List of recipes from category Tips and tricks: 90 recipes (alcohol-free)
A short selection of recipes from this list
List of recipes from category Tips and tricks
- Cooking: 11 recipes
- How to...: 54 recipes
- Tarts: 1 recipe
- Tricks: 13 recipes
- Work on/prepare an ingredient: 5 recipes
- You should not...: 8 recipes
Cooking
How to cook hard-boiled eggs properly
A hard-boiled egg is properly cooked when: shell is not broken, white and yolk are firm, yolk is only yellow with no traces of green around it. Here are some tips to make this easy. November 4th 20131.38 M 65 1 hour 30 min.
How to cook red meat properly
Cooking red meat well is not as simple as it might seem. Even if you start with high quality meat, with poor cooking it can become dry and tough. Here's a way that will guarantee you a perfect result. October 13th 2010481 K2.7 1 hour 25 min.
How to cook rice in rice-cooker
Cooking rice in a specially adapted "rice-cooker" is practical and quick: you don't have to watch it during cooking, it's fast (15 minutes) and the rice-cooker switches automatically to "keep warm". February 21th 2011935 K 24.9 20 min.
How to cook pasta properly
Here is some advice for pasta that's properly cooked and doesn't stick. July 18th 20191.16 M4.4 25 min.
How to cook Morteau sausage well
This is, in my opinion, the best smoked sausage. You can cook it in a number of ways, here are three of the best known. November 15th 20182.78 M 23.4 40 min.
How to cook bacon and remove excess fat
To prevent excess fat in a recipe using bacon, you can "blanch" it before use, leaving most of the fat in the pan with the water. February 21th 2011391 K 44.8 15 min.
How to fry eggs well
You've probably heard the expression: "S/he can't even cook an egg," suggesting that the person referred is a hopeless cook. In reality, frying eggs well isn't as easy as it might appear. The two most frequent errors: the white develops a brown crust around the outside which is unpleasant in the mouth, or the yolk is surrounded by white that is still raw and runny. Here is a foolproof and easy method that will help you avoid both. March 11th 2018515 K 14.6 20 min.
Cooking sugar
Cooking sugar, which is one of the basics of patisserie and sweet-making, is a delicate operation in which sugar is heated from 100°C or 212°F to 180°C or 356°F. Here is some information on this tricky subject. [Translator's note: the terms used below correspond to the French tradition, as often used by English-speaking chefs, but there are other stages and terms in other traditions. Best to use a thermometer, and be guided by temperature, as the English terms commonly used in domestic... April 3rd 2019506 K4.9 45 min.
How to bake blind
This method allows you to cook a tart case, and then fill with a preparation which may or may not need further cooking (fruit, chocolate, crème patissière , etc...). May 6th 2017930 K5 1 hour 40 min.
How to grill salmon well
This is not as simple as it might at first appear. A properly grilled piece of salmon should be crisp on the outside and moist on the inside. This soft interior is achieved by very strict timing (cooking fish just right is a sign of a true chef), as undercooked it is unpleasant, and overcooked the salmon dries out. October 13th 2010486 K4.3 25 min.
How to...
How to prepare spinach
For most people (and me most of all), spinach brings back bad memories of canteens... But, well prepared, it's a fine and delicate vegetable which goes remarkably well with scrambled eggs, fish, and many another things. Here are two ways of preparing it. June 5th 20153.40 M3.5 1 hour 9 min.
How to make fleur de sel (salt flakes)
French "fleur de sel" is a salt with a special texture, formed by the action of the wind on salt marshs. The wind dries the surface of the water which has a high salt concentration (this will later become sea salt) producing thin flaky crystals. May 4th 2011248 K 43.9 1 hour 7 min.
How to extract passion fruit juice
Passion fruit are rather strange fruit as they do not really have much flesh, but rather seeds surrounded by a fine layer of pulp. Here is a way to extract the juice. March 23th 2011532 K 32.3 20 min.
