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Do you sometimes feel that you can’t prepare food the way they do in a restaurant? Where did it go wrong if you followed the recipe to the last dot? Maybe you didn’t know about the following rules, which don’t only concern cooking. With the following tips you’ll be a little wiser again. We bring you a list of common mistakes people make in the kitchen. Next time you should avoid them.
What mistakes do we make in the kitchen?
Seafood cooked for too long
Many people are put off eating seafood by the assumption that it’s rubbery or tasteless. If you’ve had that experience too, the seafood was probably just cooked incorrectly. Most often some people simply cook it for too long. Chefs recommend dropping shrimp into truly boiling, salted water and cooking them for only about 3 minutes. For king prawns it’s 7 minutes and some types of octopus need only 30 seconds.
Incorrectly cooked spaghetti
According to chefs, you should cook spaghetti in salted water, but forget adding oil. After cooking the pasta becomes slippery and the sauce won’t adhere to it as Italians think it should. In Italy, after cooking spaghetti they even use a little of the water in which the spaghetti cooked, mix it with the spaghetti in the pot, add the sauce and stir briefly over low heat. For them it’s the marriage of spaghetti and sauce, where all the ingredients perfectly combine.
Marinades for meat
Many people are convinced that the right marinade can make meat tender. However, even a lot of lemon juice won’t help, because such marinades act only on the surface of the meat and don’t penetrate its interior. A marinade’s task is to flavor the meat, but it won’t perform miracles with tough meat. Still, it’s true that a little lemon juice in a marinade can help the meat retain juiciness.
Cut or tear lettuce?
Both methods have their advantages. When you cut herbs or green lettuce with a knife, the amount of antioxidants, which are beneficial to the body, increases. However, if you tear the lettuce by hand, you damage fewer cells, so there won’t be as much reduction in vitamin C and potassium content as when cutting with a knife. By tearing lettuce or cutting it with a ceramic, non-metal knife you avoid the oxidation process and the lettuce won’t brown and “wilt” as quickly.
Vegetable salad without fat
If you’re trying to eat healthily, you don’t need to fear olive oil on your vegetable salad. Many vitamins and substances the vegetables contain can only be absorbed in the body thanks to fats. Therefore you should consume them together. The same applies, for example, to fruit, which is good to eat with a little full-fat yogurt.
Don’t use whole flax seeds
Flax seeds are recommended by all nutrition experts precisely because they contain large amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber and antioxidants. For these substances to actually get into your body, you must grind the seeds or process them with a mortar. If you don’t choose either option, at least try to chew them thoroughly while eating. The seed coating is harder to digest whole.
How to prepare meat
It’s likely that the thought of deliciously fried juicy meat with marinade and caramelized onions makes your mouth water. Such cooking isn’t very good for our health. The combination of fatty meat and carbohydrates in the marinade, sweet sauce or caramelized onions contributes to increasing the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or Alzheimer’s disease. High temperatures from frying or grilling over fire also play a part. Therefore you should grill, braise or bake meat more often at gentler temperatures, turning it continuously. Always remember to remove burnt pieces.
Soak nuts and grains
Nuts contain healthy fats, are good for the brain, and are rich in B vitamins and iron. The same goes for grains, which are rich in trace elements and slow carbohydrates that women especially need for proper hormonal function. To get the most out of these foods you should soak them for several hours before consuming. Pour water over buckwheat or almonds and let them soak (nuts about 7 to 12 hours, grains about 8 to 20 hours).
Raw pumpkin or zucchini
There are many ways to prepare dishes from zucchini or pumpkin, but you’ll do the best for your health if you enjoy them at least occasionally raw. They contain many more vitamins and especially needed fiber that way.
Intensity of garlic’s aroma and taste
Generally, the smaller the pieces of garlic, the more noticeable it will be in the dish. If you enjoy this aromatic ingredient, it’s best to press the garlic. If you want to further emphasize its aroma and taste in the dish, add it only toward the end of cooking.
Honey or sugar?
Although honey is placed on an imaginary pedestal and sugar should feel ashamed beside it, according to experts that’s not entirely true. There aren’t big differences in their composition and the only advantage of honey is that it’s sweeter, so you’ll need less of it.
Can children have spices?
Research from Japan has shown that many children who are fed only commercial baby food or completely unseasoned homemade food at an early age have trouble “adapting” to foods with spices. Therefore it’s not a bad idea to gradually add rosemary, basil, parsley, dill, cinnamon or garlic to a child’s meals from around 1.5 years of age. Of course spices like chili, curry or horseradish are not permitted.
When to put food in the fridge?
Bacteria in food, especially at high summer temperatures, start to multiply after just 1 to 2 hours. Therefore you don’t have to wait for the food to cool completely and you should then store it in the fridge. If you don’t have a refrigerator with the latest modern technologies, at least place the pot on a wooden or other pad in the fridge.
When to drink coffee
If you tend to start your day with a cup of coffee, postpone it to later. The human body produces the hormone cortisol, which helps us cope with stress. Its production is highest between 8 and 9 a.m., and combined with caffeine its effects are dampened. Coffee and this hormone kind of cancel each other out, so you should move your coffee to a later hour.
