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If you want to cook brown rice, you have several options. We will introduce you to two variants – a particularly quick and a particularly healthy way of cooking brown rice.

Brown rice is so healthy

Basmati rice, long grain rice, parboiled rice, black rice, wild rice: there are many different varieties and types of rice. Brown rice is popular because it is largely untreated and still has the outer layers of the rice grain. Brown rice therefore contains more minerals and trace elements than white rice – but it also takes longer to cook. We explain how to cook brown rice properly.

Cook brown rice – soak, wash, cook

If you want to cook rice, you basically have two options: the swelling method and the water method. The soaking method is particularly energy- and water-saving, but has one major disadvantage: In addition to the valuable micronutrients, pollutants also remain in the rice. This is a problem with brown rice because it is usually particularly heavily contaminated with arsenic, as reported by the Federal Office for Risk Assessment (BfR). Arsenic is a metalloid that is carcinogenic to humans. You can find more information about arsenic, its occurrence and its effects in our article on the subject.

We therefore recommend that you soak the brown rice beforehand, wash it and cook it with a higher water-to-rice ratio. In this way you can reduce the arsenic content by up to 80 percent.

Cooking brown rice – this is how the preparation works:
Soak the brown rice in water overnight. The rice should be covered with water about two centimeters high.
The next day, rinse the rice until the wastewater runs clear.
Then put the brown rice in a saucepan with five times the amount of water. In other words, there are five cups of water for every cup of rice.
Bring the water to a boil on the highest setting. Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down to low and let the brown rice simmer, with the lid on, for about 20 minutes.
Remove the pot from the stove and let the rice sit in the covered pot for another ten minutes.
The brown rice is ready. At this point you can loosen the rice grains with a fork and add a pinch of salt. But be careful: very hot steam escapes when you open the pot.

Cooking brown rice using the quick swelling method

With the swelling method, you only add enough water to the rice so that it completely absorbs the water when cooking. Therefore, the source method is particularly water and energy-saving. However, the arsenic contained in the rice is not flushed out with this method of preparation. If you have enough time, you should still soak the brown rice first to reduce the arsenic content.

Cooking brown rice using the swelling method:
Optional: Soak the brown rice in plenty of water overnight.
Rinse the rice with clear water until the waste water is no longer cloudy.
Put twice the amount of brown rice in a saucepan: for every cup of rice, add two cups of water.
Bring the water to a boil on the highest setting. Once the water is boiling, switch to a low setting. With the lid on, let the rice gently simmer for about 20 minutes.
Remove the covered pot from the heat and let the rice sit for another 10 minutes.
At the end you can fluff up the brown rice with a fork and add a pinch of salt.
By the way: If you have cooked too much rice, you can heat up the rest of the rice the next day. Alternatively, you can freeze the cooked rice and preserve it for a long time.

Lifestyle

Planting potatoes: How it Works

With these simple instructions you will learn to plant and harvest your own potatoes – whether on the balcony or in the garden. So you can get a rich harvest in autumn with just a few potatoes in spring.

Plant potatoes yourself: the right location

When it comes to choosing the right location for your potato patch, there are only a few limits. However, you should keep these things in mind if you want to plant potatoes:
The potato plants need daylight, so they should be planted outside.
Enough space: you need a bed or a tall planter or a flower pot measuring approx. 30 cm x 30 cm.
The bottom should have holes to prevent waterlogging in the planter or pot.
Use high-quality, sustainably sourced, peat-free potting soil.
If you have neither a balcony nor a garden, you can also plant a green space in your neighborhood using urban gardening methods.

Plant the right type of potato

You also have many options when it comes to the choice of potatoes. Cultivation is easiest with special seed potatoes. You can order these from the garden trade and should choose according to these criteria:
early or late harvest
firm or mealy boiling
storage suitability
You can even choose the color of your potatoes:
purple potatoes
Red Potatoes
Blue Potatoes
You can also use potatoes from the supermarket. However, varieties from conventional cultivation in particular are often treated with germ inhibitors or are more susceptible to diseases because they are bred to grow up with chemical aids.

