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7 Useful Tips for Beginners About BBQ in Winter

Most people associate barbecue with a warm summer breeze, with green tree branches hanging over the grill and sunlight that accompanies the party almost until its end. But the Big Green Egg grill shouldn’t get dusty in the garage in winter, because this is not seasonal sports equipment, it is suitable for use at any time of the year.

In winter, cooking is even more pleasant: insects do not get bored, gathering at the lamps; the drinks are not heated, and the guests are even more delighted to welcome your little culinary masterpieces.

  • Place the grill in the least windy corner of the yard, as it is the icy wind that penetrates the blower and cools the heat;
  • The day before your planned BBQ party, bring the charcoal into your home to warm it up and dry, making it easier to fire.
  • It is only necessary to store coal in paper bags, as condensation can form on the walls of the plastic packaging due to temperature differences. The resulting water droplets will be absorbed by the coal, from which its quality will only suffer.
  • Close the charcoal bag tightly. Many people store grill charcoal in their garage, which has a ton of chemical odors such as gasoline, paint, or furniture varnish. If this smelling air gets to the coal, then you risk getting a steak for lunch with the smell of gasoline, engine oil, etc.
  • Equip yourself with tools: buy Big Green Egg tongs for meat and vegetables, and a metal spatula for fish. Under no circumstances pierce the grilled food with a fork, as you will only damage them and lose juice, turn juicy tidbits into dry and sinewy. The fork is only useful for slicing the finished dish.
  • Don’t tackle complicated recipes in winter. Bad weather can quickly ruin plans, be prepared for this. Cook simply and with passion.
  • If you want something like that, then it’s time to get a set of spices from the cabinet and make a fragrant sauce. With the Big Green Egg Pickle Syringe, you can make your steak or poultry even more juicy and tender.
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4 Tips for Cooking Sushi Rice

These tips will definitely come in handy 🙂

  1. To make sushi, the rice should be small and round. However, in order not to be mistaken in your choice, I advise you to purchase rice specially made for sushi. The first step is to rinse the rice several times in order to wash the rice powder. After that, it is very important that all the water is glass, so leave the rice in a colander for half an hour. Then you need to fill the rice with water, one to one. Bring rice to a boil, cook for 1 minute, cover and cook over low heat for 15-20 minutes. Remove the rice from heat and let stand for another 10 minutes without opening the lid.
  2. Put the rice in a wide bowl and pour the rice vinegar over it evenly (use 1 tablespoon of vinegar for 1 cup of rice). Then quickly stir the rice with a wooden spatula. If you stir slowly and smoothly, the rice turns into porridge. Then the rice needs to be cooled. If you can’t find sushi vinegar, you can make it yourself. 1/3 cup table vinegar, 2 tbsp tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt, stir until the grains dissolve in the liquid.
  3. Polished white rice can be dyed in a variety of colors to add contrast to the finished meal and give it a festive look. If you use red plum vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar to make the vinegar mixture, the rice will turn pink. If you add one teaspoon of turmeric to the water before boiling the rice, the rice will turn out bright yellow. If you mix two tablespoons of ground seaweed into ready-made sushi rice, it will turn soft green.
  4. And now, the sushi rice is ready. Now you need to decide what kind of sushi you want to make. There are several types of sushi: Nigiri is a type of sushi that is sculpted by hand. Blind rice is served on lettuce leaves with a slice of raw fish on top of the rice. Futomaki are large rolls that are prepared with several fillings (usually five). Temaki are nori rolled into buns filled with rice with any of the fillings. Uramaki is sushi with rice on the outside.
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Cooking Tips

4 Important Tips for Selecting and Preparing Sushi Ingredients

Here are some tips you will find helpful:

  1. Don’t forget to buy sushi fish or other seafood specially made for sushi if you are going to eat it raw. Otherwise, you run the risk of contracting parasitic and bacterial diseases. Handle convenience foods with care, carefully preserving raw ingredients while waiting to be cooked.
  2. Avoid cross contamination! Never let your raw ingredients touch anything other than the cooking and serving utensils from which you will be eating sushi. It is better to choose a regular seafood supplier with a good image.
  3. Don’t overload the rice with nigiri sushi or maki seasoning. Sushi rice needs air.
  4. Some side dishes (herbs) can be grown on the window or in the household. First of all, Daikon and Shiso (railings). They can be purchased in stores. Daikon keeps well in refrigerated place. Shiso is recommended to be planted in small containers as it grows quickly.
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5 Tips for Choosing Fish for Sushi

Making sushi is a very exciting process. It takes very little time, and the pleasure of homemade sushi is much more, because they are made with your own hands.

