Best Recipes

• Freeze leftover wine in ice cube trays for recipes, casseroles, and sauces.
• A nice gift or garnish to many recipes is a flavored butter like herb butter, caraway butter, almond butter, cinnamon butter, garlic butter, etc.  This can be accomplished by adding the finely ground ingredients to butter in a food processor and processing until smooth.  Then put butter in molds, balls, cures, and crocks.
• An excellent way to disguise canned soup combinations is to use a freshly gathered bouquet of tender herbs.
• When making bread remember that skim milk makes a softer crumb than water, but whole milk's fat coats the yeast and prevents its proper softening.  Skim milk also increases the keeping quality of bread.
• When your recipe calls for soft bread crumbs, use 2-4 day old bread and tear it apart with a fork into crumbs.
• Double acting baking powders start working in cold dough, but the great rising impact begins when the dough contacts the oven's heat.
• Small quantities of sugar speed yeast activity, but too much will inhibit it.
• Salt inhibits yeast, so never use salted water for disolving yeast.
• Fresh or frozen pineapple inhibits jelling of gelatin
• Try wrapping briefly a warm damp cloth on a gelatin mold to release your food onto a plate.
• Anchovy paste is saltier but less strong in taste then the whole anchovy.  When using anchovies in salad, soak in cold water or milk 1/2 -1 hour and drain and dry on paper towels.
• The best gelatin, when prepared, should be quivery, not rigid when jostled.
• To remove salt from cooking butter, heat it slowly to avoid browning it; skim it.  Allow it to cool in the pan and remove the cooked fat.  Any sediment and moisture should be in the bottom of the pan.
• Be careful when substituting fats for other fats in a recipe.  The substitution can develop a different flavor than was intended.
• When cooking or reading recipes, remember that one pound of butter equals 2 cups ; each stick, if quartered, is 8 tablespoons or 1/2 cup.
• If you have hard water, steaming your vegetables for cooking will markedly retain their color.  Hard water also retards fermentation of yeast in bread, and alkaline water has a slovent affect on gluten, redusing the size of the loaf.
• Steaming vegetables takes no extra time and you digest more valuable nutrients by using this process.
• A good method of getting eggs to room temperature is setting them in a bowl of warm water--do not use in a microwave.
• When cooking with wine, select one that is as good in quality as one you would drink and never add so much that it drowns out the flavor of the food itself.
• Never use water over 115 degrees when using yeast or you will kill the yeast, causing your bread not to rise.
• When cooking with honey, oil the measuring cup or spoon when measuring so the honey will slip off easily.
• Even if a recipe does not instruct to preheat the oven, unless it says not to, you must preheat it and enter the food when the oven is at the designated temperature.
• To remove egg from dishes when washing, start with cold water, which released rather than glues on protein.
• A touch of sugar will help make more palatable over salted cooked foods.
• The best time to adjust for salt in tasting is when food is just below 98 degrees.
• Eggs should not be washed until ready to use, as they are covered with a soluble film which protects the porous shell against bacterial entry.
• Some recipes call for sour milk because the lactic acid gives a more tender crumb when baking.
• Vinegars vary in acidity.  Distilled white vinegar has 4% acetic acid, cider vinegar has 5% and 6% acetic acid.
• To substitue solid shortening for butter, replace measure for measure, as the water in butter compensates for the air in the shortening.  But if substituting weight for weight, use 15% TO 20% less shortening than butter.
• About deep fat frying:  Soy bean oil is not recommended for deep fat frying because it foams.  Safflower, cottonseed, and corn oil have high smoking points, while peanut and sesame oil have lower smoking points.
• For the same amout of sweetening power as sugar, you may substitute 2 cups corn syrup for 1 cup sugar.  If you must replace sugar with corn syrup in baking, for each 2 cups of sugar in the recipe, reduce the liquid called for other than syrup by 1/4 cup.
• Be sure to check the date when purchasing eggs.  Fresh eggs perform incomparably in cooking and baking to old eggs.  To check, place egg in a bowl of cold water.  Those that float are unusable.  In addition, fresher eggs have thicker whites.
• Most commercial peanut butter is made without its nutritious germ.  To make your own, allow 1-1/2-2 tablespoons safflower oil to 1 cup of peanuts and salt to taste (about 1-2 teaspoons per sup); process or blend until smooth.
• Remember that margarine and butter are floavored differently.  They produce different textures in cooking and baking.  So if your recipe tastes different than what you're trying to achieve, experiment with both.
• Molasses is rich in iron and improves the keeping qualities of breads and cakes.  Use 1 cup of molasses for 3/4 cup sugar.  The molasses should replace no more than 1/2 the amount of sugar in a recipe.
• Do not use eggs fresher than 3 days old for hard boiling or beating and baking.  If you do the hard boiled egg will be greenish and hard to peel, and the beaten eggs won't get as much of a volume.
• The best molasses is unsulfured molasses deliberately made from the juice of sun-ripened cane which has grown from 12-15 months.
• Prolonged drinking of alcohol before, and smoking during a meal tends to desensitize all the pathways along which food is appreciated.
• To toast coconut for cakes, put in pie pan and place in moderate oven.  Stir often from edges, to brown evenly
• Flour should be sifted once before measuring.  Fill the cup without packing.
• Do not grease the sides of cake pans, grease only the bottoms.
• When beating egg whites, do not tap beater on bowl of egg whites.  The jarring of the beater will cause the whites to lose a great deal of their fluffiness.  The beater should be tapped on the hand to clear off the whites
• Rub the bottom of the soup cup with sliced whole garlic to accent the flavor of Navy Bean Soup
• Eggs should be at least 3 days old before using in cakes.
• When making cake icing or candy consisting of milk or cream and sugar, add one teaspoon of ordinary table syrup for each cup of sugar used.  Boil in the usual way.  Your finished product will be much smoother and not so apt to become sugary.
• Trimmed baked cookies while they are still warm so the dough doesn't crack.
• Adding flour to prepared cookie dough gives it a better texture and keeps the cookies from puffing up too much in the oven.
• If cookies stick to cookie sheet upon removing from oven, you might have let them cool to long on the cookie sheet.  To solve this problem, return the baking sheet to oven for 60 seconds and immediately transfer them to wire racks.

