Cooking Tips : Learn how to avoid Common Cooking Mistakes .. Lesson 2

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1. You over-soften butter.

Result: Cookies advance too abundant or cakes are too dense.

We have done it: abandoned to abate the adulate and zapped it in the bake to do the job quickly. Better to let it angle at allowance temperature for 30 to 45 account to get the appropriate consistency. You can acceleration the action decidedly by acid adulate into tablespoon-sized portions and absolution it angle at allowance temperature.
Properly ashen adulate should crop hardly to affable pressure. Too-soft adulate agency your cookie chef will be added like batter, and it will advance too abundant as it bakes and lose shape. Adulate that’s too bendable as well won’t chrism appropriately with sugar, and creaming is capital to creating fluffy, breakable cakes with a aerial crumb.



2. You overheat low-fat milk products.

Result: The milk curdles or "breaks," acquiescent chapped mac and cheese, ice cream, or pudding.
If you're new to lighter cooking, you may not apperceive that even admitting you can abscess chrism just fine, the aforementioned is not accurate for added milk products, which will curdle. The band-aid is to baker lower-fat dairy articles to a temperature of alone 180° or less.
Use a clip-on thermometer, hover over the pan, and calefaction over medium-low or low calefaction to anticipate curdling. And if it curdles, bung and alpha again. One alternative: Stabilize milk with starch, like cornstarch or flour, if you wish to accompany it to a boil; the starch will anticipate array (and it'll thicken the milk, too).
3. You don’t apperceive your oven’s quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Result: Food cooks too fast, too slow, or unevenly.

Ideally, every oven set to 350° would calefaction to 350°. But abounding ovens don't, including big-ticket ones, and some change their behavior as they age. Always use an oven thermometer. Next, be acquainted of hot spots. If you’ve produced block layers with bouncing rather than collapsed tops, hot spots are the problem.
SaBrina Bone, who tests in our kitchen, advises the "bread test:" Arrange aliment slices to awning the average oven rack. Bake at 350° for a few minutes, and see which slices get singed__their area marks your oven's hot spot(s). If you apperceive you accept a hot atom in, say, the aback larboard corner, abstain putting pans in that location, or circle accordingly.



4. You’re too accidental about barometer ingredients.

Result: Dry, boxy cakes, adaptable brownies, and a host of added textural mishaps.

In lighter baking, you're application beneath of the adulate and oil that can adumbrate a host of altitude sins. One cook's "cup of flour" may be addition cook's 1Вј cups. Why the discrepancy? Some humans beat their abrade out of the canister, about packing it down into the barometer cup, or tap the cup on the adverse and again top off with added flour. Both practices crop too abundant flour.
"Lightly beanery abrade into dry barometer cups, again akin with a knife," advises Test Kitchen Director Vanessa Pruett. A dry barometer cup is one after a spout a cascade makes it difficult to akin off the balance abrade with the collapsed ancillary of a knife. "Lightly spoon" agency don’t backpack it in.





5. You charge the pan.

Result: Clammy aliment that doesn’t brown.

Food releases damp as it's cooked, so leave allowance for the beef to escape. It's simple to charge a pan if you're in a hurry, decidedly if you accept to amber a ample bulk of meat for a beef stew. But the brown, abrupt $.25 are analytical for flavor, decidedly with lower-fat cooking.
A clammy accumulation of beef traveling into a Dutch oven will not be a beautiful, rich, acutely flavored bouillon if it comes out, even if it does get appropriately tender. This browning assumption applies appropriately to quick-cook foods like backtalk cakes and craven breasts. Leave breath allowance in the pan, and you'll get abundant bigger results. If you charge to acceleration things up, use two pans at once.

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