10 Home Cooking Deliciosity Hacks

10 Home Cooking Deliciosity Hacks

Okay, deliciosity is a word I made up. Or maybe I heard I somewhere else at some point. But it’s a fun word to use to describe how tasty a meal is on a scale of 1-10. I was using that term to rate meals I had at local restaurants in my “Amy H Reviews Stuff” blog. Now I’m going to pass along some home cooking hacks so you can start using it at your dinner table.

1)  Slow cooker meat bland and lacking texture? Try browning it first. Some slow cooker recipes online call for just dumping raw chicken breast or a piece of roast into the slow cooker with some vegetables and sauce and calling it a day. While that will make it edible, if you want it to be delectable, you have to do a little legwork first.

·      Heat a skillet to medium or medium-high and add some butter, oil or butter alternative

·      Rub some dry spices onto the surface of your meat. You can either buy a dry rub in a flavor that matches your recipe (BBQ, Taco, etc...) or make your own. (Basic guide to home dry rubs coming soon)

·      Put the meat in the hot pan for just a few minutes on each side. Enough that it turns golden-brown on the surface, but is still raw in the middle.

·      Add it to the crock pot or dutch oven and finish the original recipe instructions

2)  Soup too thin? Make it creamy in just a few easy steps. If vegetables and meat floating in a thin broth aren’t doing it for you, you can make the soup thicker and more filling easily. It does add carbs, though.

·      Take the large stew pot you were going to use for soup and put some butter or oil in the bottom, turn burner to medium heat.

·      After the butter is melted, toss 2/3 cup of flour. It doesn’t matter really if it’s white, rice, potato or some other kind as long as it’s a light, fine flour. Add 2 tbsp of corn or rice starch.

·      Stir the flour mixture into the hot melted butter or oil, keep stirring as the mixture goes from white to golden tan. Don’t let it turn dark brown. This is a trick often used in New Orleans and French cooking called Roux.

·      As soon as it’s golden, add your broth and turn to a boil. Add 1 cup of either heavy cream or thick unsweetened coconut milk from a can. (The heavy cream tastes better)

·      Once it’s boiling, go forward with the rest of the original soup recipe

3)  For pasta dishes that don’t involve a thick sauce, add more flavor to the pasta. Because sometimes plain spaghetti is kind of boring underneath a scoop of sautéed vegetables or a sauce that’s thin with herbs and big tomato chunks.

·      Boil the pasta in broth instead of water (Save the broth for later instead of dumping it when you strain the pasta)

·      Heat a skillet on medium with butter or oil in it, toss in a tbsp. of minced garlic and a handful of finely chopped onions, sautee until golden.

·      Dump the pasta into the skillet, grill it with the garlic and onions for just a few minutes. Maybe no more than five, stirring constantly. Don’t let the pasta turn dark on the bottom.

·      You can serve it as is or you can go ahead and add the vegetables and thin sauce you were going to top it with, and sautee for another five minutes.

4)  Out of time for side dishes? Roast mass amounts of vegetables in the oven ahead of time.

·      Preheat the oven to 400*

·      Fill one large cookie sheet with chopped up root vegetables like fingerling potatoes, sweet potatoes and beets. You can also use diced butternut squash.

·      Fill another large cookie sheet with cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and cut up Brussels sprouts.

·      Sprinkle olive oil over all the vegetables equally

·      Sprinkle salt over all the vegetables equally

·      Optional: Sprinkle garlic and powdered onion over the potatoes and cruciferous vegetables, sprinkle paprika and curry powder over the beets, sweet potatoes and squash

·      Roast the ROOT vegetables for 40 minutes and the CRUCIFEROUS vegetables for 20 minutes.

·      Cool, store in large container in the fridge, use for salad toppings, re-heated over rice, in taco shells with some homemade aioli or as-is with a meat.

5)  Bland soft tacos? Fry taco shells.

·      Heat a pot or somewhat deep skillet to medium-high, pour in 1 inch of a light oil like vegetable or very light olive oil

·      One at a time, place taco shells in the boiling oil, fry for 2 minutes, fold in half with tongs while still in, fry another 2 minutes

·      Let them cool on paper towels

6)  Meals coming out too salty? Opt for lower sodium stocks and bases, add your own salt content. Choose the lower sodium or even sodium free broth. Choose the organic soup for a base, like Imagine brand. Steer clear of kits like Hamburger helper and Shake and Bake- they often contain high sodium and MSG. Buy Tamari instead of regular soy sauce. Use the lower sodium as much as possible, and then add some pink rose salt at the end. You’re welcome.

7)  Use chicken thighs instead of white meat. They are a little fattier, but they are also more tender and moist. Where chicken breast seems to get really dry, especially after the dish has been in the fridge for a few days, thigh meat stays equally moist. It is also easier to cook through all the way and easier to cut up. And it’s cheaper.

    

 B       Boring rice? Use broth in the rice cooker instead of water.

Then, as soon as it’s done, mix a tbsp. of butter or butter alternative into the rice as you fluff it.

Bland beans? Use meat to flavor them.* Only if you’re not vegan. There are some other ways to flavor it if you are. If you’re OK with meat, however, and you are cooking the beans from scratch, (Soaking overnight, boiling two or three times and adding ingredients as you go), plop in a thick piece of bacon, a ham-hock or a cubed slice of ham steak. The first two, you have the option of extracting and throwing away if you don’t want the extra fat when you eat the beans. The third, being diced, would be hard to get rid of and will become part of the bean dish or soup.

Marinades are your friend. Read the labels, though. Some brands, especially the cheaper ones, can contain MSG. The good brands can still contain that, but are less likely to. If you are busy and don’t have time to concoct home-made rubs and sauces, but you’re tired of bland meals, start adding marinades generously. They aren’t just for grilling. The four essentials to have (IMHO): Lemon pepper, Teriyaki, Jerk and Carnita. You can coat the meat in it before you grill, but you can also pour a little over the browned meat with the dry rub after you pop it into a crockpot. You can use it to make stir-fry, mix it into vegetables and rice to make them more exciting, and even add it to other types of saucy food. One of my favorites is to add the jerk sauce to sloppy-joe sauce, and top the sloppy-joe with grilled pineapple.