Tinfoil Chef

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One of the things that make losing weight difficult is that so many have a hard time burning off the excess calories. It’s hard enough when you think about the fat that you’re trying to lose, then along comes the thought of burning off the calories that you eat with every meal.

All of a sudden it seems like there’s an almost insurmountable problem. Fortunately it’s not *that* impossible. For one thing, you *need* a certain amount of calories to fuel normal operation of the body. You just need to burn up any amount that’s more than you eat. This way stored fat gets used up. One way to speed this up is with fat burning foods.

These foods help you because you actually burn a few more calories to digest them than they contain, resulting in a net loss. Mind you, fat burners aren’t a license to go crazy and load yourself up. It’s still important to eat a proper, balanced, diet that contains all of the nutritional stuff you need.

Here’s a list of “fat burning” foods. It’s made up mostly of fruits and vegetables that require a fair amount of the body’s energy to digest. Eating dishes that include as much of this as you can reasonably manage, combined with a decent exercise program will increase your metabolism and burn calories faster for several hours after the exercise is done.

apples, apricots, artichokes, asparagus, beets, blackberries, blueberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cherries, chives, cod, corn, crabs, cranberries, cucumbers, eggplant, flounder, garlic, grapefruit, grapes, green beans, honeydew, kale, leeks, lemons, lettuce, limes, lobster, mangoes, mushrooms, nectarines, okra, onions, oranges, papaya, parsley, peaches, pears, peas, peppers, pineapple, prunes, pumpkin, radishes, raspberries, red cabbage, sauerkraut, scallions, spinach, squash, strawberries, string beans, tangerines, tomatoes, turnips, watermelon

As you can see, there’s a lot of things here, enough so that even if you avoid the things that you just plain don’t like there will still be plenty of choices. Getting ready to write this I also read that the calcium in dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt also helps them to qualify as fat burners because they increase breakdown in fat cells.

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I was going to do another one of the cooking terms posts but then I ran across something that made me decide that the term “Boil” deserved a bit broader treatment than as a one of many in a list of several items.

First I’ll start out defining the term. To boil is to cook something in water or other liquid that’s been heated until it’s bubbling vigorously.

The misconception is that anything being cooked in heated water is being boiled and that the more intense the boiling action, the better. However simmering and poaching are related to boiling and are actually used a lot more often.

What I’ve learned is that boiling is often a technique that is best avoided. Most foods, for example meat and seafood, are better poached instead. The reason is that boiling meat and seafood can leave them dry or stringy and the liquid will be left greasy.

Poaching is to cook in liquid where the temperature is held just below the boiling point so that it shimmers slightly on the surface.

On the other hand, there are some foods that are best cooked at a rolling boil. For example rice and pasta cook more quickly and evenly in boiling water. Green vegetables are often cooked uncovered in a large amount of boiling salted water. The large quantity of water keeps the vegetables from lowering the temperature of the water and slowing the cooking process. It would also cause them to lose their bright color.

The salt also helps the vegetables retain their green color. As soon as the vegetables are done you should immediately drain them in a colander and then either plunge them into ice water or quickly rinse them under cold tap water until they’re completely cool. This technique of immediately chilling the drained vegetables so they retain their flavor and color is called refreshing or shocking.

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I have a bad habit of getting into a hurry when cooking. The reason I consider this a bad habit is because while it’s true that you can “hurry things along” with some recipes or prep techniques, there are others that if you try to hurry them, all you’re going to do is stand a real big chance of ruining something.

For example, recently I was making something that required an onion to be diced up and sauted until it was mostly caramelized. In order to saute something right, you have to work with no more than a medium heat. Turning the heat all the way up isn’t going to allow time for the moisture in the onion to come out and the onion bits themselves soften and turn clear. It’s also a good way to burn them rather than caramelize them.

Instead, use the medium heat along with frequent stirring to prevent sticking. Try to plan ahead so that you’ll have the time to saute something right. In my example of onions I’ve found that it can take ten to fifteen minutes to do it right without either burning them or having a lot of them turn out only partially cooked and still crunchier than they should be.

Technorati Tags: cooking tips, hurry up, take your time, tips, heat, time, saute

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Some of the traffic that comes to Tinfoil Chef is from search engines. What I find interesting is looking at the search terms that they used because it’s interesting to see what kind of search terms are returning results for Tinfoil Chef. Among the more interesting ones recently was two recent visitors came here from google after using ‘cooking with tinfoil in microwave’ as their search terms.