Planting Potatoes: Season, Soil and Harvest

Whether you just want to plant a flower pot or an entire bed – the following steps are important if you want to plant potatoes yourself:
Germination: Pre-germinating potatoes is important. From the beginning of March, leave them in the light until they start to germinate and become shriveled. You can then plant them in the ground about six weeks later. Make sure that the nights are already frost-free.
Planting: Loosen the potting soil and remove weeds and roots if necessary. Dig the sprouted potatoes about two inches deep—you’ll need to keep the soil moist from there.
Covering with soil: As soon as the first small plants of ten centimeters have formed, you should cover them with soil again and again (“cover”) with soil so that only the top part is exposed. The plant grows higher and higher and the growing potatoes have more space in the ground and can thrive better.
Harvest: Depending on the variety, the plants begin to wither after three months at the earliest. About two weeks after the plants have withered, the first potatoes can be harvested. You can simply search the earth below the plant remains with your hands or a digging fork.
Tips:
If the potatoes are to be stored for a longer period of time, it is better to leave them in the ground a little longer. This gives them a more robust shell that protects them better against rot.
To prevent disease, potatoes should only be planted in the same spot every four years.
Once you’ve got a taste for your own potatoes and you’ve internalized the basic techniques, you can experiment with different varieties and thus also contribute to the preservation of seed diversity.

Lifestyle

Hydroponics: How it Works

Growing plants only in water without soil? This is exactly how the principle of hydroponics works. And you can even use it on your windowsill.

What is hydroponics?

The term hydroponics comes from the inventor of the concept, Dr. Wilhelm Gericke and describes the science of soilless horticulture. The word part “hydro” comes from the Greek and means water. Because with hydroponics, the soil is effectively replaced by water.

As in “normal cultivation”, a plant in hydroponics is supplied with light, the right temperature, water and nutrients. It gets its light from daylight – it only absorbs liquid and nutrients directly from the water, not via the intermediate medium earth.

Hydroponics versus regular vegetable growing – the pros and cons

Proponents of hydroponics find many good arguments for its use:
You can use hydroponics in a small space.
You can optimally promote the growth of the plant by controlling the light, temperature, water and nutrient supply.
With hydroponics you can grow vegetables all year round.
In a hydroponic system, the roots should not rot – unlike in soil.
You don’t have to water the plants every day, you have to refill the nutrient solution much less often.
With a little creativity, you can also upcycle a hydroponic system from plastic waste.
You don’t have to pull weeds.
However, there are also disadvantages:
Some hydroponic systems only work with electricity.
Most hydroponic systems are made out of plastic.
You also need fertilizer for the nutrient solution. If you don’t want to use chemical fertilizer, you can make a nutrient solution out of kitchen scraps or tea bags. You can find instructions on how to do this on the home garden page.
Depending on the design, you will probably need to obtain additional materials such as pumps or plastic containers for the water reservoir.

How to build your own hydroponic system

You can get everything you need from the hardware store:
a plastic box with a lid as a water reservoir
net pots
an aquarium pump with aeration stone
possibly a plant substrate (e.g. pumice stone)
hydroponic fertilizer
And this is how you proceed step by step:
Drill holes in the top of the plastic box to insert the mesh pots.
Place the pump aeration stone in the plastic box.
If you are using seedlings, carefully wash the soil from the roots before planting.
Put the prepared plants in the net pots and then put the net pots in the plastic box.
Fill the plastic box with the water so that the net pots are about an inch deep in the water
Add the fertilizer solution according to the package instructions. If you use homemade fertilizer from tea leftovers, you can use it every third time.
You should aerate your plants for about 15 minutes every 30 minutes. A timer helps with this.

