Cooking Tips

Perfect rice baked in an oven uses all the same measurements in an oven safe container with a lid and baked alongside your meal/protein 350 degrees for 45 minutes - 1 ½ hours depending on the rice type. Water is great but any liquid would work, such as broth, tea, vegetable juice, fruit juice, coconut milk with water or beer, or wine with water. Spices, small-dice vegetables, or spaghetti broken into small pieces can all be added to offer a new fun twist or texture. Add butter after cooked.

If you want to add a new twist on a sauce, dip or salsa, you can cut the vegetables in half and grill them first.

If you are making pasta, add salt to make it boil faster, add flavor to the pasta as it cooks, and it helps the pasta to absorb liquid. A good ratio is 1 gallon of water to 2T kosher salt or any salt you have on hand.

Instead of wasting time leaving butter out overnight or melting it in the microwave, use a grater to help it soften faster. Grating frozen or cold butter makes it easier to spread and incorporate into recipes, saving you time along the way.

Instead of using plain butter in your recipes, make your own herb-infused compound butter and save time in the process. Compound butter has already taken on the flavor of the herbs and spices you've added to it by the time you're ready to start cooking, meaning you won't have to cook your herbs separately first to get the rich flavor you're trying to achieve.

Creating big batches of a single food and seasoning later can be a great way to shave off time in the kitchen. For instance, if you're browning ground beef, create a large batch and spice it after it's been divided up into single-use portions. Later, you can add some rosemary to one batch for sauce; toss cumin into another batch for stuffed peppers; and freeze the remainder with some salsa for burritos for later.

The most important three words in the kitchen, aside from "don't catch fire," are "mise en place." This French phrase, meaning to put things in their place, refers to the chef-approved technique of measuring, cutting, and otherwise prepping ingredients and laying them out before attempting a recipe. Doing adequate prep before you start cooking will make the cooking process a whole lot faster. Better yet, it's easy to avoid overcooking your food when you're not frantically trying to find ingredients.

Want to speed up your cooking times? Ask us to pre cut, pound or slice your protein items to save time on the extra prepping at home.

Hot Pan/ Hot Fat/ Cold Product—the only way to saute. It can be hard to wait, but let the pan get hot; add whatever fat you are using; give it few seconds to get hot; then add whatever you are sauteing. Be sure not to overcrowd the pan, and keep it moving. Saute means to jump in the pan!