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OOOPS! Have you ever said
that while cooking in the kitchen and you have ended up with making a mess
instead of a meal? Tammy wanted some help with over spicing chili. Here are a
few tips on how to handle some common kitchen flops:
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Over spicing/salting soups, stews, chili, etc.-adding more liquids such
as stock (beware if you have over salted- commercial stocks can be very salty),
the liquid from the vegetables you are cooking alongside your dish, extra
tomatoes if it’s the right kind of soup/stew, add a few pinches of brown sugar-
won’t de-salt the soup but will help cover the saltiness or add chunks of raw
potato and partially cook before removing. I am skeptical about this method of
lowering the saltiness, though I don’t really know because I have never tried
it. When I have over salted a soup I either add more stock or tomatoes.
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Over spicing/salting sauces- I have this as a separate tip from soups and
stews because a sauce’s consistency is more noticeable than the thickness of a
soup or stew. Over spicing/salting a sauce again requires the addition of more
liquids to dilute the spiciness/saltiness, but then you have a sauce that is too
thin. Here is a quick repair to a too thin a sauce: for every added cup of
liquid to your sauce, stir thoroughly together 1 T cornstarch w/1 T cold liquid
for a thinner sauce or 2 T cornstarch w/2 T cold liquid for a thicker sauce and
whisk into the simmering sauce. Bring back to a boil, re-taste, serve. The
additional liquid that you add can be fruit juice (like pineapple or apple for a
ham), wine, water or more stock- remembering that commercial stocks are salty.
You can also under season the item you are serving the sauce over.
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Misc. dishes- once you have stirred your ingredients together and you
find that there is a problem with the seasoning: go light on the cheese topping,
add more cooked pasta, rice or potatoes.
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Too greasy- if possible, refrigerate over night and remove the hardened
fat before re-warming, use a spoon to skim off all visible grease, slurp up with
a baster, or waded up paper toweling wicks up grease quickly. If you put an ice
cube or two inside the paper towel the grease will clean to the paper towel more
easily.
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Undercooked meat- slice as you normally would and lightly heat in a
skillet with a little bit of stock, serve with the “broth” that was created in
the pan. This works for all cuts of meat.
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Overcooked potatoes- mash even with their skins on and add a little
cheese on the top and bake to melt the cheese
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Overcooked pasta- no hope, turn your sauce off and start again.
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Undercooked pasta- re-boil water and return to the pan for a few more
minutes or drain and toss pasta with sauce and cook together, either in the oven
as a baked dish or lightly stirring on top of the stove.
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Stuck together pasta- throw the clumps away, cook more, remembering to
add pasta to rapidly boiling water and stirring frequently- toss waiting cooked
pasta w/olive oil, cover with foil and keep warm in a 200 degree oven.
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Burned or scorched on the bottom of the pan- boy, I’ve done this when I
am doing lots of things at one time or I have walked out of the kitchen for a
moment. Remove from the heat immediately. You should be able to avoid a
scorched taste by carefully pouring into another pan w/out scraping the bottom.
Remove the scorched pan from the kitchen- preferably to the back porch to be
taken care of after the meal is over and the guests have left.
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I know the list is endless of the mistakes that can be made in the
kitchen yet, THE KEY to all kitchen mistakes falls under what I call “kitchen
secrets”. You don’t have to confess your mistake. Some of my cooking mistakes
are simply re-named: it may have started out as a casserole, but ended up as a
soup due to the addition of liquids. Be creative!
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