1. Wine ATM
2. Air Fryer
Hot air frying is a new cooking technique that allows you to fry, grill and roast without the use of copious amounts of fat or oil. You can get that deep-fried taste and texture without the grease.
Hot air frying machines are the first real kitchen innovation since the 1970s, when we acquired slow cookers and microwaves.
These appliances are designed to circulate extremely hot air in a fashion that mimics the movement and flow of heat currents in a pot of boiling oil, to crisp up the outsides of food while cooking it inside.
Some designs also have a grilling element, for added browning and crispiness.
Food ends up crispy on the outside, and very moist on the inside.
Air frying VS Deep-Fat Frying
Air-fried food will, obviously, taste a little different from deep-fried food, but most fans think air-fried actually tastes better: you don’t have the taste of the sodden-grease that later sinks to the pit of your stomach. But still, the taste is acceptably close to deep-fried without the terrible cleanup and the heavy oil smell in the house. It’s way less work, so you may end up eating fried food more than ever.
On the face of it, it can look like the hot air machines take longer to make a batch of homemade fries than deep-fat would — say, 25 minutes for air frying versus 8 minutes for deep fried, but don’t forget to add in all the hidden warm up and cool down time before and after deep-frying, not to mention the hassle. As much as people might purport to love deep-fat frying, few people rarely do it at home anymore precisely for that reason. There’s the waiting time for the oil to heat up, then the waiting time for it to cool down, the cleanup, the filtering and storage of the oil — not to mention the odour.
Hot air frying completely eliminates all that hassle.
What’s truly unbelievable, but true nonetheless, is that most of us thought fried foods were basically banned from our lives forever — but with a hot air fryer, many of our favourite fried foods are back, and back as part of a very healthy way of daily eating!
And for your cooking oils, you can now go crazy and experiment with some very interesting stuff: avocado oil, walnut oil, duck and goose fat, grapeseed oil, etc — the sky is the limit for healthy and tasty cooking fats now! These healthy, gourmet cooking fats are ideal for hot air frying!
Hot air frying tremendously reduces the danger of making fried food. Young teenagers can be taught to operate hot air fryers as safely as they would toaster ovens and microwaves, and firemen’s lives would be a different place if people coming home from a night at the pub tossed a bag of frozen chips into the basket of a hot air fryer, and set the timer, instead of putting a pan on hot oil on the stove.
3. Slow Cooker
A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot, is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than other cooking methods, such as baking, boiling, and frying.
1. Don’t add lean meats
While slow cooking turns tougher, sinewy joints of meat (think beef shin, oxtail, pork shoulder) into tender morsels, lean cuts (chicken breast, pork fillet, fillet steak) cook down to tough leather. It’s better to leave these pieces of meat for frying or grilling.
3. Don’t use too much liquid
Slow cookers are excellent at retaining their moisture, so pouring in too much stock or water will mean your casserole tastes insipid. If you’re using a stew recipe that wasn’t written for the slow cooker (and please do – it’s a great idea!), reduce the liquid quantity by roughly half.
You can always top it up during the cooking time if it looks dry.
4. Don’t add summer vegetables
Long cooking is great for softening hard root veg, but it's a brutal treatment for delicate vegetables like courgettes, asparagus and peas, and will render them mushy.
Don’t add them to the slow cooker until near the end of the cooking time.
5. Don’t add too much spice
Resist temptation to get silly with the chillies – fiery ingredients become increasingly hotter the longer they’re cooked.
Sprinkling them in with everything at the beginning is only for total spice fiends.
For everyone else, it’s best to stir them in at the last minute.
6. Don’t add raw dried beans EVER (until you do this first…)
Slow cookers are a great way to make the most of pulses, but don’t cook raw dried beans in them because you can make your diners ill (or worse). Lots of types of dried beans, especially kidney beans, contain a toxic substance that needs to be destroyed first by cooking them at a high temperature to make them safe to eat. Most crockpots cook too gently to do this, so briskly boil the beans first for 10min on the hob, drain, rinse, then add to your slow cooker.
7. Don’t add dairy
Prolonged cooking of dairy products causes them to separate.
