Quick Start Guide to Basic Home Cooking

At first it might sound like a crazy question, but what is cooking? Or, to be more precise, when does warming up food become basic home cooking?

A trip to the supermarket. Rush home with your frozen, pre-prepared meal. Open the packet and toss the frozen meal into the microwave oven. Set to high and turn the dial to 3 minutes. Wait for the ping then open the microwave oven door. Let the bubbling, steaming meal stand for two minutes. Now you're ready to sit down in front of your favourite TV show with your meal which is now too cool to burn off the outermost layers of your tongue.

Is that cooking? You had to use a cooking appliance. Control the time. Set the temperature. You had to know that the food should stand for two minutes after you took it out of the microwave oven. But you didn't prepare any ingredients. You didn't mix anything together. You didn't do anything to the food beyond changing its temperature. In short, you didn't cook anything, so we can't consider it to be even the most basic home cooking. Sorry.

Cooking requires knowlege of a host of techniques and skills. What's the best way to peel a carrot? How do you blanche a vegetable? How can you tell when a chicken leg is done? How do you braise a steak? Even making mashed potatoes needs a certain amount of cooking equipment and some knowledge of basic home cooking.

The point is, if your cooking skills extend only as far as using a microwave to warm-up pre-prepared food, then you don't cook. And if you don't cook, you're missing out on one of the world's most rewarding experiences - even if you can only manage the basics. And the most basic reward of basic home cooking? A healthy, varied diet.

Make a Great Presentation With Gourmet Foods

How to Locate Gourmet Foods

If you are seeking to impress your guests at your next dinner party or special event enrolling in a creative cooking school will teach the necessary skills to properly prepare gourmet food.  Most of the larger retail grocery stores have a gourmet foods isle. If you cannot find what you are hungry for there try a quick online search.

Hard to Find Meats

Many of the gourmet meats and poultry such as "Kobi" beef and barbequed or smoked ribs and turkey are available locally at privately owned butcher shops or in some of the larger super markets.  You can also have some of these items shipped from online stores.

If you do live in an area that has a great supply of gourmet meats make friends with the in house butcher.  Tell him what type of event you are planning and how many people will be attending.  He will be able to furnish you with all the information about the type of meat and its cost that you can serve to your guests that is sure to impress.

Gourmet Coffee

You may be serving coffee to family and friends or you may have a restaurant and want to provide the tastiest gourmet coffee around.  The fresh aroma that wafts through your home or cafe beckons guests in.  With so many brands on the market today discovering which gourmet coffee is best is difficult and depends on personal tastes.

Starting or finishing a meal of finer gourmet foods with a cup of gourmet coffee is adamant.  If you have spent the time and extra money on the main course you will also want to serve the most flavorful cup of java.  Starting with a flavored coffee and ending with a cappuccino or espresso is recommended.

Chocolate the Grand Finale

Of course no talk of finer gourmet foods would be complete without discussing gourmet chocolate. Everyone loves chocolate, and in fact there are very few foods in history that are as highly prized as chocolate.

Gifts of gourmet chocolate truffles, fudge, dipped fruits etc., are all highly prized by the recipient.  They can be found online and shipped directly to your friend or loved one.

There is an extensive selection of gourmet foods to choose from these days, most of which have been around since ancient times. Although these foods typically require more time and effort to cook it is always well worth it to take gourmet cooking classes, especially if you are entertaining guests and want to make a great impression.

How can Cooking Pots Endanger your Health?

Certain materials are more inert than others. This means the pots you use to cook with can interact with the food you make. Traces of metals can make their way into your food.

This is not so important for adults. For babies and small children it can be a risk to health. Experts are divided on exactly what the effects are. The biggest risks are attached to those who are allergic to certain metals. And babies can't always tell you what has given them a stomachache or that unsightly rash.

When your cooking pots are shiny and new, there is no risk. As soon as they begin to get chipped, the metals they are made of can get into your food. Here are some tips from the experts to help you avoid any health risks:

- Avoid using copper pots that are not lined or insulated to prepare your baby's food. When it's hot, copper breaks down vitamins C and E and folic acid in food. Any food that contains vinegar is likely to be quite acidic. Acidic foods break down the copper in your pots - and this is deposited in your food.

