Cooking on the grill is a great way to keep the heat of cooking outside your home as well as to bring the family together for the entire cooking process. Moms read: this is a great way to get dad to help out with meal preparation. While this is said somewhat in jest, there is some truth to the fact that men are much more inclined to slave away over a hot grill than a hot stove. More importantly, most of the mess of cooking on the grill remains outside your kitchen. I don’t know about you, but that is a huge bonus for me, when it comes to cooking.
It is important to keep in mind that you can cook all kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables on the grill as well. You should also keep in mind the awesome side dishes that go great with grilled foods such as baked beans, potato salad, and nice cool deserts and pies.
There’s nothing on earth that can quite compare to the aroma of meat, fruit, and vegetables grilling over hot charcoal. If you don’t remember and your mouth isn’t watering just reading about, it’s been far too long since your last barbecue experience.
Some Wonderful Tools of Cooking
When it comes to pots and pans and skillets you should keep in mind that conductivity is of extreme importance. You should also select pots and pans that are made of a heavier gauge. This allows your pans to heat evenly avoiding hot spots, which can lead to food that may ’stick’ to your pan or scorch during the cooking process. This means that simply stopping in at your local mass market retailer and purchasing any old set of pots and pans is probably not the best course of action for the best possible quality in your kitchen.
Of course there are many more cooking tools than I could possibly mention here. There are all kinds of appliances that in my humble opinion no kitchen is truly complete without. In addition to these great appliances there are many tools that are simple matters of preference. Do you peel enough potatoes to warrant a special device for doing so or do you simply opt to purchase an ergonomically designed potato peeler and peel them by hand? There are no one size fits all answers when it comes to kitchen tools and many of us are often limited by serious budget constraints and restrictions. My best advice if this is the situation for you is to purchase the best possible quality you can afford and build from there. Even if it means replacing one pot or knife at a time until you can manage a complete set of superior quality cooking tools you will find it well worth the price you’ve paid in the long run.
Cooking for Crowds Guidelines
When it comes to cooking for a large crowd, the planning phase is the most important. You absolutely must plan your meals when feeding a large group of people. This goes far beyond the notion of spaghetti or fried chicken as the meals you are planning. You need to know how many servings you will need.
Having the proper ingredients and the proper amounts of ingredients is more important in bulk recipes than is often necessary in smaller recipes as there is less leeway when it comes to creating the proper consistency. You should keep this in mind when making purchases for your cooking for a large crowd event.
Most importantly you should remember when cooking for crowds is that you might have just earned yourself a well-deserved night off afterwards. Cooking for crowds is time consuming and should be approached when well rested (if that is even possible) for the best results. There is something that is actually very satisfying about knowing that you have fed a crowd and fed them well.
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August 27 2008 | cooking | No Comments »
The American consumer eats over 16 billion quarts of popcorn. It is a whole grain snack that is good for you too! Every man, woman and child eat over 65 quarts of popcorn. With only 55 calories per cup, Popcorn is very low in calories. With 31 calories per cup if you air pop it.
Popcorn is a member of the grass family. It is known by it’s scientific name as Zea Mays Everta. Popcorn is a type of corn or maize. There are 5 different types of corn. They are flour, dent or field, flint, sweet and popcorn. Only popcorn can pop. This due to the amount of moisture in the kernals.The moisture content is 13-15 percent.
There are 2 basic types of popcorn. Mushroom and Snowflake. Snowflake is normally used in concession poppers. It looks nicer and pops out larger. Candy makers prefer the Mushroom type. It holds up better and takes candy coatings better. There are over 700 varieties of popcorn.
Kettle corn was first introduced in the early 1700’s. The Settlers would pop the popcorn in large cast iron kettles. They would use rendered lard and whatever sweetner they had on hand. Many times it was molasses, honey or sugar cane.
Kettle corn that you see being popped at county fairs and farmers market is one of the hottest ways around to make money using popcorn. It has a very low overhead and an extremely high profit margin. Sometimes you can recover your initial investment in a few shows.
Microwave popcorn was discovered in 1945 by Percy Spencer. Mr. Spencer discovered that popcorn would pop when energized by microwaves.This development led to the first microwaves.
The oldest known popcorn was discovered in the Bat cave of west cental New Mexico from 1948 to 1950. The ears of popcorn ranged from smaller than a penny to almost 2 inches long.
Popcorn became very popular during the great depression in the 1890’s. Popcorn was sold in bags for 5 to 10 cents each. Some street vendors would push their gas and steam powered poppers around following the crowds selling popcorn. Very few peole could afford this luxury. People would start their own popcorn business to help their families during the lean years.
Popcorn sales dropped off in the early 1950s, when the t.v. became popular. Movie theater attendance also dropped too. So did popcorn consumption, when the public started eating popcorn at home. Home poppers were first introduced around 1925.
January 19 is National Popcorn Day! April 7th is Caramel Popcorn Day! October is National Popcorn Popping Month!
Native Americans learned to pop their popcorn on the cob. They would skewer a stick through the cob and hold it over an open flame causing the popcorn to pop right on the cob.
The English colonists were the first to eat popcorn as a breakfast cereal. They ate it with milk and sugar. Popcorn was brought to the first Thanksgiving day feast as a gift from the chief’s brother.
The American Dental Association lists popcorn as a sugar free snack. Popcorn is low in calories along with pears, apples, cheese, nuts and plain yougurt.
The American Diabetes Association uses popcorn as a bread exchange for weight control. Popcorn aids in digestion and provides the necessary roughage and fiber. This helps the overall health of the body. It is listed third on the 11 things that don’t cause cancer. One cup of popcorn provides the 1.3 grams of dietary fiber needed.
The unpopped kernals are called “old maids” or “spinsters”. Good popcorn should produce less than 2 percent of “old maids”. Popcorn kernals will start popping at the temperature of 347 degrees. Popcorn can pop as high as 3 feet.
Popcorn has more phosphorus, protein, and iron than ice crean cone, pretzels, potato chips or soda crackers.
Popcorn comes in many different flavors in different parts of the world. Germany,Luxemburg, Switzerland and Belgium love sweet popcorn. The rest of Europe prefers salty popcorn. Americans love it with salt and butter and a host of sweet coatings. The japanese eat their popcorn with seaweed or shrimp flavorings.
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August 24 2008 | cooking | No Comments »