General Cooking Skills, Food Preparation, Tips & Tricks, and other skills
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Easy Homemade Pizza Crust: The Essential Guide
In this video, I’m sharing my go-to guide for first-time pizza makers to create the best homemade pizza crust using a simple four-ingredient dough recipe. You don’t need a commercial pizza oven or fancy equipment. I’ll show you how to handle common beginner challenges, like using a pizza peel and getting the right bake in…
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How to Spatchcock a Chicken
Welcome to the Eating Plebian Skills Series, where we learn how to spatchcock a chicken. Spatchcocking is a technique for flattening a whole chicken, which allows it to cook much faster than an intact chicken. Flattening the chicken increases the surface area, allowing heat to cook the meat more quickly. I’ve even cooked whole chickens…
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Making Omelets Can Be Both Both Simple and Challenging. Here’s How to Start Off Right
More than anything else, technique can make or break an omelet. Heat management and knowing when to quit is the factor determining whether your omelet is soft and creamy, or resembles show leather. The following is the Cold Pan method, which increases your chances of success for this sometimes vexing dish. The recipe follows the…
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How to Cut a Chiffonade of Your Herbs and Vegetables
Here’s a simple, two minute guide on how to cut a Chiffonade- a series of thin, fine threads or ribbons of herbs and vegetables that give a nice presentation to dishes. Using basil, you could use this technique for quite a lot.
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How to Hone and Sharpen Your Kitchen Knives
Beyond a pot, a knife is the most common tool in the kitchen drawer. Eventually, with use, they will dull and will become unsafe as more pressure will be needed to cut through the food and possibly injure you. Also, less effort to dice up your vittles means a quicker and more satisfactory preparation of…
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No Garlic Press Needed- A Safe Kitchen Knife Handling Tutorial (video)
Proper knife handling is very important to a beginner cook, as proper early form makes a long-term habit. In the process, we’re using the activity of mincing garlic without a garlic press, which is something I’ve come to live without. Part of the Eating Plebian Skills series. Note that this is as much as a…
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How to Make Pizza Dough Without the Intimidation Factor
Many people become anxious about the thought of making pizza dough. Visiting a pizzeria and seeing the person in front of the flaming oven, tossing large disks of dough through the air might make those who haven’t done it a bit nervous of the thought. But with a little bit of time and a few…
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On Selecting Fats & Oils for Roasting, Sauteing, Frying and Other Things
So you have a nice piece of fish and wish to fry it up in a pan, or you have a whole chicken and wish to roast it in the oven. You’ll need some fat to keep it from sticking, or want to impart a nice crispiness to the poultry skin. You have butter, extra…