Everyone cooks! There is no way a person can continue to live without him or her having the basics of basic cooking. When someone says “I can’t cook” it probably means that “I can cook eggs and hotdogs but I can’t cook pesto pasta.” One thing great about cooking is your ingredients won’t mind whichever way you cook them. You can steam them, grill them, boil them, sauté or burn them and still you won’t get a peep out of your ingredients.
Cooking is an adventure. You can cook a superb meal one time and fail on your next. Cooking is a step closer to disaster and (also) a step closer to perfection. Yes, mistakes in cooking happen and when they do are there ways to remedy the slip? When dinner guests are about to arrive fixing a problem meal could be rattling. What to do? Well, the best thing to do is to be prepared for such “disasters”. Here are some common kitchen or cooking disasters that can happen to anyone of us, great chefs included.
Hard-boiled egg shell won’t peel. After taking out the hard cooked egg from the pan, gently place the egg in a bowl of cold water. Gently but firmly tap the egg against the bowl while it is still under the water. The cold water will seep in through the cracks of the shell and loosen it. Wait a while and start peeling the egg, easily and perfectly.
The soup is too salty. Never measure ingredients over the pan while you cook. Your hand could easily slip and there goes a chunk of salt into the soup. A stew or soup too salty seems to be the end of the line for you. It has always been said that adding raw potato on a too or salty soup or stew could absorb its saltiness. Not true. The best way to reduce the soup’s saltiness is to add more of all the ingredients except the salt. The same holds true if you added too much hot sauce, chili, or pepper.
Vegetables too Soggy. Okay, there’s no way to turn soggy veggies into crisp ones. The best thing that you can do is puree the limp veggies and make a cream soup out of them.
Lumpy Gravy…Is so unappetizing. Who would want to pour lumpy gravy into a satin smooth mashed potato? Not I and I guess not you too. To remedy, just pour the gravy through a sieve into another pan and just “let it drip”.
Too runny fudge or icing? For runny fudge, just put the whole lot in the freezer, wait a bit for it to settle then serve. For a too runny icing, adding more confectioner’s sugar could fix it to the right consistency. However, if the frosting is really runny, you might run out of sugar. Better to half it and then add sugar.
Burnt sauce, burnt taste. Don’t stir the pan as this will only make the situation worse. Turn off the heat; place the pan in cold water to stop the cooking. Pour the top part of the sauce into another pan. Taste it. If there’s still a burnt after taste, start all over.
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