Fix Those Cooking Blunders

A few weeks ago one of my friends made a big pot of chili.  When her husband tasted it, he said it was too salty - which got us to trying to figure out how to fix it.  Then the rest of us tasted it and thought it was just fine, no, better than fine, it was really good!  Which was a good thing because we never did figure out how to fix it if it was too salty.  I knew I had read it somewhere, I just couldn't remember where...

So, when I found this list - Fast Fixes for Blunders - in an old Family Circle magazine, I clipped it out.  Now we'll always know how to fix super salty soup as well as fix other cooking blunders or problems.

• To remove grease from stew, soup or gravy, drop a few ice cubes in the pot.  Spoon the cubes out once the grease sticks to the ice.
• Neutralize super-salty soup, stew or tomato sauce with brown sugar.
• To eliminate cabbage odors, place a small tin cup half filled with vinegar on the stove near the cabbage.
• If brown sugar gets lumpy, put an apple wedge in it and microwave on high for about 20 seconds.
• To absorb excess salt, drop in a peeled potato while cooking.
• Puree overcooked vegetables, add broth or milk along with seasonings, and you'll have delicious soup.

2 tips for taking care of too much salt!  I love the idea of ice cubes to remove grease, too.  Cabbage odors aren't something I usually have a problem with, but I have found that vinegar is great for taking care of all kinds of odors.  I don't know why or how, but it works.

I usually just put a slice of bread in my brown sugar canister when it starts getting hard and lumpy.  The bread dries out, and the sugar gets nice and soft again.  (Make that half a slice of bread - while the bread is nice and soft and can easily be folded a bit to fit into the canister, once it dries out, it's not so easy - and you don't really want to break it and get bread crumbs all in your nice, soft brown sugar.  Of course, this all depends on the style of your canisters.  If the top/neck/opening of your canister is smaller than a slice of bread, you'll want to use half.  Believe me, I know!)  The bread is not a quick fix, so if you're ready to bake, and your brown sugar is hard, that apple wedge and microwave tip sounds good.  Then put the bread into the canister so you'll be ready next time.

Do you have any good tips for fixing cooking blunders?

No More Freezer Burn

When I go shopping, I always check the meat case to see if there are any markdowns.  When an item is getting close to it's Sell By date, the store will usually mark it down to encourage customers to buy it.  Walmart makes them really easy to spot with bright yellow stickers.

Buying this marked-down meat is a good way to save money.  The key is to use it or freeze it by the date on the package.  I usually buy several packages when I can get a good deal - whether it's chicken breasts, steaks, hamburger, or anything else I normally use.  Then the next day I break the large packages down and freeze them in single-use packages, usually in zipper bags, like in this post - Freezing Hamburger.

It wasn't until recently that I found a great way to avoid freezer burn - which happens when you freeze a lot of stuff and don't use it in a timely manner.  It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't think of it myself!  I was thinking maybe I needed one of those Vacuum-Sealing Systems - and one of these would be nice.  But, I was talking to the man who works in the meat department, and he suggested wrapping individual pieces of meat in plastic wrap and then putting them into the zipper bags.

Individually wrapped steaks in my freezer

Wrapping serves two purposes - the plastic wrap protects the steaks from freezer burn, should I not use them right away, and it's so easy to pull out just the number of steaks I need - even though they're all in the same zipper bag.  You know those individually frozen chicken breasts you can buy in the store?  Yes, I buy those too, but if I find a great deal on chicken breasts in the meat department, I can individually freeze my own now!

Also, a note: the best plastic wrap I have ever tried is the Great Value Premium Wrap - Professional Strength you can buy at Walmart.  I never even liked plastic wrap before I tried this stuff.  Seriously, it's great!

Baking for the Troops

I shared this on my other blog, but I thought I'd mention it here, too.  Kenmore and The Food Network’s Sunny Anderson have launched Kenmore “Baking for the Troops” to send up to 250,000 cookies to deployed troops with messages of support from Americans.  To participate, all you have to do is visit Kenmore's Facebook page and ask them to bake and send a dozen cookies on your behalf.  You'll also be able to choose from several messages of encouragement to send along with your cookies.

To make the deal even sweeter, when the goal of 250,000 cookies has been met, Kenmore will donate $50,000 to Heroes at Home Wish Registry to assist military families in need stateside. So, please - go ask Kenmore to donate some cookies for you, and then enjoy these baking tips from Sunny Anderson.

Baking tips:

• A baker’s golden rule: read all recipes before you begin.
• Invest in an oven thermometer. Baking is a science and a proper oven temperature can be the difference between good and great cookies.
• Ice cream scoops and melon ballers are great for measuring cookies so they are identical in size.
• Softened butter keeps its shape but allows dents with your finger. It also softens faster when placed on metal or aluminum.
• To store cookies, allow to completely cool then contain. If done before they’re cooled the cookies will either be too soft or brittle depending on the recipe.
• To stack sticky or soft cookies, use parchment paper, a muffin tin or cupcake liners.
• Cookie dough can survive in the freezer up to three weeks if properly wrapped and sealed.

Tuna Tip

Most of you have probably already thought of this, but I mentioned it to my brother-in-law a while back, and he hadn't.

When you use tuna, don't just pour the tuna water down the drain. If you have a cat, give her the water. She'll love it, and you! I usually only give our cat Tillie about half of it and save the other half for later - so she gets two treats from one can of tuna.

If you don't have a cat, well, just go ahead and pour the water down the drain...

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Don't Waste Chocolate!

We used to buy our Hershey's chocolate syrup in the can. When the can got about empty, we opened the top of the can and used a spatula to scrape out every last bit of the chocolate. I mean, it is chocolate, and it's not good to waste chocolate.

Now we buy our Hershey's syrup in the bottle, and it took me a while to figure out how to get every last bit of chocolate from that bottle. It's not like you can open up the bottle and scrape the chocolate out.

Instead, we have to make chocolate milk: Unscrew the top, pour some milk into the bottle, shake it up well, pour into a glass, and enjoy.

No more wasted chocolate!