  1. Fish and shellfish with crustaceans used to make sushi must first of all be fresh, since in most cases they are eaten raw. Knowing the freshness of whole fish, chunks of fish, shellfish with crustaceans and other seafood will allow you to choose the freshest and therefore most delicious fish in the fish market or the best preserved frozen fish in a large store if possible.
  2. It is especially important that the whole fish is fresh, that is, not gutted with all the insides. When examining such a fish, make sure that the scales are not damaged and shiny, the flesh is elastic, the eyes are black and transparent, not bloody, the belly is hard, the gills are bright red. And of course, the absence of any fishy smell! Dull eyes and dirty gray gills clearly indicate that such fish must be boiled.
  3. When buying fish cuts, make sure the flesh is firm and shiny and the blood on the cuts is bright red. Since the meat loses its flavor and becomes crumbly when you wash the pieces of fish, it is best to buy the whole fish and cut it at home.
  4. Having bought fish, you should cut it up as soon as possible, and then store it in the cold. If you are going to cook the fish soon, place it in the refrigerator, wrapped in a pre-damp cloth. If the cut fish will be in the refrigerator for more than half a day, put it in a plastic bag. Opened fish dries up in the refrigerator.
  5. The taste of frozen fish depends on how deeply it is thawed. Fish will thaw best if placed in the refrigerator overnight, where it will thaw gradually. But if you are in a hurry, thaw the fish in salted water: put freshwater fish in a solution with 1/2 teaspoon of salt per 4 cups of water; for sea fish, take 1 tablespoon of salt in 4 glasses of water. This will avoid the loss of many of the flavors. But you can’t let the frozen fish thaw completely. As soon as it can be cut with a knife, then it is ready for further processing.
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9 Tips for Grilling Steak as in a Restaurant

A recipe to make a juicy beef steak at home, almost like in a restaurant. Beautiful, tasty, with stripes, and most importantly healthy! Like the previous steak recipe in a regular pan, this recipe is real salvation from hunger. When you need to quickly cook a piece of meat, there is no better way than to fry a beefsteak. It will take 20 minutes in total to cook. But you can take your time.

