Recipe for Success – Kitchen Tips, Tricks & Hacks

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Sometimes when you are using other people’s recipes, things can go array even when you follow things to the very letter. There are lots of reasons that this can happen – many of which may have nothing to do with YOU! Here are a few things to consider when it comes to finding Recipes for Success.

1. When you are trying to locate a recipe – read more than one for the same dish. Look for the variations – in ingredients as well as methods. Select the recipe that feels the most comfortable to you. Pick the one that has techniques familiar to you. As well as ingredients that you know you are going to be able to locate.
2. Make sure that you have read the recipes from start to finish before you even start to prepare anything. There is nothing worst than starting a recipes for dinner, that expecting to serve within the hour and it requires an overnight marinade. Or maybe not realizing a very specific key ingredient that you just do not have access to.
3. Never just follow the recipe blindly. If it smells like it is burning do something – don’t wait the remaining 5 minutes the recipe calls for. Often recipes will say something like “brown until no longer pink” – this is how a recipe writer avoids listing a time, but making sure it will be cooked through. Every stove and pan is different, and is going to have a different cook time.
4. If you are going to make a substitution, make sure you are considering the impact. If you are going to use 1% milk when it calls for Whole milk, you need to determine if the fat content of the milk is doing more for the recipe than just flavor. If you are going to change the protein – cook times change. If you are going to change the type of cheese – melting times will change. You always want to make a recipe your own and for your own family. You don’t want to make something no one at the table is going to eat.

A lot of the process of cooking a meal is in the techniques used to do different things. Sometimes, it is about having the right tools and gadgets to achieve different things. But other times, it is simply about having the knowledge of how to do different things – like how to roll a burrito up, or how peeled, seed, and dice a cucumber. Obviously, there are some things that are purely logical and other things you would never have thought of if someone else didn’t show you. So I wanted to create a series of Kitchen Tips, Tricks & Hacks that I have picked up along the way to make my cooking experience more efficient, easier, and even sometimes more fun! Obviously as the old adage goes – “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” – which is 10000% true – so if you have another way to do one of these things – please tell us in the comments.

Do you have any kitchen tips, tricks or hacks that you want to share? Do you have any ideas on other tips, ticks or hack you want to see?

I love to link up my posts to lots of blogs around the internet – check out this Ultimate Handy Linky Party List to find some of the places I share to!

Estelle Forrest self-published this cookbook after a lot of playing around in the kitchen. You can purchase your own copy here:

AVAILABLE IN PRINT OR KINDLE eBOOK VERSIONS

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