It’s pretty easy to see why google would connect ‘cooking’, ‘tinfoil’, and ‘microwave’ with this site given the name and subject matter of this blog. But it occurred to me that it’d be a good idea to do a post about Cooking With Tinfoil In Microwave Oven.

There’s really only one thing to say about it… “Don’t Do it!“. For one reason, the kind of feedback generated is very bad for the microwave transmitter that is the heart of the oven. Too much operating like that would very likely burn it out completely.

If you’d like any further evidence of why you should never put any kind of metal or foil in a microwave oven, check out the following YouTube Video that somebody did which demonstrates what happens when you do it.

Please note that this demonstration was only with aluminum foil. Had there been food or any flammable material in there it probably would have caught fire, running the risk of not only destroying the oven, but also of spreading to the rest of the house.

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I made a dish the other day following a recipe found online and had another one of those times where I got to learn something the hard way.

This dish combined, among other things, pasta and potatoes. My wife and I had high hopes for this because it smelled so good in the slow cooker. What I *should* have done was adjust the recipe and stop short of adding any pasta to it.

What I ended up doing was discovered that there was no macaroni around and substituted Penne instead. The pasta was added about a half hour or so before the end of the cooking time. By the time it was done, those seemingly small Penne tubes had swelled to a proportion that I honestly don’t remember seeing before. It looked large enough to be used as a sheath over a CAT5e network cable.

To make a long story short, it turned out to be a tasteless disaster. Between the pasta and the potatoes, the thing was really starchy and loaded to the gills with carbs. The noodles began to disintegrate and several other ingredients were literally lost, almost impossible to find.

The moral of the story is that if a recipe has potatoes in it, you want to be very careful about whether or not to add any kind of pasta to it.

Technorati Tags: pasta, slow cooker, starches, potatoes, disaster, carbs

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I’ve had a problem lately with tomato sauces, specifically the sauce didn’t want to sauce stick to the pasta, resulting in the pasta basically laying there in an almost “sauce soup” kinda thing. It would simply come right off of the pasta as you picked it up.

So I spent a bunch of time looking around the net trying to find ways to get it to cooperate. Here’s the results of what I found out.

The first tip was to use tomato paste to thicken the sauce.

A common tip was to use a bit of corn starch. Mix it with a little water and then stir it into the sauce.

Another common tip was to cook the sauce “gently” on a low heat for a long long time. The moisture evaporates as it cooks and the sauce is reduced to a concentrated and thicker form.

One that I liked was to add some chopped up dehydrated tomatoes to soak up moisture as the sauce cooks.

For cheese lovers, a little grated Parmesan and a little flour (preferably semolena if you have it) will thicken the sauce.

When cooking the noodles, make sure not to overcook them. They should be “al dente”, firm to the tooth.

Finally, another popular bit of advice was to never rinse the noodles after boiling and draining them because doing so washes away the starch that normally helps the sauce to stick to the noodles. Instead, when the noodles are done, drain them and allow them to sit draining in the colander for several minutes to make sure all of the water is drained away.

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Tomato sauce and by extension pasta sauce, pizza sauce and many others that are based on a tomato sauce. They’re all great, however there is one drawback for some people. The Tomato is basically an acidic plant and sauces maded from it are going to be acidic. While this isn’t a problem for most people, there’s plenty of people that have indigestion or Acid Reflux that’s aggravated enough by the acid content to seriously cut into their enjoyment of the meal.

I spent a bunch of time over the last several days searching out ways in which to cut the acid and learned a few things. A few of which will help.

The first thing I found was a suggestion to add a couple teaspoons of sugar to the sauce as it cooks down. This is one that I’ve tried recently and regretted doing so. Sugar MIGHT cut acid a little but mostly what it does is add sweetness to the taste and a sweet pasta sauce is not something I ever want to make again. I honestly don’t think that sugar actually gets rid of any acid, it just tries to mask it with the sweet taste. Not good in a tomato sauce.

Another suggestion was sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda. When the sauce is near the end of the cooking process and most of the juices are gone, add a VERY little bit, Just enough to fit on the point of a steak knife. Stir it into the sauce. You’ll see a lot of small white bubbles all over. They are caused by a chemical reaction that actually nutralizes some of the acid in the sauce. When the bubbles subside taste the sauce to check both for acidity and any change to the taste. If you need to add a bit more baking soda you can but caution is the word of the day. Best to do this in very small steps because once you add it in you can’t take any of it back out.

