Tag: food prep

Measure or Pour

When teaching kids to cook, is it better to measure or pour? I’ve always liked teaching kids to cook using measuring cups and spoons. It’s a great way to teach and visualize fractions. It’s an opportunity to point out how things work better if you follow a certain order of operations. Beyond math-related functions, it’s a chance to learn cooking vocabulary and how to read recipes.

Determined African American girl rolling dough with flour covered arms.

But a lot of cooking is smell and feel and knowing what a certain kind of dough should look like. That information can’t be found in a recipe. It has to be experienced. And sometimes the temperature and humidity in your kitchen will mean you need to alter a recipe. It seems equally important to allow kids to learn simple cooking and baking by eyeballing quantities.

Perhaps the best choice is both measuring and pouring. I know it means spending more time in the kitchen in possibly messy circumstances that will require additional cleanup time. On balance, you’ll gain the opportunity for presenting family traditions, math lessons, and English lessons in addition to overt cooking instruction.

In preparation, you’ll need to get comfortable with winging it. If that’s not your thing, try cooking dinner a night or two by using only what you can remember of a recipe. Pay attention to what you forget or tend to use too much of. Nothing about this is critical so don’t be afraid to laugh.

Once you have a bit of confidence, add fresh ingredients and children. Try making the same dish  with and without following a recipe. Add unexpected changes that smell like a good combination. Play, play, play.

If we’re truly going to limit processed food, we have to get the kids comfortable in the kitchen. I know some restaurant owners whose mom let them play bake in the kitchen when they were quite young. She says the results weren’t always good, but they were learning and having fun. I’d offer they were gaining comfort and confidence.

When you’re comfortable and confident in an environment, you’re able to focus and learn. It’s the ideal state for absorbing new information.

Now’s the time. Get the kids in the kitchen. Let them measure and pour to their heart’s content. They’ll probably use too much salt, too much sugar, and definitely too much vanilla. It’s hard to judge how fast it will pour when you’re not used to the size and weight of the bottle.

They’ll love using a grater and microplane. Buy a protective glove if you’re worried about them cutting themselves. Show them how to zest citrus and squeeze juice without getting seeds in the food.

Demonstrate peeling garlic and slicing onions. If you’re nervous, buy some kid-safe knives and show them how to keep their fingertips out of the way.

Measure or pour, you’re not just prepping food. You’re prepping your children for being cooks. That’s a huge step along the way to incorporating fresh ingredients into their diet. The benefits are huge!

Slow Cooking

My version of slow cooking isn’t using a slow cooker, it’s not rushing the process. If you’re a fan of cooking shows, or any reality TV, you’ve probably seen many shows that feature challenges that race the clock. The time challenge is a device used to build tension and keep us tuned to a particular program through yet another pharmaceutical ad.

I realized years ago that I found clock racing especially distasteful in cooking shows. It gives the impression that you can’t be a great cook or make delicious food unless you’re also a fast. But that’s simply not true. In fact, you’ll get a lot more out of the sensory experience of cooking when you take your time to savor the tastes and aromas. Presenting food preparation as a constant race feels less than inviting to me.

When we began developing recipes at Cooking2Thrive, we considered inclusion of overall preparation time with each recipe. After comparing the prep time listed on other people’s recipes to the time it took us to prepare them, we recognized how widely this varied depending on the chef. And we found the time listed on most recipes was not a realistic representation of what you can expect in a home kitchen.

Makes you wonder whether the developers believe no one will prepare the recipe if they know how long it really takes or whether they are just retroactively recording how long they thought it took instead of making meticulous notes.

Time can be deceptive. We often have to add a fourth recipe test because the timing turns out to be very different than what we thought it was. And while we don’t list overall prep time on our recipes, we do include some specific cooking times that we want to make sure are as accurate as possible.

I made a salad from someone else’s recipe today that listed the prep time as five minutes. It took me thirty. Am I just slow or was that unrealistic to begin with?

I had to locate the bowls, utensils, measuring devices, and vegetables. I had to pick some herbs. That took 3-4 minutes, and I still needed to clean, peel, chop, and measure six ingredients. Keeping prep time to five minutes would leave me 20 seconds to complete each item. And I’d still have no dressing.

It could be that I’m just a slow cook, but five minutes doesn’t seem realistic to me unless most of the prep has already been done and you begin timing when everything has already been gathered, cleaned, and peeled. Listing prep time that leaves out half the prep isn’t particularly helpful.

I don’t mind being efficient with my efforts, but I’d rather fully enjoy being in the kitchen than rush through the tasks as quickly as possible. I mean, if you don’t take time to lick whipped cream off the beater, you can’t be fully enjoying the process. And if you’re cooking with someone you enjoy, there’s even more reason to linger.

I tasted and adjusted the dressing several times. Fresh lemons, limes, and ginger may taste slightly different on different days even when the measurements are the same. Then I tasted the salad ingredients as a combo bite with the dressing and adjusted again. In between, I got a drink and ate a palette cleanser. Did all of that add time? Of course. But it was pleasant. And it will elevate the flavor of the salad.

I won’t say that savoring time in the kitchen means I jump up and down to get started on each and every meal of each and every day. But it does give me positive motivation to cook fresh food that takes more prep. Whenever I dread getting started on a meal, I come back to all the wonderful sensory memories I’ve made taking my time with slow cooking.

