Category: Cooking Techniques

Jamaican Jerk Chicken – Prepared Safely

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date August 29, 2017

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Do you have a hankering for some spicy Jamaican Jerk Chicken? Before you begin, make sure that you are preparing the meat safely!

Chicken, the base of so many wonderful meals. Loved by old, young, rich, and poor, alike. It goes in our sandwiches, makes fantastic stock, and is the cornerstone of one of the biggest fast food chains in the world. It is an economical source of protein, as well.

By gran (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

But as with every meat, there is a risk of food poisoning. While you may have read about raw chicken being a delicacy in Eastern countries, the fact of the matter is that it’s not safe to eat raw chicken in any form! So here’s a little reminder of how to keep your chicken on the right side of healthy and tasty, with a tasty Jamaican jerk chicken recipe.

Safe Chicken Practices

Don’t wash your chicken! Some people have been taught to wash raw chicken but this actually helps to promote cross contamination because washing poultry can spread the juices around and therefore spread bacteria further than the immediate area. Instead, simply pat dry with a paper towel and dispose of the paper towel directly.

Avoid cross contamination. The first thing to do to avoid this is to make sure there is nothing dripping from the package and make sure you use different surfaces for different foods. Make sure your chicken stays in one area and doesn’t touch anything else before being cooked. You only have to see a number of food poisoning claims that are made in any one year due to poor hygiene in professional restaurants. There’s a lot of them! I have separate cutting boards that I use for different types of food to help with this.

Thaw properly. If a chicken has been frozen raw, three of the methods of letting it defrost naturally include: placing it in the refrigerator overnight, in the microwave, or in cold water. Never leave chicken on a counter. And make sure that you keep the temperature of the outside of the chicken less than 41°F.

Cook it properly. You need to cook the meat to a temperature of 165°F. This needs to be on the inside of the meat, so you need to use a digital thermometer that is tip sensitive as well as check the meat temperature in various spots.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Public domain photo via Pexels

Now that you know how to prepare chicken properly, let’s make some tasty jerk chicken!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons thyme
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon allspice
1 tablespoon ginger
1 1⁄2 tablespoons sea salt
1 1⁄2 teaspoons onion powder
1 1⁄2 teaspoons black pepper
1 1⁄2 teaspoons cinnamon
3⁄4 teaspoon nutmeg
3⁄4 teaspoon garlic powder
3⁄4 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoons scotch bonnet peppers*
12 bay leaves
1⁄3 cup sugar
The juice of 1 lime
1⁄4 cup olive oil
3 lbs of chicken

Directions

Ground all the ingredients (except the lime juice and oil) into a fine paste.
Whisk together the lime juice and oil.
Rub the chicken with lime and oil mix (but don’t marinate).
Coat chicken with the ground ingredients.
Refrigerate for 1-3 hours, then remove and allow it to come to almost room temperature.v
Grill chicken. Once seared, move it to the indirect heat part of the grill, cook it to 165°F (internal temperature).

And voila! Enjoy with some rice and peas and you’ve got an amazing Jamaican meal!

By Temaciejewski (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

* Scotch bonnet peppers are also known as Bonney peppers or Caribbean red peppers. It is a variety of chili pepper named for its resemblance to a tam o’ shanter hat.

These peppers are used to flavor a variety of dishes from cuisines around the world. They are often used in hot sauces and condiments. The Scotch bonnet pepper has a sweeter flavor and stouter shape, which makes it distinct from its habanero relative (with which it is often confused). This pepper gives jerk dishes, both pork, and chicken, as well as other Caribbean dishes, their unique flavor.

Tags chicken

Cooking Techniques

How to Overcome a Fear of Baking and Learn to Love It

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date July 10, 2017

I LOVE baking! I love eating baked goods. I’ve been trying my hand at baking since I was about three years old. So, imagine my surprise when I learned that there are people who are afraid of baking!

For some reason, baking is one of the least common kitchen skills. Most people will learn to cook with the stove, fry things, and even use the oven to bake lasagnas or potatoes, but not how to bake cakes, cookies, and bread.

A lot of this has to do with how precise baking is. You need to measure out the wet and dry ingredients exactly, and you need to buy a lot of special items that you usually won’t use for other recipes. For example, cream is rarely ever used outside of cakes (unless you’re making some kind of creamy pasta sauce) and it takes a lot of patience and storage area to become a successful baker.

Public Domain image from Pixabay

As a result, it can sometimes become a daunting thing to learn and we simply don’t have time for it. After all, if we can just go to a store and buy a cake that would otherwise take a lot of effort and time, why should we bother learning how to bake? Stores and bakeries will do it better than us, and it can be a little harder to learn than other types of cooking.

