Handling disasters in the kitchen

When you encounter a disaster while preparing food, it is important NOT TO PANIC. This must be the golden rule. After all its only food and usually there is something that can be done to rectify the situation. I have listed a series of common disasters that people possibly encounter in the kitchen during cooking routines with some ideas to that could potentially help you to get over it.

• Burnt sauce pans: while cooking if the ingredients stick to the bottom of the sauce pan and burns, do not stir it! Remove from the pan from the heat immediately and taste the food. If it tastes burnt, throw it away and if it taste is ok, then tip the contents into another pan, leaving the burnt bits in the first pan. Don’t be tempted to scrape around the pan to get it all of it out.
• Too much seasoning: if your seasoning become too salty, add some cubes of peeled potato and boil them in the liquid until soft which will take away some of the salt. And if you add too much pepper you just have to replace half of the liquid with stock or water.
• Burnt cakes: slice off if the top is burnt after cooling the cake and coat with chocolate or icing to cover it. Rather than throwing away a cake that spent too long in the oven, disguise the colour by sprinkling some icing sugar.
• Lumpy sauces: if you find lumps vile preparing a sauce, beat it well by using a whisk. If that doesn’t help then process the sauce in a blender until smooth or pass it through a fine sieve.
• Avoiding food from sticking: to avoid sticky rice or pasta, top up with more boiling water if necessary and then stir a table spoon of olive oil into the cooking liquid.
• Wet pastry: if you add too much water when making pastry, it will be difficult to cook. If your pastry feels too damp, don’t just add more flour this would cause the proportions to go wrong . Rub a little more flour and fat together in a clean bowl and add that to the pastry. Then knead it thoroughly.
• Unexpected guests: if you suddenly face an extra guest for dinner, just pad out the meal you were originally planning. Think of serving something like pasta, bread, another vegetable, rice or salad with the main dish. If you have made the right proportion of chicken, meat or steak, then cut it in to strips or chunks and cook it for less time.

2 Responses to “Handling disasters in the kitchen”

1. 

   Rosa | August 2, 2009 at 1:07 pm | Reply

   Great tips, asusual!

   Cheers,

   Rosa
2. 

   Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella | August 10, 2009 at 10:26 am | Reply

   These are great and useful tips Nora and I agree with all of them!