Cooking tips

[Magical Realist]

Salt your pasta water!

"If your pasta comes out slimy or sticky, it's because you aren't using salt -- or not enough salt. When you salt the pasta water, it helps the pasta cook evenly, preventing it from developing this slimy surface texture. Add one to two tbsp. of sea salt to a large pot of water to help your pasta cook evenly. If you do not want to rely on measurements, follow the advice of cookbook author Jill Silverman Hough and add enough salt to make your water taste as salty as the ocean.

Flavor
Don't rely just on sauces, meats or vegetables to flavor your pasta dish -- salting the water gives flavor to the pasta itself. When pasta cooks, it absorbs water and swells. This means that when you cook with salt water, it absorbs the salt as well, seasoning itself from the inside out. Unlike other foods such as potatoes, though, pasta only absorbs so much, minimizing the risk of an overly salty flavor. While the salt does add flavor, it is not overpowering.

Myth
A relatively common cooking myth is that adding salt to water makes it boil faster, but this is not true. In fact, it has no bearing whatsoever on why you should use salt water to cook pasta. Adding salt to water before it comes to a boil actually increases the amount of time it takes to reach the boiling point, so wait until the water is already boiling to add the salt. When you eventually do add it, it only increases the water's temperature by about one degree Fahrenheit."====http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/need-...25193.html

[Image: Pasta-006.jpg]

[elte]

I have a cooking tip for getting split peas cooked.  I have found that my slow cooker tends to turn them dark and hurt the flavor.  So I just use the slow cooker to preheat them and the do the actual cooking the microwave oven.

After they are warmed up by the slow cooker, I put them in the microwave oven to get them to start foaming, which they do pretty much before they reach the boiling point.  To help get them to the boiling point, the water gets poured off of them, and then they are heated up the rest of the way to the boiling point.  Then the water gets poured back in. Then they get microwaved again.  They get reheated to the foam point many times thereafter until they are done.  When they get closer to done, they foam less and boil easier.

Another tip in this process is to stop the reheatings at some point and then pour them into another container and pour them back in the first one again.  That tends to stir them without needing to use a spoon, which tends to disintegrate them.  Then continue reheating them.