Real Ways To Save Time & Money In The Kitchen – Your Crock Pot

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Did you purchase a crock pot recently? Have you seen it around? Alright, I’m one of the guilty ones who filed my crock pot under “long lost kitchen appliances” a few years back and have forgotten about it. Until recently, when my budget took a hit and I had to put in more hours at work. So, out it came, all shined up and ready to use and my family loves having actual meals on the table again.

A little heads up. If your crock pot is more than 7 or 8 years old, you’ll want to invest $30 or $40 in a new one. Crock pots have improved, and you can find models with better energy efficiency, timed starts, temperature settings by degree, warming cycles, secure lids, and a host of other features. Besides the new features, I keep reading that crock pots save money and time. How exactly does that work?

Money Saving: When you are cooking a beef stew, simmering soup or spaghetti sauce, or making a nice pot roast, you are using your appliance for long hours. If you use an oven, you are committing roughly 2500 watts to this meal. If you cook your pot roast in the oven for about 3 hours, calculated roughly, you’ll be using about 10 kWh for that meal. If you cook that same pot roast in a crock pot for about 6 hours, you’ll be committing about 200 watts, or calculated roughly again, about 1.2 kWh for the same meal. Heating up a whole oven for a pot roast doesn’t make sense when you can put it in it’s very own, personal sized oven – your crock pot. Using any of the informative energy consumption calculators on the internet, compare your own data and see if cooking with your crock pot makes sense to you.

Most crock pot recipes call for inexpensive cuts of meat. The low, slow cooking of a crock pot breaks down the sinew and connective tissue of less expensive cuts of meat. Crock pot recipes call for cooking in liquid which also tenderizes tougher cuts of meat, so you end up with meat that falls apart with a fork. A more tender cut doesn’t stand up as well to the long, slow cooking or the liquid. Opt for beef cuts like brisket, bottom round, rump roast, round steak, or even a good chuck roast. Pork shoulders and short ribs are good, too.

How does a crock pot save you money in the evening rush? You aren’t calling your husband to pick up dinner at a fast food place. You’ve prepared your dinner in the morning and popped it in the crock pot. Now you don’t have that “what are we going to do for dinner” nightmare. When the kids are coming home from school and the busy evening begins, it is not the time for figuring out something for dinner. Avoiding fast food and convenience store stops are a real money saver.

When you are air conditioning your house, the last thing you want to do is heat up your kitchen by having the oven on for a long time. During the summer, we do eat mostly cold meals, like salads, but summers can be pretty long here and my family starts to get a yearning for a nice, hot meal. Without adding a bunch of hot air to my house, I can throw a pot roast in my crock pot, and we’re all happy… and the air conditioner can do it’s normal work without stressing it out anymore than necessary.

Time Saving: How often have you made a one-pot meal on top of the stove, like a creamy soup, or thick spaghetti sauce, and you found yourself constantly checking it so it wasn’t boiling over or burning to the bottom of the pot? If you’re stirring a pot you are not saving time. And if you put a dish in the oven for a long time, like a pot roast, it doesn’t need to be watched, but you sure aren’t saving money. We don’t want to sacrifice money for time savers… we want both.

Getting my family to help with meal preparations is a big time saver in my book. If I can walk away for a few minutes while my children are scrubbing potatoes and plunking them in the crock pot, I’ve got those precious minutes to attend to another task. Getting kids involved putting a crock pot meal together is possible because there’s less danger of having someone get burned; you don’t turn on a crock pot until all the ingredients are in and you’re ready. There are many crock pot recipes available that have only a few basic ingredients, so even a cooking novice like my husband can jump right in there and cook a meal, too.

Nightly stops at the store to quick grab something to cook for dinner is a serious waste of time. Now I take one trip to the grocery store, and buy everything I need for at least three crock pot meals. I can plan several all-in-one-step meals, buy and even prep a lot of the ingredients ahead of time, and pop a meal in the crock pot in the morning. Now, we can go straight home from the soccer game… home to a hot meal!

Money and Time Saving: Using a larger crock pot yields the best returns for my family. Cooking once and eating twice is not only a time saving feature, but a money saver as well. I use an oval, 6 quart size crock pot, so that we have leftovers for lunch, which solves the problem of wasting money going out to eat. For my time and money, it makes sense to use a crock pot several times a week for our family meals.

Look at your poor crock pot just waiting for you to come to your senses, once again. I know you can do it, once you start looking through all the new recipes! Get your kitchen counter cleared off, set up your crock pot, and make out your grocery list. Now, won’t you enjoy saving all that time and money when you cook?