Adding milk, cream or yogurt to crockpots at the beginning of cooking is a sure-fire way to wind-up with a grainy, watery mess at the end.
Stir it in once the recipe has finished cooking.
8. Don’t add too much booze
As mentioned before, slow cookers don’t evaporate much liquid, so putting large glugs of wine or beer straight into to your crockpot is not a great idea.
Alcohol needs to evaporate a little to taste appealing and not acrid, so try reducing it in a separate pan on the hob first.
9. Don’t add meat that has the skin on
Skin-on cuts of meat need the dry heat of roasting or grilling to crisp up.
Cook them in a crockpot and you’ll end up picking unappetising, flubbery bits of skin out of your casserole.
10. Don’t add soft fresh herbs
Unless you’re using woody herbs like rosemary or thyme (and if you use these, use them sparingly as they’re potent), cooking soft herbs like basil or coriander for too long will obliterate their delightful fragrant properties.
Stir them in just before serving.
11. Don’t add seafood
Just like lean cuts of meat, fish and shellfish need to be cooked for a very short time or risk being destroyed.
The only exceptions are squid and octopus, which can benefit from a slow braise to tenderise them to perfection.
12. Don’t add pasta and rice
It might seem like a time-saver to bung these staple ingredients in with your slow cooker stew, but doing so will turn your hard work into a gloopy, congealed mess - they’re too starchy and cook too quickly.
It’s wiser to cook pasta and rice separately once your dish is close to being done, and serve them alongside.
Sources
@ http://www.hotairfrying.com/what-is-hot-air-frying
@ https://swirled.com/wine-atm-las-vegas/
@ https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/10-top-tips-using-slow-cooker
@ http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/food/food-news/foods-you-shouldnt-put-in-a-slow-cooker
In a perfect world, wine flows from taps. And lucky for us, that’s a reality. At the Hostile Grape, located inside the M Resort in Las Vegas, there’s a wine ATM and it looks like something from the future. You can walk around filling up your wine glass as you go. The world is basically your oyster.
Once you put money on a wine card, you can choose one-ounce pours, three-ounce pours or five-ounce pours. You insert the card into the machine, select your wine, press a button and out comes a flowing stream into your glass. It’s truly magical.
The pours range from reasonable to pricey. You can sample over 160 wines on tap at the Hostile Grape and the wine cellar has over 400 bottles of vino. White wines are kept along the walls to stay cool and red wines are displayed on racks throughout the place.
If you’re more into beer than wine, this wine ATM is a great place to start your love affair with wine. You get to try a little bit of everything.
2. Air Fryer
Hot air frying is a new cooking technique that allows you to fry, grill and roast without the use of copious amounts of fat or oil. You can get that deep-fried taste and texture without the grease.
Hot air frying machines are the first real kitchen innovation since the 1970s, when we acquired slow cookers and microwaves.
These appliances are designed to circulate extremely hot air in a fashion that mimics the movement and flow of heat currents in a pot of boiling oil, to crisp up the outsides of food while cooking it inside.
Some designs also have a grilling element, for added browning and crispiness.
Food ends up crispy on the outside, and very moist on the inside.
Air frying VS Deep-Fat Frying
Air-fried food will, obviously, taste a little different from deep-fried food, but most fans think air-fried actually tastes better: you don’t have the taste of the sodden-grease that later sinks to the pit of your stomach. But still, the taste is acceptably close to deep-fried without the terrible cleanup and the heavy oil smell in the house. It’s way less work, so you may end up eating fried food more than ever.
On the face of it, it can look like the hot air machines take longer to make a batch of homemade fries than deep-fat would — say, 25 minutes for air frying versus 8 minutes for deep fried, but don’t forget to add in all the hidden warm up and cool down time before and after deep-frying, not to mention the hassle. As much as people might purport to love deep-fat frying, few people rarely do it at home anymore precisely for that reason. There’s the waiting time for the oil to heat up, then the waiting time for it to cool down, the cleanup, the filtering and storage of the oil — not to mention the odour.
Hot air frying completely eliminates all that hassle.
