Nothing beats home-cooked food by family members simply because it has the heart-warming factor; genuine care and love. Most importantly, home-cooked food is healthier than most of what we eat at food centres, cafes and restaurants. It is what we grew up with. So try not to stop cooking for our families and/or appreciate wholeheartedly what has been cooked for us. :]
BUT......
Our common blues are...
- It's tiring to wash the dishes and clean up the mess daily! I always need to clean myself up after that too.
- My hands are sensitive to the detergents and become rough from all the cleaning!
- It is expensive to invest in a dishwasher and I still have to clean the dishwasher frequently too.
3 simple ways to cure your blues:
1. Plan the order of your dishes well
Example: You plan to cook 1 stir-fry ginger chicken dish, 1 steamed white pomfret dish, 1 broccoli and mushroom dish, and an egg-drop chives soup.
- Prepare the ingredients 1 to 2 hours in advance; Group the vegetables to be used for all the dishes (ginger, garlic, chives), (broccoli, mushrooms).
- Cook certain dishes earlier; Soup base can be boiled first then set aside for re-heating and adding of other ingredients later (this would make the soup even tastier).
- Re-use the plates and bowls; Those that are used to store vegetables can be rinsed clean with water and re-used for sauce, cornstarch, egg mixture preparation.
- Wash used dishes by parts; During waiting intervals like covering wok to simmer chicken, boiling soup, and steaming fish.
2. Use washing liquids suitable for sensitive skin and rice water
There are already quite a number of brands of washing liquids available in supermarkets that are suitable for sensitive skin. Just use a small of these detergents together with rice water to wash your dishes sparkling clean.
Rice water is obtained from the first washing of rice. If you have left over rice, instead of throwing them away, use them with water to soak your oily wok and pots first before cleaning with detergents. This will help you save on the amount of detergent used during washing up and scrubbing work thus saving your skin as well!
3. Switch to cooking oils with higher smoke point, and splatter less
Light coloured cooking oils with higher smoke point can reduce the amount of smoke released when frying food. This also causes less splatters around your stove area which saves you a lot of scrubbing during clean up.
Some cooking oils with high smoke point are Grapeseed Oil, Refined Safflower Oil, Extra Light Olive Oil, Refined Corn Oil and Refined Soybean Oil.
Additional pre-cooking measures to counter oil splatters around your kitchen include pasting aluminium coated sheets on stove wall, laying used cardboards on kitchen floors near the stove, pat away excess moisture in food with kitchen towel, and set aside some salt to sprinkle into the wok/pan when frying food.
Hmm.. I think u got the smoking point of those oils u mentioned wrongly. These oils are categorized under Low Smoking Point. Meaning these oils cannot withstand high heat. Yet it is also healthier oils to use compared with palm olein oil or peanut or vegetable oil, whc are all suitable for deep frying due to their high smoking point. These low smoking point oils are normally cold pressed to retain their goodness, so as not to let heat destroy their properties. Hence, there are unsuitable to use for deep frying. Only for quick light frying. And these oils are also harder to clean up when heated, as they stick to woks n surfaces of the cooking utensils due to the structure of their oils.
ReplyDeleteHi, glad that you left a note, it made me double-check on smoking points and the properties of the oils I had listed. :)
ReplyDeleteI actually found the smoking points of these oils from a few website articles like (http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/collectedinfo/oilsmokepoints.htm)and ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point), you might want to view for further reference. These oils have high smoking points and it seems that the more refined the oil and the lighter coloured it is, the higher will be the smoking point (ref http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/culinaryreference/a/smokepoints.htm). You might probably be referring to healthy oils like Extra Virgin Olive which I agree totally that it has low smoking point and definitely not suitable for deep/long frying. As for the oils I mentioned, you might like to give them a try! I had been using Grapeseed and Extra Light Olive oils, had no problems so far and might try Safflower oil soon.