Japanese Cooking

Do you love Japanese food? The funny thing about Japanese food is that you either love it or you hate it. There is no in-between. And chances are, if you hate it, you probably havent really tasted Japanese food yet or havent given yourself a chance to sample it enough. Japanese food is hard to appreciate after only one bite. And sometimes, the idea that you are tasting raw food just wont escape your mind that you are already predisposed to hating Japanese food even before you actually taste it.

Personally, I love Japanese food. There really is no other cuisine like it in the world in terms of its unique taste and presentation. Who would believe that something so raw could be so delicious? For those of you who have not yet discovered the pleasures of Japanese food, allow me to present the following primer.

The standard Japanese meal always involves a bowl of white rice as well as soup and side dishes such as pickles, vegetables, meat and fish. Japanese food is classified by the number of viands or okazu that are served with the rice, soup and side dishes. A meal with one okazu is called ichiju-issai and a prime example of this is the traditional Japanese breakfast which consists of miso soup, rice, grilled fish and one pickled vegetable.

The regular Japanese meal usually involves three okazu to go along with the soup, rice and pickles. Traditionally, each of these three okazu are cooked in a different way from the others. They can either be served raw or grilled, simmered, steamed or deep fried.

Another hallmark of Japanese food is seafood, which is the most popular and most widely consumed food in Japan. The most popular dishes include all types of fish as well as shellfish, squid and octopus. Crab is another favorite delicacy and so are whale and seaweed. Despite the fact that Japanese are not heavy meat eaters, you will hardly find any vegetarians among them either probably owing to their deep fashion for seafood. Beef and chicken are also popular among the Japanese.

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including Cooking, Outdoors, and Recreation

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Artisan Mixer

After School Cooking Classes For Children

Tired of paying so much money for after school programs that do not teach your children anything more than Sponge Bob? How about considering an after school program that teaches children how to prepare healthy meals as well as exploring different food cultures from all over the world. Dinner time with family has become a thing of the past with all of the busyness of life. Children are so involved with after school activities and parents are rushed everyday trying to squeeze everything in their busy lives, that we as a nation have forgotten this very important aspect of "family time".

Teaching children how to cook can be a great way to get your children involved in the meal preparing process. It can also help bring families closer together. After school cooking classes can be taught in individual classrooms, camps, with the boy scouts, girl scouts or any other group setting for children kindergarten age and up. Children will be able to explore not only their favorite foods, but foods from other cultures. They may even be able to experience some famous top chef's recipes from all over the country. This is a wonderful way to integrate cooking into a child's life, giving them knowledge of the kitchen, how to prepare wonderful foods and learning the different food cultures of the world.

Taking home two or three of their "finished" products is a thrilling way for a child to show off his or her new cooking talents. Children are always proud when they are able to complete a project, especially something edible for the whole family to enjoy.

After school cooking classes last for about an hour and there is only a small fee per child. This is a great way to bring excitement to children after their busy days at school. Learning how to cook is a great way for a child to explore fun, new adventures. It will definitely keep them busy learning basic food prep, kitchen equipment and shopping for food as well as taking home a cooked meal to share with the rest of the family.<0000239D/p>

Consider having an after school cooking class for your children. It will definitely be a learning experience that they will never forget, one that they will cherish and maybe one day pass down to their children.

I am just a southern girl who has a passion for writing. This is slowly becoming a reality for me in my "empty nest syndrome" years to be able to actually pursue my dreams.

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Cooking food

Cooking Adventures With Your Family

Dinner time should be the highlight of the day when families can sit down together, share their day's activities and have a nice home cooked meal. Sound like something from the 70's? With a little planning and cooperation from your family, you can prepare delicious, nutritious meals almost every night of the week.

Cooking dinner for your family every night does seem nearly impossible. Planning your meals ahead of time can save you some time. There are several different ways to plan your menus. There are several web sites on once a month cooking where you plan out your meals, prep, cook and freeze your meals all in one day. Recruiting the whole family in this process will help get things done faster as well as having more "family time". Sit down with your family and come up with several menus that you want to use, do your shopping and take set aside one day a month to do the cooking, baking and freezing.

Another great idea to get the whole family involved is to have each family member plan, cook and clean up for one dinner a week. Younger children, of course will need help but older ones will probably love to have the responsibility of handling the whole preparation. Your children will not realize that they are using their math, science and reading skills in this process. Children also love challenges, so you could have a monthly "bake off" contest or "best dish of the month" contest to keep everyone's interest. Putting entrees, sides and dessert names on paper in a hat and having each family member "draw" out their food choices can also be a fun way to not have to "delegate" who gets to do what.

