Tag: tips and tricks
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How To Thicken Gravy, Sauce, Stew And More With Cornflour
When you are making stews, casseroles, sauces and the like, it is sometimes hard to get the balance between flavour and thickness. Your dish might have the right taste but be too watery.
Continue to cook it and you might ruin the flavours by over cooking it.
So what do you do?
Well you can use cornflour. You don’t want to stir it into what you are making however. This will just make the liquid lumpy.
Instead, take remove some of the hot cooking liquid and add a tablespoon of cornflour to it. Mix until you have no lumps.
Add a little to the dish and mix it in. Repeat until you get the consistency you want.
Here I had a pie filling that tasted right but would have made for soggy pies. Now it is ready:
Enjoy,
PK
Here are some more tips and posts about cooking ingredients:
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How To Make Boiled Eggs With A Steamer
I recently stumbled across this method of making boiled eggs when searching online for egg recipes.
It is pretty handy if you have to make soft boiled and hard boiled eggs for the same meal. If everyone wants the same amount of ‘doneness’ I would recommend using KT’s Dippy Eggs and Soldiers or PK’s Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs instead.
Simply add water to your strainer and bring to a medium boil. You will have to experiment with your steamer, the amount of water and heat to work out the exact times to get different yolk hardness.
Last time, I used a medium boil for 6 minutes to get the one egg perfect for dipping soldiers into:
I left one egg in for an additional 5 minutes to get a hard boiled egg.
Enjoy,
PK
Here are some more eggs recipies and tasting plate ideas:
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Stock Tip Blanching Chicken
Blanching chicken meat before using it to make stock or broth removes fat and other impurities. This results in a clearer healthier broth!
You aren’t cooking the chicken, just preparing/cleaning it.
Simply
Add the chicken meat, frames etc into a pot of cold water.
Bring the water to a boil and then remove the scum by pouring it through a sieve. I even give the meat a quick rinse.
So instead of your stock looking like the picture above when you start making it, you get this:
Enjoy,
PK
Here are some more stock and chicken recipes:
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Parboiling Potatoes
Some dishes using potatoes, like roast potatoes, benefit greatly by first parboiling them.
Simply put, we put the potatoes in boiling water for 5 to 10 minutes so that their cores are partially cooked. Try and keep all the potato pieces the same size otherwise the smaller ones will be overdone by the time the larger are ready.
A quick drain and they are perfect for roasting using Jamie Oliver’s methods.
Enjoy,
PK
Here are a couple of potato posts to help you plan dinner. 🙂
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The Cure For Brown Thumb Syndrome
I have a cure for Brown Thumbitis. Brown what you say?
I know lots of people (including yours truly) that say they are or were serial plant killers. Most had given up but I can share the secret for a happier life, at least in the garden 🙂 .
Here are my 6 steps to gardening success:
Relax
You can not achieve perfection or “success” in the garden so don’t try.
Experiment
Plant everything everywhere at least once. Your local climate, pests, soil types etc will send you a message as to what goes where and when. If something fails it is not a complete loss if you learn something. I write down what I learn about when to plant what in my Perth Grow It Calendar.
Talk
To your plants and other people (as many as you can). I converse with my plants and it makes both of us grow 🙂 . The internet is an amazing resource but it pales in comparison to that which you can glean from talking to other local gardeners.
Read
This blog a lot 🙂 🙂
Seriously though read anything you can on gardening. Start with general concepts and then go into more detail if you want to or if you are troubleshooting.
Enjoy
See between the gardening chores to find the peace and enjoyment the outdoors brings. If you don’t have lots of free time, design your garden accordingly so you don’t feel a slave to it. I go into more detail on my post Why Am I Writing This Blog?.
Eat
Eating your homegrown edibles is rewarding and addictive. This turns into motivation and the cycle is complete. Hot tip – Eating your produce before pests (what I call BadCritters) do is one sure fire way to stopping them being “ruined” or dying.
Enjoy,
PK
PS I would love to hear your success stories so drop me a line in the comments or at growitcatchitcookit@iinet.net.au
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Make Tea, Kill Weeds!
I just wanted to share a chemical free way of killing weeds. This tip is great for those tenacious weeds growing in brick paving or growing right next to another plant. I guess you just have to weigh up for yourself the cost to the planet to use and boil the water vs the chemicals, water, power and plastic in a bottle of weed spray. For some that might not be worth the cost and I get that.
If you have any boiled water leftover in the kettle, simply pour it on the weed until you see it blanch. This kills the weed and its roots outright and seems to inhibit the seeds too.
There is no need to pull the weed out as it will quickly turn into mulch. See I told you I am lazy :).
The effects are immediate.
Before:
After:
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