Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs, Every Time!

 So many of my friends have horror stories about growing up eating less-than-perfect hard boiled eggs.  And after all, if the adults in your life couldn't make a hard boiled egg that didn't have a grey, crumbly yolk and a rubbery white, then why should you expect to be able to do any differently?  Well, you should.  And now (luckily for you), there's no more excuses as to why you can't have perfectly cooked hard boiled eggs every single time you make them.

This method comes from an old Betty Crocker cookbook tucked away in my mom's kitchen, and it hasn't failed us, yet.  I also have a few tricks that I use in conjunction with the Betty Crocker method, which I've added in.

Now, let's get crackin!  Sort of...

Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

Prep Time: negligible

Cooking Time: 30+- minutes

Yield: Variable

Ingredients:

-  Fresh Eggs (as many as you'd like)
-  Cold Water

Directions: 

1) Place your eggs gently in the bottom of a pot.  Make sure that the eggs lay in ONE LAYER on the bottom of the pot.  This is important for two reasons: 1) even temperature distribution and 2) less of a chance that the eggs will knock together while boiling and crack.

2)  Fill the pot with COLD water so that the level of water is about 1 inch above the top of the eggs.

3)  Place the pot on the stove and cover.  Turn the heat as high up as you can (medium-high for electric is usually about as high as you should go, but I'll often go to high, anyway) to bring the water to a boil as rapidly as possible.

4)  AS SOON AS THE WATER COMES TO A BOIL:  Turn the heat off, and remove the pot from the hot burner.  Why is this important?  If you leave the pot on the burner, the burner will continue to heat the water (it doesn't immediately get cool just because you've shut the power off), and the eggs will become overcooked.  This applies mainly to electric stoves, but gas stove supports can also become heated by the flames, so it's best to move the pot off whatever burner you were just using onto a cool one.

5)  Leaving the lid on the pot, let it just sit there for 22-24 minutes.

6)  While the pot of eggs is sitting off the burner, prepare a secondary bowl.  Fill the bowl with very cold water, and place it in your kitchen sink under the tap.  Make sure the tap water is also going to be nice and cold when it comes out of the tap.

7)  At the end of the 22-24 minutes, take a slotted spoon/wire scoop/etc. and transfer the eggs directly into the bowl of cold water.  Turn on the tap, and have the cold water running through the bowl while you're transferring the eggs.  Leave the tap running for a minute or two.

This last step is crucial to having perfectly cooked hard boiled eggs.

Why, do you ask?  For the same reasons that leaving the pot on the burner is a no-no: you will end up overcooking the eggs.  Remember, the eggshell is like a little insulator, trapping the heat so that the egg continues to cook long after you've stopped adding heat to it.  If you don't do something to remove that heat - and remove it quickly - you will end up overcooking the eggs.

Once the eggs have cooled for a few minutes under the cold water, it's time to peel!  Unless, of course, you are planning on dyeing the eggs or not using them immediately. 

Note: If you are not planning on using the eggs immediately, I recommend storing them with the shell on.  Keep in mind, though, that the eggs will not be as easy to peel and you run the risk of them overcooking.  If you are going to store the eggs, leave them in the cold water longer to make sure the heat is fully drawn out.  Peeling immediately removes the insulator, so it's not as much of a problem!

Peeling the Eggs - My way.

Is it reeeeally necessary for me to do a primer on peeling hard-boiled eggs?  Probably not, but I will do it anyway.  It's especially important to peel an egg properly when you're going to make a dish like deviled eggs that requires a nice, whole egg white.

1) Lay out a piece of paper towel to make cleanup easier, and gently knock the egg on the paper towel all the way around, creating cracks throughout the surface of the eggshell.

2) Find the air bubble.  Every egg has one.  There is air trapped inside the egg, and when the egg is floating in the water as it boils, the air bubble will rise above the yolk and white because it isn't as dense.  The yolk and white then solidify, trapping the air bubble permanently in one spot right on the edge of the egg.

