The Kitchn Archive: Jan 2011

Sometimes I get a little nervous when dealing with hot oil for popcorn. If it gets hot too fast and I’m not moving the pan around, kernels can burn pretty quickly. And, it’s a bit tedious to stand at the stove shaking the pan. Here’s simple solution to know just when the oil is hot.Next time you make popcorn on the stove, after pouring oil (vegetable oil, peanut oil, or other oils capable of high heat) in the pan, crank up the heat and add 3 popcorn kernels.

Casserole recipes are usually sized for a crowd. They are often designed to feed 6, 8, maybe even 10 people! But if you’re just cooking for one or two, that’s too much. The good news is that most casseroles are extremely easy to size down. Here are a couple of tips and guidelines for taking any one of the recipes we’ve posted during Casserole Week and adjusting it to a half-batch size.

I am an impatient cook. If I’m going to make a sauce or gravy out of the liquid I just used for braising, I want to do it right now. I don’t want to laboriously skim the fat off with a spoon or wait for anything to cool. Fat separators are all well and good, but what about using a tool I already own? Enter the turkey baster.Here’s what I do: squeeze the turkey baster bulb, insert it into the liquid below the fat line, and let go.

Q: I have a box of large tapioca pearls that I bought for a dessert. I love tapioca pudding but I’m the only one in the house who eats it.Any suggestions for non-dessert recipes? Thanks!Sent by RachelEditor: Rachel, depending on how large your tapioca pearls are, you could make some sort of boba (bubble) tea with it! We love milk tea with cooked tapioca pearls in the bottom of the glass.

A casserole is a great low-maintenance, hands-off dish to make for a dinner party; you can finish the side or salad while it’s cooking and still have time to sip a cocktail with your friends. But when you’re thinking about the timing of the meal, add on at least 10 minutes for the casserole to sit when it comes out of the oven. It’s just like resting meat.This is especially important for casseroles that have a decent amount of liquid or gooey cheese in them.

Q: What can I make with Camembert that doesn’t amount to Baked Cheese? I keep getting a wheel of it weekly from my CSA and there are only so many panini a girl can eat.I’ve heard this cheese needs to be used pretty quickly. Help! Sent by HeidiEditor: Heidi, oh yum! Camembert is delicious with just a hunk of bread and jam, too. But yes, if you’re getting a wheel every week that’s a lot of cheese and bread!

I like my homemade chicken and vegetable broth to be very clear and free of floaty particles, so I usually take the extra step of pouring it through a coffee filter. The only problem is that the filter seems to clog almost immediately. Does this happen to you? If so, here’s a great trick I recently learned for keeping those filters free of clogs.The trick is to wet the filter with a little plain water before starting to filter the broth.

We’d never heard of finger limes before a few months ago, but now we’re seeing them pop up all over the place. Which seems appropriate since they’re also known as “citrus pop rocks”!The pulp inside these skinny citrus fruits is made of hundreds of tiny balls of juice, edible bubbles that literally burst between your teeth. How cool is that?Also called citrus caviar, finger limes are native to the rainforest regions of Australia.

We love garlic in our vinaigrettes, but find that the raw stuff often becomes too pungent and overpowering. A chef friend recently suggested we try rubbing the salad bowl with a clove of garlic. The result is magical: a pleasant background note of garlic infused throughout the salad. You have to try this!We think this garlic tip works in two ways.

Poor fruitcake. It gets such a bad rap for being cloyingly sweet, heavy as a doorstop, and generally inedible. If you were gifted with just such a treat this holiday season, don’t automatically shove it to the back of the freezer. Here are a few suggestions for how you might eat and actually enjoy that fruitcake.Part of the problem with fruitcakes is in the name. We hear “cake” and we expect something light and fluffy. Fruitcake is really more of a candy-like confection.

Q: For Christmas I received a Lodge cast iron Dutch oven and took the opportunity on my snowed-in Monday to roast my first chicken. On Tuesday I made a very simple first soup. The soup came out pretty good, if I do say so myself, but when I put them into the fridge for the night they turned gelatinous!