50 CAMPING RECIPES

4 Ideas for Overnight Oatmeal from A Beautiful Mess

24 Hour Layered Veggie Salad from my disorganized life

Apple Pie Scones from Real Housemoms

Baby Quiche Lorraine from Real Housemoms

Campfire Blueberry Peach French Toast from Self Proclaimed Foodie

Detailed recipes and credit : realhousemoms.com

Cooking Tips : 

Guidelines For Cooking And Preparing Simple Dishes

Learning to master the basics of cooking can seem like a daunting task to someone who has never cooked before. If you do not know anything about cooking and are one of the people who burn water when trying to get it to boil, here are some tips to teach you the basics of cooking.

Learn to use your hands when cooking (after washing them thoroughly first of course!). Hands are the most sensitive yet versatile cooking utensil you will own. They can be used for mixing, measuring and testing whether a product is cooked enough. A cake, for example, will show that it is done by springing back when touched lightly with a finger on its top.

If you are cooking for someone important, such as a new boss or for a dinner party, don't use a new recipe and a new ingredient. Make sure you practice the dish first for your own family. Play around with it to make sure it is how you want it.

Make sure that you defrost your vegetables before you put them in the microwave if you are planning to cook them this way. This will allow you to achieve the best texture, while not sacrificing the taste of your vegetables. After cooking, add your vegetables to a main plate as a side dish.

If you've forgotten to soak your beans over night, quick soak them instead. Just put the beans in a very large pot and cover with water. Bring this to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about two hours. This method is just as effective as an over night soak and can save you time.

Here is a great cooking tip to use when you are handling smelly garlic. After handling garlic, simply rub your hands with a piece of stainless steel for 30 seconds. This could be your sink or a doorknob. After doing this, wash your hands with soap as your normally would. The stainless steel helps to remove the odor from your hands.

Always properly measure cooking oil. Use only the required amount of oil necessary, and resist pouring straight from the bottle to the cooking pan, to reduce the fat content in your foods. You'll want to make sure to only use the amount of cooking oil that you need.

Make sure you season your meat and fish evenly. Sprinkle your salt and pepper over the food as though it is snowing. This will make it so you avoid clumping and avoid having parts of the meat without any seasoning. This will make for a tastier meal.

If you are making meatloaf or meatballs it is a good idea to test a small piece before you make the rest of it. Make a little piece and fry it in a frying pan. Then you can taste it, see if it needs any more seasoning. It is a small thing to do that will go a long way to making a better tasting meal.

Pour off the grease from your browned hamburger before you add the rest of the ingredients. Your health will thank you for this small step and the meal is likely to taste much better without the unneeded fat. Keep an empty can or other container on your stove top expressly for that purpose.

Start your sear in a cold pan when searing duck breasts. Duck can turn very dry very quickly if not properly cooked. Using the cold pan technique for searing allows the fat to render slowly which will keep your duck moist and juicy. It will also give you more time to develop flavors and take care of some side dishes.

Pesto cooking tip! When you are using pesto sauce, make sure you never heat it up! If you want to have it in a pasta or soup dish, it is best if you cook the food first - then add the uncooked pesto. This is important because cooking pesto will make the basil have a bitter taste.

It is a good idea to cook your green vegetables in boiling hot water. If you place the veggies in cold water and wait for it to come to a boil you will lose a lot of the green color because the chlorophyll in them will leech into the water.

When baking cookies, make sure to drop the batter in thick spoonfulls onto the cookie sheet. Then, refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before baking. This reduces the flattening process that can happen when the baking process is taking place. When the edges are brown, remove the cookies from the oven, and you will be rewarded with a soft center.

Watch the time when you are making pasta for a dish. If you are cooking pasta that will be mixed with sauce, you should shave a full minute off of the initial boil time. Doing this will keep your noodles from becoming overcooked in the sauce as you mix them.

If you are cooking for an important guest, resist the urge to experiment with a new recipe. You naturally want to impress certain people with your culinary skills, be it a romantic date, a business colleague or your persnickety mother-in-law. Impress these people with a meal that you already know you are good at making.

To save time on busy weeknights, cook ahead on the weekends and stock your freezer with meals that are ready to heat through. Lasagnas, enchiladas, and other casseroles are great for freezing, as are many soups. Alternately, you can cook an extra batch of dinner any day of the week to freeze for a day when you don't have the time.

Using the tips stated above, you should have a firm grasp on the basics of cooking and be able to cook for yourself. You can even try cooking for your family and friends as a learning experience. The great thing about cooking is that if it does not work the first time, you can try again.