Your Favourite Foods are Back on The Menu — And Dieticians Will Approve
And for your cooking oils, you can now go crazy and experiment with some very interesting stuff: avocado oil, walnut oil, duck and goose fat, grapeseed oil, etc — the sky is the limit for healthy and tasty cooking fats now! These healthy, gourmet cooking fats are ideal for hot air frying!
Hot air frying tremendously reduces the danger of making fried food. Young teenagers can be taught to operate hot air fryers as safely as they would toaster ovens and microwaves, and firemen’s lives would be a different place if people coming home from a night at the pub tossed a bag of frozen chips into the basket of a hot air fryer, and set the timer, instead of putting a pan on hot oil on the stove.
3. Slow Cooker
A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot, is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than other cooking methods, such as baking, boiling, and frying.
10 tOP TIPS FOR USING A SLOW COOKER
1. Save time & effort
One of the main attractions for many is the ease of a slow-cooker so when you're looking for recipes, avoid those that suggest a lot of pre-preparation. For many dishes, particularly soups and stews, you really can just throw all the ingredients in. It can be nice to cook the onions beforehand as the flavour is different to when you put them in raw but experiment both ways as you may find you prefer one. It can also be good to brown meat to give it some colour but again this is not essential.
2. Get ahead
If you're short on time in the morning, prepare everything you need for your slow-cooked meal the night before, put it into the slow-cooker dish, cover and store in the fridge overnight. Ideally the dish should be as close to room temperature as possible, so get it out of the fridge when you wake up and leave it for 20 minutes before turning the cooker on. If you need to heat your dish beforehand, then put the ingredients in a different container and transfer them in the morning.
3. Save money
Slow cookers are great for cooking cheaper cuts like beef brisket, pork shoulder, lamb shoulder and chicken thighs. You can also use less meat as slow-cooking really extracts a meaty flavour that permeates the whole dish. Bulk up with vegetables instead.
4. Trim the fat
You don't need to add oil to a slow cooker, the contents won't catch as long as there's enough moisture in there. You don't need a lot of fat on your meat either. Normally when you fry meat, a lot of the fat drains away, this won't happen in a slow cooker so trim it off, otherwise you might find you have pools of oil in your stew. This will give you a healthier result and it'll still be tasty.
5. Go easy on the liquid
Because your slow cooker will have a tightly sealed lid, the liquid won't evaporate so if you're adapting a standard recipe, it's best to reduce the liquid by roughly a third. Liquid should just cover the meat and vegetables. Don't overfill your slow cooker or it may start leaking out the top and food won't cook as well. Half to two thirds full is ideal and certainly no more than three quarters.
6. Thickening
Just as the the liquid doesn't reduce it also doesn't thicken. You can roll meat in a small amount of seasoned flour before adding it to the slow cooker or use a little cornflour at the end. If you want to do the latter, take a teaspoon or two of cornflour, mix it to a paste with a little cold water. Stir into your simmering slow cooker contents, then replace the lid.
7. Slow is good
Ginny has been working with slow-cookers for over a decade, her advice is to use the 'Low' setting as much as you can, finding most dishes really benefit from a slow, gentle heat to really bring out the flavours. This also means you won't need to worry if you're heading out for the day, it'll take care of itself. "I think of it as my cook fairy making my dinner while I'm out," says Ginny.
8. Leave it alone
Slow cookers are designed to do their own thing so you don't need to keep checking the contents. Everytime you take the lid off it will release some of the heat, so if you keep doing this you'll have to increase the cooking time.
9. When to add food
Ideally you want to choose recipes where most, if not all, of the ingredients can be added at the beginning, leaving you free to do other things. However in most cases, pasta, rice and fresh herbs will need to be added towards the end.
10. How long should I cook it for?
If a dish usually takes:
- 15 - 30 mins, cook it for 1 - 2 hours on High or 4 - 6 hours on Low
- 30 mins - 1 hour, cook it for 2 - 3 hours on High or 5 - 7 hours on Low
- 1 - 2 hours, cook it for 3 - 4 hours on High or 6 - 8 hours on Low
- 2 - 4 hours, cook it for 4 - 6 hours on High or 8 - 12 hours on Low
Root vegetables can take longer than meat and other vegetables so put these near the heat source, at the bottom of the pot.
