You no need to be a tip top chef to cook a meal. Cooking can be very interesting. Mouth watery food such as bananas foster or lobster ravioli actually come from simple food preparation techniques to produce one amazing meal. Here are several tips on basic cooking for beginners; there are egg scrambling, vegetable preparation to sautéing meat and boiling pasta.
Do you know that pasta is one of the easiest meals? How to make ideal pasta every time? It’s very simple. Just add two third of a large pot with water, more water you have, the chances of pasta stick to the pan is lesser while cooking. Add a spoon of oil and salt to the water. Turn your stove fire into high and let the water boil before putting the pasta. When you see the water boiling with lots of bubble on top, it’s time to add the pasta and cook for about 10 minutes. Check and stir pasta while cooking. Use a pair of chopsticks or slotted spoon; remove one of the pasta pieces for taste test. Pasta should cook until outer layer is firm when you take a bite and inside is somewhat chewy and soft. When the pasta is almost done, place a colander in the sink and pour out the water as well as the pasta. Then you can mix with either carbonara or Bolognese sauce
Chopping vegetables is one of the scary moments for beginners at the kitchen. Anyway, don’t be afraid as the more you practice the more you’ll learn. Put a big cutting board on top of a well-built surface. Wash and dry any vegetables you’ll be chopping such as celery or potatoes. If you’re right handed (meaning you use right hand most of time for writing, holding a knife and etc) this hand is holding the knife, while your left hand will be holding vegetables. A clean edge knife is very useful to chop hard vegetables. For cutting breads normally use serrated knives. For example when you’re cutting a carrot, put it on cutting board and ensure your fingers all are curved, your nail touching the carrot and hold it in position. Try to avoid having your fingers level against the carrot. If the knife slip, fingers are just right where the knife blade would be. With you right hand hold the knife with index finger on the non blade side. Middle, pinky and ring fingers on one side. Thumb on the other side of the handle. Slice into the carrot using descending motion. Remember don’t use knife to rearrange vegetables, always use hand to move it.
Before you doing any sautéing process, first you need to pick the correct pan, don’t use non stick pan, use a big, heavy bottomed and wide rimmed. Let the pan warming up on the stove burner under medium high heat. You can test the heat by lowering your hand two to three inches from the surface. When the pan is heat, add enough oil (vegetable, canola or olive) and let it heating for a while before adding meat. Always pat the meat until dry before putting it to pan, the less moisture on the meat, the higher chance you’ll have a crisp crust outer edge. Add in meat when the oil is heated, not to put some much which will make it soggy. Cook meat one side at the time and be careful not to undercook or overcook.
Scrambled eggs are a simple and delicious dish. Crack the eggs and white and yolk into a big mixing bowl. Use a whisk to mix together the eggs by mixer or hand. The reason of doing this is to let the air mixing with the yolk and white. But don’t overdo it. Setup medium high heat burner and put a non stick pan. Put a small piece of butter and let it melt. Add in the egg mixture, as long as the egg mixture no longer look runny is time to use a plastic spatula to push it around in. You can dip sauce if you want to.
Slow cooker is useful equipment in kitchen. The amazing part of using slow cooker is you can put almost every ingredient into the pot either in the morning or at night. Just set the time and heat temperature level. The setting of slow cooker may vary it depend on what type of dishes you want to cook. For example, if you want to cook mainly vegetable soup, you’re advice don’t set higher temperature as the water may dry out faster. For cooking meat, higher temperature and longer time are required.
Cooking is considers a hobby and also you can get fun from it. Next time, get your children involved, they can learn basic cooking skills such as chopping skills, what is the functions of the tools and how do use it. Any way have fun in cooking.