3) Once you've found the air bubble, take off the shell above the air bubble.

4) Continue removing the shell, separating the membrane from the egg white.  This membrane is clear, and rests between the egg white and the shell.  The shell sticks to the membrane, so peeling off the membrane is the easiest way to also remove the shell.

5) If there are miniscule shell pieces still stuck to the egg white, don't worry!  All you have to do is run the egg under a gentle stream of cold water, and the shell pieces will wash right off.  Then, dry with a paper towel.

6)  Voila!  You now have a perfectly cooked, perfectly peeled, ready to eat, beautiful hard boiled egg!

Butter and Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

I love cooking with friends and making people happy through food.  What better way to start off the year, then, with a podcast where I teach everybody how to make homemade butter and Southern buttermilk biscuits!

Thanks to my friends at Thor's Hour of Thunder, you can cook along with Thor, Baldr, Loki, and me as I try to bring a little bit of Southern charm to the Valhalla kitchen.

The recipes are included in the description of the podcast. 

Just a couple of suggestions before you start.

1) If you are going to try to cook along, try to prep as many of the ingredients before listening as possible.  If you are thinking really hard about measuring, you might miss some of the important tips and explanations given as to why you're doing what you're doing!

2) For making butter:  Room temperature cream will make butter in 10 minutes.  Cold cream straight from the fridge will take 20 min or more.  For the sake of your arms, I'd suggest letting the cream come to room temperature first.

You can also find the podcast and information through fellow blog site Strictly Commercials.

Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe that another year has passed, and we're already going strong in a new one!  (Yes, I'm a little late with this post).  Part of this disbelief has to do with the weather (It should not have been 60 degrees through New Year's Eve), the fact that Christmas and New Year's both fell on weekends (reducing vacation time), and general exhaustion that goes hand-in-hand with holiday festivities.

So far, it looks like this year is going to start out strong with some great blog posts!  There will be some things that I did for the first time and turned out fantastic, some more hints for what NOT to do in a kitchen, and maybe even a guest cooking slot on a podcast of a good friend!

Thank you all for your support thus far, and I wish you all the best in the kitchen for 2012!

~Nicole

Frozen Ground Meat - How to Thaw in a Pinch

Ok, so you've just arrived home from work.  You want to make a dinner that involves ground beef (or some other kind of ground meat).  You reach for the freezer and suddenly, it hits you.  I'm reaching for the freezer...the ground beef is frozen solid...

What do you do now?

Well, the following is a tip for when you need to thaw your ground beef (or other ground meat) in a short period of time - shorter than running it under cold water for a couple of hours.  Is it the best way to thaw out frozen meat?  Nope.  The best way is to transfer the frozen meat into the fridge and let it take the time to thaw out - usually making the transfer the night before at a minimum.  This tip is only if you have forgotten to plan ahead.

Step 1:  Take out a frying pan and place it on the stove.  If the dish you're making involves cooking on the stove, then try to do this in the same pan you plan on using for the meal.  This will cut down on your dishes after cooking.

Step 2:  Put the frozen ground meat into the pan, and get a spatula and fork/tongs/etc. ready.

Step 3:  Turn the burner on the lowest possible setting.  This will heat the pan enough to thaw the frozen outer layers of the meat, but not enough that the meat will start to cook. 

Step 4:  Let the block of meat sit in the pan for about a half a minute, then flip it over.  The top layer should be nice and soft.  Hold the meat firmly with a fork or tongs as you use the spatula to scrape off the top layer of thawed meat.  Then, flip it over and repeat on the other side.  Continue flipping the meat over and scraping off the thawed areas.

Step 5:  Eventually, the block of meat will become too thin for this method to keep working, so just use the spatula to break it up into smaller pieces.

Step 6:  Continue with cooking your meal.

Remember, the key here is to keep the pan at the lowest heat setting possible.  Any higher, and you'll be cooking the meat while you're trying to thaw it - which makes timing cooking a little more difficult.  It also makes it harder to make things like burger patties if the meat is already partially cooked.

