General Cooking & Baking Articles
Come on in and learn how to make the perfect hamburger, julienne vegetables, frost a cake, and a delicious array of other skills sure to impress whomever you might be cooking for.Articles From General Cooking & Baking
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84 results
General Cooking & Baking Staples for Your Pantry, Refrigerator, and Freezer Article / Updated 10-20-2023 Family hungry and nothing to cook? Make sure that never happens again. If you always keep these staples in your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer, you’ll never again be stuck with no option but takeout.
You can certainly add to these lists, but these essentials can always help you make a good meal. For items you use regularly (such as bread, eggs, and milk), plan to restock about once a week.
Pantry
Baking powder
Baking soda
Bread
Brown sugar
Canned beans (pinto, white, or black)
Cereal (hot or cold)
Chicken, beef, or vegetable broth
Cider or white vinegar
Cocoa powder
Coffee and/or tea
Condiments: ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, soy sauce, pickles, and pickle relish
Cornstarch
Dried herbs: Basil, bay leaves, oregano, rosemary, tarragon, thyme, and parsley
Flour
Granulated sugar
Ground spices: Black pepper, cayenne pepper (or red pepper flakes), chili powder, cinnamon, cumin, curry powder, ginger, dry mustard, nutmeg, and paprika
Jam, jelly, or preserves
Pancake syrup
Pasta
Peanut butter
Powdered sugar
Rice
Salt
Tomato sauce, paste, and canned tomatoes
Vanilla extract
Vegetable oil
Refrigerator
Butter
Cheese (hard and soft)
Eggs
Fresh fruit
Fresh vegetables, including leafy greens
Meat, fish, poultry, or tofu to last three to five days
Milk
Yogurt and/or sour cream
Freezer
Frozen fruit, for smoothies and sauces
Frozen vegetables you will actually eat
Ice cream or frozen yogurt
Meat, poultry, and/or fish to last about a week
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General Cooking & Baking 3 Essential Knives for the Home Cook Step by Step / Updated 09-26-2023 Most home cooks can get along with three versatile knives: a 10- to 12-inch chef’s knife, an 8- to 10-inch serrated (bread) knife, and a small paring knife. View Step by Step
General Cooking & Baking 7 Specialty Pots and Pans for the Beginning Cook Step by Step / Updated 09-26-2023 If you really want to go to town with this pots-and-pans thing, you could probably buy a hundred different ones, each with its own specialized function. But is your kitchen really that big? You can do just about any cooking chore with some basic pots and pans However, if you want to take it to the next level, you may consider acquiring some of these additional handy pans.
They aren’t essential, but they are pretty cool — and some of them even give you the opportunity to spout French to your guests. Who’s not impressed by that? View Step by Step
General Cooking & Baking How to Cut a Whole Chicken into Eight Pieces Video / Updated 09-26-2023
Hone your knife skills and learn how to separate a whole chicken into eight pieces so you can leave the expensive, precut chicken pieces at the grocery store. Master the simple steps needed to cut a whole chicken into thighs, drumsticks, wings, and breasts. You’ll feel like a real kitchen pro! Watch Video
General Cooking & Baking Cooking For One For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-15-2023 Cooking for yourself is a skill anyone can do, whether you are 16 years old or 96 years old. Making your own meals from scratch can be immensely satisfying while also saving you money, allowing more control over your nutritional intake, and providing an outlet to express your creativity.
Being able to shop, prep, cook, and feed yourself is the ultimate in self-sufficiency that will bring you energy and joy for the rest of your life. View Cheat Sheet
General Cooking & Baking Recipe Measurement Abbreviations and Conversions Article / Updated 09-11-2023 Recipes are full of culinary codes like abbreviations and weird measurements (how big is a pinch?). Deciphering between the different cooking abbreviations and their proper units of measurement can help make sure your dish comes out exactly as planned. You can find common abbreviations for measurements here, as well as conversions of various ingredient measurements.
Common cooking abbreviations
Although some recipes spell out measurements, a lot of cookbooks use abbreviations. Oftentimes, different books will use different abbreviations, which can cause confusion when putting together a dish. For example, the tablespoon and teaspoon abbreviations may look very similar and can be mistaken for one another:
a lowercase t can stand for teaspoon
an uppercase T can stand for tablespoon
Adding a tablespoon (T) of garlic when the recipe only requires a teaspoon (t) can spell disaster!
Find the common cooking abbreviations and their corresponding units of measurement below:
Common Abbreviations for Measurements in Cooking
Cooking Abbreviation(s)
Unit of Measurement
C, c
cup
g
gram
kg
kilogram
L, l
liter
lb
pound
mL, ml
milliliter
oz
ounce
pt
pint
t, tsp
teaspoon
T, TB, Tbl, Tbsp
tablespoon
Common cooking conversion measurements
Now that you have the abbreviations all sorted out, it’s time to learn the most common conversion measurements in cooking. Understanding these cooking conversions can help you quickly follow recipes, convert based on your available cooking equipment, or even allow you to do quick math to slightly alter recipes according to your liking.
This table lists common conversion measurements in cooking.