However, learning to bake is a great way to boost your confidence in the kitchen. As it turns out, the preciseness of baking isn’t absolutely required. Even when something fails you (usually) get something that is still perfectly edible. For example, I once made a chocolate torte for my father. It used whipped egg whites for leavening. However, at the time, I had no idea that there were different sized eggs. My father had purchased medium sized eggs, and when recipes refer to eggs, they assume large eggs. So I didn’t compensate and the resulting torte did not rise. It was tasty — but not light and fluffy as it was supposed to be.

In contrast, if you under or overcook pasta, meat or vegetables, then you usually get an unpleasant texture and a pile of mess that isn’t very nice. Baking also becomes smooth and easy once you get the basics down. You can easily make your own recipes, adjust how sweet something is, and share your creations with friends and loved ones.

So to help you overcome any fear of baking you may have, here are a couple of simple tips, tricks, and pieces of advice.

Public domain image from Pixabay

Practice patience when you start baking

Patience is key when baking. Make sure you give yourself some time to prepare the ingredients and bake because the entire baking process is going to take a long time. And mixing everything will eat up a good chunk of your time and energy. Try to clear your schedule so there’s nothing planned after baking. You don’t want to feel like you’re being rushed and you need to reserve some time to have a second attempt if the first one doesn’t quite go as planned. An empty house is best so that you don’t get family members or roommates staring at you while you work.

Try simple recipes

There are plenty of simple recipes. Some (funnily enough) don’t require baking at all, but they result in delicious cake-like creations. This might seem counter-intuitive since you’re not actually baking, but the idea of making something like a cake and measuring out the exact ingredients is good practice for both your skills and your confidence.

There are also brownies you can make with very few ingredients, and there’s always the option of making an icebox cake if you really want to cut down on cooking effort. Simple recipes are a great way to get something delicious in a short amount of time. The boost of confidence it gives when you share your creations with friends and family is fantastic, and it will go a long way to helping you become more skilled at baking.

Buy the right baking equipment

Equipment in baking is important. You’ll need a variety of tools, such as food processors, mixers, pans, trays and even thermometers. Scales are also incredibly important due to how precise baking can be. You’ll need to measure out exact amounts of ingredients, and nothing accomplishes this as fast as kitchen scales. If you’re baking, you’re also going to need an oven. While most kitchens come equipped with an oven, many people see it as the main wall to overcome when learning how to bake. This is because the oven can get extremely hot or it might be located in a place that isn’t very comfortable to reach due to an injury or disability. This review can give some valuable information about the Wolf Gourmet Countertop oven which is perfect for anyone who wants a more stable, controlled and convenient oven to bake with. It sits on your countertops much like a toaster or a microwave, and it works almost the same way as a regular oven except you won’t need to bend down and kneel on the floor in order to get something in and out of the oven.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I’ll post a list of the basic tools you’ll need when baking.

Image Credit

Follow recipes properly

There’s nothing worse than thinking you know better than the recipe you’re following. At least while you’re learning, don’t substitute any kind of ingredients because you won’t know what you’ll end up with. It’s possible to do it as an experiment, but try your best to stick to a recipe and follow it carefully. Make sure your measurements are accurate, ensure the temperature of your oven is set to the right heat and don’t neglect to re-read important sections in the recipe to ensure you get the best results possible. Do things in the order they are written and pay attention to what the recipe asks for you to do. For example, if the recipe says to save some chocolate, then save that chocolate. If it asks you to mix, then you mix and you don’t fold — there is a difference!

Share your creations

Baking will always create portions that are larger than what a single person can eat — so why not share them? As mentioned before, it’s a fantastic way to boost your confidence and collect feedback on how you did. Some people might not like your creations, others might love them, but the mixed response and feedback you receive (as long as it’s constructive) will go a long way in helping you become a better baker.

Get over your fear of baking and learn to share your creations with people to make them smile. It’s a good source of motivation and it can be a lot of fun.

Tags baking, fear of baking

Cooking Techniques Creative Cookery

Cooking Strategies for the Disabled

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date July 6, 2017

In February of last year, I was hit by a car while crossing the street. As a result, I was in a wheelchair for about a month. And, because I broke both bones in my left forearm, my hand is to this day weaker than my right. The result, I’m not able to do all the things I was once able to do in the kitchen and have had to makes some adjustments.

Whether your physical disability is permanent or temporary, you may need to make some adaptions around the home in order to carry on with your day-to-day life. These adaptations can help you live at home without losing your independence.

