thegoodfood

Archive for July 22nd, 2010

Gluten Free Shopping Tips – Get the Best of your Shopping Experience

Being diagnosed with gluten intolerance or celiac disease can be initially exasperating and may give you some emotional quandaries since you haven’t thought that planning your everyday meals can require you to furnish tremendous efforts. You may also feel little inhibitions when you visit the supermarket to shop for groceries and food stocks for your kitchen, since you are thinking that shopping won’t be as exciting as it was before. Though, limitations on food choices are apparent, there are some gluten free shopping tips that you can carry out to make your shopping experience hassle free.

When going to the grocery store, one gluten free shopping tip that you should employ is to enjoy your day out. Though your gluten free diet can be exasperating, your little effort will help you a lot to surpass the emotional obstacles you feel at first. Rather than thinking that your celiac disease is much of a burden, consider it as a call for you to change your lifestyle for the better. Moreover, you should feel lucky for yourself, since not all people are given the opportunity to live a hale and hearty lifestyle as what can be provided by the gluten free diet.

The most recommended gluten free shopping tip, which is also advisable for all people so they can discern the foods that they ingest, is to always check and examine the labels of the things that you will purchase. If you can’t completely determine the ingredients of the foods and products that you wish to buy, it’s best, if you just leave it and not take even a little chance on it. You should also be able to get hold of the list of gluten-free grains, gluten-free snacks and other gluten-free products so you can appropriately recognize what you should and shouldn’t have.

Another gluten free tip that you should keep in mind is that you must at all times prefer to separately purchase the ingredients of the dish that you want, rather than purchasing precooked and prepackaged dishes, so you can be assured that it is gluten free. Remember that if a product can grant you with huge convenience and handiness, it’s more likely to contain enormous amount of gluten.

Since the supermarkets, grocery stores and specialty health outlets that present celiacs with varieties of gluten-free foods and products are numerous, the task of buying these items are becoming more pleasurable. You don’t need to look far, visit the nearest supermarket near you and have a wonderful gluten free shopping experience.

-
About the Author:
For the latest tips and advice on Gltuen Free Cooking, visit Gluten Secrets Revealed and start living a gluten free healthy lifestyle.
Article Source

A good bbq rub recipe is the foundational ingredient for cooking great barbecue.  While bbq sauce can be important, sauce should complement the meat, not BE the flavor.  A good dry rub will permeate the meat and can be the difference between average barbecue and fantastic barbecue.  There are several core spices that make up a great dry rub.

Core Spices

Paprika

Paprika is the spice that makes up the bulk of most good bbq rub recipes.  Paprika is made from sweet red peppers that are dried and powdered.  Most often, paprika originates from Hungary, but today great paprika can come from Spain.  The author tends to prefer ’sweet Hungarian paprika’.  Paprika tends to give barbecue its beautiful red color.

Chili Powder

Chili powder is a typcially a spice mix primarily made from chili peppers (red, ancho, cayenne, and chipotle). Some mixes will include other spices such as black pepper,mace, coriander, turmeric and others.

Salt

Salt is obvious! Care must be taken because you can easily add too much salt to a rub. Smaller cuts such as ribs or chicken are easy to oversalt. Also, be careful with rubs that are high in salt content if you plan to let the rub cover the meat for long periods of time. High salt rubs can turn the meat ‘hammy’ if allowed to blend with the meat too long. I prefer to use kosher salt or sea with my rubs, but you may want to run it through a spice grinder if your other ingredients are finely ground.

Sugar/Brown Sugar

Brown sugar is typcially a large percentage of the bulk of rib rubs, but is common in many all-purpose rubs. The amount of sugar will depend on how sweet you want your barbecue. It may be necessary to dry out brown sugar to avoid clumping if you are planning to store the rub for some time. Also, be careful with rubs high in sugar because it can easily burn.

Garlic Powder,Onion Powder,Black Pepper

Add to taste, and these ingredients exist in almost all bbq rub recipes.

Secondary Spices

Cumin

Not a common household spice, but a favorite of the author. Cumin is in the parsley family and has a great aroma. If you have eaten Indian or Persian food, you have had an abundance of this spice. This is a core spice for many Mexican and in nearly all Tex-Mex dishes. I love this spice and often have to hold back to keep from putting too much in my rubs. A little known fact is that cumin is the 2nd most used spice in the world (to black pepper).

