Connect with us

Food

Gastronomically Impressive: 5 Ways to Elevate Your Cooking Skills

Published

on

Around 36% of Americans cook daily at home. Considering one person in the household is often responsible for cooking at mealtimes, that’s not a bad figure.

Making the effort to learn to cook is a rewarding task. Not only is cooking at home often cheaper than eating out, but it’s healthier too. Having cooking skills means you can care for (and impress) your loved ones with your delicious dinners.

But as with any skill, you can always improve your cooking. Read these cooking tips to discover simple ways to fire up your foodie delights!

1. Take a Cooking Class

Most keen home cooks are self-taught unless they had a parent or grandparent who showed them the ropes. Even if you had a cooking mentor, there is still a lot you can learn to boost your cooking skills by taking a course.

You can learn how to hold a knife like a professional chef and how to chop food finer and faster. You could take a cooking class in a type of cuisine that you don’t know much about to expand your repertoire too.

2. Use the Right Tools

Emmert Wolf said, “a man is only as good as his tools.” This is 100% true with cooking.

Without a sieve, you have lumpy flour. And without a muffin tin, your bakes will never hold their shape.

To improve your culinary skills, know when to scrimp and when to save with the tools you need to have. Buying a $10 whisk instead of a $5 one won’t make much difference. But you need pristine, sharp knives and high-quality pans.

You’ll notice the difference straight away when you chop onions with a Japanese steel chef’s knife or cook steaks in Grizzly cast iron pans.

3. Lacking Flavor? Add Salt

This is one of the best tips to start enhancing your culinary skills today. If you’re making a stew or soup and it’s missing something, add a little more salt. Salt always heightens the other flavors in a dish so it’s an essential ingredient.

4. Experiment With Recipes

There’s nothing wrong with following recipes to the letter when you are a beginner. But if you want to progress, you need to take your cooking practice to the next level.

Try adding different spices and swapping out ingredients to see if you can improve the recipe. Challenge yourself to adapt existing recipes for different dietary needs. For example, gluten-free or vegan.

5. Shop at a Local Market

Sometimes, it’s not your cooking that needs improving, but your ingredients. Instead of buying fruit and vegetables in your grocery store, try a farmer’s market instead. The produce at markets is more likely to be fresher, tastier, and in season.

Spice up Your Cooking Skills With These Tips

There are 1,001 ways you can improve your cooking skills. But these tips will help you build a good foundation of culinary techniques and knowledge so they are a great place to start.

One of the great things about gaining culinary skills is that you can never learn too many. Browse our food articles for recipes and more meal inspiration!

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Food

4 Classy Things to Know About Australian Wine

Published

on

By

Did you know that there are 10,000 different types of wine grapes in the world? If you love wine, then you should see that as a challenge to try them all.

You may be surprised to learn that Australia is known for its unique wine varieties. Although the country often makes us think of kangaroos and boomerangs, you could visit there for an awesome wine-tasting experience instead.

Are you wondering what you’ve been missing out on? Keep reading to learn about 4 classy things related to Australian wine.

1. The Wine Regions

There are a lot of different wine regions to explore in Australia. First off, there’s the South Australia zone, which is comprised of Clare Valley, Barossa Valley, Adelaide Hills, and others.

There’s also New South Wales, which has Hastings River, the Canberra District, Lachlan Valley, and Shoalhaven Coast, to name a handful.

Another large zone is Western Australia. This is where you’ll find Margaret River, Perth Hills, Warren Valley, and more. If you’re already getting overwhelmed with the number of options, you should book one of the best D’Vine Wine Tours.

The other major regions are the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, and Tasmania.

2. White Wines

You’ll be glad to know that there’s a classy selection of Aussie white wines. The most popular is chardonnay. Depending on which vineyard you visit, you can expect the expression to fluctuate between a fruity taste and an earthy one.

If you want to try something completely different, you can opt for a glass of Riesling, Vermentino, or Semillon.

3. Red Wines

The Land Down Under doesn’t neglect its red wines. In fact, the Shiraz is one of the most popular red-grape wines in the country. Unlike in colder places, the Shiraz there has a richer plum flavor.

Additionally, you won’t want to miss out on Australia’s full-body Merlot. Depending on the region you visit, you might be able to spot an oaky aftertaste.

4. Natural Wines

If you’re a fan of natural wine, you’ll be glad to know that business is booming in Australia. There are many independent vineyards focusing on natural methods. This is paving the way for a revolution in the wine industry.

You’ll find many natural wine businesses around the country, such as Ochota Barrels and Gentle Folk in the Adelaide Hills. Western Australia also has a good variety of natural wine vineyards, such as Blind Corner, La Violetta, and Si Vintners.

Even if you’re all the way in McLaren Vale, you can still pop into Brash Higgins for a phenomenal glass of natural wine.

Are You Ready to Try Australian Wine?

Now that you’ve learned about 4 classy things related to Australian wine, you’re ready to try everything the beautiful country has to offer. The ancient Greek gods drank wine for a reason. With a glass of Australian wine in each hand, you can feel absolutely divine.

If you’re a foodie, then you won’t want to miss out on all the latest culinary news and recipes. You can stay up to date by bookmarking our site.

Continue Reading

Food

Tasting 3 Of The World’s Favorite Desserts

Even though we all have a favorite dessert (or several), it’s possible that another sweetheart is out there waiting for you.