In this blog post, I run down some tips and tricks that can help disabled individuals in the kitchen and allow them to continue cooking their favorite meals.

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De-Clutter Your Kitchen

If there are too many items stored in one cupboard or drawer, you can find it very difficult to remove one of them. So, it’s a good idea to spend some time decluttering your kitchen. Make sure that there aren’t too many items and ingredients spread out on top of your countertops. Give yourself plenty of space. Plus, don’t overfill any storage units. This could restrict your access to things that have been placed in the back.

Forget About Knives

Some disabilities make it difficult for individuals to use their hands properly. If you have a poor grip as a result, you should try to reduce your use of knives, as they could easily slip out of your hand and cause injury. One thing that stands up to the amazing test of being easy to handle as well as efficiently chopping is a food chopper. All you do is place the food that needs chopping inside and then you pull the handle. The blades inside whizz around, chopping all of the ingredients up! Some blenders and food processors can help you with this task, as well.

Think about Countertop Height

If you are in a wheelchair, you may need to reconsider the height of your countertops. After all, those at a standard height will probably be too high for you to use while you are sitting in your chair. However, there are plenty of companies that can fit lower countertops, which will make it easier for you to get to work in your kitchen.

If you can’t remodel your kitchen, you can invest in a kitchen counter station that will work for you. This would be a rolling or stationary table that is the right height and width for you to easily access while sitting in your wheelchair. You may have to improvise or have something custom made. A quick search on Amazon revealed no good results.

Modernize Your Kitchen

If you can afford to completely modernize your kitchen, you may find that adding lots of new appliances can enhance your cooking experience. For instance, if you add a dishwasher, you won’t have to struggle to reach your sink to wash all your dishes anymore. When you do add more appliances, make sure that they are easy for you to use. You can often find ones with extra big buttons and dials which can be easier for those with a disability to use. Also, make sure that they don’t have sharp edges or corners. Otherwise, you might hurt yourself if you accidentally ride your wheelchair into them!

Lots of people enjoy cooking and baking. There is no reason why a disability should prevent you from enjoying this pastime. Just follow all of the above tips, be creative, and you can make cooking easier for you!

Tags adaptions, adjustments, disability, disabled

Cooking Techniques Well Stocked Pantry

5 Simple Tricks For Tastier Meals

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date June 8, 2017

With many things in life, it’s often the smallest of tweaks and touches that make all the difference. This is certainly true when it comes to food. If you’ve been getting bored of your usual meals, and wondering how you can make them that much more satisfying, here are five simple changes you can make for tastier meals.

By Moyan Brenn from Anzio, Italy (Cooking) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Stop Preparing Garlic and Onions in Advance

As you’ve probably learned by experience, chopping up onions and garlic releases sharp, strong odors that can be overpowering in a meal. You might be tempted to prepare them in advance, but it’s best to do this at the last minute. You may also want to try soaking chopped onions and garlic in baking soda and water before they’re added to the meal. This will subdue some of the pungency, and create a much more balanced flavor.

Keep Your Fats Fresh

The fats contained in oils, butter and nuts can go rancid incredibly quickly, producing off flavors when they’re added to your cooking. To keep this from happening, start keeping their exposure to light and oxygen at a minimum. Keep your butter and nuts frozen, keep any nut-based oils in the fridge, and vegetable oils in a dark pantry.

By Elina Mark (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Start Shopping Organic

The main reason to shop organic is avoiding pesticides and the risk of super bugs in the produce you eat. However, many will agree that organic foods taste much better than regular, processed foods. Because organic ingredients cost more to buy from vendors, many companies that sell them go the extra mile in making sure they taste great. From the vegetables you regularly pick up in your grocery shopping to the best organic coffee on the market, there are all kinds of foods you can swap out.

Wait for the Pan to Heat Up

The second you add food to a pan, the temperature of the surface will drop. Don’t make the common mistake of rushing the preheating stage when you’re cooking. Give it a little while, waiting for the oil in the pan to simmer before dropping in vegetables. When you’re frying proteins, on the other hand, you should wait for those first tiny wisps of smoke to rise from the oil.

Stop Throwing Out the Fond

When you finish cooking, and see all those brown, caramelized bits sticking to the base of the pan, your first reaction might be to throw it all out. Resist this urge! This residue is bursting with potent, savory flavor, which can make all the difference to how your food tastes. Instead, get into the habit of deglazing your pans with some kind of liquid. Wine, juice and broth are all good choices. Then, scrape the fond free with a spoon or spatula, and incorporate it in the finished meal. For a creamier sauce, stir in a little sour cream. Yum!

