A white wine is essential to bring balance, fruit and acidity to many recipes. Although grocery stores carry cooking wine, you’ll find even moderately priced white wine expands possibilities and cooking styles. By far one of the best wines to cook with is a dry, crisp white wine. A rich, oaky white can become bitter during the cooking process, while a sweeter white may caramelize or add unwanted sweetness to

A self-rising flour is an ingredient found in scones, muffins or biscuits. If you don’t have it on hand, no weed to worry; there’s a good chance you have everything already at home. This flour is used in all types of baked goods, even some cake recipes. It’s a convenient shortcut as the flour will cause the batter or dough to expand while the salt will season the final baked

A homemade muffin is the best answer to an easy breakfast while heading to the office. However, even a good blueberry muffin often faces a problem when the fruit sinks to the bottom and bursts, gluing itself to the paper lining or pan. One trick to solving this dilemma is holding off on mixing the fruit in your muffin batter. Instead, drop a bit of the plain batter to each

There are plenty of tips out there that claim to help you hang onto the color of pesto. From blanching the basil leaves to adding a bit of lemon juice, chefs all have their own tricks for pesto. One trick you probably haven’t heard of: an ice cube. Pesto has come a long way from the traditional mortar and pestle to modern food processors. A step you can skip is

Cutting fruits and vegetables is all in the grip. There are 4 tips for safer and smarter chopping you can follow. Making sure the cutting board won’t slip Using the “claw grip” method when cutting Stabilizing your food Keeping your knives sharp Keep Your Cutting Board From Slipping You first want to make sure your cutting board isn’t moving around while you’re using it. Chopping on an unstable surface could

We all know the pain of making a batch of cinnamon rolls and turning around to find you’re out of powdered sugar. Without extra time to run to the store, missing out on this key ingredient could spill disaster for many recipes. However, there’s a solution if you have white sugar and a food processor or blender around. Powdered sugar is white cane sugar that has been pulverized to a

No matter what kind of grill you have, you’ll need two heat zones to cook a steak. A high heat area for searing and a medium heat area to finish it to the desired level. Here’s how to set it up. Searing is a technique where food is cooked at a high temperature until a browned crust forms due to the Maillard reaction. This high heat causes the molecules to

Burgers are a quintessential summer meal. There’s nothing like a classic burger for dinner with family or a backyard barbeque. They’re versatile, easy to prepare and always a crowd pleaser. But there’s one ingredient to make burgers even more flavorful without any fussy preparation, yellow mustard! This tip is used among chefs and popular burger chains. Just brushing a bit of mustard on an uncooked side of a patty after

It’s the time of year again where those grills are fired up after months of staying dormant. There’s nothing better than delicious charred vegetables, seared steaks or classic BBQ chicken. Most grill recipes will call for a clean, oiled grill. You may think this requires extensive scrubbing and scouring. However, if you’re cleaning your grills more than twice a season, you’re cleaning it too much. You only need to deep

Grilling pizza might seem a bit confusing at first, but can offer you greater flavor than an oven normally would. The charcoal better mimics the wood fired ovens that pizzas are normally made in. It also leaves the heat outside during a hot summer day, no firing up an oven and making your home hotter than it should be! The dough doesn’t fall through the grates and will form a