I hope that this tip helps.  I've had to resort to this method of thawing meat several times myself.  Like I mentioned, it's best to plan ahead and thaw your ingredients slowly.  If you don't though, here's a way that you can still cook the meal you want, even though your ingredients aren't necessarily ready.

Good luck!

Poor Little Citrus Fruit...

Here I am again with another "Don't do this" post.  This one took me completely by surprise, and the science-y part of my brain went, "huh....I wonder why that happened."

I turned my poor little lemons and oranges into rocks in less than 2 days.

How did I manage this incredible bit of alchemy, you ask?  Well, you see, I put them into the refrigerator.  That should keep them fresh longer, you say?  Not if they don't have the outer peel on them, it won't.

Here's how the tragedy unfolded:

I had a Christmas party this past weekend.  I baked cakes, made chocolate, decorated the apartment, watched my favorite claymation movies, and generally gorged myself on the sundry joys of the Christmas season.  One of my dear friends showed up early to make mulled apple cider, which included the use of fresh lemons and oranges.  As she was using a standard peeler to remove most of the peels (leaving just a little bit of the white pith left), I was trying very hard to not jump right into the pot and swim around with them.  After each lemon and orange had so graciously offered it's zesty goodness for the sake of the party, I diligently placed it into the fridge to keep.  After all...they'll spoil if I leave them out, now that they have no peel left.  What I didn't know was that that simple act sent the poor unsuspecting citrus fruits to their doom.

I've tried searching online for the cause of this phenomenon, but to no avail.  My best guess is that the peel maintains the moisture within the fruit, preventing it from drying out.  Therefore, if you have an unpeeled citrus fruit (even if it seems to be mostly intact and covered by a little bit of pith), you should put it in a sealed, airtight container or bag right away.  I should have done the smart thing and put the orange in the fruit bowl with the blueberries and raspberries, and squeezed the lemon into the iced tea.  But then again, you all wouldn't be reading this post, and I wouldn't have had my "huh, that's cool" moment of the evening.

So please, save a citrus fruit - don't leave it unprotected from the harsh elements!

Lard vs. Vegetable Shortening - My Experience

First, let me set up the story behind this post for you.

My great-grandmother developed a set of Christmas cookie recipes from scratch while growing up in Sicily.  It took years to develop the amazing pastries that we - the family - and those lucky enough to know us and, therefore, get close enough to eat some of these cookies, enjoy.  It's the kind of recipe that we get asked for ALL the time...but we can't give it out.  It was my great-grandmother's wish that her recipe never leave the hands of the immediate family.

Every year, for as long as I can remember, we used vegetable shortening as the "fat" content for the dough.  But this was not the way the recipe was designed.  Just like pie crusts and other flaky doughs, lard was the original ingredient.  So, this year, we decided to try the recipe the way my great-grandmother intended - with lard.

To me, this made sense.  It's a special set of cookies that we make once a year.  I wanted - just once - to taste the real thing.  Evidently, this didn't seem to make sense for many other people outside of the family - especially once we tried to find lard.  It was nearly impossible to find in a grocery store.  I walked into one very small store and asked if they carried lard, and you know what the cashier actually told me?  She said, loud enough for all the people within earshot to hear, I quote: "Oh God, no!  Just the thought of that makes me want to gag.  I mean, I'm Southern, we used it in everything, but really, do you know how bad that stuff is for you?!"  Well, cashier, I'm not using it in everything...I'm using it in cookies.  And I'll think twice about the way you tried to humiliate me at the register next time I decide where I'm going to shop.

For this reason, I am giving you my unbiased experience with using lard versus vegetable shortening, and why, hand to God, I will be using lard instead of vegetable shortening in my pastries for the rest of my life.  This, obviously, will not be of any help to those of you who are vegetarian or Jewish (lard is pork fat).  But, for the rest of you, I hope this account from someone who has worked with vegetable shortening for over 20 years will give you something to ponder.

