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| Gadgets and Tips to remove frustration when preparing Thanksgiving Dinner |
Prepare Food in Advance and Store for Use Later
You might be surprised to discover just how many foods and ingredients can be made ahead of time. This includes toasted bread for thanksgiving dressing, diced, sliced and chopped ingredients.
For example, chop up onions and put it in a food storage container. When you need chopped onion for the recipe you're using, it saves time and frustration to be able to just pull out the container from the refrigerator or freezer and measure what you need. This works with many ingredients.
Helpful Kitchen Gadgets Turn Hours into Minutes
Buy yourself a potato ricer for your holiday meal mashed potatoes. It a great gadget to have in your kitchen, it looks like a giant garlic press, is really affordable, and is easy to use: There’s nothing better your Thanksgiving table than smooth airy mashed potatoes.
Another great gadget is a folding steamer platform that sits in almost any pot or pan and works great for your steamed veggies.
Invest in a salad spinner. They are also quite inexpensive and work wonders for that holiday green salad.
Make sure your roasting pan is the correct size and is placed on the middle rack.
7 Cooking Tips
1. You can substitute 1 tablespoon of fresh rosemary leaves with 1 teaspoon. of dried, but fresh is better.
2. When roasting a turkey, use a spray olive oil to coat your roasting pan to easily turn pan juices into gravy.
3. To roast garlic, sprinkle the bulb with a little olive oil and white wine, salt and pepper, wrap it in tin foil and roast in a 350 degree oven for approximately one hour.
4. Mushrooms should be wiped off with a damp cloth and not washed under the faucet since they are like sponges and will absorb the water.
5. Try using carrots instead of sugar to sweeten your sauces.
6. When your recipes call for fresh cracked pepper corns, put fresh peppercorns in a zip lock bag and crack them on a cutting board with a hammer. Noisy, but it works. Otherwise, set your pepper mill to course grain instead.
7. Leeks are full of hard to get at sand and dirt, chop them first, then give them a bath in cold water and drain in a colander.
That's it for today, blog.