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Tag: diet:under 500 calories

  • How To Make Limoncello

    How To Make Limoncello

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    Prepare sugar syrup: Prepare a sugar syrup of at least 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar — bring the water to a simmer and stir in the sugar to dissolve; allow to cool.

    You can play with the ratios of water to sugar. Start with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar, taste the limoncello, and add additional sugar syrup gradually until you reach a flavor you like — up to 4 cups of water with 4 cups of sugar. More water will dilute the alcohol base, making a less alcoholic, milder, and smoother-sipping liqueur. More sugar will make a sweeter limoncello.

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    Emma Christensen

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  • This Is The Best Way to Freeze Cookie Dough So It Lasts for Months

    This Is The Best Way to Freeze Cookie Dough So It Lasts for Months

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    We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

    There are any number of reasons why you might want to stash some cookie dough in the freezer. Maybe you like having treats on hand in case company stops by. Maybe the first day of fall kickstarted your holiday baking gene. But we’re friends here, so let’s be honest: Frozen cookie dough in our freezer means warm, gooey, fresh-baked cookies any time we want one. Here are the best ways to freeze your favorite cookies for later.

    How To Freeze Cookie Dough

    For the purpose of freezing, let’s divide cookies into three main categories: chunky cookies, tender slice-and-bake cookies, and cut-out cookies.

    How To Freeze Chunky Cookie Dough

    Chunky cookies, like chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin, freeze best if you portion out the dough beforehand. Scoop out the dough just as if you were about to bake it, but then freeze it instead. Once frozen, the little balls of dough get sealed up inside a plastic freezer bag — when you need a cookie fix, just grab as many as you want to bake.

    How To Freeze Slice-and-Bake Cookie Dough

    By slice-and-bake cookies, I am referring to any fairly smooth, fairly tender cookie, like shortbread or sandies. These get pressed into logs, wrapped in wax paper, and frozen solid. They can be crumbly right out of the freezer, so when you’re ready to bake, let them warm for a few minutes before slicing. If you can plan ahead, letting the logs thaw in the fridge for a few hours is even better.

    How To Freeze Cut-Out Cookie Dough

    Last but not least, we have cut-out cookies, like sugar cookies and many holiday cookies. The dough for these cookies can be frozen in disks just like a flaky pie crust. When ready to bake, thaw until pliable and continue with the recipe. Freezing the dough for cut-out cookies is a little less of a time- and labor-saver than the other cookies, but it’s handy to break up the work of a big cookie-baking project or if you start a batch of cookies and get interrupted in the middle.

    Most frozen cookies will need an extra minute or two in the oven. Otherwise, prepping and baking the cookies is exactly the same as in the recipe — you’re just giving them a freezer vacation in the middle.

    Reasons to Freeze Cookie Dough:

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    Emma Christensen

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  • How To Reheat Turkey So It Never Dries It Out

    How To Reheat Turkey So It Never Dries It Out

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    How to Reheat Turkey

    The best way to reheat turkey is in a 350°F oven. Place the turkey pieces in a baking dish and drizzle with a few tablespoons of stock and/or butter. Cover the dish with foil and heat in the oven at 350°F for about 30 minutes.

    Alternatively, you can microwave the sliced turkey (cover with a damp paper towel) in a microwave-safe dish at 50% power in 1-minute intervals.

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    Meghan Splawn

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  • The Easiest Vegetable Stock You Can Make at Home

    The Easiest Vegetable Stock You Can Make at Home

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    All you need are some chopped up vegetables and fresh herbs.

    We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

    Every time we make vegetable stock, we wonder why we ever bother buying it in the store. It’s so easy! Chop up some vegetables, cover with water, and simmer. Done. You’ll have enough stock to make your soups, casseroles, and pilafs for weeks to come, and all in just a little over an hour.

    The Best Vegetables for Vegetable Stock

    When making a basic vegetable stock, you want vegetables with neutral, but savory flavors. Some recipes recommend adding garlic and other strong spices, but unless we know how we’re going to be using the broth, we prefer to add those kinds of seasonings when we’re actually making a dish. We also don’t add salt to the stock for the same reason. Onions, carrots, celery and mushrooms are the ideal starter vegetables for stock, but feel free to swap any of these for leeks, tomatoes or parsnips.

