Recipe Tricks and Tips
Posted by terrepruitt on November 24, 2012
Sometimes I don’t even have to try a recipe to be able to use a portion of it. Sometimes I do try the recipe and even though I might not use it again, I gain something from it. A tip, a tactic, a procedure, a trick, ya know . . . . something. Sometimes the process explained in the recipe makes what I am actually doing escape me. What am I talking about, right? Well, I love macaroni and cheese. I don’t eat it often because, well, it is not high on the health-o-meter. I will admit that I love the boxed stuff. I have a box in my pantry for those nights when I just don’t have time to figure out what to eat or I just can’t muster a good healthy answer to: “What am I going to cook for dinner?” Usually I restrict the making of the box of macaroni and cheese to when I have a bell pepper or some broccoli. I add a vegetable to help bring up the nutrients, which is necessary because there really isn’t anything nutritious in that box. I love Kraft’s Three Cheese and Annie’s White Cheddar. I actually can’t tell you when I last had the Kraft one. It does have a lot more chemical’s than Annie’s. Anyway, I was browsing on My Sister’s Pantry when I saw this: “Instant Mac & Cheese Without The Box” I was excited thinking I could have that same taste but without the box.
So I made it. And it doesn’t taste like the boxed kind. It really shouldn’t because it is made with better ingredients and it is fresh, but I was kinda hoping for that familiar box taste. Crazy, I know. The macaroni and cheese from the recipe was good. Both my husband and I loved it, but it is basically a mac and cheese with a roux base. Which I didn’t even THINK about until I tasted it. Yes, I did make it. Yes, I know most people would recognize it as a roux as they were making it, but I didn’t. I was thrown off by the shaking of the milk and the flour. And the shaking (mixing) that is my take away from this recipe.
Mixing the flour and milk in a container. AWESOME shake and pour. No more lumps! Ever! I mean, I can make a roux without lumps but sometimes I am in a hurry or trying to do a few other things and so my roux suffers. I am blessed with a husband who is just happy to have dinner made for him so he never complains about my lumpy white sauce (good boy!). But the flour and milk in a shakable container — brilliant.
I made soup recently in my slow cooker and the recipe was created for a much bigger crock pot. Even though I cut back on some of the ingredients, I still ended up with a way-too-full crock pot. At the last 30 minutes of cooking mark the recipe calls for two cups of milk and a half a cup of flour to be stirred into the pot. And of course, you need to stir until the lumps are gone. I could barely stir much less stir lumps out. I was so happy to have the shake-it-up trick from the mac and cheese recipe. It works so well, I am going to use it for every milk/flour recipe! So even though I probably won’t make that mac and cheese recipe again I have a new trick. Yay!
Do you have any tricks that you use all the time that you learned from a recipe?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 
biggsis said
Thanks for the link! We often throw a vegetable into our mac & cheese to bring up the nutritional level as well. Even with the homemade!
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terrepruitt said
Yeah, great idea! Throw a veggie (or whatever) into anything you want to help make it healthier! Just because it is homemade doesn’t mean it is healthy so I should remember to add more nutrition to it! Thanks!
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