How to prepare tomatoes
Yes, I know you will say to me: why peel tomatoes? The answer is very simple: it's much better, gives a better texture, softer in the mouth. The skin is tough, adds nothing to the taste (and you will have noticed that commercial tomatoes have practically no taste), and finally it's there (on/under the skin) that the awful chemical products that the fruit receive during growth, are concentrated (treatments, pesticides, etc...). June 6th 2012340 K 24 40 min.
How to prepare cabbage
Cabbage can be used cooked or raw, whole leaves or in julienne. Here is how to prepare a cabbage julienne. December 31th 20131.13 M 13.4 45 min.
How to use a vanilla pod effectively
Vanilla pods are used in many recipes, but they need to treated in a particular way to be effective, detailed here. February 21th 2011397 K4.3 35 min.
How to prepare sorrel
Here is how to clean and cut fresh leaves to use in a recipe, by removing stalks and central vein, to retain only the very best of the sorrel. October 6th 2010448 K3.3 35 min.
How to prepare purple artichokes
The small purple artichokes, which are more tender than the larger green ones, are almost entirely edible. But they need to be prepared in a particular way. Here is how to do this fairly easily. February 26th 2016677 K 44 20 min.
How to poach peaches
To poach peaches, we begin rather like for tomatoes. To peel them, we boil them for a few seconds, then plunge them into cold water. Once the skin has been removed, they are poached gently in a light syrup. September 6th 2012238 K3 1 hour 50 min.
How to make marzipan decorations
Making marzipan decorations for cakes or desserts is fairly simple. Here are some tips to make it even easier. October 13th 2010221 K 24.3 15 min.
How to prepare a pumpkin (or potimarron)
Here is how to prepare a pumpkin for use in a recipe like the delicious potimarron soup. February 21th 2011414 K4.6 25 min.
How to prepare egg glaze
Bakers and pastry chefs use a glaze ("dorure" in French - the same word as for gilding) made with whole full eggs, beaten in a blender. This is used with a brush on pastry that would not naturally brown during cooking (
How to make chocolate chips
These chocolate chips, very fine, are perfect for decorating a dessert, but they can also be incorporated in a preparation like mint ice-cream for example. February 21th 2011285 K3.8 5 min.
How to cook potato grenaille
The French call very small potatoes "grenaille". This is a typical way of cooking them: the tiny potatoes are pan-fried in their skins and make an excellent accompanient for meat. Grenaille can be made with any kind of potato; it is a question of size, rather than variety, though I think that firm-textured potatoes, such as rattes or charlottes, work best. I am using rattes in the photos. The cooking is a combined method: boiling first, then frying. This is quicker than using a single method. September 16th 2015468 K4.5 45 min.
How to roll out pastry for a tart
Rolling out pastry from a block and lining a tart mould or tin is not as straighforward as all that. To help you to succeed every time, here is a very simple tip. It will to change your opinion of tarts... October 13th 2010307 K4.6 25 min.
How to prepare courgettes
Preparing courgettes is fairly simple. You just need to remember 3 things: 1) the bigger they are, the less good they will be, 2) they never need to be peeled, and 3) the central part with the seeds is pretty tasteless. June 8th 2011287 K 13.8 30 min.
How to prepare a lettuce
It is much more economical to buy a whole lettuce than separate leaves in a plastic packet. And it's so simple to prepare - you can see how here. April 17th 2011411 K4.8 30 min.
How to peel a pineapple
For most recipes it is necessary to completely peel the pineapple, and to keep only the flesh which is then often cut into small pieces. Here is a method. February 21th 2011213 K3.7 20 min.
How to glaze a tart
Professional pastrycooks usually say that "a beautiful cake is already half sold", it is one of the reasons why they do not put a tart on sale without glazing it ("abricoter" in Fench), i.e. coating it with a thick apricot syrup. This glaze gives a glossy finish to the tart (see the photographs below) and also protects it from the air and thus from oxidation and browning. It's a quite simple technique that you can easily apply to give to your desserts a professional look. This is how you do it. February 15th 2016463 K4.4 7 min.
