Cooking Made Easy With These Basic Strategies

Cooking is a tough skill to learn. The following article has plenty of tips to make the best dishes possible.
Bake pie and tart crusts for a longer time than you think is really necessary. They should be golden caramel in color instead of pale blonde. This golden color means that the sugar used in the crust has caramelized, giving the crust a crisp and sweet flavor.
Try drying your own fresh tomatoes. Just slice them when ripe to about 1/2" thickness. You should place them on cooling rack, and salt them lightly with the cut side up. Place the cooling rack on a cookie sheet and dry in a 190 degree oven for up to 10 hours. You can store your dried tomatoes in your freezer. You can put the dried tomatoes with fresh herbs in a jar with olive oil to preserve them. Place in the refrigerator and consume within two weeks.
Find fresher ways to prepare meals with oysters. Even though oysters are usually eaten raw with drops of lemon juice, they can be made in plenty of other ways. Place opened oysters on top of a broiling pan while covering it with cream. Add some Parmesan cheese along with some fresh pepper, then broil until it bubbles. Get out your saute pan for another option. Just drop them in some seasoned flour, then fry them in butter until they turn golden- about 2 minutes. You can also keep the oysters inside their shells, then bake them. Add each one into a casserole dish, add a few bits of butter and breadcrumbs on top of every oyster and set the oven to 425 degrees. Place the dish into the oven and bake for between four and five minutes. Serve your oysters once the butter starts bubbling.
A good kitchen requires good knives. It's safer to cut with a sharp instrument than it is to with a dull one, and you will also save some time. Dull knives cause more accidents than sharp ones.
If you are working on creating more home-cooked meals, try the library for cookbooks that offer a variety of easy recipes that will be fun to prepare. Cooking might take a while to master, as it requires perfecting certain techniques.
It can be very useful to think large when making your favorite chicken stock. If you prepare a large pot of stock, it can be frozen and stored for future use. Homemade chicken stock adds great flavor to everything from soups to casseroles. Allow the stock to cool before freezing it in durable, Ziploc bags.
To make your sauce thicker, stir cornstarch into the simmering sauce. Mix one tablespoon of starch from corn and two tablespoons of water together in a bowl. Thicken your sauce by stirring the mixture into the simmering liquid. Add the starch solution slowly, and stir constantly so that the sauce does not become too thick.
Stay creative and have fun when cooking. Following a recipe exactly is boring and stale. Experimenting fearlessly with cooking, adding a new ingredient, cutting one out, and changing amounts is how great new recipes are born. Now that is a real cook!
Directions should be followed closely when you are making macaroni and cheese. This is the perfect way to cook the macaroni. The cheese will add the final touch. Use a solid face spoon when you serve to make sure you get plenty of cheese scooped up with the macaroni. Spice up the macaroni with some pepper!
Get your grill ready to go before you start to barbecue. It takes approximately 30 minutes for the grill to heat to the proper temperature for cooking. Make sure that the heat of the coals is medium and that they are covered with ash. Grilling at this temperature is highly recommended.
Do some of your prep work the day before to avoid being too busy to enjoy yourself or causing stress. This allows you to serve a fresh, healthy meal to your family even when you are pressed for time. Considered chopping up stir-fry veggies and having them ready to go for the next night. Casseroles are also something easy to prepare that you can have 100 percent ready to go, and simply store them in the fridge overnight.
As you are preparing mashed potatoes for a meal, be sure to use hot, but not boiling milk to stir in with the potatoes. The end result is lighter, fluffier mashed potatoes. Nobody wants to eat mashed potatoes full of lumps.
These little bits of advice can go a long way toward improving your kitchen creations. Take a shot at each suggestion at least once. With practice, you will be able to incorporate these ideas into your cooking, improving your technique. You'll become much better at cooking in a short amount of time when you apply these tips in your kitchen.