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Collegians offer cooking advice
By Patti Denton
September 15, 2004
Often the key to a recipe is not so much what ingredients you use but rather how you combine them. These little tricks of the trade, or culinary tips, are often not spelled out in cookbooks. They come from mothers, teachers or friends who have demonstrated the recipe and gave important cooking advice as the dish was being created.
For example, for both biscuits and cakes, you combine butter and flour. But for the best taste and texture, the flour and butter are combined differently for each recipe! When you're making a cake from scratch, it's important that the butter is creamed, in other words, almost whipped, before the flour is added. Then the flour and butter are blended for up to ten minutes.
But when you're making biscuits, the flour and butter are mixed together very quickly. The butter is in big lumps and not blended thoroughly before the batter is put into the oven. Why is this? Big chunks of butter in the biscuit batter melt when the batter is cooked. This creates big air holes in the biscuits, thus making them light. The cake batter is mixed for such a long time in order to give it a creamy texture.
Some college veterans have cooking advice for novices on passing the college-life course Meal-Making 101.
- Buy a George Foreman grill -- or even two. The appliance not only quickly grills the grease from boneless chicken breasts and hamburgers, but is great for making all sorts of panini-style warmed sandwiches. (Dorm-dwellers need to check on whether university rules allow the grills.) The grills range in price from $14.99 for the basic, two-person model to $49.99 for a family-size model. Foreman grills with special options are priced at about $99.
- Voila! This is just one of the packaged meals that students can find in the freezer case or boxed on shelves. These products, such as Homestyle Bakes and Voila!, come with all ingredients or require adding only a meat. cooking quickly and feed friends or provide leftovers.
- Those not living in a dorm need pots and pans, baking dishes, silverware and dinnerware. Rental properties may have major appliances but don't come with the equipment.
- Depending on the number of roommates, consider shopping for a cheap additional refrigerator and/or small deep freeze to keep bulk purchases. You'll save money in the end.
- Buy in bulk. Family-size bags of frozen chicken breasts are available at local supermarkets and big-box discount stores. The larger the better, so you have plenty on hand. It saves money and time.
- When there is time to make dinner, make a large quantity, so there are leftovers or you can feed lots of friends.
- Make a list before going to the grocery store, and plan dinners for the week if possible.
Cooking advice: avoiding fat for healthier eating 
While some fat in the diet is necessary, and it would be a mistake to try to eliminate all fat from the diet, most people simply eat too much fat.
Cutting back on fat is an important part of creating a healthier diet and lifestyle. There are a number of good reasons for cutting back on levels of dietary fat.
Those reasons include:
- Lowering levels of dietary fat helps in weight loss and weight management. Fat contains twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbohydrates, so eating less fat usually means consuming fewer calories.
- Lowering fat has been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease. Dietary fat, particularly saturated fat, has been implicated as a factor in heart disease and elevated cholesterol levels.
- A low fat diet may help to reduce the risk of some forms of cancer. Although this matter has not been totally settled, there have been a number of studies which indicate that a diet low in fat can keep certain cancers at bay. * And of course eating fewer high fat foods means that you will be able to enjoy many more low fat alternatives, such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Since these types of foods tend to be nutrient rich and low calorie, they can be enjoyed guilt free.
Of course cutting back on dietary fat is easier said than done, so we have compiled the list of tips for low fat healthy eating to help you get started.
- In place of spreads like peanut butter and full fat cream cheese, use lower fat alternatives such as low fat cream cheese, jellies, jams, fruit spreads, apple butter, mustard, low fat margarine, or low fat mayonnaise.
- Use high fat foods as an occasional treat, not as a dietary staple.
- Use reduced fat or nonfat salad dressings whenever possible. When eating out, request the salad dressing on the side so you can compare the amount used.
- .Instead of butter or sour cream, top baked potatoes with plain nonfat or low fat yogurt. Other delicious baked potato toppings include steamed broccoli, cottage cheese, salsa, low fat cheese and low fat or nonfat sour cream.
More info about cooking advice, please visit Kansas City.
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