There you have five simple habits you can get into that will make your cooking tastier. Obviously, everyone has their own palate, but keep experimenting with these kinds of creative tricks, and soon you’ll figure out which ones work for you.

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Tags fond, garlic, onion, organic

Cooking Techniques

Tips to Make Your Barbecue the Best

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date May 15, 2017

If you love dining outdoors in the sunshine, but you find that your barbecue food isn’t quite as good as you’d like it to be, check out the tips below. They’ll help you improve your technique when cooking over a fire and ensure that your barbecue is the best around.

Source: Flickr

Buy the Right Barbecue

It all starts with the right equipment. If you want to make the best possible barbecue food – charcoal bbq smokers are the best. Gas versions may work fine, but they won’t give you the all important smoky flavor that makes a truly delicious BBQ meal.

You should also aim to buy a barbecue that features a lid. This will help you to maintain a constant cooking temperature and help you do things like melting cheese onto your burgers and smoking ribs, that you just can’t do without a lid. Look at any BBQ vendor worth his/her salt, and they’re using a lidded device.

Choose Better Fuel

If your barbecue food is lacking that smoky, woody taste that you find in BBQ joints, it’s probably because you are using cheap charcoal. Instead, go for hickory, apple or oak wood chips, combined with more expensive charcoal for a taste sensation that’ll get rave reviews from your guests.

Don’t Cook in the Flames

Although barbecue dishes are often referred to as ‘flame-grilled’ that doesn’t mean that you should actually cook your food when the flames are high. To get the best flavor, and meat that is perfectly cooked, wait until the coals are burning white and the flames have died down. The heat will be even then, which will help you to avoid burnt or undercooked food.

Make Your Own

If you really want to wow at the barbecue, instead of cooking pre-made burgers and sausages, make your own. The simplest burgers can be made with just high-quality meat and seasoning, and they will taste much better than the average store-bought products. Just make sure that you buy ground meat that has lots of fat running through it because this will make the juiciest, most flavorsome burgers possible.

When I make my own burgers, I like mix in a variety of flavor boosters such as garlic powder, onion powder, Worcestershire sauce and A-1 Steak sauce.

Long, Slow Marinade

When you’re barbecuing, it’s even more important than usual that you let your meat marinade overnight. The longer you can leave your meat to marinade, the more moist and delicious it will be when you take that all-important first bite. As well as leaving your meat to marinade, you should also give it an extra brush for every 10 minutes of cooking time, while it’s on the grill.

Don’t have time? You can speed up the marinating process using a vacuum packer. An hour or so vacuum packed with marinade can give you close to the same results as letting sit overnight.

Carefully Grill Vegetables

Although meat is usually the star of the show, expertly grilled vegetables can give them a run for their money and make your barbecue offerings a bit more interesting. To ensure that your veggies are perfectly cooked, slice them thinly and grill them immediately without adding any oil or seasoning of any kind. Aim to gently char them and only add extra flavors once they’ve been removed from the grill.

Kill It with Sides

Once you’ve got the grilling down, you need to create some killer side dishes that will blow your guests away … and ensure that you all eat a more balanced meal that isn’t just meat, meat, meat. Some good side ideas include grilled corn on the cob, potato salad or flatbreads cooked right on the barbecue.

Tags barbecue, bbq

Cooking Techniques

How to Cook Perfect Pasta Every Time

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date May 11, 2017

Chef Bake Spaghetti Noodles Cook Italian Pasta

Pasta is one of those dishes that’s easy to make but can be challenging to master. Italian chefs built up their expertise over the generations. But if you’re relatively new to the stuff or you haven’t been trained by a grand master, then it can be tricky to get right.

Fortunately, cooking up the perfect pasta dish is easy, so long as you’ve got the right tips at your disposal. Take a look at these chef-inspired essentials.

Source: Max Pixel

Add Mountains of Salt to the Water

When you order linguini from a restaurant, you expect it to be seasoned perfectly and taste delicious. And when it arrives, it usually is. However, when you get home and try to recreate the intense flavors yourself, your efforts fall short. Why?

One of the things that chefs do is use a mountain of salt when they cook their pasta. You might think that a couple of grinds of the salt mill in the boiling water will suffice, but very little of that salt will ever make its way into the pasta. Professionals, therefore, use around a tablespoon of salt to flavor the water. Ideally, the water should taste like the sea.

I’ll admit, in my effort to reduce salt in my diet, I stopped using salt in the boiling water. Boy, what a difference it made! I’ve gone back to adding it to the water and reducing salt in other areas of my cooking.

