Tag: #Techniques

Posted in Book Reviews

Brew Like a Pro: Make Pub-Style Draft Beer at Home

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Make your best beer ever! Legendary brewer Dave Miller brings a lifetime of professional experience into your home. With complete plans for a system that requires just 18 square feet and full of small-batch recipes, Brew Like a Proreveals the secrets of truly great draft- and pub-style brewing. Learn to make classic all-grain beers that stay fresh in kegs for months, eliminating the need for bottling. This clear, concise guide is sure to take your homebrewing to the next level.

Editorial Reviews 

From the Back Cover

Enjoy Refreshing Draft Beer — at Home!

Elevate your homebrewed beer to new levels of quality and consistency. Dave Miller has been a homebrewer and a professional brewmaster; he has firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of a pub brewery and a unique understanding of how to adapt pro techniques for home use. Follow Miller’s advice on setting up an efficient all-grain home brewery and a draft system for serving fresh, cold beer, and you’ll be brewing like a pro in no time — no bottling required!

Amazon

Posted in Kitchen Tips

I Asked 3 Farmers How to Pick the Sweetest Corn, and They All Swear By This Method

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

During summer road trips with the family, and sometimes just while driving to a more rural part of town to golf together, my Dad would drive us past row upon row upon row of corn. As a native Iowan, “knee-high by the Fourth of July”—a Midwestern saying about how tall farmers hope their corn to be by Independence Day—was a phrase about as common as declaring that something is “a piece of cake.”

As you might guess, fresh corn was a true sign of summer since I was born and raised in the heart of the Midwest. In my opinion, Dad’s charcoal-grilled corn needed nothing but a few shakes of salt to be the perfect side dish. This was something my family would enjoy about once per week during fresh sweet corn season, which spans from Memorial Day to Labor Day in most parts of the country, according to Dana Peters, a Barney, Georgia-based produce and floral field inspector at Whole Foods Market (who grew up on a small family farm).

Continue reading “I Asked 3 Farmers How to Pick the Sweetest Corn, and They All Swear By This Method” →
Posted in Kitchen Tips

How to Keep Your Cucumbers Fresher for Longer

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Fresh, bright, and vegetal, with a clean, mild flavor and subtle sweetness, cucumbers are extremely versatile and lend themselves well to a wide range of dishes. From raw to cooked, savory to sweet, and beverages dry or spiked, cucumbers go a long way. Their refreshing nature makes them a star in the summer, but a crudité plate any time of year is bound to see some of these seedy wonders, thanks to their consistent availability and dippable goodness.

The Easiest Way to Make Cucumbers Taste So Much Better

If you’ve ever grown cucumbers at home, you know that not only are these long, cylindrical fruits one of the easiest things to grow, but they’re also abundant. Home-growing cucumbers will inevitably have them coming out of your ears at some point, so a little brush-up on how to keep them fresh for as long as possible is a solid idea.

How Long Do Cucumbers Last?

  • In the fridge: 4-6 days (unwrapped), but up to 2 weeks
  • Room temperature on the counter: up to 7 days (if out of sun)
  • In the freezer: 6 months to 1 year

Allrecipes

Posted in Book Reviews

Bowls of Plenty: Recipes for Healthy and Delicious Whole-Grain Meals

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Gorgeous, layered, satisfying bowls have become the next wave of healthy eating. From food blogs to Instagram, farm-to-table bistros to chain restaurants, “the bowl” has become part of our culinary vocabulary. And whole grains are not just for hippies and health nuts anymore! Hearty grains like quinoa, farro, millet, and spelt are replacing flour or corn tortillas, bread, pasta, white rice, and mashed potatoes as the base or vehicle for other, richer, more complex ingredients.

Bowls of Plenty brings grain bowls to the home cook, offering more than 75 recipes for hearty, grain-centric, one-dish meals that layer flavorful veggies and delicious sauces and vinaigrettes, with optional meats and dairy on a foundation of whole-grain staples. A mix sweet and savory breakfast bowls, salad bowls that will put an end to the sad desk lunch, flexible composed main dish bowls that work with all diets, and creative dessert bowls, Bowls of Plenty is a modern handbook for healthy and delicious cooking at home.

Amazon

Posted in Kitchen Tips

An Expert Settles the Debate: This Is the Best Trick to Make Your Beans Less Gassy

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Beans are magical, and not just in fairy tales. Everyone from your favorite social media chef to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pushing for increased bean consumption, and there’s plenty of good reason—beansare rich in protein and fiber, making them an affordable foundation for a nutritious and filling meal.

Despite their benefits, you could say beans don’t have the best reputation, thanks to their … after-effects. So, when we heard about a simple trick that helps reduce gas in beans, you bet we investigated the method.

Why Do Beans Cause So Much Gas? 

“Beans produce gas mainly due to oligosaccharides, which are complex sugars like raffinose and stachyose,” says recipe developer and food expert Rizwan Asad. “We lack the enzymes to break these down, so they end up fermenting in the gut, creating gas.”