    Saving Vegetables for Broth

    We keep a big resealable bag in our freezer where we can throw vegetable odds and ends: vegetables that have wilted beyond saving, the green parts from leeks, trimmings from carrots, and so on. Once this bag gets full, we use the contents to make broth.

    Vegetables to Avoid When Making Vegetables Stock

    Seems contrary to the title but not every vegetables is destined for vegetable stock. Starchy vegetables like potatoes and turnips will make for a gummy, cloudy vegetable stock. Beets overpower their aromatic counterparts. Zucchini and greens beans become bitter when slowly simmered for as long it takes to make this stock.

    Simple Upgrades for Better Vegetable Stock

    While vegetable broth is a basic building block of the kitchen it doesn’t have to be boring. Consider adding leftover Parmesan rinds to your vegetable stock. Kombu is powerful addition, mostly for its thickening and umami abilities.

    Two ways to add more flavor to your broth are to roast the vegetables beforehand or to let them sweat (start to soften and release their liquids) for a few minutes over the heat before adding the water.

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    Emma Christensen

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  • How To Spatchcock a Turkey (An Easier, Simpler Way!)

    How To Spatchcock a Turkey (An Easier, Simpler Way!)

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    We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

    While some might believe that the whole Thanksgiving meal centers around the picture-perfect carving of a whole roasted turkey at the table, we’ve found that it can be tricky to cook a bird with such out-of-proportion dimensions and a very thick breast evenly. There’s an easy technique of preparing the turkey, however, that gives you more control over the cooking process and cooks the turkey a lot faster too: spatchcocking.

    This technique is borrowed from a method often used for chickens, but we’ve taken it one step further by spatchcocking in a traditional Latin American way. Here’s a new way to spatchcock your bird for faster, better cooking this Thanksgiving.

    An Easier Method for Spatchcocking Turkey — the Latin American Way!

    In the traditional technique of spatchcocking, the backbone is cut out of the whole bird. The result is a wide butterflied bird where the breast is in the center with a leg on either side. This allows the bird to cook more evenly and more quickly.

    A few years ago, however, I learned an alternative way of spatchcocking that I liked even better. In Argentina and other parts of Latin America, the backbone is kept intact. Instead, the cook pulls the legs away from the body, and uses scissors to cut through the thin ribcage on either side of the breast. The breast is pushed up and away from the legs.

    The result here is a long butterflied bird with the breast and wings sitting away from the legs. It’s definitely odd-looking, a bit like a frog, but it also cooks more quickly (only about 1 1/12 hours for a 15-pound turkey on a grill) and evenly than a bird that is not butterflied.

    In this tutorial we show you how to spatchcock a bird in this way, but we also go one extra step of completely removing the legs from the rest of the turkey’s body.

    Why Try Our Spatchcock Method?

    Here’s why I like the Latin American way of spatchcocking for turkey, as opposed to the more traditional “flattened butterfly” method.

    Our Spatchcocking Tips for Success

    If you plan to try this technique with your Thanksgiving turkey, here are a few things to keep in mind.

    Keep in the mind that this style of spatchcocking means that the thick breast is not flattened out very much so in my testing, I found that the legs actually cooked faster than the breast. To deal with this, I start cooking the breast first and then add in the legs a bit later so that the white and dark meats were done at approximately the same time.

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    Christine Gallary

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  • Memorize This Simple Formula for the Best Roasted Root Vegetables

    Memorize This Simple Formula for the Best Roasted Root Vegetables

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    I like to think of this as more of a formula. It’s designed to work with any and all root vegetables, and you can mix and match them to your liking. So grab whatever you’re in the mood for, whatever looks best at the farmers market, or whatever you currently have in your kitchen — be it carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beets, turnips, or rutabagas.

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    Sheela Prakash

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  • You Only Need 5 Minutes (Yes, Really) to Make This Garlic Butter Shrimp

    You Only Need 5 Minutes (Yes, Really) to Make This Garlic Butter Shrimp

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    Shrimp is a weeknight dinner superhero. It cooks quickly and is extremely versatile, yet feels like a treat every time I set it down on the dinner table. This classic recipe calls for ingredients you probably already have on hand, like butter, garlic, and lemon, which together create a saucy, Italian-leaning shrimp that’s just begging to be at the center of your plate tonight. The best part: You need just five minutes to make it.

