Get In The Know About The Food Service Industry

Here are some great tips and fun foodservice facts! Let us know how you like them.

Better Stews and Soups

When preparing stews, adding a half cup of strong tea will help tenderize the meat and reduce cooking time. For added flavor, try adding a tablespoon of molasses. If you want your stew or soup to be a bit sweeter, add a small amount of pureed carrots. To thicken stews, add a little quick-cooking oats or grated potato.

Most people are aware that over-salted stews and soups can be corrected by adding a piece of potato or two and discarding the potato after simmering briefly. An apple will also work if you don't have a potato handy. To reduce a strong garlic flavor in almost any liquid, place some parsley flakes in a tea ball and use it to "soak up" the excess garlic.

Cranberry Sweetening

To sweeten a bag of cranberries when cooking, add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and use less sugar to achieve the same level of sweetness.

Flakier Pie and Pastry Crusts

For a flakier pastry shell or pie crust, add one tablespoon of lemon juice when mixing the dough. To prevent soggy crusts, spread a thin layer of butter on the bottom of the pie pan before placing the dough in it. Also, coating a pie shell with egg white before baking, by brushing with a pastry brush, prevents a soggy crust.

Improving Your Kernel Corn

Add richness to your corn after cooking, by adding two ounces of cream cheese (regular or light) to every sixteen ounces of corn. Stir into the hot corn until the cheese melts.

Perfect Potatoes

For wonderfully light and creamy mashed potatoes, just add a little baking powder before beating them vigorously.

Don't store boiled potatoes more than a day or two. After 2 to 5 days, they will only have 0% to 3% of their original nutritional value remaining.

Salsa Is King!

Salsa has replaced ketchup as the best-selling condiment in the U.S.! You may want to experiment with some of the more unusual varieties. Most are low in sugar and contain lots of nutritional ingredients!

Here Are Some Sweet Ideas Regarding Honey

To produce just one pound of honey, bees must forage over a flight path equal to three trips around the world. While doing this, they burn up only one ounce of honey as fuel. That's 7,000,000 miles per gallon! Honey continues today to offer all the qualities that have made it a favorite sweetener since prehistoric times. It was discovered in Egyptian pyramids and was still perfectly edible!

Honey is a versatile food that enhances and accents the flavors of other foods. It is used as a spread, topping for fruit, fruit salad, or ice cream and a small amount gives an excellent flavor to whipped cream. It can also be used to sweeten cold or hot cereals, and in beverages such as milk, tea, juice, lemon or orangeade.

When cooking with honey, substitute it for sugar (measure for measure) in puddings, custards, pie fillings, baked apples, candied, and sweet-sour vegetables, salad dressings, and cinnamon toast. Brushed or drizzled on ham during the last half hour of baking, honey adds flavor and creates a golden glaze. When baking cakes and cookies, substitute 7/8 cup of honey for each one cup of sugar, and reduce the liquid called for in the recipe by 3 tablespoons for each cup of sugar. The honey should be mixed with the liquid in the recipe, then thoroughly blended with the other ingredients to prevent a soggy layer from forming on top. Products made with honey also brown faster, so reduce your oven temperature by 25 degrees.

When adding honey to a recipe, spray your measuring spoon or cup with a non-stick cooking spray. The honey will slide right off with no mess. The same spray works equally well when measuring syrup or molasses. Be sure your measurer is completely emptied each time for accurate portions. Honey is not recommended for use in foods for infants under one year old.

Helpful Hints

Cook to the right temperature for the right length of time. Most bacteria, viruses and food contaminates can be eliminated by cooking foods to the right temperatures, then holding them at that temperature, or hotter, long nougat to kill the toxins. Any form of heating-baking, roasting or frying-destroys bacteria that cause food-borne illness. Recommended minimum times and temperatures:

• Beef, veal and lamb, 160°F for at least 10 seconds. Some authorities accept minimum temperatures of as low as 145° F (between rare and medium-rare), but these red meats must be kept at that temperature for a minute or more for safety.
• Poultry that's been cut into pieces should be cooked to an internal temperature of 170°F; use 180°F for whole birds.
• Pork may be eaten after reaching an internal temperature of 160°F. In some cases, this means pork may appear slightly pink. That's acceptable with today's pork if the proper cooking temperature has been reached.
• Fish should be cooked until it' flesh is opaque and flakes easily when tested with a fork at its thickest part. Its internal temperature should be at least 145°F
• Always reheat cooked foods to a temperature of 165°F. Maintain hot, cooked foods in a buffet at 140°F or higher, and keep cold buffet items at 40°F or lower.