- Aluminium pots are also broken down by acidic food so that traces of aluminium can get into your baby's food. A safer alternative is anodized aluminium cookware which prevents any aluminium getting into your food.

- Pots made of stainless steel are much safer because they don't react with food despite being made of a mixture of different metals. But you'd be better off not using them to prepare baby food if the pots are old - especially if they are dented or chipped.

- Cooking baby food in non-stick pans, particularly if they are old, can be dangerous as the teflon coating can chip off and taint the food. Many experts agree that noxious gases are released when a non-stick pan is heated to high temperatures.

In general, scrubbing your stainless steel cookware with an abrasive substance such as wire wool is not a great idea. As well as scratching your pots, it releases small quantities of of nickel and chromium into your food.

However, the news is not all bad. Cooking with iron cooking pots can benefit your health. When you cook acidic foods such as tomatoes in iron, the foods actually "pull" the iron from the pot. This increases the amount of iron, essential to replenishing blood cells, in your food.

The FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition say that ceramic, glass and enameled cookware is safe. They recommend not using older enameled cookware because it may contain cadmium. Cadmium is toxic and is no longer used in the manufacture of cookware in the US.

Find Out What Cooking Equipment the Top Chefs Use

Would you expect the top chefs to use low or high quality cooking equipment? My bet is you answered 'high' quality. And you'd be right. Many TV chefs use their familiar faces to market and sell their own brand of cooking equipment. Jamie Oliver springs to mind straight away. And you wouldn't be far off the mark in thinking that Jamie's own brand of cooking equipment is top quality.

His cooking equipment has to be of the highest quality. He is a brand. He sells his shows, his recipes, his cooking style through the quality of what he produces. So the quality of his cooking equipment has to match the quality of the rest of his brand. Chances are, you wouldn't think much of your Jamie Oliver deep frying pan if the handle came off while you were following Jamie's show, frying up the perfect English breakfast.

OK, so much for celebrity chefs. They make their living from chopping up, mixing and cooking food, so they are only going to use the best cooking equipment. What about the rest of us? Is it possible to detect a real difference between the cheap cooking equipment and the premium brands? Does the law of diminishing returns apply to kitchenware?

The short answer is: cook a lot? Then buy the best. Good cooking equipment lasts a lifetime. It's something you forge a relationship with. Your tools are your cooking pots. They can become an extension of your body, even of your self. you. It is a heavy piece of equipment. It's solid. You really feel it's power every time you wield it. And there's research to suggest that cooking slightly acidic foods such as tomatoes in ironware will have a beneficial effect on your health. Contributing to your daily iron intake, traces of iron are released into your food.

On the other hand, cheap cooking equipment is very likely to let you down.

The Pros and Cons of Cooking Food in the Great Outdoors

Outdoors, food just tastes better. And if you're camping, appetites are bigger and everything feels so much fresher. Chances are that you're cooking food that you've carried with you - but you've probably also added any herbs or berries that you found by the wayside on your travels.

Cooking food isn't the easiest or most appealing part of camping. We've all experienced trying to light the stove in the rain, running out of water just when you need to thin the soup or discovering that you're missing a vital ingredient - like salt.

As a teenager, I went hiking with a friend in the Lake District. Because we had to carry everything on our backs, we decided that we would only carry lightweight food - and our solution was to pack lots of packets of dried soup. By day three, not only were we sick of soup, we were experiencing some weird side effects from all the e-numbers in the mixtures. It wasn't long before my ears felt as though they were burning - and my hiking partner told me they had started to glow red. But we didn't have any other food to cook.

The key to cooking food on a camping holiday is planning.

Carry a good lighter, a good stove such as a Trankia and some lightweight cooking pots and pans, and cooking food in the great outdoors doesn't look so daunting. Remembering to bring the right cooking equipment and utensils is one thing. You'll be cooking food though. And carrying all that food can be the problem.

While I still carry packets of dried food - because they are so light to carry and take up such little space - I steer clear of anything that contains a lot of e-numbers. There's plenty of room left for fresh food. Cooking food in the great outdoors is most fun if you use fresh food. And the best fresh food is the berries that you pick while you walk, or the fish that you catch in the river or lake that you pass.

I know, I know, it sounds a little idealistic. But I usually make sure I pass a supermarket or two on route. There, the berries are easier to find and the fish easier to catch. The idea is solid, and it promises to make the best part of your holiday the food you cook.