Coriander

This is another great spice with an identity crisis. Most of the world refers to it as coriander, but in America it is called cilantro, yet, it is also referred to as Mexican parsley, as well as Chinese parsley. Whatever you want to call it, add it to your barbecue rub. But,make sure to use ground (dried) coriander. Cilantro leaves have their purpose, but its sweet, citrus like taste of the leaves is better left for other dishes. This is another spice often used in Asian, Indian and Mexican dishes.

Cayenne Pepper

This is the one to add some heat to your bbq rub recipe.  Go easy with this one unless you like your rub with some kick. Too much kick is possible even for those who dig very spicy rubs. I made the mistake of using fresh ground cayenne for the first time at a barbecue competition…and the judges must have thought it was a hot buffalo wing eating contest. I enjoyed the ribs, but the judges scored me VERY low on taste.

Mixing

Basically,mix your ingredients together and put on your favorite cut of meat and cook to your pleasure. A few hints. Keep in mind that ribs have a small surface area, so a little rub goes a long way. Just the opposite effect with an eight pound Boston Butt or 12 pound beef brisket. With the bigger cuts,more rub is better. Also, sweeter rubs seem to do better with ribs and chicken and less sweet for bigger cuts (they cook longer and could burn with high sugar content).

Some cooks will use what is called a mustard slather. They will literally slather Barbecue Rubs yellow mustard on the meat and then apply the rub. The mustard slather tends to bind the rub to the meat so that it will not fall off. I have tried it with mustard and without and cannot tell any appreciable difference.

Here is a great rub base for starting your own rub.  Please experiment!

Basic Barbecue Rub Recipe

5 parts Paprika
3 parts Chli Powder
3 parts Brown Sugar (more for ribs)
2 parts Kosher Salt
1 part each Black Pepper,Onion Powder, Cayenne Pepper
Part can be any measurement – cup, tablespoon, teaspoon

Remember to Experiment with other spices

Commercial Rubs

There are some OUTSTANDING commercial rubs on the market that could save you the pain of making your own. A few names to drop.  Bad Byrons Butt Rub, Billy Bones, Lotta Bull, Texas Rib Rangers and HomeBBQ.com.

-
About the Author:
Kevin Moore is a barbecue hobbyist and occasional competition barbecue cook.  He enjoys writing about bbq, cooking bbq and most importantly eating great barbecue.  Many backyard cooks are intimidated by the process, but it can be very easy and fulfulling with the right tools.  For additional tips, tricks, techniques and recipes check out CookingGreatBBQ.
Article Source

There are many ways on how to cooking a turkey. In fact you can find 101 way to cook turkey if you have the time.. But if you had ever wished you could cook turkey perfectly, then you are reading the right article. For a nervous cooks the first thing you need to understand is that there are different method on how to cook a turkey.

you don’t need to be a master cook to make a good tasting turkey for dinner, its just knowing what options are available.

I want to show you basically the 3 methods for cooking a moist turkey:

1. Roasting:

Roasting has been one of the most traditional method of cooking a turkey.
Preparing a turkey for roasting
1. rinse it thoroughly, season it inside and out with flavors your family enjoys and put it in a roasting pan with water in the button. The water keeps the drippings from burning.

Loosely cover the turkey with aluminum foil. you would need about an hour for every unstuffed turkey..

Note for this method:

A.The meat of the turkey needs to be 165 degrees to be safe for eating. so you need to check by placing your kitchen thermometer, place it in the thickest breast part of the turkey.

B. You can remove the aluminum foil one hour before the turkey is done you can also so you get a nice crunchy turkey skin.

C.Allow the turkey to cool(let it sit untouched) for 15 – 20 minutes before carving. the keeps the turkey moist.

2. Oven Braising

This method i using an oven bag or warp in that you’re steaming the turkey.
Pre heat you oven to about 340 degrees. Then put turkey in a roaster covered. Get the turkey stuffed with seasoning.

3.Turkey: Oven Bag Roasted

The choice on How to cook a turkey depends on which o the method you want to use. Oven bags are a great alternative instead of the traditional ones.

How to use it..

Put your bird in the bag the place it in with the pan in the oven consider adding some onions pealed orange and other flavors to the cavity of the turkey to add more flavors. follow the cooking instruction in the cooking bag packaging.

-
About the Author:
I found a guide that will be of great help to you. A step by step way of cooking a perfect turkey for dinner or any important occasion. In this guide called  The Perfect Turkey Dinner Guide,  You will be shown the secret methods of great cooks, how the proffesional cooks brine their turkey, cut their turkey, fry their turkey, and how they <a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” href=”http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Cooking-a-Turkey/”>cook their turkey</a> perfectly to taste great.
Article Source