Easily Read and Follow Cooking Recipes

How to Easily Read and Follow Cooking Recipes

Cooking recipes are guides that a simple housewife or an expert chef can use. These are master plans that can enhance the meals to be served. Reading and following recipes is an important tool to put delicious foods on your table; but beginners may find this hard. Here are simple tips to help you:

1. Being the first step in cooking, reading the recipe takes time. Read the recipe several times thoroughly from start to end. Familiarize yourself with the cooking terms and unknown ingredients first before cooking. You should understand the recipe to be able to cook well.

2. Cooking recipes usually start with the ingredients. Make sure that you have the correct ingredients; there are substitutes for hard to find ingredients. Gather all the ingredients and measuring and cooking utensils that you will need before starting.

3. Alongside the ingredients are the measuring utensils and the measurements, which are all important. The order of words in the cooking recipes can change the preparation of food so be cautious about it. For example, 1 cup chopped onions is different from 1 cup onions, chopped. 1 cup onion, chopped means you should measure 1 cup onion first before you’ve chopped it.

4. Go over the recipe carefully and don’t rush! You should double check all the ingredients and steps to be successful in cooking. Don’t try to alter the cooking recipes or add a little extra sugar, etc., as this may affect the taste of your meal.

5. Cooking recipes contain numerous methods in cooking. There are certain terms like simmer, browning of meat, sauté, stir, mix, fry, etc. There are guides and explanation at the back of many cooking recipes which can help. Familiarize yourself and get acquainted with them.

6. Enjoy your cooking recipes. You can at first follow them but gradually make your own. Making some changes in the recipes isn’t strictly prohibited unless you and your kids don’t like the taste.

Cooking recipes are very useful tools for beginners. It doesn’t mean that when followed, you’ll have an impeccable dish everyone will admire, but it can help develop your skill in cooking. Always keep in mind that your purpose isn’t only to follow and finish a recipe but to produce a good tasting and healthy food everyone will love!

How to Modify Cooking Recipes to Match Your Taste

How would you feel when you’ve finally found the recipe you’ve been look for, only to find out that the ingredients listed in aren’t easily available to you? You’ll get frustrated. Or mad even. But don’t feel that way. There are many things that you can do to modify a certain recipe to match your taste and what’s available to you.

You can also make some changes to it so that you get to enjoy its taste despite the present health condition you are in. And so if you can’t eat something sweet, fatty, or salty, try to change the recipe in such a way so it becomes more nutritious and healthy. Here’s how:

1. Know which ingredients are necessary and which aren’t. Read the recipe over. Is the particular ingredient you can’t get ahold of or can’t eat a main ingredient? If it is you might need to look for the next best alternative. But if it is merely there for seasoning or garnishing purposes, then you can just skip those. The recipe will do without them.

2. Reduce a certain ingredients amount. Can’t have much sweets because you are diabetic? Then why not reduce the sweetener in the ingredients list in proportion with all the others? This way, you won’t be consuming more than the necessary dose your doctor told you not to exceed.

3. Substitute. Know which ingredient can be substituted for another. Kale, for example, can be substituted by cabbage. Or if the recipe calls for whole milk, try non-fat milk. More often than not, either of the two will work, and with minimal difference in taste or appearance.

4. Modify the cooking techniques used. If you don’t like fatty food but the recipe wants you to deep fry the meat, why not stir-fry it using a non-stick pan instead? This way, you’ll get close to the recipe without an overload in your cholesterol level. Grilling and roasting are almost the same. You may interchange the one for the other depending upon which resources are available to you.

Modifying a recipe requires a little of your cooking ability to come out of the surface. And doing so is rather adventurous, because you get to experiment which type of preparation or ingredient tastes better. You are also adding a personal touch to the food you prepare as you modify. Who knows, you might just create a variation of your favorite recipe which tastes better than the original one!