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| Kitchen Tips |
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Clean Tea Kettle Advice from Roann
To keep your tea kettle looking like NEW on the
inside - free of calcifications etc. - take 3-4 oyster shells - scrub them
well and then wash in the dishwasher for added cleaning. Place them in your
tea kettle and you will NEVER have any mineral or other build up. I have
had the same tea kettle since 1992 and it looks like a new one! |
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Keep your tomatoes flavorful
All those tomatoes from the garden? Don’t refrigerate them, as one of the critical flavor components (something called "dexenal") disappears when tomatoes go in the refrigerator. The cold also will make your tomatoes mealy. Instead, can or make sauce out of the excess treasures. You can also purchase a freeze-drying machine (for not too much money) and have your own "sun-dried”" (sort of) tomatoes to use the rest of the year. Your sauce can be frozen and given as Christmas gifts. |
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Searing and Sauté 101
When sautéing vegetables or searing off meat and fish, always get your pan and cooking oil hot before adding the item you want to cook.
For vegetables, that you want to cook quickly and with minimum water loss (or too cook off the water as fast as possible in the case of mushrooms), put them into a hot pan with just enough oil to barely cover the bottom. Start tossing the vegetables in the pan right away and season them as they cook. You will get better flavor and texture and hold onto more vitamins because they will cook quicker and their natural sugars will caramelize nicely. Don’t crowd the pan, just enough vegetables to lightly cover the bottom of the pan.
For meats and fish: Season the meat or fish before you add them to the pan and add the same amount of oil to the pan as with the vegetables. Reduce the heat to medium-high or medium and get good color on the meat/fish before turning it over. Don’t crowd the pan here either.
And always remember: “Color is flavor”, just don’t blacken it…unless it’s Cajun…
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