Getting your family involved with menu planning and cooking meals will help the whole family to grow closer, save money by eating at home and communicating with each other on a new and exciting level.

I am just a southern girl who loves to write. It is my dream and I am trying to turn it into a reality, especially as I have the time now. I am experiencing a b00001A3Eit of "empty nest syndrome" and this has given me a new perspective on what I want to bring to my "golden years".

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Smoker Cooking is Worth the Wait!

Although barbecuing is the typical way most of us cook outdoors, cooking with a smoker is gaining in popularity. Even though the smoked heat method takes considerably longer than your basic charcoal grill, cooks say that the distinctive taste of smoker cooking is well worth the wait.

Smoker cooking is a form of cooking where the smoke from burning wood prepares your foods. Heated hard wood chips, such as mesquite, hickory and oak are placed in a smoker, which not only cook the food, but also add a unique flavor from each wood type. The typical wood smoker has a separate fire chamber, which allows the heat and smoke to pass through the food being prepared. In smoker cooking, food never comes in contact with an actual flame as it does with charcoal grilling. As such, there are no dripping oils, bursts of flames or charcoal burnt food.

Cooking with a smoker allows for a whole range of flavor opportunities. The type of hard wood chips you choose will provide the unique flavor for your smoked food. Hickory typically provides a heavy, smoky flavor to foods, and is often used when smoker cooking a turkey. Wood chips made from apple or pecan trees produce a lighter smoke flavor and will produce foods with a light, slightly sweet smoked 00003A7Dtaste, often used with a white fish fillet.

Patience and allowing oodles of time to prepare a meal is the key to successful cooking with a smoker. Foods cooked with heated smoke take considerably longer to cook than foods slapped on the barbecue. Depending in the size of the food you are preparing, and the temperature you are cooking, smoker cooking takes hours longer than typical grilling. A four pound piece of meat that will cook in 45 minutes on a barbecue will most likely take at least two hours in a smoker. A four pound chicken will need about four hours in the smoker before it is done. The best way to tell if meat is thoroughly cooked is to use a meat thermometer. Chicken that is thoroughly cooked has a temperature of 165 degrees.

There are endless possibilities when smoker cooking food. Any type of meat, poultry or seafood can be prepared for cooking by a smoker. Experimentation will allow you to find the perfect wood chip for each of your favorite meat types. Rubbing spices on your meat prior to smoker cooking, as well as adding sauces while meat is being prepared adds even more flavor to your food.

Steaming vegetables is also ideal for cooking with a smoker. The cooking with smoke process seals in not just the taste, but the nutrients as well. Smoker cooking is the simple way and tasty way to add more veggies to your diet. Many of your favorite recipes can also be prepared via cooking with smoke. Chili is a smoker cooking favorite for many cooks. Your smoker will most likely come with a cookbook filled with new recipes to try.

So when you have the time and are yearning for food with that unique smoky flavor, consider smoker cooking for your next meal.

You can never know too much about traditional barbecue basics so it is essential to constantly educate yourself on the latest, greatest things about barbecue. Smoker cooking is another way of providing great barbecue. To get more free information sign up for the free 7 part email series on barbecuing at http://www.allaboutbbqsmokers.com/Reg1.html

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Italian Cooking - Quick And Easy Cooking Tips

"Cooking is an art form that takes years to master" -ever heard those words spoken before? It was probably a chef who didn't want you to know the secrets they hide from us all, the secrets to making delicious Italian styled meals quickly and easily and having them taste delicious. Today we at The Cooks Hangout bring you 3 quick and easy Italian meal addition to make your Italian meals all the more delicious while not wasting your time or money.

1. Oven Roasted Garlic

If there's any ingredient that is both cheap quick and easy yet adds enormous amounts of flavor to your food, its garlic, and roasting it in the oven makes it irresistibly tasty. Preparing Oven Roasted Garlic is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Slice off the top of the garlic.

2. Drizzle 2 teaspoons of olive oil over the garlic, wrap it loosely in aluminum foil, and roast at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 40 minutes.

3. Remove the pulp from the garlic by squeezing it once it cools. You can spread oven-roasted garlic on bread or blend it in a food processor and add it to fish, steak, hamburgers, soups, or even throw it in a risotto.

