Good housewives always use a variety of spices when preparing dishes. They know that the simplest familiar products with the help of spices can be made unusually tasty, fragrant, original. In addition, spices are a curative product, they function perfectly on the immune system and metabolism. The use of spices can be called whole art, because they should be approached carefully, carefully and with knowledge of the subtleties of their influence on a particular dish.
Here are some of the rules that allow you to figure out how to use various spices in the kitchen.
- Spices should be placed in the dish very carefully, in very small quantities. If you overdo it, for example, with pepper or cinnamon, then we will only taste the taste of spices, not dishes. Spices are designed not to hamper the taste of food products, and emphasize them, shade, give the dish spiciness. Dishes in which there are spices, should not be subjected to repeated heating, in this case they start to be bitter.
- If the spice is ground, then put it three times less than in kind. This applies, for example, to ground pepper, it should be put less than peppercorns.
Whole spices exude an aroma thinner than crushed. - Very effective method of applying spices - heating them in a frying pan with oil. At the same time, the oil is saturated with the aroma and taste of the spice. The main thing - do not get carried away by the hot. Spices should not be overcooked, whole should be heated until they start to crackle, and ground - five to seven seconds.
- If you want to experiment and mix some spices, then you can add one new spice each time. Remember that salt makes the flavor and aroma of spices more saturated, so you need to salt these dishes less intensively.
If you put spices in salads or cold snacks, they saturate the entire dish for hours. - Proper storage of spices requires separate sealed containers in a dry place. Spices with improper storage will soon lose their marvelous qualities, the taste and smell will evaporate. It is advisable to pour them from the store package into jars of dark glass with a dense lid. Open can not leave them, otherwise spices will become useless and tasteless.
- Do not tilt the jars of spices over a hot pot or frying pan. The heat from the stove will penetrate inside, and the spices will lose their properties. Do not expose the cans of spices outside, they should be stored in a dark and not hot place.
For potato dishes, turmeric, coriander or asafoetida are very good. For fatty heavy food, ginger, saffron, mustard seeds, turmeric are excellent.
Sour-milk products perfectly combined with cinnamon, fennel, ginger, coriander. For sweets are appropriate cardamom, ginger, saffron, nutmeg.
Try coffee or tea with a pinch of ginger, cardamom or cinnamon, these drinks will respond with a new unusual flavor and original piquant flavor.