More possibilities: active and passive hydroponic systems

The system that we have presented is an active system. But there are also passive systems. Here the plant fetches liquid and nutrients itself via the roots or via capillary effects. There are three classic, relatively simple, passive systems in hydroponics:
Either you work with substrate, for example pumice stone or coconut fiber. Here you plant your plant in the substrate and fill a water reservoir with nutrient solution underneath. This allows the plant to pull the nutrient solution up with the help of its roots and capillary forces.
The wick system works in a similar way. Here the substrate container and the water reservoir are connected by wicks. These are thin tubes through which the plant draws the nutrient solution.
In a passive system with no substrate, you use a mesh that your plant can stretch its roots through. You place them in a pot over the water reservoir with the nutrient solution so that some of the root ends protrude into the water.
Active hydroponics systems are more complicated to construct. They have elements that need to be powered by electricity, such as pumps or temperature controllers. In theory, all plants that bear fruit above ground can be cultivated in active systems. They include, for example:
Deep Water Culture (described above): Here you let the roots of your plants hang completely in the nutrient solution. An air pump continuously enriches the water with oxygen from below, thus preventing the plants from drowning.
Flood and ebb system: The roots are not permanently submerged in the water. The nutrient solution is pumped at regular intervals to the roots, which hang freely or grow on substrate.
Nutrient Film Technique: It works similar to the ebb and flow system. The plants are arranged in a row and the tube in which they grow is inclined. The nutrient solution is pumped to the higher end with a pump and then flows back into the reservoir at the lower end of the tube.

The differences between hydroponics, hydroponics and aquaponics

The demarcation between hydroponics and aquaponics is relatively simple: Because aquaponics describes a special system in which fish farming and vegetable cultivation are combined. Vegetable cultivation in aquaponics usually takes place in a hydroponic system. So aquaponics is a part of hydroponics.

Hydroponics usually refers to a process in which ornamental plants are grown on expanded clay as a substrate. In hydroponics, on the other hand, the roots usually hang freely and are fully or partially immersed in a nutrient solution.

In this article you learned how to cultivate plants without substrate. If you want to grow plants on expanded clay, you can find information on how to do this in our article on hydroponics.

Cooking Tips

Stir-Fry: This is How The Chinese Preparation Works

Stir-Fry is a method of preparation that you can use to prepare a variety of dishes.

Stir Fry: The Basics

Translated, stir-fry means something like “stir-fry”. It is a Chinese preparation method in which vegetables are briefly fried while stirring. The vegetables should remain crisp and retain most of their micronutrients. It is often served with tofu, egg or meat afterwards.

You are free to choose the vegetables. However, make sure to use vegetables that don’t need to cook for a long time. Potatoes, sweet potatoes or parsnips, for example, are not suitable. The following types of vegetables are particularly recommended:

carrots
broccoli
mushrooms
sugar snap
paprika
zucchini
spring onions
Red cabbage
Kale
Chinese cabbage

In addition to the main ingredients, stir-fry lives mainly from the spices. It is best to use garlic, ginger and soy sauce for this. Optionally, you can add chilli or some chili or curry paste. Traditionally, the ingredients are fried in sesame oil. You can also use rapeseed oil or sunflower oil.

Cooking Tips

Bake Blind: This is How it Works

Blind baking means that a dough is first pre-baked and then filled. Find out here what exactly blind baking is all about and how the baking technique works in the most resource-saving way possible.

If you plan to bake a (vegan) quiche, tart or pie, you may have to blind bake the dough first. This means that you pre-bake the dough without the filling. When baking blind, this is replaced by a “blind” filling made from dried legumes or uncooked rice. Blind baking is a baking technique that does two things:

The base will be crispy and not soggy when the moist filling is added afterwards.
The blind filling also stabilizes the edges of the dough so that they do not collapse.
You remove the “blind” filling after baking. Depending on the recipe, you can let the dough cool down completely before adding the right filling. Or you can put the filling in immediately and then continue baking the cake.