Observation #1: Incorporation of the fat into the dough.  When mixing pastry dough that incorporates a fat into it, the goal is to keep the fat content nice and cool so that it doesn't melt.  For this reason, the first step is to do what my nonna calls "cutting the fat into the dough."  You use a funny looking metal device called a pastry blender to cut the fat up into smaller pieces.  This incorporates the fat into the dough without having to touch it with your hands.  Why is this important?  Your hands generate - and radiate - heat from your body, which will warm up and begin to melt the fat.  This fat incorporation step was much easier using lard, and the lard started to melt even with the use of the pastry blender.  This is something I hadn't seen with the vegetable shortening.  In general, it made making the dough so much easier (and when you're making enough cookies to use up multiple 5lb bags of flour, that's a big deal!).

Observation #2: Consistency of the dough.  For this recipe, it is very important that the dough be neither too moist nor too dry.  The texture is something that you learn as you go along.  At this point, I still ask my nonna to check the dough, but I can pretty much hit the nail on the head as to when it is ready.  I cannot remember a time when we did not have to add extra moisture to the dough once the wet ingredients had been incorporated.  The dough has always been too dry....Until this year.  For the first time, the dough was perfect without any extras added.  Considering the main difference was the substitution of lard for vegetable shortening...we've all chalked it up to the lard.

Observation #3:  Cleaning up! I love mixing the dough because, at some point, you have to dig right in with your hands.  It's a very therapeutic - and arm strengthening - exercise throwing around over 5lbs of cookie dough over and over until it's fully mixed.  The not so fun part is cleaning your hands afterward.  Vegetable shortening made it a nightmare.  The dough would stick to my hands like glue, and it would take about 10 minutes of scalding hot water interspersed with repeated applications and thorough scrubbing with dish soap before the stuff would be gone.  Even then, my hands were left with an unsettling film.  Not so with lard!  I didn't even need soap half the time with this stuff - just some warm running water for a minute.  And what did my hands feel like afterward?  Why, they felt beautifully moisturized instead of sticky and filmy and not-quite-clean!  Now, for those of you reading this still clinging to the idea that lard is soooooo much worse for you than vegetable shortening, I have an honest question for you.  If vegetable shortening is subjected to that much work and heat and is still a sticky film remnant when outside your body, what must it be doing to the inside of your body?  Lard, on the other hand, liquifies with body heat, and removes quickly and easily.  It's still your call, but I know which I'd rather be putting inside my body. (Note that this is meant as a "within reason" statement.  Too much of either fat is going to be unhealthy for you - whether it was derived from animals or vegetables!)

 Observation #4:  Making the cookies.  Many of the cookies we make involve a twisting or "braiding" of the dough...sorta...It's hard to describe.  In general, the thing you need to understand is that we do more than just roll out the dough and use cookie cutters.  In the past, the dough would crack, fall apart, and cause me to do a lot of cursing in my head as I'm trying to fill up one cookie sheet with braided Christmas wreath-shaped cookies.  This year, I was a pro.  The cookie dough was smooth, easy to handle, and generally worked beautifully for everything from the cut-out cookies to the more-intricate wreaths.  My nonna and my mom both commented on how great the dough was to work with this year - so it's not just me having gained some extra dexterity!

Observation #5: THE ALL-IMPORTANT TASTE!  Last - but not least - we come to the evaluation of the taste and texture of the dough using lard instead of vegetable shortening.  The verdict: These were the best Christmas cookies we'd ever made.  My nonna said that the cookies hadn't tasted this good since she was a little girl (when her mom was still using lard before switching to vegetable shortening).  My parents agreed that these were the best cookies they'd had.  My brothers probably devoured their fair share of cookies before they even made it off the cooling table.  And me?  Well, you can probably guess what I thought.  The only person who wasn't as thrilled was my grandfather.  Why?  Because these cookies were lighter and flakier...he preferred the harder, denser cookies that we got with the vegetable shortening.  *shrug*  To each his own.