According to our friends at Eating Well, high-protein foods contain compounds that can exacerbate gas or lactose in dairy. In beans’ case, hard-to-digest complex carbohydrates (including oligosaccharides and fiber) cause further fermentation and discomfort.  

Allrecipes

Posted in Kitchen Tips

This Mind-Blowing Potato-Peeling Hack Doesn’t Even Use a Vegetable Peeler

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

I’m always looking for ways to do things better, faster, and easier in the kitchen—as long as the end result is quality. Peeling different foods is at the top of the list. Who hasn’t tried various methods for easily peeling a hard-boiled egg, removing the skin from a tomato, or peeling the thick skin from a butternut squash? And the various different ways I’ve tried to keep myself from crying while cutting an onion until I discovered onion goggles? I’ve lost count.

Recently, a viral video got the social media world buzzing about the easiest way to peel potatoes, and it’s intriguing. Particularly with the holidays coming up and the mountains of mashed potatoes many of us will make, the trick is definitely worth investigating.

How to Peel Potatoes Without a Vegetable Peeler 

TikTok’s kalejunkie shares various tricks, tips, and recipes with her followers. Her method for making potatoes easy to peel seems genius if you intend for the potatoes to be boiled for dishes like mashed potatoes or potato salad.

Here are the steps to her method:

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. 
  2. Score potatoes around the middle with a sharp knife.
  3. Carefully drop potatoes in the boiling water and cook them until you can easily pierce them with a knife.
  4. Remove and let cool a little so you can handle them. 
  5. Peel the skins right off by hand.

Allrecipes

Posted in Kitchen Tips

Toss Your Salad Dressing Immediately If Notice These Signs

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

We all have condiments and dressings sitting in the back of our refrigerators (and would rather not admit how long they’ve been there). Due to the fact that mayonnaise or balsamic vinaigrette usually don’t get used everyday, it’s easy to forget when you bought them at the store—and how long they’ve been inhabiting the top shelf. 

That’s why it’s important to brush up on the signs of expiration, especially when it comes to salad dressing, which tends to get overlooked in the kitchen. We turned to an expert to learn exactly when your salad dressing needs to be tossed—either in a bowl or in the garbage. 

It Fails the Sniff Test 

Like most foods, salad dressing tends to take on an off-putting odor when expired. “This is because there are yeasts that produce gas when salad dressing has spoiled, and create off-flavors or odors in the process,” says food scientist Dr. Bryan Quoc Le. Trust your gut—any forms of rancid, unpleasant, or just plain weird scents warrant throwing it away. 

You’ll especially notice a sour odor with dairy-based dressings like ranch, Caesar, or Italian. Some have even likened a funky salad dressing smell to wet cardboard.

Allrecipes

Posted in Kitchen Tips

How to Clean Dirty Baking Sheets So They Look Brand New

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

If you’re like me, sheet pans are probably some of your most well-loved and perpetually dirty kitchen items. No amount of scrubbing and soaking seems to get any of that burnt residue off. Sometimes it’s time to set soap and water aside and look for new methods of cleaning stubborn stains and residue. So before you toss those dirty pans, give these methods of cleaning sheet pans a try.

Allrecipes

Posted in Taste Tests

I Asked 5 Chefs for the Best Salt, and This Brand Won by a Big Pinch

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Salt might seem like the most standard of pantry staples. Whether it’s in individual packets, added to a shaker and placed alongside black pepper, or sold in a 3-pound bucket, it’s all just the same ol’ crystals of sodium chloride, right?

Not so fast. The style and brand of salt you use can make all the difference between a dish that falls flat, one that sings and is full of flavor, or one that is so salty, it’s inedible. (Also, when you add salt during cooking also matters!)

To help us smartly stock up and season like the pros, we asked chefs from coast to coast to reveal their favorite salt brand as well as the ways (both classic and unexpected) they like to use it.

Our Panel of Salt-Savvy Chefs 

Allrecipes

Posted in Kitchen Tips

PSA: You’re Storing Your Potatoes and Onions the Wrong Way

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

Potatoes and onions have a fair amount in common: They’re infrequently the star of a dish, but play stellar supportive roles in everything from pot roasts to casseroles. Onion bulbs and potato tubers both flourish underground, meaning that the vegetables require similar storage conditions—cool, dark, and ventilated environments—and they fare much better on a counter than in the fridge.

However, just because onions and potatoes prefer the same conditions doesn’t mean they make good neighbors. In fact, storing the vegetables together will shorten both of their shelf lives.

Can You Store Potatoes and Onions Together? 

Storing potatoes and onions together isn’t the best idea. Onions produce a high level of ethylene gas, which will cause potatoes to ripen—and go bad—before you’re ready to use them. However, those spuds aren’t completely innocent, either: Potatoes’ high moisture content can cause onions to liquefy and leak. Keep onions and potatoes apart for both vegetables’ sakes.

Allrecipes