The Really REALLY important stuff!

[Big Don]

The Most Common Cooking Mistakes
Cookinglight.com
Learn how to avoid these common mistakes for success every time.


Every cook, being human, errs, bungles, botches, and screws up in the kitchen once in a while. If you have not "caramelized" fruit in salt rather than sugar, you have not suffered the most embarrassing mistake made by one of our editors. We did not have to look much farther than our staff―and their encounters with readers, friends, and relatives―to compile a list of 25 common, avoidable culinary boo-boos.

The creative cook can often cook her way out of a kitchen error, but the smart cook aims to prevent such creativity from being necessary. Here are 25 ways to be smarter every time.

Taste Test While Cooking

Story by Ann Taylor Pittman and Tim Cebula
1. You don’t taste as you go.

Result: The flavors or textures of an otherwise excellent dish are out of balance or unappealing.

For most cooks, tasting is automatic, but when it’s not, the price can be high. Recipes don’t always call for the "right" amount of seasoning, cooking times are estimates, and results vary depending on your ingredients, your stove, altitude…and a million other factors. Your palate is the control factor.
Lots of interesting stuff there.
Hey, food is fuel, what is more important?

 

[aedrasteia]

Don

yes!! so what are you cooking??

great! can we go thru all 41 ??? I teach folks to cook regularly and have to help them on these constantly.

I'm on my way to a house party/pot-luck with creamy ham/potato/blue cheese casserole and spicy deviled eggs.

Next up is eggplant parm., irish soda bread (w/golden raisins), buttermilk biscuits (w/country ham and jalepeno jam).
ahh, not all in the same meal.

Soups this week: cream of mushroom (scratch) w/sherry; golden chicken w/buttermilk dumplings.

Can you tell somebody gave me 2 gallons of buttermilk - non fat-free ?

food is disappearing edible art.

 

[Jason Striker II]

GM Peter Urban remarks in The Karate Sensei that more marriages are ruined by lousy cooking than lousy people.

Anyway, my wife will appreciate your post. Thanks.

 

[Blindside]

Next up is eggplant parm., irish soda bread (w/golden raisins), buttermilk biscuits (w/country ham and jalepeno jam).
ahh, not all in the same meal.

Do you soak your raisins in whiskey before putting them in the irish soda bread? Also, serving the bread with a whiskey butter is amazing.

 

[Sukerkin]

I do have to agree that food and cuisine is SO very, very important to the human psyche and social relationships.

We have been inundated with foreign workers at my place of employment in the past year, truly I feel like I am the foreigner in our canteen at lunch time. When we, who are in the land of our birth have that fact disputed by our eyes and ears, I think one of the things that is helping keep the racial peace is that, at said lunchtime, what is the natural topic with which we can all engage in conversation?

Food!

The Italians sit at their table. the Chinese at theirs, the Poles at theirs, the Indians at theirs and so on but what breaks the 'ghetto' is the food. We all move from clique to clique and the questions and comments are along of the lines of "That smells good!" and "How do you cook that?".

I have ever said that one of the greatest pleasures of life is to share a good meal with good friends and, by the same token, it is hard to be irrationally angry at those with whom you have 'broken bread'.

 

[Big Don]

I thought it was pretty interesting and after emailing it around, I shared it here.
I've been called many things, but, never once, "Late for dinner"

 

[granfire]

Got a kid here that is from the same neck of the woods like me, literally a few miles from where I went to school.
He came by my house Thursday when I had my 'Berliner' on the counter, a taste of home for him.

 

[aedrasteia]

Blindside

mmmm, whiskey butter... on everything. how do you do yours?

putting raisins in to soak right now - in Irish whiskey and a drop in my hot tea w/honey before sleep.

Folks brought fine food - lots of homemade chicken salad sandwiches, spinach/cheese pies, corn pudding
one of the non-cooks brought hot wings from a great place, - sadly not one deviled egg left, nor any ham/potato thing,
but some angel food cake came home w/me, 2 kinds of homemade brownies, cheesecake, homemade whole wheat roles.
there was a big outdoor firepit, food and music inside. hope everyone on MT had as fine a night. nice waxing moon too.

 

[Blindside]

Blindside

mmmm, whiskey butter... on everything. how do you do yours?

putting raisins in to soak right now - in Irish whiskey and a drop in my hot tea w/honey before sleep.

Heat 3 tbsp whiskey until warm, dissolve 1 tbsp sugar into it and let cool to room temp. Whisk into 9 tbsp softened butter until mixed. Amazing, but the whiskey flavor starts dropping out after two days.

 

[aedrasteia]

Heat 3 tbsp whiskey until warm, dissolve 1 tbsp sugar into it and let cool to room temp. Whisk into 9 tbsp softened butter until mixed. Amazing, but the whiskey flavor starts dropping out after two days.

it lasts 2 days ?? not at my house. this is great - I'll try it. I make a whiskey and pecan cake, recipe calls for 3 tbsp
poured over and let it soak. i figure double is better. And i'm right!

thanks - love bourbon whiskey in cooking - and a glass.

 

[Carol]

Do you soak your raisins in whiskey before putting them in the irish soda bread? Also, serving the bread with a whiskey butter is amazing.

:EG:

My frybread is about to get a lot more interesting

 

[granfire]

it lasts 2 days ?? not at my house. this is great - I'll try it. I make a whiskey and pecan cake, recipe calls for 3 tbsp
poured over and let it soak. i figure double is better. And i'm right!

thanks - love bourbon whiskey in cooking - and a glass.

Well, you gotta check and make sure it has not gone bad!