What Not to Cook : Lesson: Negative 101

1. Boiling water: While it might be true, that it is physically impossible to burn water, there is a lesson all new chefs should learn when cooking. When you leave a burner on high, with a pan full of water, if you do not watch it, not only will the pot boil, it will actually force the water to evaporate into steam. Over time, an unwatched boiling pot of water will begin to melt to the burner and cause the smoke alarm to go off.

Don't do what I did, and cook the pot.

What Not to Cook - Fact one - A pot will boil whether it is watched or not, don't think just because you leave the room to watch television that the pot will stop boiling. Be sure to watch it and save your pans from melting and ruining the stove!

2. Making sticky rice: Making great rice means first of all that the rice is cooked.

Don't do what I did and serve partially cooked rice; it is really crunchy and not that flavorful.

Using a traditional rice recipe usually involves a 1:2 ratio, meaning 1 cup of rice uses 2 cups of water. Typically the bag or box will tell you to add salt, pepper a little butter and then cook on low for 20 minutes or so. Rice is cooked to perfection through the steam that occurs under the lid of the pot. If you lift the pot on the rice, you stop the cooking and if you go exactly 20 minutes, you will have consistently under cooked rice.

What Not to Cook Fact two - when making rice leave covered and resist the urge to peek.

3. What an Egg Salad Sandwich is not: As a new bride, a husband asked his wife to take over the cooking responsibilities. On Friday night, she made Taco's. She carefully ground and fried up the hamburger meat, and stirred in the taco sauce. She heated up the shells in the oven and prepped the onions, lettuce, olives, hot peppers and tomatoes. They ate until their stomachs were full and she put the rest away.

The following day, she took out the leftovers and after scrambling some eggs together, she added them into the frying pan and served it to her husband for breakfast as a Mexican omelet. Her husband barely touched his food for breakfast but asked her to make his lunch as he headed off to work. She replied, certainly "No problem honey".

As he got ready to go to work, she mixed the leftover omelet taco mixture together with a glob of mayonnaise and then put it between two slices of wheat bread. When he left for work, she told him she had made him an egg salad sandwich. He was happy with his new wife, and proud that she had made his lunch. When he got home that night, it was a different story when he informed her that egg salad sandwich had no salad in it!

Don't do what I did and serve "A non-traditional version egg salad". Did you know that an egg salad sandwich actually contains no lettuce or other salad ingredients?

What Not to Cook: Fact three - When saving money and using leftovers creatively, husbands may not appreciate your conservative approach.

4. Don't forget the tin lid: Pillsbury offers wonderful ready to bake dough's in the dairy freezer. One favorite of new couples is the cinnamon rolls as they are great on Sunday's with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.

What Not to Cook: Fact four- The icing at the bottom of the roll of dough has a metal cover that hurts husband's teeth if they happen to bite into it. Look for the metal tin cap that belongs on the icing and is usually stuck to the bottom of the last piece of dough, before cooking the muffins and remove it.

Don't do what I did and serve it to your brother on the bottom of his muffin so that when he bit into it he almost lost his front teeth.

5. Scrambled fish is not a delicacy: Cooking fish is often done on the grill so that it won't stink up the house. As fish cooks, it becomes flaky and can stick to the grill if the grill has not been covered with a non sticking agent such as Pam. Removing it from a sticky grill can make a piece of fish turn into a thousand pieces.

What Not to Cook: Fact five: Don't let fish overcook and then try and get it off the grill as it will fall apart and force you to serve it ala "scrambled" style.

Don't do what I did. Family members don't appreciate scrambled fish.

Source:

Yup, you guessed it, personal experience. Click here for other personal experiences by Kay Balbi. Be sure to check out my recipe poem for sloppy balls.