Fine Caviar from the World Over to Serve You

Parties are fun times and no party is complete without arrangements for special food to be served. It is the gourmet food fare offered at parties that takes our hearts away. Caviar can be a suitable delicacy to be served at parties. This is principally consumed as a garnish or as a spread. Serving of caviar on lightly toasted bread or crackers along with butter is acclaimed as a fine hors d’oeuvre. It is also common to find caviar being served with beverages like champagne or vodka. The caviar may be obtained from various fish species- the most commonly used fish species being the sturgeon.

 

Delicacy caviar obtained from various fish species

 

It is the eggs or roe obtained from the female sturgeon, a primitive fish species of the Northern Hemisphere that usually constitute caviar. These fishes are found in coastal waters, rivers and lakes. It is from the inland Caspian Sea- lying between Russia and Iran that most of the world’s caviar supplies is procured.

 

Among the sturgeon species it is the beluga sturgeon that produces the beluga caviar and the Russian sturgeon that produces the osetra caviar. Again, the stellate sturgeon produces the sevruga caviar. All these are varieties of fine caviar. The American paddlefish caviar- roe of a special fresh water sturgeon comes in many shades and ranges from pale grey to dark steel and has a smooth and silky texture and rich, complex flavor.

 

The Royal Osetra caviar is low-salt caviar obtained from the sturgeon fished in the Caspian Sea- Russian waters. The characteristic dark and rich color and incredible flavor and subtle sweetness make it so very special. Featuring among the rarest and the most magnificent of all caviar is the Tzar Imperial Beluga. This is near-translucent pale grey caviar. The large perfect pearls and delicate buttery flavor makes this stand apart.

 

Serving caviar secured from around the world

 

Caviar as secured from the world over is a highly esteemed delicacy. How best to serve it is the issue which concerns hosts offering the delicacy the most. The fine caviar obtained from various parts of the world and from various species of fishes are to be desirably served on lightly toasted bread or crackers together with butter. The bread or crackers are not to be made too hard by toasting in order to avoid losing of the taste. Utensils made of horn, wood or gold are traditionally considered as the best utensils to serve the caviar on. Mother-of-pearl and plastic utensils may also be suitable. However, utensils made of silver and steel- both carbon and stainless types need to be avoided as they have been known to alter taste and color of caviar.

 

Find resources on caviar and gourmet food and A1 Gourmet.

 

Why Cooking Lessons for Children is such a Good Idea

Children love doing what adults do. Cook a lot at home? Then your kids will want to cook too. Or at least do their version of cooking. It's the ideal situation for setting up some cooking lessons at home. And your kids won't even know they're learning. For them, it will be more like a game.

Young children love getting their hands into sticky mixtures. Making muffins? Let your children pour in the ingredients. Let them do the stirring - with their hands, if you can stand it. You'll be giving them valuable cooking lessons in how different textures feel, how different smells relate to the food we eat. You'll be stimulating their senses and arousing their curiosity. And you'll even be helping them develop their fine motor skills. That amounts to quite a lot more than a cooking lesson!

When your children are a bit older, let them measure out the different ingredients. Their cooking lessons could include counting out the number of teaspoonsful of sugar you add to the cake mixture. They can learn about units of weight and volume by actually weighing flour and pouring milk into a measuring jug. They'll see how the number relate to the quantities they can see. And they'll be able to taste the effect of different quantities of the ingredients they add. This might prove to be a valuable cooking lesson when they're older.

Finally, when your children are learning to read and write, they can read through simple recipes themselves. Again, this is more than just a cooking lesson. They'll be able to see how the nouns relate to objects, and actions to the processes of cooking food.

Along the way, they'll be learning how to manage their workspace and their time. Cooking can be quite managment intensive. Many cooking lessons focus on managing a kitchen - how to manage your time by doing everything in the most logical order; your space by cleaning up as you go along. And they'll also be learning the basics of food storage and kitchen hygiene.

Children learn all these cooking lessons at home while they're having fun. Not a lecture to be heard. All hands on. all with tangible results that everyone can enjoy. And who knows, maybe they'll soon be making delicious food for you and the rest of the family. Now that has to be worth a few cooking lessons.