    A Fast & Fancy Shrimp Dinner for Any Night of the Week

    Shrimp tossed in a rich garlic butter sauce is hard to compete with. This recipe is quick enough to pull off on a busy weeknight, but feels special enough for a Saturday night in, too. How you serve it is up to you. Toss it with pasta for a dish that very much resembles shrimp scampi; serve it over rice, orzo, or creamy polenta; or simply serve it straight-up in shallow bowls, with crusty bread close by to help soak up all the delicious sauce.

    This garlic butter shrimp couldn’t be easier to pull together but a few tips ensure success:

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    Sheela Prakash

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  • This Is the Only Martini Recipe You’ll Ever Need

    This Is the Only Martini Recipe You’ll Ever Need

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    Crafting a great one at home can make you feel as classy and sophisticated as they come.

    Makes1 cocktail

    We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

    A Martini is one of the most iconic and classic cocktails around. It’s also one that not a lot of people agree on when it comes to making it the best way. Gin or vodka? Stirred or shaken? Ice shards or double strained? Lemon twist or olives? Blue cheese stuffed? Dirty?

    Point being, how you like your Martini is probably different than how your aunt likes hers. Despite this, you and your aunt can both agree that crafting a great Martini at home can make you feel as classy and sophisticated as they come!

    Because there are so many options, it’s always good to start with the tried-and-true classic recipe for a Martini before you get to customizing your own (espresso martinis, anyone?). As we dive into the recipe, let’s take a look at how such an elegant two-ingredient cocktail can have so many people divided.

    A classic Martini calls for gin. Some people love it, while others feel like drinking gin is like biting into a pine cone. Gin is full of botanical flavors, most of which are juniper-forward. It’s like the friend who’s always wearing a bright, funky-colored shirt and despite how you feel about it, it just works. Gin works because it pairs really well with the herbal qualities of dry vermouth, the next key ingredient in a classic Martini. If you’re going the gin route, I recommend using something high-quality. Some common ones are Beefeater, Plymouth Gin, Tanqueray, or Hendrick’s.

    In the other camp, we have vodka. It’s a neutral spirit that tends to take a little bit of a beating amongst cocktail enthusiasts for being flavorless. Yet, it’s smooth and a lot of people prefer it over gin. If you like vodka, I recommend purchasing a premium bottle like a Belvedere or Ketel One. Don’t skimp on ingredients here because every drop matters. I’d say $25 to $35 is a great price range for a quality bottle.

    Who Is This Dry Vermouth Character?

    The second ingredient in a Martini is dry vermouth. It’s a type of fortified wine, blended and infused with different herbs and botanicals. Use a quality, well-preserved bottle of vermouth. By well-preserved I mean refrigerated after it’s opened. It’s still a wine and begins to oxidize after opening, so be sure you keep it cold. There’s nothing worse than a left-out bottle of vermouth that has turned to vinegar. Not tasty. A recommended bottle of dry vermouth is Noilly Prat or Dolin.

    Stirred or Shaken? (I’m Looking at You, James Bond.)

    By rule of thumb, if your cocktail contains only booze, then you stir. By this rule, a Martini should be stirred. James Bond would probably disagree. On any other day I wouldn’t fight him, but on this matter I advise you to stir your Martini, especially when going with gin. Shaking can “bruise” the gin and mask the botanicals you want to taste.

    Want an Ice-Cold Martini?

    The reason people shake their Martini is because they don’t feel stirring the cocktail yields a cold-enough martini. If you want your cocktail arctic cold with ice shards floating on top, shake it.

    A martini should always be served up in a chilled glass, but the garnish you use is up to preference. Squeeze the back of a lemon peel over the glass to release the lemon oils into the martini, then rub the peel around the rim of the glass. This enhances the aroma and brings a fresh zest to it. Either drop the lemon peel in, or discard and garnish with several fresh olives.

    Most importantly, drink your martini pinky up because now you’re fancy!

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    Elliott Clark

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