Bake blind: this is how it works

Blind baking only requires a few extra steps:
Roll out a dough, grease a baking pan and line it with the dough.
Poke the dough a few times with a fork. This way no air bubbles form during baking.
Place a piece of baking paper on the dough and then fill the dried legumes or uncooked rice into the baking pan. The “blind” filling ensures that the base of the dough is weighed down, no bubbles form and the edge of the dough stays in shape.
Put the dough and the filling in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes.
Take the pre-baked dough out of the oven and remove the legumes and the parchment paper.
Now you can process the dough further:
Cold filling: If the dough has a filling that doesn’t need to be cooked, you can put the pre-baked dough back in the oven without the blind filling. This makes the base nice and crispy and gives it a golden yellow colour. Then let the base cool down before you put the right filling on top.
Warm Filling: Some fillings require cooking. So put them on the pre-baked base and finish baking the dough including the filling.

Sustainable blind baking: Here’s how

Save energy: You don’t need to preheat the oven when blind baking the dough. Preheating is usually only useful for very sensitive dough. Depending on the oven, it may take a different amount of time for the dough to pre-bake. So make sure that your dough doesn’t get too dark during blind baking. Also, use the time that the dough is blind-baked and prepare the filling in the meantime.
Reuse: You can use the baking paper several times. You can also use the legumes more often for blind baking. Just let them cool and store them in a screw-top jar. Label them as baking legumes appropriately, because you shouldn’t cook them after they’re baked. Incidentally, special blind baking balls are also available in stores, which you can use as often as you like.

Food

Roasting Coffee: This is How it Works at Home

In principle, roasting your own coffee is very easy. However, it is difficult to achieve a good roasting result at home without a coffee roaster.

You need this to roast coffee

In the food industry, coffee is dry-roasted at temperatures between 250 and 450 degrees Celsius. Special drum or fluid bed roasters are used for this, which guarantee a particularly even roasting result. A simple frying pan will also do at home, but there is a risk that the coffee beans will be roasted very unevenly.

If you would like to roast coffee regularly at home, we recommend purchasing a drum roaster for home use. Coffee roasters are not cheap. However, you avoid the coffee beans burning on the bottom of the pan. A drum roaster works on a similar principle to an air fryer. However, the drum in the drum roaster rotates continuously so that there are no “hotspots” where it is particularly hot or cold. Even in an air fryer, the heat distribution is too uneven to achieve a good roasting result.

How to roast coffee beans at home

How to roast your coffee beans using a coffee roaster or air fryer:

Preheat your coffee roaster or hot air fryer to 250 degrees Celsius.
Place the coffee beans in the roasting chamber and let the beans roast to your desired roast level. This typically takes between five and ten minutes. If you use an air fryer, stir the coffee beans regularly.
Cool the roasted coffee beans in a cool place as quickly as possible. In industry, the beans are cooled with cold air. The aromatic substances in coffee are highly volatile and therefore evaporate at high temperatures.
Store the roasted coffee beans in a gas-permeable and light-proof bag. Roasting gases form during coffee roasting, which escape during storage.

How do you know how roasted your coffee is?

Connoisseurs distinguish between more than a dozen different degrees of roasting of coffee. The degree of roasting can be easily recognized by the color of the coffee beans. The beans change color from greenish-grey to black as they roast. Roasting can be roughly divided into three phases:

The first crack (first crack), where the beans break open on the surface for the first time, which you can tell by the crackling. The beans are still light brown here. The coffee aroma is particularly acidic.
The second crack (Second Crack), whereby the beans break open for the second time. The beans are already dark brown here. This corresponds to a medium degree of roasting, as can be found in many commercial products.
Oil migrates to the surface. The beans here are very dark brown to black with small drops of oil on the surface. The chlorogenic acid in the coffee is almost completely broken down here, making the coffee very digestible. The aroma is particularly full-bodied and intense. This level of roasting is particularly popular in Spain, France and Italy.

Why dark roasted coffee is more digestible

Basically, dark roasted coffee is more digestible, sweeter and richer in vitamins than light roasted coffee. This is because acids and irritants are broken down during roasting and vitamin B3 is formed from trigonelline.