  1. Beef meat.
    This is essentially the only ingredient. Everything is correct. Nothing else is needed. For a good steak, we just need one good piece of beef. The beef should be fresh, the fresher the better. Calf meat is ideal. Great – meat streaked with fat. Just don’t confuse fat with ligaments. It will be tough in these places and the piece will also lead when frying since the ligaments are strongly compressed during heating and frying. It is best for meat that it is one piece of one muscle.
  1. Do we need to beat the meat?
    I will answer the question with a question. What for? A piece of meat of 1.5 – 2 centimeters, chosen as we have already decided, does not require any additional processing. In his pan, so her, grill!
  2. Is it possible to fry frozen meat?
    In the last recipe, I allowed the meat to be roasted from the freezer. Taking into account the fact that we are now using the grill, it is still better to let the meat thaw. This will allow less water to melt, which in frozen form is familiar to us as ice. In a flat frying pan, heating frozen meat slightly improves the frying process in terms of reducing sticking and boiling the top layer and frying it at the same time. On the grill pan, we get soup with a piece of meat. Therefore, it is better to let the meat move a little so that the top layer defrosts.
    But ideally, fry chilled or defrosted meat. Then even if there is still ice between the fibers inside, the toasted outer layer inhibits moisture inside the piece.
    Answer: you can, but wisely.
  3. Spices and salt
    The steak does not require salting when frying. This is definitely unnecessary. Serve a cooked piece of grilled meat with coarse salt on top, or add some salt as you eat, and you will be good. The meat has its own wonderful taste, slightly salty. If the steak is not deep-fried, medium, or generally “with blood” – then the tastes will be different and very pleasant and without salt. But experiment, add coarse salt and pepper to the table.
    There are tips to salt before frying, marinate, and more. My advice is not to salt, do not spoil the taste of pure meat. The undersalt is always on the table, and at hand. Give yourself the freedom to choose whether or not to salt!
  4. Frying pan. The best frying pan is a cast iron grill pan. A thick bottom gives some thermal inertia. Naturally, fry only after good heating of the cast-iron pan, not before.
  5. With or without oil. According to the technology of its maintenance, the cast iron frying pan is always oiled. Taking into account the fact that we are grilling in a pan, the meat falls on the grooved protrusions. You don’t need to use oil at all. If this confuses you, lightly grease the pan with olive oil using a brush or a piece of cheesecloth. But I repeat – a cast-iron grill pan allows you to fry without oil.
  1. Temperature or frying mode
    It’s hard to say about the temperature. I roast on gas on the most powerful burner. I set it to almost maximum to warm up the cast iron. Then I decrease it by more than half (when the cast iron handle of the grill pan gets hot). And I fry the meat in this mode. In a hot cast-iron frying pan, you don’t have to think about such trifles as how many degrees Celsius the temperature costs when frying meat.
  2. How often to turn over
    Everything is simple here. As soon as a piece of meat hits the hot skillet, I timed 2 or 3 minutes for each side. Depending on the degree of roast and the thickness of the meat. Meat up to 2 centimeters requires 2 minutes on each side. Thicker is more. Fry deeper – 3 minutes for meat up to 2 cm thick. It’s simple. Turn over – once. Fried 2-3 minutes on one side, turned it over and another 2-3 minutes on the other and that’s it. Meat on a plate!
  3. When and how to serve. Preferably while it is still warm. Why is there a cold steak? Fried a steak, on a plate of it, knives, forks. A bunch of greens. Drinks and everything. Let’s not sit with a stopwatch.

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11 Tips for the Most Delicious Baking

These tips are very important when baking! With them it will be the most delicious!

  1. Use a brush to grease the mold with oil. If your metal mold has a lot of cracks, apply the softened butter with a cooking brush.
  2. Reduce the temperature for dark dishes. Dark dishes absorb more energy and transfer heat faster. Therefore, if you are baking pastries in a dark dish, set the oven temperature slightly lower than the recipe indicates.
  3. Use toothpicks to check the dough. It is better to check the readiness of the dough not with metal sticks, but with toothpicks. The metal will slip and tell you little about the baked goods. In contrast, the tree will show the actual state of the test.
  4. Chill the cake with the top down. If you want the top of the pie to be flat, after baking, turn it upside down and chill. There will be less unevenness on the surface of the cake.
  5. Cool the cake properly. Chill the cake on a stand to allow air to circulate from below. Don’t do this in the fridge – just leave the baked goods on the counter. To speed up the process, bring it near an open window or fan.
  6. Use the frosting as glue. If you are making a piece with icing, place some of it on a platter and then start assembling the cake. When cooled, the baked goods will stick to the dish and will not move.
  7. Cover the cake with the icing before freezing. Before freezing and icing the cake, lightly glaze all baking surfaces. It will protect the cakes from the negative effects of cold. After 15 minutes in the refrigerator, you can take out the cake and cover it with a thick layer of icing.
  8. Use a cold knife for warm desserts and a warm knife for cold ones. Use a cold knife to cut evenly warm desserts (you can put it in the freezer for a few minutes). Conversely, for cold desserts, heat the knife by dipping it under running hot water and then wiping it dry.
  9. Do not put baked goods in plastic until they have cooled down. Never put warm cookies in a plastic container or wrap an uncooled cake in plastic. Otherwise, condensation will start and your baked goods will get wet and spoil.
  10. Defrost baked goods without film or packaging. If you defrost baked goods in a wrapper or a closed container, condensation will form on the surface. Therefore, always remove the packaging.
  11. One final tip: cook with love is the best ingredient for any dessert. Successful culinary feats!
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7 Cool Tips for Making Yummy Dessert

These tips will definitely come in handy!