Grab your old slowcooker recipes, search for a few new recipes, and brush up on your slowcooker cooking methods! It’s time to get started and get serious saving money with your slowcooker.

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Looking For Pulled Pork Crockpot Recipes You Can Serve With Pride?

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If you’ve been searching the internet for pulled pork crockpot recipes to try, you may keep seeing a theme recurring over and over. It seems that there are several regions, states, and even cities that lay claim to a particular “style” of a pulled pork sandwich. The Memphis style appears very often, as does a South Carolina sandwich, and just about every state south of the Mason Dixon line.

What most everyone can agree on is that no one agrees which style of sandwich truly belongs to which region. Comparing hundreds of pulled pork crockpot recipes doesn’t help much either. For every barbecue sauce on the market there is at least one recipe. For every variation of dry rubs you can find, there are that many more methods and ingredients for cooking a pulled pork sandwich. Here are just a few common methods for cooking and serving this sandwich that seems to be everyone’s hometown original!

Vinegar – Most homemade versions of barbecue sauce for a pulled pork sandwich will include vinegar. Memphis may claim this belongs to them, but South Carolina cooks say the same thing. The tangy element of vinegar seems to be a sticking point for almost all recipes in which you make a classic barbecue sauce.

Brown Sugar – Many dry rubs contain brown sugar to give the sweet flavor to the whole sweet-sour balance that a pulled pork sandwich should have. A simple concoction of brown sugar, vinegar, and a pinch of any hot sauce or seasoning is often found in barbecue places in Florida and Alabama. Whether this simple recipe originated there we’ll never know. Although, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a pulled pork sandwich seasoned like this in Memphis.

Dry Rub – Here again the boundaries blur. South Carolina recipes often stake claim to this method of seasoning the pork. The rub is made up of a variety of spices, usually including paprika, cayenne, and lots of black pepper. Some folks say this is the only only flavoring you add to the pork. That means no barbecue sauce is mixed in with the pulled pork, only served on the side as a condiment. As a matter of fact, some folks in Memphis shudder when someone refers to this beloved sandwich as a pulled pork barbecue.

Condiments – There are several standard condiments found on most every table serving pulled pork sandwiches. A bottle of barbecue sauce is a must. Then, some people like a little red hot sauce, mustard, and salt and pepper. I have yet to see a bottle of ketchup! That just seems wrong… and it probably is. Memphis holds the honor in most people’s opinion of being the cole slaw condiment originator. If you get a “slap of slaw” on top, you’re probably enjoying a real Memphis pulled pork sandwich.

Cooking Method – Of course, using your slowcooker to make a batch of pulled pork may be quite a departure from the method your parents and their parents before them used. The most noted methods to prepare the pork include grilling, smoking, oven roasting, and braising. Different methods are claimed as original by different regions and there is no one, simple answer to this. If you go to Memphis you’ll see a lot of smoky pits with big hunks of pork sizzling away on the grill, but you’ll also see that same method in a lot of other places, so it’s hard to pin down.

Whether you’re sitting in Memphis reading this, or in Florida, or Mississippi, you’ve probably already dismissed all this nonsense about any pulled pork crockpot recipes that claim they are a certain region’s style. All I can say is that no matter where you live, if your Granddaddy made the best pulled pork sandwich ever, then that’s YOUR official recipe and don’t let anybody take that away from you!

Learning the methods for successful slowcooker cooking will help you create mouth-watering meals like slow cooker pulled pork sandwiches that will be sure to please your family.

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How To Get Culinary Advice Through PF Chang Recipes

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PF Chang recipes can be a wonderful source of inspiration for people who wish to cook their own Chinese dinners at home. Restaurants perfect their ingredients and processes until they find efficient ways to make food while maintaining the fidelity of the flavor and original spirit. By training oneself in these professionally designed methods, at home chefs can improve their culinary knowledge and their selection of future meals.

A Lettuce Wrap is a unique dish that combines crunchy green lettuce leaves with an interestingly flavored meaty filling. Before cooking can begin, chinked cubes, or strips, must be allowed to marinate in soy sauce and ginger in the refrigerator for a few hours. Then it is tossed in a frying pan with citrus juices and hoisin sauce to crisp the edges, and subsequently wrapped in the lettuce leaf of choice.

The spicy Dan Dan Noodle dish is a good source of peppers and can be a valuable lesson in the creation of thick meat and vegetable sauce. Diced peppers, garlic, and onions are simmered together in a frying pan with cooking wine and ground chicken. Cooking will produce a thick substance which can then be poured over a plate of prepared noodles.

