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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Fruit Pies

Save the drained juice from frozen or canned fruit and use fruit juice instead of water in your recipe. This is only a good idea if the juice does not have a lot of sugar in it.

Add fresh butter to your fruit pie filling after it has been cooked. Or dot pieces of butter over the fruit before you place on the top crust.

Don't cut apples pieces too thin when you are using fresh apples. Larger chunks will hold together and have more apple flavor.

Use a little red food color and a drop or two of almond extract in your cherry pies when you use fresh or canned cherries.

Use a little yellow food color and a teaspoon of lemon juice in your apricot and peach fruit pies.

The lemon juice will enhance their flavor and also help keep a bright color.

Mix a few raisins with fresh chopped apples and make a easy, new apple pie.

Do not over-cook pie fillings, especially those with corn starch used as the thickener. The filling will break down and quickly become watery. Over cooking fillings made with flour will cause the filling to be thick.

Cooking a Turkey

If you hate the memory of dry turkey from the old days, buy a fresh-killed (meaning, never frozen) turkey. They truly are juicier, tenderer, and tastier than frozen birds.

Turkeys range in weight from the 6- to 8-pound category to as large as 26 pounds. Very small and super-big are not better. Small ones get blotchy. Big ones present food safety problems because their mass resists total heat penetration. Best to go with a basic 12- to 16-pound turkey

Trussing: The point of tying string around a turkey is to make the bird into a round -- no protrusions, no wings sticking out. This prevents burning of exposed areas. Twist the wing tips, which will burn first, under themselves, using some force. Now run a strand of string under the turkey's girth and up each side, catching the wing tips under the string. Continue the string over to the drumsticks, catching them and the fatty tail flap (Pope's Nose), and tie tightly.

Turkey lifter: This major help comes in two styles. One resembles an L-shaped metal prong. The prong goes right up the turkey's cavity while a handle remains in your hand. All you do it lift. If you've stuffed the turkey, get the type that looks like snow chains, lies under the bird, and acts like a sling. Either device ends burned hands, greasy potholders and lost drumsticks.

Instant-read thermometer: This is your most important tool. With this, you don't need a roasting chart or a clock. Read the facts on the dial. There will be no question about the internal temperature of your meat. If you don't have one, get one!

Shortcut Meals

There are nights I just don’t feel like working to hard to put together a dinner for the family. I’m sure every home cook responsible for preparing meals every day feels this way once in a while.

In fact, it’s my opinion finding “shortcut” meals that you and your family enjoy are an essential part of planning out your week’s meal schedule. In my case, I don’t usually plan out the week but it’s a really good idea if you can manage it; I just make sure I have enough “short cut” ingredients in the house at all times.

What do I mean by “shortcut” meals?

These are dinners you put together where one or more of the ingredients is already prepared and you build the meal around it. For a good example, check out my Ravioli with Carrot Fennel Sauce recipe on my Cooking & Recipe Blog.

By the way, a “quickie meal” is different from a “shortcut meal” insofar as it is one step and you don’t prepare the rest of the meal around it. For example, throwing a frozen pizza in the oven is a quickie meal. Mac and Cheese is another example. Heating up some commercial chicken wings another. These are usually meals that we make for the kids when a baby sitter is coming over or they won’t eat something I prepared for my wife and myself.

The trick is to have a well-stocked pantry and freezer with products that are quick and easy to prepare, good quality, taste good and affordable. Over time I will show you some of my favorites and ones that have saved me numerous times when I needed to get a meal together in a hurry.