The oven-roasted garlic can be kept in the fridge for up to a week.

2. Bechamel Sauce

A Delicious sauce to use in cooking lasagnas and the like. Bechamel sauce is an incredible addition to many pastas yet it seemingly overlooked by many.

Ingredients:

- 2T Unsalted Butter

- 3T Flour

- 1 1/2 Cups Milk

- 1/8t Nutmeg

- Salt and White Pepper (Freshly Grounded)

Instructions:

- Heat the milk in a saucepan to a warm temperature.

- Melt the butter in the saucepan until bubbling.

- Add the flour slowly while stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.

- Return to medium heat and add 1/4 of a cup of milk at a time, when the milk gets absorbed add a little more until all the milk is used.

- Add nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste and continue stirring the sauce at a slow bubble until it has the consistency of heavy cream.

3. Memphis Rub

This zesty rub will bring out the best in ribs and other meats.

- 1/4 cup paprika

- 1 Tablespoon packed dark brown sugar

- 1 Tablespoon white sugar

- 2 Tablespoons Salt

- 2 Te00000ED5aspoons monosodium glutamate.

- 1 teaspoon celery salt

- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste

- 1 teaspoon dry mustard

- 1 teaspoon garlic powder

- 1 teaspoon onion powder

Simply mix the ingredients together in a small container and use on your meat to add the delicious flavor of Memphis to your food.

http://thecookshangout.com - Theres a reason 99% of chef's say they "can't live without it", now with a FREE 31 day cooking course for a limited time only.

Thanks for Reading and happy cooking,

-- Maria Glensworth

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Cooking Tips - The ABCs Of Prime Rib Roast Cooking!

If you have spent the bucks to buy the Prime Rib you will definitely want to make the best Prime Rib Roast and will like to hone your skills to get the best out of your ingredients and time. The praise and comments will also be worth the trouble if you manage to get a good meal together. We have compiled a list of simple tips that could be used to cook a good prime rib roast.

Prime rib is one of the best cut meats we can buy and is mostly served during some festival season such as season and New Year. Many eating establishments prefer to use prime rib for their meals as this is the best quality of meat, so naturally it will cost a bit more than the normal meat, and so one mistake and a whole lot of time and money is wasted.

As the name suggests the meat comes from the rib section of the stock and the word 'prime' goes on to describe the quality of the meat, however, the butcher will give his own monetary meaning to the cut. Whatever, the name suggests, this part of the meat stock is rich with connective tissue and nutrients and so is the best meat to cook.

It must be borne in mind that the best and effective way of cooking prime rib roast is dry heat cooking. This technique advices one to cook the meat over a fire without covering the pot, no lid should be placed over the meat while it is cooking neither is any liquid added to the meal. Immersing the meat in some liquid will mean that you are cooking the meat in moist heat, a technique used to cook tougher meat.

Some Roasting Tips

The best way to cook prime rib roast is to slowly roast it in an oven set to 200 or 230 degrees. The time it will take to prepare at this temperature is about 25 minutes per pound of meat. This is a good way to cook if you have big vertical ovens.

Most people like to use medium heat of about 325 degrees to lower the cooking time to about 15 minutes per pound of meat.

Another popular way of cooking prime rib roast is to cook it for 15 minutes at high temperature of 450 degrees and then cook it for 20 minutes at 325 degrees. This method is referred to as "searing" by most recipe books.

If you have a meat thermometer it is advisable that you learn to use it, as it will prove a very useful tool in cooking prime rib roast dishes. It is best to remove the meat from the oven when it is about five degrees below the required temperature. This way the meat will keep cooking while it is out of the oven.

Abhishek is a cooking enthusiast! Visit his website http://www.Cooking-Guru.com and download his FREE Cooking Report "Master Chef Secrets" and learn some amazing Cooking tips and tricks for FREE! Learn how to create the perfect meal on a shoe-string budget. And yes, you get to keep all the accolades! But hurry, only limited Free copies available! http://www.Cooking-Guru.com

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Poverty Cooking

For the past several months, we have been on a really tight grocery budget and so I had to really be inventive to spread it as far as it would go. These are some recipes that worked out really well for us and we ended up eating rather well! Some of the veggies came from our garden, so they were free!

