

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Tapioca Pearls

How to Replace Tapioca

Tapioca is a starch extracted from the roots of the cassava plant. It is used to thicken sauces, pies and puddings. It is sold in small pearls, usually used in puddings and pies, or as tapioca starch, which is used to coat foods that will be fried or to thicken sauces.

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Salad being dressed

What to Use Instead of Olive Oil to Make a Salad Dressing Fat-Free

Since olive oil contains 100 calories per tablespoon, salad dressings that use it as a base are high in calories and fat. Oil helps dressing adhere to the salad ingredients and provides flavor and texture. To make salad dressing without oil, add low-calorie ingredients that have plenty of flavor.

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Pandan cake

How to Make a Cake Soft and Moist Without the Cake Falling Apart

Whether you use a cake mix or make a cake from scratch, you can take a few steps to make sure your cake is moist and tender. To prevent a moist and tender cake from falling apart, let it cool in the pan long enough to become firm before you turn it out of the pan.

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Man cooking

How to Keep Shrimp Tender While Cooking

Shrimp cooks quickly, and overcooked shrimp can be tough, rubbery and dry. As soon as the shrimp is pink, it's done. Jumbo shrimp takes about 7 minutes to cook, large shrimp about 5 minutes and medium shrimp cook in 3 to 4 minutes. Shrimp smaller than medium can take as little as 1 minute to cook.

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What Can I Use Instead of Cream of Tartar to Make Coconut Macaroons?

Cream of tartar is an acid powder, potassium hydrogen tartrate, which is a byproduct of wine-making. When cream of tartar combines with baking soda -- a base or alkali -- during baking, carbon dioxide is released. It creates bubbles that make baked ingredients lighter and more tender.

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How to: Rump Roast in a Dutch Oven

Rump roast of beef is also called diamond cut, Manhattan roast, round roast and bottom round roast. While not as tender as some cuts of beef, it has enough marbling to either roast or braise. Cooking rump roast in a Dutch oven helps to retain flavor and moisture.

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How to Replace the Milk in a Pancake

Pancake recipes usually call for milk. If you have someone in your house who can't or won't eat milk products or you are trying to eliminate dairy foods from your own diet, pancakes made with other liquids can be just as good as those with milk. Use your favorite pancake recipe with a number of options.

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rib eye steak

How to Cook a Delmonico Steak in a Pan

Delmonico steak originated in the 19th century at Delmonico's Restaurant in Manhattan. Although the name is used for several different cuts of beef, Delmonico steak is often a ribeye. It is tender and more marbled than other steaks, sold boneless or bone-in.

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Woman opening the kitchen oven

How to Smoke Meat in the Oven

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.

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Bamboo steamer

How to Steam Cook a Cake

Cakes can be steamed as well as baked, resulting in a light, tender cake that is very moist and has fewer crumbs than a baked cake.

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Vanilla cream

How to Replace Custard Powder

Custard powder was created by a Birmingham chemist named Bird in 1837. His wife was allergic to eggs. The original custard powder contained cornstarch, salt, vanilla flavoring and annato coloring, and was cooked with milk to make pudding. It is still available, with the same ingredients.

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Tapioca pearls

How to Cook Sago Pearls

Sago pearls are made from the inner pith of the sago palm tree. The inner pith of the trunk is scraped out, pounded into fine particles and then soaked in water, which dissolves the starch from the fiber. The starchy water is strained through a sieve and dried.

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Dried Chilli

How to Cook Chicken With Dona Maria Mole

Moles are pureed sauces that originated with the Aztecs, according to Zarela Martinez, author of "The Food and Life of Oaxaca." They are based on dried chilies, toasted and ground with nuts or seeds that provide the thickening.

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Mature Pancake Prickly Pear Cactus, Santa Monica Mountains

How to Cook Napolitos Cactus

Opuntia cactus, native to Mexico but now grown in many warm climates, produces two kinds of food: the prickly pear, and nopales or nopalitos, cactus leaves. Nopal is a common ingredient in Mexican and Central American cuisine, and readily available in Hispanic grocery stores.

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cuban oxtail stew with yellow rice

How to Cook Spanish-Style Oxtails

In Spain, oxtail stew recipes developed in areas where beef and leather were produced (oxtails being an inexpensive by-product of the industry). Oxtails are bony but have some meat and fat that contribute to the flavor of the dish.

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baked salmon

How to Oven Cook or Grill Salmon

Salmon is one of the healthiest fishes to eat, providing plenty of omega-3s, fatty acids necessary for health according to the American Heart Association. You can cook salmon just before serving or prepare it ahead of time and serve it cold over green salad, or flaked in a salad of whole grains.

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