How To Save Money By Cooking At Home

Many people are intimidated by the thought of trying new recipes and learning new ways to cook, but cooking can be fun if you know what you are doing. If you follow the tips in this article, you will be on your way to cooking gourmet food in your home kitchen.

Preparation is a very important part of cooking. You want to make sure you have every item you might need. You also want to make sure you have all the supplies you might need. You don't want to be in the middle of a dish and find out you are missing something important.

Bake pie and tart crusts for a longer time than you think is really necessary. The crust should turn a golden color, not simple blonde. The color on your pie signifies that the caramelizing process is complete in your crust, yielding a scrumptious dessert.

Make sure that you defrost your vegetables before you put them in the microwave if you are planning to cook them this way. This will allow you to achieve the best texture, while not sacrificing the taste of your vegetables. After cooking, add your vegetables to a main plate as a side dish.

When you have a really important occasion where you are going to be cooking for someone that you love or your boss, try to stick to a food that you know will turn out good. This is not the time to be trying new things as you want to be certain it comes out right.

You can save a lot of money by buying potatoes for your favorite dishes in larger quantities. Make sure you store them in a cool dark place (preferably in a root cellar). Place them in a crate loosely and keep the storage temperature between 45 and 50 degrees F. Avoid storing them in the refrigerator as they become sweet.

Though you may not realize it, garlic tends to seep into the pores of your skin during meal preparation. After cooking with garlic, rub your hands across a stainless steel table or sink to rid them of the smell. This will help get rid of the smell so that it is not transfered to the next food item that you handle.

Have you ever experienced difficulty in determining how long you should grill a piece of meat? The best way to be sure that your meat has cooked fully is to test it with a digital meat thermometer near the center of the thickest part of the meat. For meat that is more than an inch and a half thick, you might want to close the lid of the grill to decrease the cooking time.

If you love to use herbs and spices, make sure you keep them in a dark, cool place to keep them fresh. Do not keep your spices in a warm place or where they would be exposed to the sun because they could lose their flavor.

If you have left over wine in a bottle from dinner or drinks with friends, you can pour out the remaining wine in an ice tray and put it in the freezer. When you are making a sauce that has wine in the recipe you can drop in a couple of cubes.

Prior to cooking ground meat, you should take the time to blot it. Blotting the ground meat's moisture is a good thing to do. Leaving it can cause the liquid to release when cooking. It will start to sizzle away. The meat will then be more likely to steam, instead of the intended searing.

While cooking is fun, generally, the cleaning up that follows, is not. To avoid having to deal with a big mess after a day of experimenting or meal preparation in the kitchen, keep your sink filled with hot soapy water (refreshing when necessary) and clean up as you go along. Besides keeping your end of day cleaning down to a minimum, you will also have clean hands as you touch and prepare food throughout the day.

To keep salt in shakers fresh and dry, add uncooked white rice to the shaker. The rice will absorb any moisture from the environment instead of the salt, and stops the salt from dissolving or caking. Rice is not noticeable in a glass shaker and is too large to be shaken out with normal use.

If you like to bake for the holidays and give home-baked gifts from the kitchen, consider packaging your goodies in any of the readily available, multiple-use plastic storage containers instead of holiday print metal tins. The recipient of your tasty treats will not only love their cookies, but will also love the very re-useable container your baked goods came in. Fancy tins are pretty, but often get tossed away because they are rarely air-tight and tend to rust after washing.

Keep some simple already prepared dishes frozen in the freezer. These dinners are very handy for either a quick dinner on those hectic days when you just don't feel like cooking or on that Sunday morning when you have to get something together for the church social.

Try not to overcook or undercook a cake. The times that they recommend for cake baking can be wrong due to several factors. You need to push a toothpick into the center of the cake. If your toothpick is wet or sticky, give your cake a little longer to cook. If it's clean and dry, your cake is ready to cool and frost.

Fresh lemons are a very versatile garnish in many recipes, but getting juice out of a lemon can seem like a huge chore. Rather than pulling out the big juicer, try this trick. Roll the lemon on the counter top for a few seconds, then place it in the microwave on high for 15 seconds. Take it out and cut it open - you should be able to squeeze twice the juice as before!

As was stated in the beginning of this article, cooking gourmet food at home is really just a matter of proper education and practice. Anyone can cook tasty, healthy food if they can follow directions. Apply the tips in this article and soon you will be known as the neighborhood's gourmet chef.