12 THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T PUT IN YOUR SLOW COOKER
Slow cookers are great, but they can't cook everything. When you get things right, slow cookers can be a busy person’s best friend. But add the wrong thing to your recipe and you face disaster! Here’s a handy guide for what not to put in your crockpot.
1. Don’t add lean meatsWhile slow cooking turns tougher, sinewy joints of meat (think beef shin, oxtail, pork shoulder) into tender morsels, lean cuts (chicken breast, pork fillet, fillet steak) cook down to tough leather. It’s better to leave these pieces of meat for frying or grilling.
2. Don’t add raw meat
A crockpot’s gentle heat means meat will never get a chance to brown, but it’s the golden colour from frying that gives it depth of flavour. If you don’t want your stew to taste bland, brown the meat first, then put it in the slow cooker.
3. Don’t use too much liquid
Slow cookers are excellent at retaining their moisture, so pouring in too much stock or water will mean your casserole tastes insipid. If you’re using a stew recipe that wasn’t written for the slow cooker (and please do – it’s a great idea!), reduce the liquid quantity by roughly half.
You can always top it up during the cooking time if it looks dry.
4. Don’t add summer vegetables
Long cooking is great for softening hard root veg, but it's a brutal treatment for delicate vegetables like courgettes, asparagus and peas, and will render them mushy.
Don’t add them to the slow cooker until near the end of the cooking time.
5. Don’t add too much spice
Resist temptation to get silly with the chillies – fiery ingredients become increasingly hotter the longer they’re cooked.
Sprinkling them in with everything at the beginning is only for total spice fiends.
For everyone else, it’s best to stir them in at the last minute.
Slow cookers are a great way to make the most of pulses, but don’t cook raw dried beans in them because you can make your diners ill (or worse). Lots of types of dried beans, especially kidney beans, contain a toxic substance that needs to be destroyed first by cooking them at a high temperature to make them safe to eat. Most crockpots cook too gently to do this, so briskly boil the beans first for 10min on the hob, drain, rinse, then add to your slow cooker.
7. Don’t add dairy
Prolonged cooking of dairy products causes them to separate.
Adding milk, cream or yogurt to crockpots at the beginning of cooking is a sure-fire way to wind-up with a grainy, watery mess at the end.
Stir it in once the recipe has finished cooking.
8. Don’t add too much booze
As mentioned before, slow cookers don’t evaporate much liquid, so putting large glugs of wine or beer straight into to your crockpot is not a great idea.
Alcohol needs to evaporate a little to taste appealing and not acrid, so try reducing it in a separate pan on the hob first.
9. Don’t add meat that has the skin on
Skin-on cuts of meat need the dry heat of roasting or grilling to crisp up.
Cook them in a crockpot and you’ll end up picking unappetising, flubbery bits of skin out of your casserole.
10. Don’t add soft fresh herbs
Unless you’re using woody herbs like rosemary or thyme (and if you use these, use them sparingly as they’re potent), cooking soft herbs like basil or coriander for too long will obliterate their delightful fragrant properties.
Stir them in just before serving.
11. Don’t add seafood
Just like lean cuts of meat, fish and shellfish need to be cooked for a very short time or risk being destroyed.
The only exceptions are squid and octopus, which can benefit from a slow braise to tenderise them to perfection.
12. Don’t add pasta and rice
It might seem like a time-saver to bung these staple ingredients in with your slow cooker stew, but doing so will turn your hard work into a gloopy, congealed mess - they’re too starchy and cook too quickly.
It’s wiser to cook pasta and rice separately once your dish is close to being done, and serve them alongside.
Sources
@ http://www.hotairfrying.com/what-is-hot-air-frying
@ https://swirled.com/wine-atm-las-vegas/
@ https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/10-top-tips-using-slow-cooker
@ http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/food/food-news/foods-you-shouldnt-put-in-a-slow-cooker
Comments
Post a Comment