  1. Cold whites whisk much more easily than at room temperature.
  2. Do not beat egg whites using aluminum dishes (spoon, fork, bowl …), the whites darken.
  3. It is better to bake thin cake cakes not on the baking sheet itself, but on cooking paper. So the cakes do not break, it is convenient to remove them from the baking sheet.
  4. After baking, the sponge cake should cool well. If you try to cut a warm or hot sponge cake, the cakes are crumpled.
  5. Cool well before whipping the cream. Cream should be fresh, fat content of at least 30-35%. Low fat cooking cream is not suitable for whipping.
  6. The cream is whipped with a frame mixer. Cream is considered well-whipped if its mass has increased several times and at the same time holds well on the broom.
  7. For Tiramisu cake, expensive mascarpone cheese can be replaced with whipped cream with sugar.
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5 Tips for Cooking Charlotte

Delicious, delicate and fragrant pie, charlotte, familiar to most of us from childhood. Traditional charlotte is made from apples. Antonovka is rightfully considered the best apple for charlotte. Incredibly aromatic, with a pronounced sourness, Antonov apples perfectly set off and complement the taste of sweet biscuit.
These tips, multiplied by your skill and imagination, will more than once help you please your friends and loved ones with a delicious and fragrant charlotte.

  1. Making a biscuit for charlotte is very simple. To do this, you need to separate the whites of the four eggs from the yolks, cool them and beat them separately until a stable foam. Continuing to beat, gradually add 1 glass of sugar and 1 glass of flour to the proteins. At the very end, add four yolks and beat together again. The biscuit prepared in this way will not settle, but will turn out to be fluffy and tender.
  2. It is important not only to properly prepare the dough for the biscuit, but also to bake it correctly. Charlotte is baked for 30 – 40 minutes at 180 degrees in a preheated oven. This is where the first common mistake lies. Be sure to preheat the oven at least 15 minutes before placing the charlotte in it!
  3. In an insufficiently preheated oven, the charlotte will burn on top, but it will not bake inside. The second important note – never open the oven when baking! From any draft, the biscuit will settle and turn into a sticky, dry and hardly edible substance.
  4. Additional shades of taste and aroma will add spices to charlotte. Don’t be afraid to fantasize Try adding some vanilla sugar or lemon peel to the biscuit dough. Add ground cinnamon, nutmeg or cardamom to the apples. Even a pinch of ginger or ground black pepper will not spoil the taste of the cake at all, but will give it a mysterious charm and light piquancy. But when adding spices, try not to overdo it.
  5. It is important and correct to serve charlotte to the table. Like any other sweet cake, charlotte can be served with tea or coffee, or it can be served as an independent dessert. It is best to serve charlotte hot, 10 to 15 minutes after cooking. A ball of creamy ice cream or sour cream will perfectly set off the taste of a fragrant, hot pie. Making sour cream is not at all difficult. Beat a glass of sour cream with a high fat content (25 – 30%) with a mixer until firm peaks. Mix four tablespoons of powdered sugar with a packet of vanilla sugar and add to the sour cream. Mix everything thoroughly and beat again, as it should.
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10 Life Hacks for Perfect Baking

We’ve put together helpful tips and tricks to help you avoid dirtying your dishes, avoid culinary mishaps, and make divinely delicious baked goods.

