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Browse every published article connected to Chef Todd Mohr, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
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Browse every published article connected to Chef Todd Mohr, or search within this exact expert archive.
Food is a constant expense. Every day, three times a day, whether eating out or cooking at home, you have to spend money on food. If you have to cook on a budget, you’re probably very careful about what you bring home from the grocery for everyday cooking, but how do you protect this investment once it’s in your cabinets or refrigerator?
These canning how-to tips came out of necessity. You see, I’ve been making my own barbeque sauce since I was a kid, but it caused conflict in my household. I loved using the sauce as a grilling marinade so I’d make gallons of my “New York Attitude” Barbeque Sauce and portion it into used plastic Wonton Soup containers. The shear number of containers would fill my Mom’s refrigerator.
Of the many Thanksgiving cooking tips I can give you, this is perhaps the most important. It can be the difference between a triumphant meal and an undercooked case of food borne illness. I get many questions on email about correct roasting temperatures. “What temperature should my oven be for turkey”? “What is the correct temperature for chicken”? “How hot should my oven be for…?”
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
They asked me to make Bourbon Chicken for the Beer Bourbon BBQ Festival this year. The mistake they made was asking me to send the recipe. They should know better than to ask the guy famous for burning recipes to write something down. That’s just the point, I don’t use recipes. Bourbon Chicken could be White Wine Chicken or Tequila Chicken using the same basic cooking method. Knowing how to saute allows you to create simple and quick dishes using the ingredients you desire. All you have to do is duplicate the basic procedure:
You can fry in a pan or sauté on the stove top, but knowing the differences between the two methods is an important lesson in cooking college. There are big differences between the basic cooking methods of Pan Frying and Sauté, but most people think they’re the same.
You don’t need a written recipe to achieve great low carb cooking from home. One basic cooking method and the ingredients YOU desire are all it takes. Earlier this week, I showed you a low carb chicken recipe using sauté method. Today’s inspiration will follow the same procedure with different ingredients.
What is Demi Glace? It’s only the most indispensible ingredient for making brown sauces. Professional chefs know that the secret to making rich and flavorful gravies for beef, veal, lamb or game lies in the few simple steps needed to make their sauces pop. Demi Glace uses one of the mother sauces called “Espagnole”. The brown sauce is combined with brown stock and reduced by half. This means that the two ingredients are combined and softly simmered until half the moisture evaporates, intensifying the flavor and reducing the volume.
“What has less flavor than water?” I pose the question to my cooking college class. Nothing! Nothing has less flavor than water. If you’re thinking about poaching fish, chicken, or eggs, why not ADD flavor to the final result by cooking them in a flavorful liquid? That’s the first rule of cooking something in a poaching method. Don’t use flavorless water, always poach items in a flavorful liquid. Have you ever boiled carrots in water? The result is carrots that taste like water and water that is orange. Hmm, where did the flavor go?
Most home cooks would begin searching cookbooks for a Chicken Kiev recipe that met their tastes, cooking skill, and ingredients on hand. This is most often a time consuming task. Actually, it takes MORE time just to find the recipe that it would to cook this stuffed chicken entrée. In today’s Elements of Entrée Production class at Baltimore’s culinary arts school, we have to prepare lunch for 35 diners in the next classroom. Their class deals with elements of dinner service, and our class provides the food. We’re the chefs, they are the servers.
Simple cooking is the best cooking. There, I said it for the 1000th time! No matter where I travel, no matter to whom I speak, those people and cultures that know good food say the same thing. In Paris, the spice store shared his incredibly simple secret to eating healthy, “Simple things are good things”. In a fish market on Hawaii, the local fish monger advised me to cook my tuna very rare and very simply. “Only scare the fish with a fry pan, it will be Ono”, he said. Ono is “delicious” in Hawaiian.
No, you’re not. You’re not looking for another Angel Food Cake recipe. The recipe really doesn’t matter as much as the procedure. So, rather than look for a new written set of instructions, how about scrutinizing the steps that professionals take in creating this fat free dessert? When you perfect the procedure for mixing cakes, all your recipes will come out better. I’ve told you before that it’s not the BAKING of cakes that causes problems, it’s the MIXING of cakes that creates the biggest mistakes.
Do you want to cook simply and still ensure that your kitchen is only producing healthy meals? Then you are going to love the idea that I'm going to share with you today. I just received my first produce box! This produce box is filled with healthy, fresh ingredients that practically guarantee that I will be cooking light recipes all week. Why A Produce Box?r
Cooking with spices is an aspect of cooking that frustrates many people. The questions I receive all highlight a confusion over which spices to buy, how to use them, and how much of them to use. All of those questions can be answered with a simple change in thinking. Use ethnic profiling.
Cooking brown rice can be very confusing if you pay attention to a written recipe or package instructions. There’s more than one way to cook brown rice, just like there’s more than one way to cook chicken, beef, or vegetables. Brown rice is whole-grain rice that is less processed than white rice, giving it greater nutritional qualities than processed rice. Because brown rice has its outer hull left in tact, it is a more wholesome and natural grain.
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
Cray-pe or Creh-pe, no matter how you say it, the simple French pancake makes an easy and elegant brunch menu idea. They’re incredibly simple to make, and flexible enough that they can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or late night snack. However, their delicate nature makes them perfectly suitable for the meal between breakfast and lunch.
