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In The Know About The Food Service Industry
Here are some great tips and fun foodservice facts! Let us
know how you like them.
Better Stews and Soups
When preparing stews, adding a half cup of strong tea will
help tenderize the meat and reduce cooking time. For added
flavor, try adding a tablespoon of molasses. If you want
your stew or soup to be a bit sweeter, add a small amount of
pureed carrots. To thicken stews, add a little quick-cooking
oats or grated potato.
Most people are aware that over-salted stews and soups can
be corrected by adding a piece of potato or two and
discarding the potato after simmering briefly. An apple will
also work if you don't have a potato handy. To reduce a
strong garlic flavor in almost any liquid, place some
parsley flakes in a tea ball and use it to "soak up" the
excess garlic.
Cranberry Sweetening
To sweeten a bag of cranberries when cooking, add 1/4
teaspoon of baking soda and use less sugar to achieve the
same level of sweetness.
Flakier Pie and Pastry Crusts
For a flakier pastry shell or pie crust, add one tablespoon
of lemon juice when mixing the dough. To prevent soggy
crusts, spread a thin layer of butter on the bottom of the
pie pan before placing the dough in it. Also, coating a pie
shell with egg white before baking, by brushing with a
pastry brush, prevents a soggy crust.
Improving Your Kernel Corn
Add richness to your corn after cooking, by adding two
ounces of cream cheese (regular or light) to every sixteen
ounces of corn. Stir into the hot corn until the cheese
melts.
Perfect Potatoes
For wonderfully light and creamy mashed potatoes, just add a
little baking powder before beating them vigorously.
Don't store boiled potatoes more than a day or two. After 2
to 5 days, they will only have 0% to 3% of their original
nutritional value remaining.
Salsa Is King!
Salsa has replaced ketchup as the best-selling condiment in
the U.S.! You may want to experiment with some of the more
unusual varieties. Most are low in sugar and contain lots of
nutritional ingredients!
Here Are Some Sweet Ideas Regarding
Honey
To produce just one pound of honey, bees must forage over a
flight path equal to three trips around the world. While
doing this, they burn up only one ounce of honey as fuel.
That's 7,000,000 miles per gallon! Honey continues today to
offer all the qualities that have made it a favorite
sweetener since prehistoric times. It was discovered in
Egyptian pyramids and was still perfectly edible!
Honey is a versatile food that enhances and accents the
flavors of other foods. It is used as a spread, topping for
fruit, fruit salad, or ice cream and a small amount gives an
excellent flavor to whipped cream. It can also be used to
sweeten cold or hot cereals, and in beverages such as milk,
tea, juice, lemon or orangeade.
When cooking with honey, substitute it for sugar (measure
for measure) in puddings, custards, pie fillings, baked
apples, candied, and sweet-sour vegetables, salad dressings,
and cinnamon toast. Brushed or drizzled on ham during the
last half hour of baking, honey adds flavor and creates a
golden glaze. When baking cakes and cookies, substitute 7/8
cup of honey for each one cup of sugar, and reduce the
liquid called for in the recipe by 3 tablespoons for each
cup of sugar. The honey should be mixed with the liquid in
the recipe, then thoroughly blended with the other
ingredients to prevent a soggy layer from forming on top.
Products made with honey also brown faster, so reduce your
oven temperature by 25 degrees.
When adding honey to a recipe, spray your measuring spoon or
cup with a non-stick cooking spray. The honey will slide
right off with no mess. The same spray works equally well
when measuring syrup or molasses. Be sure your measurer is
completely emptied each time for accurate portions. Honey is
not recommended for use in foods for infants under one year
old.
Helpful Hints
Cook to the right temperature for the right length of time.
Most bacteria, viruses and food contaminates can be
eliminated by cooking foods to the right temperatures, then
holding them at that temperature, or hotter, long nougat to
kill the toxins. Any form of heating-baking, roasting or
frying-destroys bacteria that cause food-borne illness.
Recommended minimum times and temperatures:
-
Beef, veal and lamb, 160ºF
for at least 10 seconds. Some authorities accept minimum
temperatures of as low as 145º F (between rare and
medium-rare), but these red meats must be kept at that
temperature for a minute or more for safety.
-
Poultry that's been cut
into pieces should be cooked to an internal temperature
of 170ºF; use 180ºF for whole birds.
-
Pork may be eaten after
reaching an internal temperature of 160ºF. In some
cases, this means pork may appear slightly pink. That's
acceptable with today's pork if the proper cooking
temperature has been reached.
-
Fish should be cooked
until it' flesh is opaque and flakes easily when tested
with a fork at its thickest part. Its internal
temperature should be at least 145ºF
-
Always reheat cooked foods
to a temperature of 165ºF. Maintain hot, cooked foods in
a buffet at 140ºF or higher, and keep cold buffet items
at 40ºF or lower.
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