Published

on





     Blame it on your grandmother’s amazing baking skills, those wonderful celebration & holiday treats, or flat-out genetic preferences, all dessert is deeply personal and engraved into our hearts. Still, there’s a great wide world full of tastes that have never come close to your tongue. Ignorance may be bliss, but there will always be a part of your personal dessert history that will make you wonder “What if?”. Yes, some of your past choices will always be with you, but as you try new flavors in new places, some of those older “favorites” will make you realize they really weren’t that special after all. To phrase this another way, there are a ton, a plethora, a variety, of new desserts that you are just waiting to try. The problem is… you don’t know what (and where) they are. Therefore, we wanted to take you on an incredibly quick trip around the world in which you can “sample” some of the desserts you would have otherwise never been introduced.

 

Alfajores, South America

To be fair, it’s very possible that you’ve seen these cookies before – they’re found all over South America, from Argentina to Peru. The ends are made of crumbly shortbread cookies that hold a delectable layer of dulce de leche – a similar type of caramel candy made by simmering sweetened milk. Additional versions are available as these cookies are highly customizable. They may be covered in dark chocolate, drizzled with white, rolled in a variety of nuts (including coconut), or simply elevated through the use of spices.

 

Borma, Middle East & Turkey

If you’ve had baklava before, then you should roughly understand the flavor profile of the Borma. These treats are produced by rolling threads of golden knafeh – a type of pasty dough – around a sweet, nutty pistachio, pine nut, or walnut center. However, unlike baklava, these are deep-fried leading to a nice crispy bite. Bakery owners surely tempt tourists and locals alike as they pile these tasty deep-fried sticks high in store windows. 

 

Gulab Jamun, India

Having been lucky enough to sample a few of these from an Indian bakery here in my hometown, I can assure that these gulab jamun are absolutely delicious (and relatively light!). Each of these balls starts as a scoop of khoya – a reduced cow or buffalo milk mixture that is simmered for hours over a very light flame. Then, this melting substance is fried in ghee – clarified butter. This frying adds additional flavor to the “milk” before it is soaked in aromatic syrup. Roses and cardamom seeds often flavor this sweet treat. 

 

The opportunities to try these treats are relatively easy to come by. To be honest, the next time you’re in a culturally-rich neighborhood, just stop by the bakery! You’ll obviously enjoy looking at all the new foods and treats but being able to sample something new is the absolute best. 


Continue Reading

Food

5 Tips for Hosting the Ultimate Dinner Party

Published

on

By

5 Tips for Hosting the Ultimate Dinner Party

Hosting a dinner party is the official mark of becoming an adult. Out with the beer cans and in with the wine glasses and cocktails – it’s time to host a classy party that your friends will talk about for years to come. But where do you start? In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the tips and best practices for hosting a successful dinner party.

5 Dinner Party Hosting Tips

The great thing about hosting a dinner party is that you get to create the rules. It’s your party and you’re the one in charge. If you want it to be super fancy, make it super fancy. If you’d prefer a more casual approach, don’t feel guilty about keeping it low key. You get to create the precise experience you please.

Having said that, here are some helpful tips that most people find useful in hitting the ground running:

1. Start With a Guest List

It’s a good idea to begin with a guest list in mind, rather than reverse-engineering the dinner party. (If you make the mistake of doing the latter, it usually ends up having a negative impact on your menu, space, cost, etc.)

When creating your guest list, take time to consider the overall dynamic of the people you’re inviting. Try your best to invite people from different areas of your life. This is how you create a balanced guest list. Ideally, there will be some people who know each other, as well as others who don’t. This paves the way for good conversation and bonding.

2. Send Out Invitations

You don’t send a text to someone inviting them to a dinner party. (This isn’t a football tailgate, after all.) Instead, you should mail a letter. And, at the very least, send an email invitation. As a general rule of thumb, send invitations three to four weeks in advance of the actual party.

3. Prepare a Menu

Food is obviously a huge part of a dinner party. Take some time to carefully consider what will be on your menu. If you’re going to splurge, this is where you do it. Fresh food is a must. During the summer, seafood is a great option. If you live in a landlocked area, buying from a site like Maine Lobster Now allows you to get access to the freshest seafood in the country – including Maine lobster.

4. Add Some Personality

You don’t need to go overboard with decorations or themed decor. This is a dinner party – not a 5-year-old’s birthday party. However, feel free to add some personality to the party with floral arrangements and some tasteful decorations.

5. Create an Agenda

You don’t want to map out every second of the dinner party, but it’s wise to have a loose idea of where the evening will go. In other words, you need some sort of agenda. The best dinner party agendas have three specific phases:

  • Cocktail hour. Serve drinks and appetizers as guests arrive. Do your best to greet everyone personally when they arrive, but keep the overall vibe casual and conversational.
  • Dinner. This is the more formal part of the evening. Serve the food (or have a buffet line) and encourage everyone to take seats in the appropriate places.
  • After dinner socializing. This is the most relaxed portion of the evening. You can serve more cocktails (or even coffee). If it’s a more casual dinner party, this is a great time to bring out games. If it’s a little fancier, you can bring people into living areas for conversation.

Ideally, you’ll put some loose time frames on these three phases. For example, cocktail hour is from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. Dinner is from 7:00pm to 8:00pm, and the after-dinner portion of the evening lasts from 8:00pm to 10:00pm. You don’t have to stress about hitting these times like strict deadlines – after all, you’re not printing this agenda off for anyone to see – but loosely following them will keep you on the right track for the evening.

Adding it All Up

Hosting a successful dinner party isn’t about checking off a bunch of boxes or making sure that you follow someone else’s definition of what it means to throw an amazing event. Instead, it’s all about casting a vision and executing in a way that makes your guests feel loved, welcome, and appreciated. If you can do this, you’ve thrown a successful party.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Facebook

Tags

Trending