How to peel a fruit
Usually French chefs says "peler à vif", which means to completely peel the fruit (removing skin and core) and keep only the very best of the flesh. Here is a method for grapefruit, but it can be used for all the other citrus fruit, and many other fruits. February 21th 2011190 K4.3 35 min.
How to prepare endives
A very classic recipe, but which can easily fail due to two main errors: too much water in bottom of dish because endives give off a lot, and endives that are too bitter so that children hate it. Here is a method which avoids these two problems. February 14th 2012473 K3.7 30 min.
How to prepare cucumber
Or how to start with a whole cucumber and finish with small crunchy dice, ready to be added to a salad. August 6th 2019254 K4.6 40 min.
How to dust
"Dusting" in cooking is sprinkling a very fine layer of something in powder form. Icing sugar or cocoa powder on cakes for example. As this is not very easy to do evenly, here is a way to do it. October 13th 2010154 K5 2 min.
How to use gelatin
Gelatin is a gelling agent use in some desserts where a rather firm texture is required when cold. It can also be used to stabilize a dessert (mousses especially) that you need to keep longer than usual. July 9th 2018422 K4.8 7 min.
How to prepare romanesco
Here is how to take a whole romanesco and end up with small pieces ready to use in a recipe. January 17th 2013664 K 23 30 min.
How to rehydrate dried mushrooms
Rehydrating dried mushrooms restoes them to something like their fresh texture, ready to use in a recipe. You will see that there is more to it than simply leaving them to soak in water. At the same time, we can also make a delicious mushroom "jus" to use in recipes. Throughout the recipe, I have used morels as the example, but the same applies to any other dried mushrooms. April 5th 2017359 K4.8 1 hour 10 min.
How to use a forcing bag (piping or icing bag)
The forcing bag is the tool needed whenever you need to deposit a blob of something precisely in a particular place (in a mould, a glass, on a plate, etc). Here is how you do it. January 14th 2011302 K 15 25 min.
How to prepare an avocado
Here is how to get from an avocado only the flesh of the fruit. January 9th 2010204 K 14 15 min.
How to prepare a bain-marie
A bain-marie is the best way to cook or heat a preparation gently without risk of burning. July 5th 2013521 K5 7 min.
How to heat plates
In restaurants serving "à l'assiette", wich means that your dish is presented already served on a plate, it's very important for the plates to be hot, otherwise dishes arrive cold and it's the customer that (rightly) becomes heated. At home it's worth doing the same thing: you are sure to serve hot dishes to your guests, and as a hot plate can wait longer than a cold one, it can sometimes help to avoid panic in the kitchen at serving time. Here are some simple ways to heat your plates. February 21th 2011219 K 43.7 25 min.
How to know when a cake is cooked
It's a frequently asked question and it's not so easy to answer it, especially for beginners: you can have a cake that's nice and golden brown outside, but which is not cooked enough in the middle. May 7th 2020292 K4.1 1 min.
How to peel pistachios
If you buy pistachios shelled but still in their skins (cheaper than ready peeled), you shouldn't use them like this. They need to be "skinned", removing the skin which is pretty unpleasant to eat. Here's a fairly easy way to do it. May 20th 2020142 K3.3 30 min.
How to prepare rhubarb
Rhubarb and its characteristic flavour can be the basis of delicious desserts, but it needs to be prepared a certain way before using. October 13th 2010225 K4.9 30 min.
How to cook caramelized puff pastry well
When puff pastry is caramelized to use in patisseries like millefeuille, French chefs call it a "feuilletage" (which means "lamination" or "leafing"). This is baked on its own before being assembled with cream, fruit, etc. The baking needs to be carefully managed: the pastry should puff into layers, but not swell too much (just a few millimeters normally). To achieve this, we need to follow a special method that I have explained for you here. September 3rd 2017284 K 24.9 40 min.