Conversion Measurements in Cooking
Unit of Measurement :
Equals:
Pinch or dash
less than 1/8 teaspoon
3 teaspoons
1 tablespoon
2 tablespoons
1 fluid ounce
1 jigger
1 1/2 fluid ounces
4 tablespoons
1/4 cup
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon
1/3 cup
12 tablespoons
3/4 cup
16 tablespoons
1 cup
1 cup
8 fluid ounces
2 cups
1 pint or 16 fluid ounces
2 pints
1 quart or 32 fluid ounces
4 quarts
1 gallon
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General Cooking & Baking How to Make and Peel Hard-Cooked Eggs Video / Updated 08-15-2023
Eggs really should never be hard-boiled (in their shells), but rather hard-cooked; rigorous boiling causes eggs to jostle and crack, leaving the whites tough. The following steps show you how to prepare and peel hard-cooked eggs.
Steps for preparing and peeling hard-cooked eggs
Place the eggs in a saucepan and add cold water to cover them by about 1 inch. Use a pan large enough to hold the eggs in a single layer, with no eggs on top of each other.
Cover the saucepan and bring the water to a boil over high heat. You want the water to start boiling as quickly as possible.
Turn off the heat. If your stove is electric, remove the pan from the burner.
Let the eggs stand in the covered pan: 12 minute for medium-sized eggs, 15 minutes for large eggs, and 18 minutes for jumbo-sized eggs. No peeking under the cover! You want to keep the heat in the pan to cook the eggs.
Carefully drain the eggs in a colander and run cold water over them.
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General Cooking & Baking How to Chop and Mince Food Video / Updated 08-14-2023
Chopping food means to use your chef’s knife to cut it into pieces. Those pieces don’t have to be exactly uniform, but the recipe will often tell you whether you need to chop something finely, coarsely, or somewhere in between. Another word for chopping something very finely is mincing. You’re most often asked to chop or mince veggies or herbs.
To chop or mince, hold the knife handle in a comfortable manner and cut the food into thin strips. Then cut the strips crosswise (as thickly as desired), rocking the blade with your hand and applying pressure on top. Your best bet is to grip the handle with one hand and place your other hand on top of the blade.
Chopping an onion
Want to practice chopping? Many recipes call for chopped onions, so they’re a good place to start. Follow these step:
Chop off the stem, and then cut the onion in half lengthwise through the bulbous center and peel back the papery skin.
Leave the root end intact. As you slice through the onion, the intact root end holds the onion half together while you slice and chop.
Place each half cut-side down and, with your knife tip just in front of the root end, slice the onion lengthwise in parallel cuts, leaving 1⁄8to@@bf1/4 inch between the slices.
Make several horizontal cuts of desired thickness, parallel to the board.
Cut through the onion crosswise, making pieces as thick as desired.
Finally, cut through the root end and discard.
No matter how you slice it, an onion releases intense flavor and juice, which is why so many recipes call for chopped or minced onion. The fumes they emit when sliced raw, however, can be irritating to the eyes. To minimize chopped onion tears, use a sharp knife that reduces cutting time, and frequently rinse off the onion in cold water as you go. Better yet, have someone else cut it.
Mincing garlic
Mincing garlic simply means chopping it very finely.
First, a quick explanation of terms: In your grocery store, you find garlic bulbs. (Buy garlic that feels firm and hard, not soft.) A bulb is covered by papery skin. When you peel it off, you discover that the bulb contains multiple cloves with thin skins. If you have difficulty removing individual cloves, take a butter knife and pry them out. Then, here’s what you do:
Peel the cloves.
To help you get the skin off easily, set the cloves on your cutting board, and lay your chef’s knife across them with the blade facing away from you. Hold the knife handle with one hand, and use your other hand to whack the side of the blade above the cloves. Doing so should break the skins and let you slip them off easily.
Hold the garlic clove on the cutting board, with the knuckles of your index finger and middle finger leaning against the side of the knife blade.
Keep your fingertips folded inward to prevent cutting yourself.
Keeping the tip of your knife on the cutting board, pump the handle up and down while you move the clove under the blade.
You’ve probably seen this technique used by the pros on cooking shows.
Slowly move your knuckles toward the other end of the garlic as you mince.
Using fresh garlic really is worth a couple extra minutes of prep time because the flavor is so superior to the stuff that comes pre-chopped in a jar. That ingredient works in a pinch, however, so it doesn’t hurt to keep a jar in the refrigerator. Watch Video
General Cooking & Baking How to Julienne and Cube Food Video / Updated 08-14-2023
A recipe that calls for you to prepare vegetables (or meat) might ask for you to julienne or cube them. Don’t let the French accent scare you: Julienned vegetables are as simple as they are attractive, and if you can julienne vegetables, cubing is a breeze.
Julienning vegetables
To julienne a vegetable, first trim the vegetable, like a radish or carrot, so it’s flat on all sides. Slice it lengthwise into 1⁄8-inch thick pieces. Stack the pieces, and slice them into strips of the same width. The figure shows an illustration of this technique.
Cubing (or dicing) vegetables
Think of a potato. Trim all the sides until it’s flat all around. Cutting lengthwise, slice off 1/2 -inch-thick pieces (or whatever thickness you desire). Stack all or some of the flat pieces and cut them vertically into even strips. Cut them crosswise into even cubes.
Dicing is the same as cubing, except that your pieces are smaller: 1⁄8 to 1/4 inch, usually. Watch Video
General Cooking & Baking How to Check for Doneness in Meat Video / Updated 08-14-2023
Making sure meat is done is important. Thoroughly cooking meats and using a meat thermometer help prevent e. coli and listeria bacteria. Employ a cooking chart and insert a meat thermometer to ensure beef, poultry, chicken, and other meats are thoroughly cooked. Watch Video
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