How dark you roast your coffee is entirely up to your personal preferences. Especially the dark roast degrees are difficult to implement at home if you don’t have a coffee roaster. In an air fryer, the heat distribution is quite uneven, so there is a high risk of burning some coffee beans.

Roasting coffee at home is only for real coffee nerds. Good roasting results can hardly be achieved at home without a coffee roaster. It is best to use ready-roasted beans from fair trade cultivation with an organic seal. So you can enjoy good coffee without much effort.

Food

Pegan: This is How the Vegan Paleo Diet Works

The pegan diet combines the paleo diet and veganism. We explain to you what constitutes the diet and whether it is healthy.

Veganism and Paleo seem mutually exclusive at first glance:

While you do without all animal products on a vegan diet, meat, fish and eggs play an important role in the Paleo diet.
Whole grains and legumes are important sources of nutrients in a vegan diet. In Paleo, on the other hand, they are taboo.
However, the American doctor Mark Hyman combined the two diets into the pegan diet. This largely corresponds to the Paleo diet, only the proportion of animal products is greatly reduced – fish, meat and eggs are still allowed. The pegan diet is not vegan.

These foods are suitable for a pegan diet:

Fresh vegetables should be the most important part of your meals, combined with plenty of fruit.
Nuts, seeds and avocados as well as olives, olive oil and coconut oil serve as sources of fat.
According to the Paleo philosophy, fish, meat and eggs should come from species-appropriate and natural animal husbandry or wild-caught where possible and play a minor role in your meals.
On the other hand, you should use these foods sparingly in a pegan diet or avoid them altogether:

Grains containing gluten do not belong on your menu. Gluten-free grains and legumes are allowed in small amounts.
You should avoid dairy products and consume them very sparingly.
Refined sugar is taboo. Instead, you can use small amounts of coconut blossom sugar, syrups or concentrated juices to sweeten.
Most oils and fats are considered over-processed and therefore not pegan. Excluded are the fat sources mentioned above.
Processed foods should be avoided as much as possible.
Ultimately, you can decide for yourself how strictly you want to interpret the guidelines. A vegan pegan diet is also possible.

How healthy is the pegan diet?

The pegan diet is very similar to the paleo diet. Experts are discussing how healthy this is.

The DGE gives a positive assessment of the high proportion of vegetables and fruit and the absence of processed products. According to the DGE, studies also show that you can reduce fat mass, improve your insulin metabolism and possibly lower your cholesterol level with a paleo diet.
The DGE is critical of the fact that people who eat paleo eat a lot of animal products. The problem is less with the pegan diet. However, the DGE also criticizes that not eating dairy products, legumes and whole grains can promote nutrient deficiencies – this can also happen with the pegan diet. Finally, the scientific basis of the Paleo diet is also questionable. It is based on the assumption that our bodies are still adapted to the Stone Age diet and cannot handle agricultural products such as milk or grain. However, there is no evidence that our genetic makeup has not changed since the Paleolithic period. In addition, people at that time also had very different diets depending on the region.
If you follow the pegan diet strictly (vegan), you should have your blood values checked regularly to avoid nutrient deficiencies (e.g. certain B vitamins, zinc, iodine, iron or calcium). Get some advice or consult your nutritionist before beginning a strict pegan diet.

Food

Thicken Cherries: This is How it Works Without Lumps

Thickening cherries is worthwhile for refining various desserts. We present three ways to help you thicken without much effort.

Thickening cherries is an easy way to create a delicious topping for desserts and sweets. There are three options: You can thicken cherries with cornstarch (or a cornstarch substitute), vanilla pudding powder and cake glaze. For this you need the following ingredients:

650 g organic cherries
0.5l water
2 tbsp cornstarch/custard powder/cake glaze

It usually takes less than five minutes to thicken the cherries. We explain step by step how to do this:

Place the cherries in a saucepan with the water.
Let the kirsch come to a boil.
Stir in the starch/custard powder or frosting as soon as the mixture boils. Caution: Begin stirring immediately after adding your thickener of choice to the water. That way no lumps form. You should also not add cornstarch directly to the boiling water, but mix it with a little cold water first and then add it. This also prevents lumps from forming.
Important: cherries are in season from June to August. So this is the best time to thicken cherries.

