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April 17, 2008

There are several ways to make soup stock, depending on what kind of soup you’re making. The important thing is that you do actually make a stock—instead of starting with water—because that’s what makes soups wonderful and complex.

The basic method is to add flavorful ingredients to cold water and bring it to a boil. You can use a wide variety of ingredients, such as veggies (roughly chopped, peels and all), herbs, spices, meat (with or without skin), bones and seafood shells. If you’re a vegetarian, don’t worry—you can make a wonderfully rich stock with no meat. Then just let it all simmer for a couple hours. Strain out the liquid and refrigerate, freeze or use immediately as the base of your next scrumptious soup. For more detailed instructions on the basics of soup-making, check out Warming Winter Soups.

April 3, 2008

The American craft beer industry is currently experiencing a renaissance, and microbreweries are popping up all over the country. Some even specialize in organic beer. To find a brewery near you, simply search your state at beertown.org. (Good news—looks like Pennsylvania has several!)

You might also be interested in checking out local wineries, and you can find those by state here. (Pennsylvania has lots of those, too!)

March 20, 2008

Your eggs are fine. Fresh eggs actually take a long time to spoil. They would be all right under those conditions even for a couple of weeks. There’s no need to rinse the eggs until it’s time to use them, and that can actually keep them fresh longer. Enjoy your farm-fresh eggs!

It’s actually very easy to pasteurize your own milk on the stovetop. An added bonus is that your milk won’t need to stand up to long distance shipping and prolonged storage, so you can pasteurize it safely using lower heat and less time than many industrial milk producers use. All you need is a stainless steel pot and a simple kitchen thermometer. Just follow these simple steps for home pasteurization:

1. Pour the raw milk into the stainless steel pot. If you have a double boiler, that will work even better to keep the milk from scalding. If you don’t have a double boiler, you can put one stainless steel pot inside a larger pot with a few inches of water at the bottom. If you can’t achieve this setup, then you’ll just need to be careful to heat the milk gently.

2. Slowly heat the milk to 145 degrees Fahrenheit, stirring occasionally. If you are not using a double boiler, stir frequently to avoid scalding the milk.

3. Hold the temperature at 145 F for exactly 30 minutes. You may need to increase and decrease the heat to keep the temperature constant.

4. Remove the pot of milk from the heat and place it in a sink or large bowl filled with ice water. Stir constantly until the temperature drops to 40 F.

5. Store pasteurized milk in the refrigerator.

Baking soda and baking powder both help create a reaction that causes doughs to rise. This chemical reaction is dependent on the interaction of a base and an acid.

Baking soda is the common name for sodium bicarbonate, which is a base. When combined with an acid plus some moisture, such as buttermilk, the reaction releases carbon dioxide bubbles, causing dough to expand.

Baking powder contains sodium bicarbonate, but it also contains the acid necessary to produce the chemical reaction, usually in the form of cream of tartar. It only needs to be combined with moisture to begin working.

Clarified butter is butter that has been heated in a pan and gently boiled so that the butterfat rises to the top. The fat is then skimmed off leaving only the clear liquid. That liquid is poured into a container and allowed to congeal. It is used extensively in cooking, and is nearly the same thing as Indian ghee. Margarine is not a suitable substitute, and in fact it is much less healthful than real butter.