Spanish Rice

Rice

1 can crushed tomatoes

Mexican seasoning

1/2 - 1 lb. ground beef or turkey

Diced onion

Diced bell pepper

Beans (rinsed & drained)

Make the rice according to package directions for the amount you need, cook in chicken broth if you can afford. Brown the meat and drain. Add the cooked rice, onion, bell pepper and beans to the meat and stir-fry until everything is heated through.

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French Bread Spaghetti Bake

1 loaf French bread (get at day old bread store or clearance at Wal-Mart)

1 jar spaghetti sauce

Grated mozzarella cheese

Tear bread into bite size pieces. In a skillet, heat some oil and butter. Toast the bread until golden on all sides. Place bread into the bottom of a casserole dish. Pour spaghetti sauce over the bread. Heat in a 350 oven until heated through. Top with mozzarella and return to oven until cheese is melted.

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Ground Meat Gravy and Mashed Potatoes

1/2 - 1 lb. ground beef or turkey

Brown gravy mix (use as many as you need to spread)

Mashed potatoes (as much as you need)

Brown the meat and drain. Mix the gravy mix according to package directions. Add to the meat and heat through. Pour gravy over servings of mashed potatoes.

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Chicken and Rice

1/2 - 1 lb. chicken drumsticks, boiled, deboned & shredded

Rice

Chicken broth

In a saucepan, add the dry rice, chicken and salt & pepper. Add enough water to the chicken broth to cook the rice according to package directions. Let cook until rice is done. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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Budget Goulash

1 lb. macaroni

1/2 - 1 lb. ground beef or turkey

1 can green beans, drained

1 can cream of mushroom soup

Cook macaroni according to package directions. Brown the meat and drain off grease. Mix together the macaroni, meat, green beans and mushroom soup. Heat through.

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Potatoes and Smoked Sausage

Potatoes

Onion

Smoked sausage

Cut the potatoes and onions into thin slices. Put in a large skillet with just enough water to barely cover. Season with salt and pepper. Cut sausage into small chunks and add to the potatoes. This will make it's own gravy.

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Leftovers Soup

We have a big plastic tub in the freezer (from ice cream). Every time there00001EDE's left over veggies (with left over juice), meat, or gravy we put it in there and freeze. When it's full, I put it into my soup pot and add water, tomato juice and things like onions or potatoes and maybe some noodles or rice. I know this sounds kind of gross, but it has always turned out REALLY good! I'll make cornbread, biscuits or bread to go with it. Makes a pretty good meal on cold winter days. I've also done it in my crock-pot.

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Hobo Hash

1 lb. ground beef or turkey

2-3 diced tomatoes

1 diced onion

1 diced bell pepper

Cook the potatoes, onion and pepper in a little oil until potato is done. Add the meat and brown. Drain. Season to taste. This can spread pretty far by adding more potatoes.

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Ground Meat Stir Fry

1 lb. ground beef or turkey

2 bell peppers, diced

1 onion diced

3-4 ribs of celery diced

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

Brown the meat until almost done, drain. Add the vegetables and stir-fry 2-3 minutes before adding the soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Continue to stir fry until vegetable are crisp-tender and meat if done. I've also done this with shredded cabbage and thinly sliced carrots.

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Nanny's Tomato and Bacon Macaroni

2 lb. hot cooked Macaroni

1 can stewed tomatoes, undrained

1 lb. bacon

Vinegar

Cook the bacon crisp and break into small pieces. In a large bowl mix together all ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add a splash of vinegar to taste.

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Tuna Pie with Gravy

1 can tuna

1 egg

1 tuna can of milk

Parsley

2 pie crusts (one for the top and bottom)

1 can cream of mushroom soup

Mix together first 4 ingredients and cook in a saucepan for just a few minutes, stirring all the time. Place 1/2 the pie crust into the bottom of a pie plate. Pour in tuna filling and top with remaining piecrust. Cut slits into top piecrust. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. Meanwhile, pour the soup into a saucepan and add 1/3 can of milk or water. Heat, but don't allow to boil. Cut pie into wedges and serve with gravy poured over top.

~ Susan Godfrey is a Christian wife, mom and homemaker. She is also the owner of Homekeeper's Heart, http://www.freewebtown.com/homekeepersheart, a Titus 2 Ministry to encourage Christian women to be the wives, mothers and homemakers that God wants them to be! She has her own blog at http://www.susangodfrey.blogspot.com and also is the owner of the Homesteader's Heart Blog at http://www.homesteadersheart.blogspot.com where she shares homesteading, gardening and country living articles.

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