  1. Do not use glasses for measuring. In recipes, the amount of ingredients is often determined by the glasses. This method is not very reliable, if only because at the exit each chef can get a different weight of the product. In addition, you can be mistaken by measuring half or a third of the glass by eye. It is better to buy a kitchen scale and follow the recipes that indicate the exact weight of the ingredients.
  2. Cover the scale with a paper towel. Ingredients such as cocoa often crumble and stain the surface of kitchen scales. To avoid this, simply cover it with a paper towel and throw it away after weighing. The scale will stay perfectly clean.
  3. Determine the age of the eggs. Eggs of different ages may be required to create certain confectionery products. For example, ice cream is good for fresh eggs, and meringues are good for older ones. You can determine your age with a bowl of water. Put an egg in it: if it falls to the bottom, then it is fresh; if it rises with a blunt end up, it means that it is older; if the egg pops up like a float, it is better to throw it away.
  4. Break the eggs into separate dishes. If you break an egg straight into a bowl of dough, it is likely that shell particles will also fall into it. Therefore, it is better to prepare the eggs separately and then add them to the general container. If a mistake has already been made, you can remove the shell after the cake is cooked and cooled. All the shells will sink to the bottom and can be easily removed.
  5. Be careful when mixing dry ingredients. To avoid a hurricane of flour and other bulk ingredients while using the mixer, add small portions to a bowl and start stirring at minimum speed. Cover your work surface with paper towels for extra protection.
  6. Use different utensils for sweet and savory foods. To avoid odd tastes in baked goods, divide your knives, spatulas, and planks into the ones you use for savory and sugary foods. This way, your cake will definitely never turn salty.
  7. Mix the sticky ingredients with the confectionary sugar. Pieces of sticky ingredients (like marzipan or dates) tend to clump together into a huge sweet bite. You can prevent this by adding a couple of tablespoons of confectionery sugar to them.
  8. Pick up heavy ingredients. Foods like raisins, nuts and frozen berries often end up at the bottom of baked goods. You can fix this by mixing them with a little cinnamon, cocoa powder, or flour. Choose the right ingredient depending on the recipe.
  9. Use butter to remove the stickiness from the dough. To prevent the dough from sticking to your hands, it is often advised to use flour. But there is another way – canola (rapeseed) oil. Lightly wipe your palms and work surface with it – the dough will not stick and no excess flour will appear in it.
  10. Cool the liquid quickly in an ice bath. If you need to quickly chill sweet cream, pour it into a metal saucepan and place it in a large bowl of cold water. Metal helps heat to escape quickly, and cold to penetrate. Note that the larger the pan, the faster the hot cream will cool down.
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6 Cake Decorating Tips for Beginners

Have you always dreamed of making the perfect cake by decorating it beautifully? But are you not a professional pastry chef? Then these tips are for you.

  1. Baking the cakes in advance and freezing them will make it easier to decorate the cake. Frozen cakes do not crumble so much, this greatly facilitates the application of the cream. These cakes will stay fresh in the freezer for up to a week. You can also prepare the cream in advance and store it in the refrigerator, in an airtight container, for up to a week.
  2. It is no coincidence that the stands are used by professional pastry chefs. This allows the cream or glaze to be applied easily and evenly on all sides. And also make any decor without mistakes, apply drawings, decorative elements, and so on.
  3. Leveling the cake layers is important as they must be completely flat. Otherwise, they may tilt when you stack them on top of each other, making the cake uneven. A serrated knife is ideal for this purpose. Just make sure the blade of your knife is longer than the diameter of your cake. The goal is to cut off any domed top. To make it perfectly flat.
  4. The next step is assembling the cake. Lubricate the first crust with a spatula. Place the second cake on it with the bottom side up and apply the cream again. Do this with all the cakes. Now apply a layer of cream all over the cake and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes. This allows the layers of cream to cure completely before applying the last layer of cream.
  5. Place the collected cake layers on the turntable and apply a layer of cream using a spatula. A pastry spatula is a flat piece of metal with one flat edge and one serrated edge. To use the tool, drag an edge along the sides of the cake, rotating it in the opposite direction.
  6. Making decorative flowers and other decorations using a piping bag and various pastry attachments takes practice. This also applies to decorating with royal glaze. A great way is to practice on a piece of wax paper instead of the cake itself. Small single flowers can be transferred from wax paper to cake. Practice is key. And over time, everything will turn out perfect for you!
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