Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Kitchen Tip: Hold the Water!

Welcome to Kitchen Tip Tuesdays!

When boiling pasta, vegetables, or meat, I've often noticed that I'm prone to fill my pot all the way to the top- unnecessarily. In reality, the food needs to be 'just covered' with water to cook. The extra water is wasteful and more time consuming to heat. 1/2 a cup of water comes to a boil much quicker than 5 cups of water!

A few more water tips: Toss your pasta in the minimum amount of boiling water, return to a boil, cut off the eye, cover, and move back from the eye. It will cook!
Another thing about pasta water, you can keep it, drink it, or use it to help thicken water or broth based soups. The water is loaded with gluten which is a protein- a plus!
When cooking veggies, you can keep the liquid and store in the freezer as vegetable broth for your next pot of soup. No vitamins lost!
Drop a tablespoon or so of fat in your pots to keep them from boiling over. (Lard for beans, butter for veggies and potatoes or even fruits, etc.)
When bringing in veggies from the garden, run a sink full of water with a few dashes of salt. Drives the bugs out and can save a one to two hundred gallons of water a month.
Waiting for the water to get hot? Save your milk jugs and fill them. Poke holes in the bottom and set beside your garden plants.
Eat a lot of dried fruit? Be sure to drink plenty of water to make up for what is no longer in the fruit or the fiber will hurt you, rather than help you.
Want to give baked goods, porridge and cereals, fruits and jams, and other foods a little extra kick? Add spices to your boiling water.

2 comments:

Stacy said...

Under boiling pasta, what does "cut off the eye" mean?

Donna said...

lol, Well, to say "take it off the eye" would have been sufficient now wouldn't it?! Hee hee. Uhm- remove from heat source? ;-)