Cooking Techniques

If plastic has melted or burned in your microwave overn, wait for it to become cold. It should peel off easily.

If a stain is left, use a cleaning cloth on it. If it won't clean off it still shouldn't affect the operation of your oven, just its appearance.

Never use any kind of abrasive cloth, sponge or cleaning preparation in a microwave oven. In fact, there's very little in your house that should need abrasives to clean, if you maintain surfaces by regular cleaning.

Stubborn stains should only be cleaned with whatever cleaner the manufacturers or suppliers recommend. If you aren't sure, ring or email the manufacturer or retailer for advice. The few minutes this'll take are worth the trouble when the alternative could mean damaging the goods.

Abrasives will leave nearly-invisible pitting in many surfaces, which will then hold dirt and stains forever more.

Absolutely, you can use both racks in your oven. You would want to use the lower rack for larger roasts or a turkey, and the upper rack for foods that you want more browned on top, such as mac n' cheese with a crust. If you want to use both racks for baking sheets full of cookies, just remember half way through baking to switch the baking pans top to bottom and bottom to top, and rotate them 180 degrees in case your oven has hot spots. (The last step may not be necessary if you have a convection oven.)

Cooking is only as difficult as a person wants to make it. For example, mac and cheese. Person A could heat up some pasta in the microwave and pour Velveeta cheese on top of it and call it dinner. Person B could: 1)create a roux (flour and butter thickening agent), 2)cube sharp cheddar cheese, 3) heat up heavy whipping cream to make their own cheese sauce with all the seasonings that they want, 4) boil the pasta, 5) then combine the cheese sauce and pasta, 6) sprinkle bread crumbs on top then stick in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. It all depends on how much work one would like to do. Follow the instructions in the recipe, most of the time, it is pretty simple and the end result is good.

The gizzard is an organ unique to fowl, seed eaters specifically. The gizzard actually holds small pieces of gravel and sand ingested by the bird to help grind down grains and seeds. It is therefore part of the digestive tract, located somewhere between the beak and the bottom.

The faster you cool food the better. It is best to use an ice bath to cool food quickly for freezing or refrigerating. An ice bath is: Put the food to cool in a shallow pan and put that into a bigger pan with ice and water. The ice and water level should go a little over half of the food pan. Stir the food a few times while it cools. This should take just a few minutes. Place the food after cooling in an airtight container to freeze or refrigerate.

Most people say "sugar" to mean granulated sugar. Different sugars are pure cane sugar and confectionery sugar (the powdered kind).

I'm Australian, and I'm guessing that 'jello' is jelly..?

Sorry

And anyway, if you are talking about what we call jelly then generally it takes about 4 hours to set properly.

But that all depends obviously on how much you have and how cold your fridge is.

Hope we are talking about the same thing and that I helped :)

No, you should leave the peel on, in fact if you tried to peel it you would end up with lots of individual peeled 'cloves', instead of one 'globe', so its best leave the peel on if you want to roast it whole.

Yes you can use flour, or better still, corn starch. In either case, make sure the sauce is at a gentle boil. Then mix the flour or corn starch with a small amount of COLD water and add it to the sauce while STIRRING CONSTANTLY. The sauce will thicken quite quickly, but will usually not be as deep red as it was originally.

you can cook it directly from the freezer because it will melt, it's not like meat or anything so it can just melt away!

Pizza is usually baked at about 425 degrees for 12 to 15 min. (Some ovens vary.) Preheat oven to the same temperature at which you are going to bake the pizza.

Real Pizza ovens bake at about 700 degrees.

Most home ovens won't even go that high.

They use a slightly different dough and shorter cooking time.

Cook tomatoes for as long as you possibly can. The longer you cook them for the better they taste. The act of cooking tomatoes also increases the health benefits they have.

Tomatoes are a good source of lycopene, the phytochemical which makes them red but which also has significant antioxidant properties. Research has shown that this antioxidant power can be boosted even more through the of cooking the tomatoes.

its not how long you cook a bird or what temp that matters, its the proper internal temperature. To determine done-ness of the bird , use a cooking thermometer.

And since i don't know how much your bird weighs, i cant answer the question properly as to what the temperature to roast it. Or how long .

