Mom Cooking Tip 179

 

Can you help?  I made a stand-alone stuffing in a casserole dish instead of inside the turkey at Thanksgiving, and the stuffing turned out mushy.  I want to try again during the Christmas holidays, but this time I'd like the stuffing to be crisp.  What do you suggest? --Ellen S.

I can offer two thoughts.  

1) When you are baking the stuffing in the casserole dish, remove the lid or aluminum foil covering the stuffing about 20 minutes before it's fully cooked.  This will allow the steam to escape and the stuffing to crisp up.

2) If you are cooking onions and celery to combine with the stuffing before baking, add the dry stuffing to the vegetable mixture before adding any broth or water.  Gently stir.  This way only a small amount of stuffing will be inundated with liquid, and the rest will have a chance to crisp up.  For extra flavor, dot the top layer of stuffing with a few spoonfuls of butter before baking.

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Mom Cooking Tip 178

Now that summer has arrived and peaches are ripe, here is a quick and easy way to remove their skin before eating or cooking them.

Drop the peach into boiling water and let sit for about 10 seconds.  Remove it from the water and make a small horizontal incision near the stem end.  Gently try peeling the peach with your fingers, starting where you cut it.  The skin should pull right off.  If it doesn’t, drop it back into the boiling water for a few more seconds and try again.

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Mom Cooking Tip 175

If you hang around good cooks, you can learn something new every day.  This tip I learned recently.  When making scrambled eggs, dilute the egg mixture with a few tablespoons of water.  The water will make the eggs fluffier.  Do NOT substitute milk for the water.  Milk toughens the eggs.

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Mom Cooking Tip 174

What’s the difference between a can of whole tomatoes, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce and a can of tomato paste?  The amount of water they contain.  If you’re in the middle of cooking something and suddenly realize that you don’t have a can of diced tomatoes, you can substitute one of these other three cans.  And vice versa.  Just add enough water so that the mixture is not too dry.  The look of the dish may be a little different, but the taste will be about the same.

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Mom Cooking Tip 173

This Mom Cooking Tip comes from a life-long friend who spent many years working in a New York test kitchen.  She told me that whenever she buys a cooked rotisserie chicken, she roasts it for 1- 1½ additional hours at 375 degrees before serving it.  She thinks it tastes better that way.

I tried out this tip last night, and everyone at the table liked the end result.  The chicken was firmer and not as salty as usual.  I had planned on serving the leftovers tonight, but there was hardly anything left.

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Mom Cooking Tip 172

Marinades can provide a lot of flavor, but marinating meat for too long can turn it mushy.  I find 15 minutes is a good length of time to marinate salmon or other fish fillets.  For chicken 1-2 hours works well.  For pork, beef and lamb, I opt for 4 hours.

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Mom Cooking Tip 171

Do you cry when you're slicing onions?  When I start tearing up, my method used to be walking away from the cutting board until my eyes stopped bothering me.  Now thanks to some good advice from my sister-in-law Sue, I simply drop slices of onion in a bowl of cold water for about 15 minutes.  When I remove them, they no longer have the power to bring tears to my eyes.

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Mom Cooking Tip 170

Put an upside-down colander over the frying pan when making French Fries to help keep the spatter down.

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Mom Cooking Tip 169

When you don't have quite enough food to feed your guests, serve smaller portions.  I was making turkey burgers for 4 and 2 extra people turned up at the last minute.  Luckily I had a package of 12 small buns in the freezer.  Somehow I made 20 mini-burgers out of 20 ounces of ground turkey.  Everyone seemed thrilled with 2 burgers plus a burger without a bun.

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Mom Cooking Tip 168

Using yeast but don’t know where you should place your dough to rise?  Use your oven. Turn it on to 325 degrees for 45 seconds to warm it up just a bit.  Then turn off the heat, put your dough in a large bowl, cover it with a tea towel and place the bowl on the bottom oven rack to rise.

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Mom Cooking Tip 167

If you are just learning to bake or are trying a new baking recipe, it’s a good idea to check whatever you are baking 5 minutes before it’s supposed to be done.  Your oven may be hotter than it should be…or the recipe writer could have made an error.  If you over-bake bread, cakes or cookies, there’s nothing you can do.  By checking 5 minutes early you may discover your dish is done and you can remove it from the oven.  If it’s not done, you have not harmed it by opening the door.  Just let it bake for the additional 5 minutes.  However, don’t open the oven door every 5 minutes during baking.  That will change the temperature of the oven and will impact the end result.

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Mom Cooking Tip 166

Cherries are now in season.  If you don't have a cherry pitter to get rid of the pits, try using the tip of your potato peeler.  The pit will slide right out.

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Mom Cooking Tip 165

Here’s a way to transport a lot of deviled eggs with or without special egg trays.  Buy a package of paper cupcake cups, usually sold in the baking section, and pop each prepared egg half into its own paper cup.  Put the filled cups in a flat-bottomed container so they won’t slide around in transit.

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Mom Cooking Tip 164

If you keep extra butter in the freezer and sometimes forget to take it out until you’re in the midst of preparing the dish you need it for, here’s what to do.

If the butter is to be melted before adding it to other ingredients,

Mom Cooking Tip 163

To thicken tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes, stir in 1 tablespoon tomato paste near the end of cooking.  It will give the sauce more body and extra flavor.

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Mom Cooking Tip 162

Bake a fruit pie on a rimmed baking sheet.  That way if the juices overflow, they won’t get on the floor of the oven.

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Mom Cooking Tip 161

To prevent lettuce and other fresh greens from deteriorating in the fridge’s vegetable bins, store them in a sealed plastic bag, along with a paper towel.  The paper towel will absorb excess moisture and keep the greens fresh for a few days.

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Mom Cooking Tip 160

                Semi-frozen raw meat is much easier to cut thinly than meat at room temperature.

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Mom Cooking Tip 159

I was well into making Chocolate Chip Cookies when I suddenly realized I was out of eggs.  Should I drop everything and rush to the store?  Kevin, my cookbook co-author,said, "No.  When that happens to me, I substitute 1/4 cup sour cream, and the cookies taste just as good."  So I did, and they did.

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Mom Cooking Tip 158

Everyone can teach me something about cooking.  Today as I was checking out at Trader Joe’s with my two 17.6-oz. chocolate bars made of 70% cocoa, the young man loading my grocery bag nodded at the chocolate.  Then he said, “Have you ever tried grating some of this onto the surface of a cup of cocoa?  The contrast between the sweet and bittersweet is amazing.”  As soon as I got home, I tried it, and he was right.  Just a few slivers of the chocolate made quite a difference!

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