In all these years of cooking, I had learnt lot of tips and tricks in cooking from various sources. It all came in handy for me and saved time during cooking. I would like to share some of them with you.
Prepare Yogurt at Home
This tip is mainly useful in cold countries. Irrespective of the season, fresh yogurt(curd) is guaranteed. Boil milk. When its warm pour in the vessel that you want to make the yogurt, add the yogurt culture and keep it in oven with oven light on. After 6-8 hours, you have fresh yogurt. Yogurt forms in an untouched environment where the good bacteria in the culture does the fermentation.
Fresh Chillies
For green chillies to be fresh for long time, put it in a closed glass container, without removing its stalk tip and store it in fridge. The same is true for curry leaves.
For onions to fry soon, add a little bit of salt to it. This is extremely helpful when you are cooking for more people and you want the onions to be fried soon.
When cooking vegetables if you add salt upfront, the vegetables tend to release the water content in them. That is the reason why we don't add salt when cooking cabbage as we don't want it to be soggy. At the same time you can use less oil for sauteing the vegetables if you add salt to the vegetables upfront. I do this when cooking any vegetables, thus using less oil and avoiding vegetables getting burnt.
Don't keep cut onions unwrapped outside as cut onions tend to attract all the germs in the surrounding. In Chinese culture, they keep cut onions in all the rooms when some one in the family is sick(like cold, flu and fever) to attract the germs and then discard the onions in trash.
Easy way to peel pearl onions is to put them in warm water for a minute and peel it. You can get the job done quickly.
Some of us might already know this. To cook dals in lesser time, soak it for atleast 10 minutes before cooking. All you have to remember is to soak the dal before you start cooking. By the time you do the seasoning and sauteing the dal will soak good enough to be cooked in less time, even if you are using pressure cooker.
Since rice is the last item that we cook for a meal, I usually soak the rice until I cook the main curry and side dish. This helps reduce the time to cook the rice, even in pressure cooker.
When cooking lady's finger/okra, after rinsing it in water, air dry it or dry it with paper towel/cloth. This reduces the sliminess when okra is being cooked. Also cook the okra in low heat.You can be a little generous when adding oil for cooking okra.
When kneading the dough for chapati add 1 - 2 tsp of yogurt, knead it using lukewarm water and set aside for 10 - 15 minutes, to make softer chapati. Optionally you can also add 1 - 2 tsp of oil to make it even more softer and tastier.
Prepare Yogurt at Home
This tip is mainly useful in cold countries. Irrespective of the season, fresh yogurt(curd) is guaranteed. Boil milk. When its warm pour in the vessel that you want to make the yogurt, add the yogurt culture and keep it in oven with oven light on. After 6-8 hours, you have fresh yogurt. Yogurt forms in an untouched environment where the good bacteria in the culture does the fermentation.
Fresh Chillies
For green chillies to be fresh for long time, put it in a closed glass container, without removing its stalk tip and store it in fridge. The same is true for curry leaves.
For onions to fry soon, add a little bit of salt to it. This is extremely helpful when you are cooking for more people and you want the onions to be fried soon.
When cooking vegetables if you add salt upfront, the vegetables tend to release the water content in them. That is the reason why we don't add salt when cooking cabbage as we don't want it to be soggy. At the same time you can use less oil for sauteing the vegetables if you add salt to the vegetables upfront. I do this when cooking any vegetables, thus using less oil and avoiding vegetables getting burnt.
Don't keep cut onions unwrapped outside as cut onions tend to attract all the germs in the surrounding. In Chinese culture, they keep cut onions in all the rooms when some one in the family is sick(like cold, flu and fever) to attract the germs and then discard the onions in trash.
Easy way to peel pearl onions is to put them in warm water for a minute and peel it. You can get the job done quickly.
Some of us might already know this. To cook dals in lesser time, soak it for atleast 10 minutes before cooking. All you have to remember is to soak the dal before you start cooking. By the time you do the seasoning and sauteing the dal will soak good enough to be cooked in less time, even if you are using pressure cooker.
Since rice is the last item that we cook for a meal, I usually soak the rice until I cook the main curry and side dish. This helps reduce the time to cook the rice, even in pressure cooker.
When cooking lady's finger/okra, after rinsing it in water, air dry it or dry it with paper towel/cloth. This reduces the sliminess when okra is being cooked. Also cook the okra in low heat.You can be a little generous when adding oil for cooking okra.
When kneading the dough for chapati add 1 - 2 tsp of yogurt, knead it using lukewarm water and set aside for 10 - 15 minutes, to make softer chapati. Optionally you can also add 1 - 2 tsp of oil to make it even more softer and tastier.
Great tips, thanks for posting! I especially liked the "less oil" tip - it seems common-sense, but I did not realize it. Waiting for more!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Will post more.....
ReplyDelete