It doesn’t get any better than that!

Pare Your Kitchen Down to the Basics

You can pare your kitchen down to the basics and still prepare great food! I love looking at houses online. Of course I pay special attention to the kitchens. For me the primary considerations are a gas stove, functional cabinets, and countertop workspace followed by cuteness.

Cuteness includes what the countertop workspace is covered with, the flooring, paint, backsplash, hardware, and cabinet style. I hate the unimaginative gray that currently dominates new houses and many remodels. I love clean, classic subway tile, European style small refrigerators, hardwood floors, and interesting countertops like wood or recycled glass. With these items in place I’m ready to fill the cabinets with necessities and fun china, pottery, and serving pieces.

What is necessary for food prep?

Let’s be real. Most of us don’t need all of the gadgets that fill our cabinets or clutter our countertops. It’s fine if you want to have them, but if funds are limited or you don’t have much space you can forego the additional purchases and pare down to the basics.

Here’s a list of basic cooking tools:

Durable, sharp knives.
A set with a carving knife, chef’s knife, paring knife, and serrated bread knife is sufficient. Keeping my knives sharp is a constant battle, so a handheld knife sharpener is also useful.

Cutting board.
Using a cutting board protects your countertop surface and keeps bacteria from meat, fish, and poultry contained. You may want to dedicate one cutting board to proteins and another to everything else. I like to use plastic for proteins because I can wash it in the dishwasher. I use wood or bamboo for vegetables, fruit, chocolate, cheese, bread, etc.

Measuring cups and spoons.
With adjustable or multiple quantity cups and spoons, you may only need one of each. I’d probably have two of each handy — one for wet ingredients and one for dry. Even though they take up more drawer space, I actually prefer separate measuring cups and spoons. Collapsible silicone sets minimize the space used, but hard plastic and metal also serve the purpose.

Mixing bowls.
Unless you do a lot of baking, a basic set of 3 bowls — large, medium, and small should be sufficient. Glass, metal, pottery and plastic choices are all readily available. If you rarely cook or need additional capacity, serving bowls can double as mixing bowls. You can use a cereal bowl to whisk an egg or dissolve yeast and a roasting pan to combine larger amounts of ingredients.

Baking pans.
The most commonly used baking pan is a 9 x 13 rectangular pan. It works for cakes, biscuits, casseroles, lasagne, oven fried chicken, chicken spaghetti, bar cookies, cobbler, bread pudding, and even your Thanksgiving dressing. It may be all you need, but you’ll probably want a cookie sheet or two, a loaf pan (with extra tall sides if you make gluten-free bread), a roasting pan with a lid, a muffin tin, a pie pan, and at least one casserole dish. A square glass baking dish can double as a casserole dish by using aluminum foil when you need a lid.

Stove top cookware.
Every kitchen needs at least one cast iron skillet. Okay, you can live without one, but you’ll have much better cornbread, pineapple upside down cake, seared steaks, country-fried potatoes, fried chicken, blackened Brussels sprouts, and stovetop burgers if you have one. Cast iron can be used for any dish you start on the stove top and finish in the oven.

Also essential are a large pot for cooking pasta, and at least one saucepan. Most kitchens will need an additional saucepan or two in order to cook multiple dishes at the same time. You may want to invest in a good skillet and a sauté pan.

Utensils.
A spatula, slotted spoon, large regular spoon, whisk, grater, can opener, colander, small and large funnel, and dough blender plus a hand crank beater will give you what you need to prepare a meal, bake a cake, and top it off with homemade whipped cream. You can add a basting brush or potato masher if you feel you need them.

Small appliances.
The only small appliances I would recommend are a food chopper, a slow cooker, and a waffle iron. I find a chopper sufficient for the chopping and puréeing I do, and a slow cooker comes in handy at parties. My antique cast iron waffle iron leaves something to be desired. A modern, electric version is definitely preferable.

On the other hand, I don’t need a coffee maker — a French press or pour over coffee maker can make an incredible cup of coffee. I don’t need a toaster — toast can be made in the oven. I can make whipped cream with my hand crank beater in less time than it takes to get out and set up a mixer. I don’t use juice in large enough quantity to justify a juicer. Two cast iron skillets will make a panini. A saucepan will heat water if I don’t buy an electric kettle. I can cook rice in a pan. Poached eggs don’t require a poacher. Popcorn is easy to pop on top of the stove. I don’t drink soda so I have no use for a soda maker. Pressure cookers scare me. I am happy buying dried fruit from Nuts.com and ice cream from the grocery store. And even though that orange nonstick skillet looked really tempting at 2am in a hotel room, I can’t think of any reason I’d need to fry hardware. That’s about a dozen kitchen specialty items I don’t need when I pare down to essentials.

If you love grapefruit and want a grapefruit knife, you should absolutely have one. If having a potato peeler makes you feel better about peeling potatoes, there’s nothing wrong with buying one. If you weigh ingredients when you bake, investing in a good quality scale makes sense.

The point is that you will not be limited to mediocre food when you choose to keep your kitchen simple! Knowing that can help you stay within budget and reduce clutter in your home. It feels good to me to know that I can prepare scrumptious meals and baked goods and still be mindful about kitchen purchases.

In this day of advertising bombardment, I think it bears repeating…you can pare your kitchen down to the basics and still prepare great food!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”