Mongolian Beef can be served solitary or with stalks of green onion or sauteed pepper chunks, however, the primary cooking process for the meat remains the same. The first step is to sear the meat’s exterior in a frying pan with a high flame until the edges are brown. Now that a solid texture is guaranteed, sugar, soy sauce, minced garlic, and sesame oil are added to the pan and cooked until there is a solid coating over the beef remaining.

Kung Pao Shrimp is dependent on the namesake Kung Pao sauce and a variety of spices which are to be sauteed in it. First, red pepper, chile pods, garlic, and green onion are softened in a liquid mixture with the famous sauce. After whole, deveined shrimp have been warmed separately and coated in oil, they can be added into the frying pan and tossed with signature toppings.

The quality of Fried Rice served in different locations may vary, but making a high-end version of this dish at home is not terribly difficult to do. Egg, or egg replacement, is cooked first until it is solid on both sides, then promptly sliced into small chunks and set to the side. The main spices are finely crushed mustard powder, a small amount of molasses, and ginger which are mixed with the traditional peas, carrots, eggs, and extra soy sauce in rice.

Many people believe Wonton Soup is a highly complex meal to make from scratch, but by following the recipe one step at a time, it will prove to be less daunting. The mixture that goes inside the sticky wonton wrappers consists of pork, or shrimp if preferred, brown sugar, sherry for cooking, and ginger to help define the flavor. A chicken stock broth must be boiled and mixed with soy sauce and rice wine to form a complete soup and soften wontons before serving.

Though Chinese dishes may at first seem imposing, their ingredients tend to be a simple mixture of meat, vegetables, and sauces. The real secret to making these entrees and appetizers correctly is in the cooking and soaking methods used during preparation. With PF Chang recipes as inspiration, many more people will be able to customize their own dishes and learn how to make professional Chinese inspired meals.

You can enjoy PF Chang recipes with uncomplicated instructions and ingredient preparation. For additional information about foods and techniques, visit the website at http://pfchangrecipes.com now.

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Foodies Guide – Sixteen Tips For Restaurant Eating

Many people, maybe including yourself, enjoy eating at a restaurant or simply go there for the convenience. We have come up with sixteen quick tips for anytime you have to eat out.

If you eat healthy food or sensible portions, that you like, you can stick with eating healthy for life.

When portioning your food, spacing is a matter of great importance. Water should be a part of every meal.

Going back to overeating, portion your food so that your stomach is only halfway full, no more than that. Drink one part water for every two parts of food you eat per meal. You also need to make space for air in your stomach – leave it at one quarter or more.

Wait five to ten minutes in between courses, and eat no more than half a portion at a restaurant. Restaurant portions are commonly two to four meals on a single or double plate.

We’re talking two to four meals, which is a significant amount of food to eat in a course of a meal – when the time comes for you to drink water, chances are you would have had more than enough.

In the Providence, RI area, there are some restaurants where the single portions could feed a family of four. No wonder a man of 200 lbs. is now considered thin. Do not make comparisons to other people. Eat to live and enjoy your food, but do not use someone else’s over indulgence as an excuse for your own.

Do not let your appetite get the better of you. Many of us think that if our plate isn’t clean, we automatically skipped the meal. Ah, the memories of childhood and Mom at the dinner table. Move on, my friends and have the rest of your food to go if you can’t finish it all.

Always eat something for breakfast and never “skip it.” The tendency is to overcompensate for a skipped breakfast when eating lunch or dinner.

Eat slowly and thoroughly chew your food.

Eat a light yet hearty and healthy meal before hitting the sack. I’m a vegetarian, so my meal planner goes something like this – a bowl of corn flakes on Monday, veg salad with extra virgin olive oil on Tuesday, rice with carrots and greens on Wednesday, and so on – you get the idea. For those who eat meat or fish: turkey, chicken, or salmon salad on top of fresh greens.

Down with the desserts, sugary foods and carbs, and no second helpings in the afternoon onwards.

Sugar is absolutely a must to avoid, but you can get around this by eating fruit or having low fat yogurt, or maybe some low fat cottage cheese with fruit.

If you must have coffee or alcohol, beware that these should be consumed in extreme moderation. Not only are they generally unhealthy, but they dehydrate the body and require you to drink extra water. Wine is much better than hard alcohol, but one or two glasses a day is the limit.

Browse thousands of easy recipes and add something new to your meal tonight. Our all recipes site is categorized, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

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