35 secrets to cooking fruits and vegetables
1.If you want the potatoes to cook quickly, add a spoonful of margarine to the water. 2. To prevent your grated potatoes from turning dark for potato pancakes, add a little hot milk. 3. Boiling slightly older potatoes can bruise them, but not if you add some vinegar to the water. 4. If you cook beets a little longer or steam them, their color changes to brownish-yellow. Add some vinegar or citric acid to the boil and it will keep its original dark red color.
5. White radish salad tastes great when you mix in roasted onions. 6. To keep the cauliflower white, put it in a little cold water with citric acid or vinegar before cooking and then cook it in an open pot at a high boil. 7. You can soak dried mushrooms in lightly salted milk for several hours, the result is: they are like fresh mushrooms.
8. To enhance the flavor of the lemon, pour boiling water over it before eating.
9. To keep your cut lemon fresh, place the cut edge on a plate sprinkled with vinegar and cover with a glass. 10. If the lemon has become dry, put it in cold water and it will be juicy and fresh again. 11. To make it easier to grate the lemon zest, put it in the freezer for a few minutes. 12. When grating lemon or orange peel, you should not rub off the white layer as well. You can add the zest of lemon or orange to cakes, desserts, sweet pastries and fish sauces. 13. Peeled bananas won’t darken in fruit salad if you rinse them with cold water, slightly acidified with lemon.
14. Lemon for the tea, you can pour boiling water over it before cutting it, this intensifies the aroma of the lemon.
15. If you squeeze the juice from a lemon, don’t use too much juice, the juice can taste bitter. To get more lemon juice out, keep the whole lemon in the hot water for about 5 minutes ( no longer ).
16. Use pink potatoes for frying, white potatoes for mashed potatoes, and yellow potatoes for soup and stews. 17. When baking potatoes in the oven, the potatoes will soften and get a nice brown color if you brush them with oil beforehand. 18. To make the onions for salad less flavorful, baste them with boiling water.
19. If you prepare a salad from different vegetables, you should first salt and mix it and only then dress it with oil, because the salt cannot dissolve in the oil.
20. If you want fried onions for your dish, you can lightly dust the onions with flour or a small amount of sugar before frying. If you do that with carrots, they get a nice brown colour.
21. For the soup, you can fry the celery, carrots and onions lightly beforehand and then add them to the soup, so your soup gets a nice golden color and the aroma of Vegetables are well preserved.
22. To get your roast potatoes nice and crispy, rinse them in cold water after slicing and then dry them with paper towel. Fry your potatoes in a well-heated pan with oil. 23. In order to improve the aroma of vegetables when frying, you should fry them in vegetable oil and add a small piece of butter at the end. 24. It’s healthiest if you keep the important nutrients and vitamins. If you cook the vegetables in water, it is better to use less water, the vegetables will be tastier.
25. You should only fry the vegetables over a moderate fire so that they don’t burn and they taste delicious. Vegetables for ragout taste better if you fry the vegetables separately. 26. If you make breaded vegetables, make sure that the flour does not burn in the pan, otherwise the taste of vegetables will suffer and there will be a lot of smoke in the kitchen. 27. You shouldn’t put the veggies in cold water because it will lose half of all and trace elements.
28. Cook the vegetables over low heat only. If you’re cooking potatoes, carrots, or beets for salad, it’s best to do so with their skins on to preserve their nutrients. 29. Spinach, young nettles, carrots and potatoes should be prepared only under a closed lid. Additives with acid such as vinegar, tomato paste, citric acid – it is better to add these at the end of the cooking time, otherwise the acid will delay the cooking process.
30. Note that different vegetables have different cooking times. That’s why don’t put all the vegetables in the pan or in the pot at once. 31. When you boil white beans, change the water after 20 minutes (from the beginning of the boiling point). Add a couple of spoons of vegetable oil to fresh water, in this case the beans will be more tender and tasty. 32. If you use bay leaf as a spice, it should be added no earlier than 10 minutes before the dish is ready to cook. 33. If you want to prepare frozen vegetables from the package, you can add them to the boiling water straight from the frozen state without having to thaw them first.
34. If you want to quickly cook the beets, put them in the cold water 1 hour into the cooking time. A little vinegar or lemon juice will help keep the beet nice and vibrant colour. 35. Never use sprouted potatoes (with eyes), you have to cut back the skin of such potatoes by 2 centimeters. These germinating potatoes contain a toxic compound solanine.
