Carma's CookeryCarma Spence has been experimenting in the kitchen since she was four years old and loves trying out new recipe ideas. She is the author of Bonkers for Bundt Cakes and Your Perfect Pie, as well as author and contributor to several more non-food-related books. With Carma's Cookery, she is taking her passion for empowering people and blending it with her passion for cooking, gift-giving and entertaining.
How can a pot and pan set do all of that for you? Well, it is really very simple. Believe it or not, the pans and pots in your kitchen mean a great deal to the foods you are cooking and just how tasty or delicious they are. Here are some tips to help you shop for your perfect set.
So let’s get to it!
Boiling
This means to bring any type of liquid to a boil. The boiling point is generally 212 degrees. Boiling is usually accomplished when bubbles have broken the surface of the liquid.
Bone
When you see this in a cookbook, it is generally telling you that you will need to remove any bones from the meat.
Braise
With this cooking technique, you brown the meat first and then place it in a pot with liquid. Then you tightly cover the pot and slowly cook the meat.
1. Keep your cooking area clean.
A cluttered kitchen can lead to adding the wrong ingredients. Worse, if the kitchen is not clean, it could lead to disease. You should disinfect the counters and any other surfaces you’ll be using, such as cutting boards, before and after preparing a meal. This is especially true if you are cooking poultry or any type of raw meat.
Homemade Pasta, Part II
Using your hands, flatten the first ball of dough in your palm. You want the finished thickness to be roughly half an inch. If you are using a slot machine, you want to be sure that the width is the same size or smaller than the width of the pasta machine slot. When feeding the pasta machine, make sure you keep hold of your pasta, but avoid pulling it as it goes through the machine. You usually want the setting of the machine to be at a one.
Did you know that Italian lasagna looks different from American? In the U.S., we tend to use lasagna noodles with ripples in the end. Whereas in Italy, lasagna noodles are usually un-rippled.
Did you know that the two main ingredients — tomatoes and pasta — of much of Italian cuisine are not native to Italy? Noodles were imported from Asia and tomatoes from the New World. But, they embraced those ingredients and made them their own.
[CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Pasta History
The very first commercial pasta plant within the U.S. was founded in 1948 in Brooklyn, New York. Many more plants were build over the next few years that the manufacturers and retailers decided create the National Pasta Association. This way they could pool their resources and help each other with issues in marketing and manufacturing. The NPA was founded in 1981.
But noodles got their start much, much earlier than that. In the 4th century B.C., pasta was eaten by the Chinese and was even mentioned in Greek Mythology. There are two notable figures who have been credited with the introduction of pasta. Marco Polo, who brought noodles from Asia to the Western world, and Thomas Jefferson, who brought the first “maccaroni” maker to America n 1789 and later invented a pasta machine of his own.
For under $40, you can get your hands on this cool kitchen gadget, allowing you to kiss the days of frustrating can opening goodbye! The can opener itself is shaped like a large remote control and this large surface area allows it to interact directly with the can on a number of different fronts; something you would never be able to do with the old can openers that most people still own today. The can opener’s large surface area gives it the versatility to use the one-touch system to open any can of any size. Previously the biggest knock on automatic can openers was that they did not accommodate size very well, but this is a thing of the past as far as the one touch can opener is concerned.
There are drawbacks, however. For one, the can opener is operated by battery power. Although one set of batteries can get you through opening 100 cans, you’ll still have the added expense of batteries. If you open one or two cans a day (people that use a lot of canned goods in their cooking might achieve this), that one set of batteries can last anywhere from two months to well over a year. So, maybe it isn’t that bad after all. To improve your return on investment (ROI), you can use rechargeable batteries and extend the value of the batteries even further.
Another that I found is that it can be a little hard to figure out at first. It took me quite a while to get it to open one can. Of course, after using it for a while, it will probably become second nature. But for those who get frustrated easily, this might not be the can opener for you.
Now on the best feature of the one touch can opener. Rather than leaving something sharp and potentially dangerous, the can opener leaves something that would not even cut a balloon ball open! That is simply remarkable and it is perhaps the biggest and most welcome surprise that came out of the development of the one touch can opener. Now, you can get a manual can opener that does this, but I haven’t had much luck with those, returning all of them back to the store.
I give it a 3 out of 5 chefs — the frustration factor was a bit much for me and I don’t like the added cost of batteries — I’d always need to keep a manual on hand in case they ran out and I didn’t have a backup. However, I think this might be a good choice for people who have a hard time using manual can openers.
[one_fifth] 
[/one_fifth]
[one_fifth] [/one_fifth]
[one_fifth] [/one_fifth]
[one_fifth] 
[/one_fifth]
[one_fifth_last] [/one_fifth_last]
