Have you ever seen caramelized onions in a recipe and just can’t seem to get them right? The trick is to BE PATIENT! First, you must sweat the onions and get rid of the moisture, then the natural sugars will start to do their thing and caramelize slowly and that’s […]
How-To: How To Make Italian Meringue
Italian meringue is often called for in recipes because it’s versatile, easy to make and of course, delicious. It can be used to frost cakes and pies and it makes a great addition to mousses. You just need a couple of ingredients and a few tips and tricks and you […]
How-To: How to Store Fresh Herbs
Adding fresh herbs to any dish adds that special touch that dried herbs or spices just cannot give. The color, aroma and flavor of fresh herbs is something everyone wants in their cooking but is sometimes hard to achieve when you are in a pinch and your last bit of […]
Ingredient Spotlight: Chicken Thighs
If you’re talking about white meat versus dark meat, it is probably either Thanksgiving or you are ordering fried chicken. In most other instances, chicken doesn’t demand a lot of conversation. For years, we’ve lived in a white meat society, using the boneless, skinless breast in nearly every application, from […]
Ingredient Spotlight: Preserved Lemons
In the culinary world, lemons are valuable. We use them in savory and baking recipes, we mix them into cocktails, we use them for colorful garnishes, we clean with them. They are, simply said, sort of perfect. And while the fresh-off-the-tree lemon truly is a gift just as it is, we’re […]
Is Butter Better? Choosing the Right Fat for Pie Crust
Fats are an essential ingredient in baking, directly imparting flavor and influencing tenderness and flakiness in pie and tart crusts. Most pie and tart crusts need to be made with a solid fat in order to create their characteristic tender and flaky texture. The role of fats in creating crusts […]
Kitchen Vocab: Bouquet garni and Sachet d’épices
Sachet d’épices (spice sachet) and bouquet garni (bundle of herbs) are bundles of spices and/or herbs that are used to add flavor to a simmering broth, soup, or stew. A basic sachet or bouquet will flavor 2½ to 3 quarts of liquid. Sachet d’Épices To make a sachet, cut a small square […]
Kitchen Vocab: Nappe
Nappe is a French term describing the consistency of a sauce that will coat the back of a spoon. Ice cream base that is cooped is cooked to this stage before cooling and then freezing. Cooking it to this stage indicates that the proteins have been fully cooked and the […]
Lid or No Lid?
Here at the CIA, we believe in teaching people how to cook confidently. And while we love sharing our favorite recipes with you, in a perfect world, you wouldn’t need them because you would be busy dinner-freestyling! But to do that, you need all of the information! So today, let’s […]
Make Creamy Salad Dressings without a Recipe
As salad dressings go, oil and vinegar—their cute couple name is Vinaigrette—are sort of the popular kids. Everyone likes them, they get along with anyone/salad, and here’s where this metaphor falls apart: you don’t need a recipe. But sometimes a salad and/or your brain are just begging for a creamy […]
Making Chocolate Curls to Dress Up Dessert
Chocolate shavings and curls are the simplest way to finish a show-stopping cake or other special occasion dessert. To create chocolate shavings and curls, you need a good-sized block of chocolate at room temperature. You can use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate for your curls. Look for larger […]
Making Clarified Butter
Clarified butter is a staple in professional kitchens. Made by melting butter to break the water and fat emulsion, you first skim away the milk solids and then the pure butterfat—the clarified butter itself. Unlike vegetable oils, which are 100% fat, butter is a mixture of water, milk solids, and […]