Chop Your Veggies Finely

Source: Pixabay

The perfect pasta recipe is one where the sauce does the majority of the talking. But if you’ve got big chunks of pepper or mushroom sticking out, then it can ruin the appeal of the dish. The first thing you’ll need to chop your veggies finely is the right knife. If you don’t have a decent set of chef’s knives, look out for a Kamikoto giveaway and save yourself a bit of money in the process. Next, proceed to the chopping board and chop your mushrooms, chilis, peppers, onions and garlic as finely as you can using your best knife skills. Saute them in the pan until they are soft before adding your pasta. You should find that when you do it this way around, your veggies stick to your noodles, creating the perfect ensemble.

Add Your Pasta to Your Sauce – Not The Other Way Around

Professional pasta chefs cook the pasta until it is al dente (nearly cooked) and then add it to the sauce to finish it off. The reason they do this is so that the starches in the pasta can become incorporated into the sauce, giving it a richer, more luxurious texture.

Add Pasta Water To The Sauce

Chefs will also add a couple of tablespoons of the starchy pasta water to the sauce itself. Again, this is so that the glutinous starches can bind with the vegetable ingredients to make them more gelatinous, helping them stick to the noodles. The last thing you want is to add the sauce and a large puddle to appear at the bottom of your bowl.

Try Adding A Bit Of Fat

You might think that the idea of adding tahini or cashew paste to your pasta is a little strange. But it turns out that adding some fat is the perfect way to bring starchy noodles and watery vegetable sauces together. Fat helps make the pasta rich and decadent.

So give these tips a try and let me know how you fare in a commment below!

Tags Pasta

Cooking Techniques Tools of the Trade

Kitchen Safety: How To Stay Safe Among The Chaos

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date April 28, 2017

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Kitchen safety should be one of your top priorities at home. Did you know that the kitchen is considered the most dangerous room in the house? Kitchen accidents that lead to emergency room visits include knife cuts, burns, poisoning and more. How can you be safe in your kitchen and prevent accidents from happening?

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If you spend a lot of time in a kitchen, at a guess, you have scars from knife mishaps. When I was a pre-teen, I was banned from using the serrated knife due to an injury I caused myself! You might be burned in several places from handling roasting pans. Or, thanks to splashing fat, there are parts of you where hair will never grow again. It’s amazing so many people consider cooking to be a job for the gentle. Those of us who do it often know the kitchen can be akin to a war zone. If you want to emerge from it largely unscathed, it helps to know what to avoid. Here are some kitchen safety tips:

Cooking In A Saucepan? Stir Away From Your Body.

Yes, you tend to stir in a circle, so at some point you’re always coming back towards you. However, if using a slotted or serving spoon, or anything with a bowl shape on the end, position that bowl facing away. If your hand jerks – and it happens to us all – you don’t want to be scooping boiling water or hot sauce all over you!

Never Cook In Bare Feet

This kitchen safety tip may seem like a no-brainer, but trust me, people do this. If you have a day off, it’s always nice to get up late and have an indulgent breakfast like waffles with sausage and eggs. If you’ve ambled into the kitchen in your pajamas, chances are you’re not as awake nor as dextrous as you’d usually be. So if you accidentally jar a knife off the worktop, the time between it falling and landing is just long enough to wake up and realize KNIVES + FEET = BAD. By which time it may be too late.

Kitchen Safety Technique: Learn How To Chop Onions

If you don’t have a gadget that chops onions easily for you (like me), here’s a safe technique: You start by chopping off the more stalk-like of the two ends, then place that end on the board and halve it vertically. From this point on, you can freestyle depending on the fineness of cut you want (finer for sauces, rough for a slaw) but always lay an onion flat side down. The Japanese steel of the best kitchen knives will carve through fish, onion, pepper and your hand very easily. Always make sure you’ve got a secure base to work on.

Remember: Pans Get Heavy

I’ve been painfully aware of this since my accident a year ago. It is only in the past few weeks that my left arm has been strong enough to start handling pots! Now, one of the coolest ways to serve an omelet is to slide it from pan to plate (espeically if you’re using a non-stick pan!). Little presentational flourishes like that can make you feel pretty good. That said, if you’re using a cast iron skillet, it might become less flourish and more floor-ish, as they have some serious heft (and aren’t that non-stick).

Yes, that sounds like a joke, but remember that a saucepan full of pasta or indeed anything made of cast iron is fine for cooking, but the longer you’re holding it the more likely you are to drop or spill – both of which can cause even bigger hazards if you slip on them. Set pans down on protective heat pads if you’re not immediately going to pour something from them.

I hope these tips will help keep you safe in the kitchen. If you have any other saftey tips, please share them below in a comment!

Tags kitchen safety