 Food poisoning too often joins the rest of the holiday menu without the knowledge of the diner.  Food poisoning can result when food is allowed to stand for several hours before cooking or serving.

Food should be kept hotter than 140 degrees Fahrenheit or cooler than 45 degrees Fahrenheit.  Staphylococcal food poisoning, the most common variety, is caused when a toxin is produced on contaminated food that is allowed to set out several hours.

During the holiday season, hosts frequently place food out for their guests to snack on.  After a meal, food may also be left out on the table for leftovers the next day.  Sometimes a large turkey is left out to thaw for several hours.  All theses habits can lead to food poisoning.

Office Christmas parties can also be a trouble spot for food poisoning, if foods are not kept at the proper temperature.  Food handlers should cook meats thoroughly, expecially fowl and pork.  Salmonella is another kind of food poisoning that can occur by eating improperly cooked meats and egg products.

• Thaw meats slowly in the refrigerator, not at room temperature.  Make sure the meat is cooked thoroughly.
• Cook stuffing separately from turkey.  If the bird is cooked slowly overnight, the center may not reach 140 degrees Farenheit and the stuffing would be spoiled.
• Don't store the meat in the same pan in which it was cooked unless the pan is cleaned.  When the pan sets out, toxins may form.
• When setting out hors'd'oeuveres, use a chafing dish for meats, cream or mayonnaise dishes.  Set out small portions that will not be out long before being eaten.
• Be especially careful of preventing spoilage of meat, fowl, cream pies, custards, milk or egg-based casseroles or sauces.
• Wash hands before cooking.  Don't cook if your hands have an infection or if you have a respiratory infection.
• Don't store products in unlabeled containers.
• Salt can be mistaken for sugar and cleaning fluid for vinegar.