Tastes Search Results

How To: Why 'Whipping' Cooked Pasta in Sauce Creates a Perfect Dish

Most cooks know they should stir pasta a few times while it's cooking, for obvious reasons: as the noodles cook, they release a glue-like starch that makes them stick to one another. Stirring prevents them from clumping together in an unwieldy, inedible mass. Now Mark Bittman in The New York Times discusses a great technique from Italy that helps you produce a plate of tender, toothsome pasta evenly coated in rich sauce every time, but it involves stirring the pasta at the end of its cooking ...

News: Flash-Freeze Anything with the Anti-Griddle

Essentially, the Anti-Griddle does exactly what its name promises: it turns things almost instantaneously cold when you drop them on its "grilling" surface. Unlike home methods of flash freezing, its staggeringly low temperatures (-30°F/-34.4°C) allows ingredients that normally can't be frozen—like oil or alcohol—to turn into solids in the wink of an eye. As you might imagine, this allows chefs to play with textures and tastes in a way that was previously unimaginable.

Ingredients 101: How & Why You Should Clarify Butter

Unless you're vegan or lactose intolerant, butter is an indispensible ingredient. However, butter is no one-trick pony. It can take many forms that make it even more versatile and useful in the kitchen. Clarified butter has many advantages over regular butter—but there are certain cases where you shouldn't use it. More on that later.

How To: Could This Clever Trick Really Keep Bacon from Shrinking?

Part of the reason bacon tastes so good is because of its high fat content, but that also means that it shrinks significantly when you cook it. How much it shrinks depends on how fatty it is and what method you use to cook it. Bacon cooked on the stovetop shrinks quite a bit more than bacon that's baked in the oven. DIY blog Franalan tested a Pinterest tip that claimed rinsing bacon under cold water before cooking it could reduce the shrinkage by up to 50 percent. Yes, we just wrote about how...

How To: A Layer of Water Stops Guacamole from Browning

Guacamole is one of those things that tastes far better than it looks. To someone who isn't a huge fan of avocados, guacamole's texture can appear slimy, and on top of that, its chunky green appearance brings up visions of Nickelodeon-style slime. What's even worse is the browning that occurs in just a few minutes of being exposed to air, and it's even worse if there's salt in it. I love guacamole, but that brown is enough to turn off even the most enthusiastic connoisseur. Few things are mor...

How To: Make Flavored Envelope Glue (And Make Sending Snail Mail Fun Again)

Not a lot of people send letters anymore. It could be because our laptops, smartphones, and tablets have taken over and we communicate electronically now. Or, it could be because envelope glue tastes terrible. If you were considering sending out nice, handmade Valentine's Day cards this year, but were so disgusted by the thought of licking all those envelopes that you changed your mind, you're in luck.

How To: Home Brew Like the Commander-in-Chief: How to Make President Obama's White House Honey Ale and Porter

There's a lot of firsts that President Barack Obama can claim, like being the first POTUS from Hawaii, the first to publicly support same-sex marriage, and of course, the first African American to hold office. One of his coolest firsts, though, is that he's the first American president to ever brew his own beer in the White House. And thanks to a Redditor who filed a Freedom of Information Act request, two recipes have been released so that home brewers everywhere can give them a try.

News: With Frenzy, You'll Online Shop Like You Never Have Before

With the massive popularity of online clothing brands like Missguided and Fashion Nova, it seems that shopping in-store is a thing of the past. I admit that I love browsing from the comfort of my own bed, but there's something to be said for actually going to a store, speaking to people with similar tastes and penchants for shopping. Fortunately, with Frenzy — Shopify's new app for iOS — you get all of the convenience of online shopping, plus the opportunity to interact with other users in pe...

News: How to Hail a Ride in Uber's Official Windows 10 App

Windows 10 universal apps are actually pretty awesome—regardless of if you're using a desktop, laptop, tablet, or convertible, the same app automatically scales up or down to suit your device. Definitely cool, but the Windows Store is pretty bare-bones as it stands, so the downside is that you can't always find a good universal app for every purpose.

Food Tool Friday: The Best Lunchboxes for Kids & Adults Alike

Bringing lunch to work or school is a win-win situation. You save money, you eat better, and you create less waste. But while the virtues of brown-bagging it are undeniable, it also gets kind of boring after a while. How many times can you shove a container of salad or noodles into an insulated sack before you say screw it and buy a $12 burrito for lunch instead?

How To: Clever Chemistry-Based Cures to Common Kitchen Conundrums

You probably already know that cooking involves a ton of chemistry. Bread rises because of the reaction between the flour and leavener, and the delicious crust on your steak is formed by the Maillard reaction. Understanding the chemistry going on behind the scenes is one of the best ways to improve the quality of your food—it's much easier to fix a problem when you know what's causing it.

How To: Make Ice Cream

There is nothing more refreshing than an ice cream in a hot summer day. And even though, here in Australia, summer is "just" a couple of months away, I still like to have a scoop or two every now and then. However, I like to make the ice cream on my own. In this way, you can make whatever flavour you want, plus you know what type of products you have used and it usually tastes better than a commercial one.

How To: The Easiest Way to Make Sure You Get Your Daily Dose of Fruits and Veggies

According to the CDC, less than 33 percent of adults eat the recommended servings of fruit each day in the United States. When it comes to vegetables, Americans are even worse, averaging less than 27 percent. Most adults should consume at least 2 servings of fruit and 3 servings of vegetables each day, depending on age, gender, and level of physical activity. Eating lots of fruits and veggies has been linked to a better immune system, faster weight loss, and way too many other health benefits...