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Weekly Cooking Tips and Advice

Welcome to Cooking and Baking Tips and Advice on Boyletoday.com. Every Wednesday we will bring you recipes and cooking tips for you to enjoy. Fell free to forward your ideas and recipes to [email protected] for inclusion.

Quick Meat Curry

Ingredients

  • 1 pound meat, cut in about 1 inch cubes, boneless pork, dark turkey or chicken meat, lamb or beef
  • For the Marinade
  • onion
  • 3 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1 inch of fresh ginger, peeled
  • 2 small hot peppers, red or green
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • 1 Tablespoon ground cumin
  • 1/2- 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 Tablespoons oil
  • 3 small potatoes, diced
  • 2 cups spinach, roughly chopped
  • 1 cup water

Directions

  1. Place meat in a mixing bowl. Grind marinade ingredients coarsely in food processor. Add marinade over bowl of meat, mix and leave at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes (i.e. while you cook the rice, make salad etc.).
  2. Heat oil in a decent sized pot (such as a large skillet or Dutch oven or a serious heavy-duty saucepan).
  3. Transfer contents of meat bowl into the pot, stirring constantly until spices and meat are browned. This takes high heat and it also takes some time, as the marinade makes it difficult for the meat to brown. But you want both the sauce and the meat to brown to give the curry gravy a rich, brown color and flavor.
  4. Add potatoes and water. Bring to a simmer, lower heat and cook until meat is tender (20 to 30 minutes) uncovered.
  5. If the water seems to be drying up completely, add another 1/4
  6. cup once or twice.

Low Fat Cooking:


* Get into the habit of measuring the oil you use while you cook,
   rather than just pouring it out of the bottle. It will be much
   easier to moderate the amount you use. 

 * Use non-stick cookware so that you don’t have to use as much,
   if any, fat. When sauteing, use a small amount of chicken broth
   or wine instead of butter or oil. 

 * To make fat-free broth, chill your meat or chicken broth. The
   fat will rise to the top, and you can remove it before using
   the broth.

 * Many vegetables and fruits, including potatoes and apples,
   retain many of their nutrients in their skin. So when possible,
   leave the skin on your fruits and vegetables and cook them whole. 

 * Romaine lettuce is loaded with vitamins compared to iceberg.
   It has three times as much Vitamin C and six times as much
   Vitamin A.

 * Vitamin C is destroyed quickly in cooking – so cook your
   vegetables with Vitamin C in the smallest amount of water
   possible and for a short amount of time.

* Stock up on spices. One of the keys to cooking low-fat and not
   getting bored is to spice your food well. When you have finished
   your recipe, always taste it and adjust the spices to meet your taste.

 * Purchase the best (i.e. heaviest) set of non-stick cookware you
   can afford.

 * When cooking a dish with both vegetables and meat (i.e. in stir frys
   and stews), reduce the amount of meat by 1/3 and increase the amount
   of vegetables by 1/3. You will hardly notice!

 * Thicken gravies with milk or broth blended in the blender with
   flour. Be sure to cook long enough to remove the raw flour taste.
   You’ll never notice the lack of fat.

 * Use olive oil for cooking when appropriate. It adds to the taste
   of the dish and is better for you.

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