Entries in Culinary Guide (22)
How To Make Salad Croutons
One way to make a mixed greens salad come alive is to focus on the supportive elements of flavor such as a unique dressing or, in this case, homemade salad croutons!
Ingredients:
J.P. Gelinas
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A Guide To Pork
In the past, pork has had a bad reputation due to the fact that it was often prepared incorrectly, resulting in a piece of meat that was tough, dry and flavorless. Due to fears of disease, the common practice was to cook pork to an interior temperature of 180 degrees. However, recent scientific research indicates that it is now acceptable to prepare pork to an interior temperature of 160 degrees. This change in cooking technique has helped pork experience increased popularity as a flavorful meat that contains great traditional value. If you're thinking of adding pork to your cooking repetoire, here's a list of the various cuts of pork and the different methods of cooking them.
J.P. Gelinas
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How To Make Your Own Ketchup
Making your own ketchup isn't that hard a process and it will leave you feeling -ahem- empowered in a way. "Hah! I've made my own ketchup! To hell with Heinz!" or something along those lines. Before we get to the recipe...
A Brief History of Ketchup: In the 1600's, British seamen brought home a sauce from China which went by the name "ketsiap". This sauce had more in common with the traditional Chinese Oyster Sauce than what we've come to know and love as ketchup. Recipes for the sauce now called "catsup" began to appear in cookbooks in the early 1700's. By the late 1700's, the sauce was being made with tomatoes and mushrooms and was being called "ketchup". In 1837, ketchup began being sold across the United States by various small entrapaneurs and in 1872, HJ Heinz began bottling the condiment with much success. This version of ketchup is the one that became fixed in the public taste and is the one we still use today!
J.P. Gelinas
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A Guide To Hot Chile Peppers
- In 1912, Wilbur Scoville, a Detroit pharmacologist, developed a system for measuring the various levels of capsaicin
- Capsaicin, a powerful alkaloid, is the unique ingredient that makes chile peppers hot
- The Scoville Heat Scale starts at 0, for the average green bell pepper that most of us buy in our local supermarkets.
- The highest heat rating for a chile pepper is given to the Red Savina Habanero Pepper, which clocks in at 350,000 - 577,000 heat units
- Many brands of bottled hot sauce use their Scoville rating as a means of advertising the piquancy of their products
- In recent years, biochemists have developed another form of heat measurement called high pressure liquid chromatography
J.P. Gelinas
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How to make your own Ricotta Cheese
This is a good example of not knowing what you're capable of in the kitchen until you give it a try. Go ahead, you might suprise yourself! Once you're comfortable with the basic recipe for making your own ricotta cheese from scratch, you may want to experiment by adding some roasted garlic or a spice like cayenne pepper. The sky's the limit!
J.P. Gelinas
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A Guide To Sausages
For those of you who have been locked up in a Tibetan monastery for the last 100 years, listen up: A sausage consists of seasoned ground meat that is stuffed into a long casing. Sausage makers twist the casing at different lengths to form sausage links. The most common meat used in sausage production is pork. Turkey, lamb, chicken, beef, and veal are among the other varieties of stuffing used in sausage production. There are some markets that sell sausage made with seafood but this is usually a rare occurence. Some butchers will sell their sausages freshly made while others prefer to sell dry cured and cooked varieties of sausage. Whew!
J.P. Gelinas
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