Cooking Tips

Gel Test: How it Works

Jam, marmalade or jelly: however you prepare your sweet spread, it’s always worth testing to see if it sets. You can find out why this is the case and how a gelling test works in this article.

Why is a gel test worthwhile?

You make an effort with your homemade jam, it tastes good, but it’s just too runny. Now you have several jars of liquid jam, which is not really suitable as a spread. This can be avoided with a gelling test – because as long as the jam is still warm, you can always make it gel later and give it a firmer consistency.

How does a gel test work?

The right time to test the jelly is when you have just made the jam and it is still hot. All you need for the rehearsal is a spoon and a small plate.

Put some jam on the plate.
Wait a minute or two and check if the mass has thickened and is no longer running.
If you are satisfied with the consistency of the jam, you can now fill it into jars.
Tip: The rehearsal works best if you chill the plate beforehand. For example, you can put it in the fridge before cooking the jam. If you are in a hurry, you can also put it in the freezer for a short time.

What to do if the gelling test didn’t work?

If the drop has not solidified, the gel test was unsuccessful. This could mean, for example, you didn’t use enough jam sugar or you added too much water to the fruit.

But that doesn’t mean your upstroke is lost. It is best to try cooking the jam for a few more minutes first. If the jam still remains too runny, you can save it by stirring in a packet of citric acid. The acid causes the mass to harden. Important: the jam must still be hot. You should then use another gelling test to check whether the jam now has the right consistency.

Cooking Tips

Cut Pumpkin Correctly: With This Tip it Works

If you want to cut a pumpkin, it is often difficult because of the hard skin. We’ll show you a simple trick that will make cutting the pumpkin much easier.

Pumpkin is a versatile vegetable that you can buy locally grown between August and December, when pumpkins are in season. You can eat the skin of many types of squash and don’t have to throw it away. However, it is a bit hard, making the squash difficult to cut. The skin only softens when it is cooked. For most recipes, however, you will need to cut the squash into small pieces or slices before cooking. For example:

Cut pumpkin into pieces for: pumpkin soup, pumpkin spread and pumpkin pasta
Slice the pumpkin for: Tarte flambée with pumpkin
We’ll show you a trick on how to cut the peel more easily.

Cutting the pumpkin: The cooking pot trick

If the pumpkin skin is very robust or the knife is no longer very sharp, it will be difficult to cut a pumpkin. But a simple trick helps to make it easier:

First wash the pumpkin thoroughly.
Then place the squash in a pot filled with water. The water should come up a little to halfway up the squash.
Let the water simmer for about five minutes.
After that, the squash will be much softer and easier to cut.

Dice the pumpkin

You can then cut the pumpkin into cubes or slices. Both are possible with this guide:

1. Halve the pumpkin. To do this, place the knife on the stalk of the pumpkin and divide the pumpkin once.
2. Now the pumpkin with the pulp is open. For most recipes you will now have to hollow out the pumpkin. This is easy to do with a spoon. In addition, you should usually remove the cores. You don’t have to throw them away, you can roast the pumpkin seeds. They’re a tasty snack.
3. To cut the pumpkin into cubes or slices, place the pumpkin half with the open side on a wooden board. Then cut the pumpkin into slices one to two centimeters thick. If you are right-handed, start at the end of the pumpkin that is to the right of the stalk.

Note: If you want to use the pumpkin in slices (for example, to cover a tarte flambée or a pizza), cut the slices only a few millimeters thick.

4. Now place several pumpkin slices on top of each other and cut off individual cubes.

Note: Be sure to separate the stalk from the pumpkin piece as well.

5. Now you can carry out steps 3 and 4 for the other half of the pumpkin and then process the pumpkin further.