Entries tagged with 'tips'
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A quick portioning tip, from Lunch in a Box "Biggie," the proprietor of bento-box-mad site Lunch in a Box, is fluent in Japanese and says on her site that she often turns to her library of Japanese bento books for great tips on speeding up the lunch-making process. Here's one she passes along, for storing individual portions of ground foods or thick sauces in freezer bags. Simply fit the food into the bag as flat as you can, squeeze out as much air as possible, seal, then use a chopstick or similar item (a ruler would work, too) to "score" the food. If you want, you can even fold the bag into thirds, along the score lines, to maximize...
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Photojojo gives ten simple, but very effective tips for tasty food photography. My major tip would be their second one: use natural lighting. It looks the best and costs nothing—you just have to time your photo with the most appropriate position of the sun....
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"Brown butter is one of the great ingredients quietly hiding in your refrigerator." Michael Ruhlman reminds us that brown butter, or butter that has been cooked until the solids turn brown, can be used in just about anything that uses butter to impart nutty and caramel flavors....
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Matt at 37signals shares three food tips: make your own soda, order the dish named after its restaurant, and use fresh garlic....
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This time of year has a way of testing (and overcoming) the capacity of even large refrigerators. Opening the door, out comes a bottle of mustard and a head of lettuce, and a slippery little pouch of baby carrots. Using your crisper drawer as your starting point, you can alleviate some of the clutter, freeing up valuable space for cream cheese loaf and leftover roast beast.
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Thinking of buying a fancy rice cooker but don't know which kind to get? Over at Just Hungry Maki Itoh posted a great FAQ about rice cookers regarding size, features, and price....
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Don't know if you should eat that tuna sandwich that has been sitting out all day? What about those potatoes that are growing sprouts? Or the 9-year-old Spam found in the trunk of your car? Macbebekin rounds up the best, "Is this safe to eat?" questions from Ask Metafilter in these two entries....
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Ed wrote earlier this morning: "There seems to be more and more choices every year, and I don't know about you, but I think there's a conspiracy afoot to befuddle and confuse us with these choices.Just consider what we are confronted with: fresh, frozen, frozen basted, free-range, free-roaming, all-natural, heritage fresh, heritage frozen, organic, wild, kosher fresh, kosher frozen. It's mind-boggling." To help you navigate your way through the turkeys, we've put together a brief guide to reading turkey labels....
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Photograph from OS2k on Flickr Jane Black wrote a fine piece for the September issue of Boston magazine decoding the labels we all see at fish counters—"organic," "day boat," "wild" versus "farmed." The first myth she debunks is whether it's worth paying extra for organic seafood. Black correctly points out that there are no USDA standards for farmed fish, "so the 'organic' designation can mean whatever the seller wants it to." Her hilarious conclusion: "A fish without an 'organic' label is like a fish without a bicycle." Hey, wasn't that a lyric in a U2 song?...
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You go to dinner with a large party, are charged a 20 percent gratuity and then a "gratuity tax" on top of that! What's the deal? San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer dishes a quick answer: According to IRS, once a gratuity is automatically added, it's considered a service charge that goes to the house, rather than a voluntary tip. When that's done, it becomes taxable. What you're seeing is the 8.5% tax that's added as a tax to the 20% tip....
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