In conclusion, if you are thinking about making a pie crust or other kind of pastry from scratch, I urge you to try it with lard instead of vegetable shortening - at least once.  Based on what I've seen and experienced, I honestly don't think lard deserves such a bad rap as it gets when compared with vegetable shortening.  I'm not saying that you need to start cooking with lard for everything.  Going overboard is not going to be healthy no matter which fat source you choose.  I'm just saying that, for things like pastries, just be open-minded.  Don't automatically assume that veggie = healthy and animal = unhealthy.  Do some more research, if you feel so inclined.  Just give it a shot, and you'll probably be glad that you did.  I know my family was.

Crunchy Cheddar Chicken

This recipe is how I made Real Simple's Cheddar Chicken, and is annotated with my own personal tips to make this recipe even easier (which is hard to believe, because it is such a simple recipe to begin with!). 

Crunchy Cheddar Chicken

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cooking Time: 40 minutes

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients:

-  4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
-  16 buttery crackers (like Ritz)
-  6 oz (3/4 cup) grated Cheddar cheese
-  1 clove garlic, finely chopped (or 1 tsp minced garlic)
-  1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper
-  4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Directions: 

1) Preheat your oven to 350° F, and cover your baking sheet in aluminum foil.  REMEMBER: Aluminum foil is always shiny side down.  Do you need aluminum foil? No, not really.  It just makes cleanup a lot easier.  Also, I used my toaster oven for this.  It's the perfect size, and requires a lot less energy to heat up and maintain the temperature.

2)  Put the crackers into a large zippered plastic bag.  This will make crushing them - and the steps following - a lot cleaner and easier than if you are switching between bowls like the original recipe calls for.

3)  Get out your aggression from a long day at work.  Crush the crackers until they are a reasonable size for breading the chicken.  The buttery crackers are easy enough to crush - I just pounded them with my fist.

4)  Add the grated cheese, garlic, salt, and pepper to the bag with the crushed crackers.  Fun fact: if you don't have fresh garlic on hand, don't use garlic a lot, or don't feel like chopping it up, you can used minced garlic.  A jar of minced garlic will keep for a long time in your fridge - and has the conversions for a clove of garlic already on the jar.  This is what I used for my version of the recipe, and it turned out delicious just the same!

5)  Close up the bag, making sure the zipper is fully closed, and shake to mix all the ingredients.

6)  Put the butter into a microwave-safe bowl that is large enough to fit one chicken breast at a time.  If your butter doesn't look like mine in the picture, don't worry.  I used homemade butter instead of store-bought. 

7)  Take the time now to prep the chicken.  Rinse each breast with cold water, and make sure that as much excess skin or fat as possible is removed.  Pat dry with paper towels, and set aside.

8)  Put the butter in the microwave, and heat until melted.  BE CAREFUL: Butter will melt and overheat very quickly and easily.  I suggest heating for 10 second intervals to ensure overheating does not occur.  Once the butter is 98% melted, remove it from the microwave.

9)  Dip the first piece of chicken in the butter, making sure it is thoroughly coated.

10)  Transfer the chicken to the bag with the "breading," and gently press the mixture onto the chicken to make sure the "breading" fully covers the chicken.

11)  Transfer the chicken to the baking sheet, and repeat until all chicken pieces are "breaded."

12)  If any butter or mixture remains, pour over the top of the chicken.  No need to waste delicious flavors!

13)  Place in the oven and bake for about 35-40 minutes.  The original recipe called for 25-30 minutes, but my chicken was sorely undercooked after 30 minutes.  It definitely took closer to 40 minutes.  Remember to double-check the chicken before you stop baking it and start eating.  Don't trust the recipe to know exactly how your oven works!  When you check to see if the chicken is done, always remember to check the thickest portion of the meat, as that will take the longest time to cook.

Enjoy!
Tips:  For variations, try different cuts of chicken (drumsticks or thighs), but remember to remove excess skin and fat first.  Also, try substituting about 3/4 cups of crushed cornflakes for the buttery crackers.