But its stuffed you said and large. So i would guesstimate roast it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 325 degrees , cover the bird with a tent of foil loosely, continue roasting for an hour . using the cooking thermometer -Check the temp of the bird at a thick part - should reach 165 degrees. Also check the temp of the stuffing, should be 150- 160 degrees.

Continue to cook until the bird reaches those temps.

NO, you will probably ruin the plate and burn out the magnetron in the microwave.

Actually eating a bay leaf is unpleasant, it tastes awful, but its not poisonous to eat. The bay leaf is used in soups and stews to impart flavor into the dish, but should always be removed prior to service so it isn't eaten. If you want to make sure you are able to find and remove the bay leaf from your soup or stew, you can make a sachet out of cheesecloth, tie it off with food safe string, then have the string go over the edge of the pot enough that you can grab it and remove it when cooking is finished. (Its essentially like an herb teabag, the cheesecloth allows the flavor of the bay leaf to come out and mix in with the simmering soup, but keeps the leaf from falling into the soup.)

Dried bay leaves remain quite stiff in certain preparations, and so consuming them whole may be ill-advised, as they may cause abrasions in the digestive system.

~

As listed above, it is not a good thing. You may become sick. It can get stuck in the digestive system, since it does not break down. It is not like a leave off your yard tree, which can become soft if it sat in your gut. The bay leaf, no matter the substance it is cooked it, still maintains it shape and a fairly good stiffness. So, if you develop a lingering gut ache, see your doctor.

By adding more of the other ingredients - this will dilute the amount of onion in your soup. You can also try to overpower the taste with spices, but that might just make the whole thing worse.

Scraping the inside of the jar with a rubber spatula is the most thorough way I've found so far.

It depends on the volume. A smaller volume takes less time to stop boiling and vice versa. The "carrying capacity" of the pot will have some effect. (How much heat is the pot holding?) If you're in a hurry for the boiling to stop, pour in a little cold water. If you have a measured amount that is boiling, use a small measuring cup to dip out that much, and add back cool water in the same volume. With the heat turned off, the water should stop boiling almost immediately with the addition of a little cool water.

Depends on there age. I would say 15 breasts of chicken. I per person.

If the mustard is only providing flavor, then mustard powder can substitute for it--though the flavor will be different and less complex, because dijon has a variety of ingredients. If the mustard is an important component of the recipe, though, providing bulk or moisture, or if the recipe is for a baked dish, the chemistry/makeup of the dish could be effected negatively.

The general rule is 20 minutes per pound of turkey in a 350 degrees F/175 degrees C oven, but that does vary on if your turkey is stuffed or not. You want the internal temperature of your turkey to be 165 degrees F/75 degrees C.

there are many ways of cooking vegetables you can boil them or stir fry them, siving and then cook under the cooker or over the grill.

you can also try stiring and mixing different type of vegetables together to taste different type of flavours.

e.g. mixing all the different types of cabbages and lettuces together and then squeezing the juicy flavour out of them with your hands and then siving them.

Before you begin get a small bowl ready to put them in, and a teaspoon & a knife and butter, salt and pepper. After you put the eggs on you can worry about your toast. Read this through a couple of times before you begin.

You can make perfect soft-boiled eggs every time, this way.

Start them in cold water, about 1 inch deeper then the eggs. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat so the water is gently rolling, just above a simmer. Set the timer for 3 minutes and 5-10 seconds. The time will vary slightly depending on the size of the egg. You may need to experiment a little to find the exact firmness you want, but don't add more than 5 to 10 seconds each time until you get it the way you want it.

When the timer goes off, be prepared with a teaspoon or slotted spoon to take the eggs from the water and moving quickly run a little cold water over the egg to cool the shell so you can handle it, but keep the egg hot. Crack the egg with the knife and separate into two pieces. With a teaspoon, scoop out the egg into your bowl scraping closely to the shell and do the next egg. Add your flavorings, butter etc.

Egg timers are available in the housewares sections of most stores. There are several different types. I like the one that looks like a plastic egg and changes color according to the "doneness". But, I mostly use the timer on my microwave because the other one wears out eventually.

Bon Appetit'