The third idea is one that as a cheese lover I kinda like. Add grated cheese. Parmesan cheese (the real stuff, Parmigiano-Reggiano) or a little Pecorino (a very strong cheese), even ricotta cheese will reduce the acid in tomato sauces and add their own flavors. This works because cheese contains calcium which has a chemical reaction with the acid that nutralizes some of it.

A suggestion I read somewhere on discusscooking.com was to add a whole potato to the sauce while cooking it and remove before serving. I’m not sure how this would work but it’s probably got something to do with the starches in the potato. Another comment on that site suggested adding a carrot to the sauce. Someone else suggested adding a bit of vinegar, though I can’t see how vinegar which is more acidic would help cut acid from tomato sauce

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I’ve been guilty of using canned spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce as a base to make the actual sauce that we end up using. Circumstances finally caught up with me however recently. I was all geared up to make the spaghetti sauce when I discovered that the cupboard had experienced some serious weight loss, the canned sauce that I’ve always used as a base was gone. Ditto the tomato sauce that I’ve used on occasion.

Fortunately I’ve been known to be a quick study when I need to be and after spending some time with a search engine and looking at various tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce recipes, I settled on this combination of several things I found and one or two that I’ve been doing all along.

First comes the tomato sauce which serves as the base. Since I didn’t have any fresh tomatoes I opened four cans of diced tomatoes and sent them on a merry journey in the food processor to render them into a sorta thick semi-liquid state. I did “cheat” a bit and added a 6oz can of tomato paste as well.

Then I put that in a largish saucepan with a cup of water and cooked them over a medium heat, stirring frequently until they cook down and get thicker … roughly about 45 minutes to an hour or until it’s thick and smooth.

This sauce can be put in a tightly sealed container and frozen for up to a year or so if you make a large enough batch of it.

You can also make a tomato paste by continuing to cook on a low heat, stirring frequently to keep the sauce from scorching until it thickens to a paste. This can also be frozen in sealed containers for up to a year or so.

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Low Fat. Thats a couple of words that for a long time I’ve associated with food that’s had a big chunk of the taste taken out of it along with the fat. However this does not always have to be the case. For example, this Low-Fat Alfredo Sauce is one that I’ll wager you’d need to have it checked out by a clinical laboratory service in order to determine it’s true nature.

If all you went by was the taste, I’ve no doubt that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the low fat version and the traditional version.

Combine a cup and a half of Low-Fat Cottage Cheese and 3 Tablespoons of Low-Fat Milk in a blender or food processor and blend until it’s smooth.

In a 2 quart saucepan saute about half of a Red Sweet Pepper (chopped) and a minced clove of garlic in a tablespoon of margarine until it’s softened.

Then reduce the heat and add the milk mixture and about 1/8 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Cook until it’s heated through without boiling it.

To serve: toss it with about 8 ounces of hot fettuccine or linguine that’s been cooked and drained. Sprinkle with a bit of grated parmesan cheese and maybe a bit of fresh chopped basil and you’ve got four main dish servings of Alfredo that you’ll never be able to tell it’s “low fat”

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One of the jobs I’ve always hated is the task of once in a while going through the refrigerator not only to clean it (which isn’t a bad job in itself really), and find the occasional mystery item that got put away only to slip behind or under something else and get forgotten.

You know, the block of cheese that suddenly looks like blue-green home theater carpet, the plastic storage dish that you forgot was in there and when it’s opened you suddenly decide you don’t care why it’s in there or what it once was. That sucker’s going in the trash and if it won’t easily come out of the container then the whole thing gets pitched.

On the other hand, I learned something once about hard blocks of cheese. When they get that fuzzy blue-green growing on them, all you need to do is use either a sharp knife or a cheese slicer to cut off all of the outer surface layers. Those you pitch, the rest is perfectly good cheese.

It’s a good idea when doing this to make sure that none of the clean surfaces you expose touch the stuff you’re cutting off. The way I avoid that is to clean the knife I’m using every cut or two in order to prevent any of the blue-green from collecting on the knife and spreading onto the rest of the cheese.

I’d say that it almost goes without saying that once this is done it’s a good idea to be sure to use that cheese soon. And if you don’t use it right away, be sure to store it in a fresh, clean container that seals tight.

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