The Best Food Storage Tips for Chicken
Chicken is a wonderful ingredient to cook with and whether you are a budding chef or completely new to chicken cookery, there are a few very important things to know about chicken safety before you start cooking chicken recipes.
Selecting Your Chicken
When you are buying chicken, make sure it is cold to the touch and still within its expiration date. It is unwise to buy a package of fresh chicken, which is leaking or looks damaged.
Chilled food storage vans transport fresh chicken to retail stores so it stays cool. If you are going to buy chicken, make sure it is one of the last things you add to your grocery cart before going to the checkout, so it does not have a chance to warm up. You can double bag your chicken or just make sure it is bagged away from your other groceries. Leave the chicken in its original packaging and put it in the refrigerator when you get home.
Chilling, Freezing and Thawing Chicken
When you get home, you can refrigerate the chicken for up to two days or freeze it. To thaw chicken, you can either do it in the refrigerator, in the microwave or in cold water. Thawing it slowly in the refrigerator is the safest way. Boneless chicken breasts defrost overnight but a whole chicken might take a day or two. If you do not use all the thawed chicken, it is safe to refreeze it.
If you want to defrost the chicken in water, submerge it, still in the packaging or in a Ziploc bag, in cold water. Change the water every half an hour so it stays cold. You can defrost a pound of boneless chicken breasts in an hour or a whole chicken in two or three hours.
Only defrost chicken in the microwave if you are going to cook it immediately after because some parts might get warm and start cooking while the chicken is defrosting and partial cooking will encourage any bacteria to multiply.
It is possible to cook frozen chicken on the stove or in the oven but you cannot safely cook frozen chicken in a crockpot or in the microwave.
You can marinate chicken in the refrigerator for a couple of days if you like but if you want to stuff a chicken, it will need to be cooked immediately. Cooked chicken has to reach an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees F to ensure any bacteria are killed.
If you have leftover Kentucky fried chicken after your delicious homemade meal, you should refrigerate it within a couple of hours so it is safe to enjoy the following day.
How Long Does Chicken Keep?
Raw chicken parts will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator or nine months in the freezer. A raw whole chicken keeps for a couple of days in the refrigerator or a year in the freezer. Cooked chicken parts or a cooked whole chicken will keep for up to four days in the refrigerator or four months in the freezer.
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Food Budget During a Recession
If you have been watching the news, especially the economic news, experts have been saying that the recession is technically over. Ok, but employers are not hiring and you may have been lucky enough to keep your job, but with a reduction in salary, you really are stretched financially. How can you save money? You need to watch your food budget. How should you do this?
You can do it the old fashion way and take a look into your pantry and refrigerator and jot down and make a list of what food you already have. Then, pull out your dusty cookbooks and take a look at what you can make with what you have. Write down the ingredients you need to buy and head off to the grocery store with your shopping list. That’s not a bad method at all, but very time consuming. Why not use technology to make your life easier.
Why would you find recipes the old fashion way, which will take an hour? You can utilize the internet and get the job done much much faster. Simply search “recipes by ingredients” and select from the list of recipe websites.
Now that you’ve found a website to find recipes based on the ingredients you already have, it’s time to jump onto the site and give it a whirl. When on the recipe website, type in the ingredients or groceries you already have at home and search for what recipes you can make with those ingredients. It’s that easy!
I like to do this routine each Sunday for the entire week. I add in all the ingredients I already have at home and then select 5 recipes for the week. This will generate a list of groceries I need to buy for these 5 recipes. Most sites will allow you to print out this list to take to the grocery store.
I usually spend around $50 for the both of us (my wife and I) for the week (Monday through Friday). We take our lunch every day to work (this is very important!!!). This means we spend around $200 per month and this saves us probably around $100 each month or $1,200 per year in savings. These sites are free, so give them a shot!
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Basic Principles For A Good Steak Tips Marinade
Many people feel that the right marinade is their answer for tenderizing tough meat. Unfortunately, that is not usually the case. Marinades may make your meat taste better, but they are not really all that good at tenderizing – the effect is only skin-deep. Here is a look at the way different marinades are made and the ways in which they work.
There are three basic methods of making a marinade, depending on the main ingredient. They can all have unpleasant side effects if you do not use them correctly. For instance, an acid marinade that is too potent will actually toughen that steak. Enzymatic marinades that are left on too long or used in large amounts could turn a good steak into mush, and dairy marinades do not work well with all kinds of cuisine.
One family of marinades relies on vinegar, wine, citrus and similar acids to denature proteins. This will unwind the proteins in the steak you are cooking. Once they run into other unwound proteins, they will bind back together. This happens when we heat proteins, as well. Water molecules start out trapped in this new mesh of proteins, creating a really tender steak. However, if the marinade is highly acidic, the bonds will tighten and the liquid will be squeezed out, actually toughening the tissues. That is bad news.
Milder acid marinades are preferable to really strong ones, since they allow us to add plenty of flavor without the danger of tightening the meat and toughening it. Meats that start out with a closer grain, including flank steak, will do okay in a stronger acidic marinade, but they are also tougher to being with.
Enzymatic marinades can actually break down the collagen and muscle fibers. They come from sources like honeydew, papaya, raw pineapple, fig, ginger, and even kiwi. However, if you use too much, they will turn the muscle to mush without tenderizing. The length of time the meat marinates will affect this as well. The texture gets softer over time. This is the kind of activity you will find from most commercial meat tenderizers, which use papaya enzymes.
The last category of easy steak marinades is based on mildly acidic dairy products, like yogurt or buttermilk. These are commonly used in India for goat and lamb, as well as for southern fried chicken.
Steaks in this kind of marinade can be interesting, but you may need to adjust your cooking methods, since this is a little unusual. Curry flavors in your marinade may turn up a good result on the grill, however.
Marinades do not have to be complicated, and if you know the kind of results to expect from your ingredients, you will have no problem getting a great end product every time. Take a little while to investigate the different varieties of marinades to find the one that is likely to go best with your steak. The results might surprise you.
There is nothing like a good broiled steak. It is sizzling, hot, and juicy. You can easily learn how to broil a steak properly with the simple tips you will find online at EasySteakMarinades.net. While you are there, check out their recipe collection and learn other tips for making terrific steak.
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