I know how to cut vegetables. Trust me, I do. Early in my career I was a lowly prep cook. I was part of a very large system, at a very large kitchen, that fed 15,000 people TWICE a day! My job was to cut vegetables, all day every day. I did this for months! From six in the morning to five in the evening, nothing but onions, carrots, celery, peppers. I spent HOURS cutting.
If you want to know how to cut onions and aren’t easily fooled by late night TV commercials, I’m about to save you a tremendous amount of time and money. I have a neighbor that owns every kitchen gadget and appliance available. She must have the QVC shopping network on speed-dial. These devices are advertised to save your time and lower your kitchen stress, but they do just the opposite. I imagine a race between my neighbor and I. We’ll both dice an onion, she with her chopper/dicer device, me with my chef’s knife that I bought 17 years ago for twenty dollars. Ready? Go!
Welcome back to culinary college! Today’s lesson is How To Steam Food. I’m glad you are punctual to class because you’ll want every minute of this four and one half hour lecture and laboratory class. The students at Stratford University in Baltimore aspire to careers as professional chefs, hospitality managers, and entrepreneurs of many different kinds. One particular graduate of the Baltimore culinary college actually became a cooking instructor on the internet! He now helps thousands of people all over the world improve their lifestyles through food.
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
Easy family dinners can come from your own kitchen but have the flavors of far away. I mean that you don’t need to cook like the greatest Italian Chef to make an Italian inspired meal. You don’t need to study in Thailand to use the characteristic flavors in a simple cooking method. Basically, if it’s good to you, it’s good. I’ve had some commenters on the internet tell me that “You didn’t make the crepes in the authentic way.” Or, “real beef bourguignon isn’t made that way”. What they don’t realize, was I was just trying to make something that appealed to me.
It’s easy for me to share 10 romantic dinner ideas with you, because I cook this way almost every night. I only cook what I’m inspired to create, and my wife, Heather has always been the muse behind my creativity, from culinary college until today. The most romantic meals have three elements; they are visually appealing, they are pleasing to the palate, and they include aphrodisiac ingredients for their effects, or just for conversation value.
A Vegetable Lasagna recipe is easy to find on the internet. Everyone will have you cooking dry sheets of pasta, letting them cool correctly, then wrestling with the limp, soggy, wet sheets to create a layered Italian dish. I’ve taken a long hard look at lasagnas and I think something dramatic has to change. So, I went about changing it. My “new-age” layered and baked dish contains no pasta at all! I’ve created a new vegetable lasagna recipe that is going to blow your minds!
Gravlax Roses can make a simple and attractive holiday appetizer from dry-cured salmon. Whether you cure the salmon yourself, or just purchase it, my simple procedure can be the focus of a fancy appetizer selection that only you know was quite simple. To me, the definition of cooking is coagulating proteins in a food product. Most often, this is accomplished by applying heat. You’ve seen the coagulation of proteins in any hamburger on your barbeque grill. The raw hamburger is twice the size of the cooked hamburger. Coagulation is the stiffening and shrinking of proteins.
If you’re looking for easy cooking ideas, stop searching in recipe books! Instead, look at your cooking basics. One of the best basic cooking methods to employ for quick dishes is stove-top sauté. Sauté is a direct source, conductive cooking method that uses intense heat to cook and brown products quickly and easily. It’s the best way to get dinner done quickly, regardless of the ingredients you choose.
Let’s say that you are depending on a teacher or a mentor…someone you trust. What would happen if you found out that they’re not telling the truth, or at least, they aren’t telling you the whole truth? If you’re depending on a book to teach you a new kitchen culinary skill, you need to know now that the book isn’t telling you everything you need to know about cooking meals at home. In fact, it might shake your faith and think, well, I can’t even cook water now!
I’m inspired to create this “Grilling How To” because outdoor cooking season is now upon us! It’s my favorite cooking time of the year, but before I actually get grilling, I’ll have to inspect my barbeque and decide whether it will survive another summer. My poor, poor barbeque grill, it took some abuse this winter. It had snow piled on top of it, freezing temperatures, spiders, dust, and carbonized pieces of last year’s hamburger spend an intimate winter with it.
Would you break into a sweat if you had to create a 6 course French dinner for friends? Most people would, it can be intimidating cooking for other people. What makes this cooking stress even greater is trying to follow written recipes. Cooking is fun. Referring back-and-forth to written instructions is not. I avoid recipe stress entirely by ignoring recipes and using the basic methods I know to be successful along with the ingredients I desire. I call it “living a no recipe lifestyle”. It makes cooking so much easier, quicker, and enjoyable.
Have you ever wondered how a chef can be told to cook with a few ingredients and they can pull together a dish without using a cookbook? How is that possible? It’s possible because there are chef secrets that we use in cooking every day. They’re the same chef secrets that I teach in my online cooking classes. If you think about it, I’m sure there are many things you can do very well without having to look for instructions each time you begin.
Today’s cooking tip: Guessing does not help to make cooking easy. In fact, guessing doesn’t help your cooking at all and will make your cooking inconsistent. Think about it… people don’t guess at things they’re sure and confident in: • You don’t guess whether your left foot will follow your right in walking • You don’t guess how to drive your car today, you’ve practiced • You don’t guess how successful you’ll be, you plan it and work the plan
If you have a love of cooking like I do, you’re excited about the days getting longer. Honestly, with the exception of cooking for the holidays, cooking in the winter seems more like a chore to me. However, cooking in the spring and summer is cooking for fun. In fact, I can’t wait to start grilling outside! But, before we all explore our love of cooking in the spring and summer, we need to address the art of cooking and prepare the kitchen.
Eating healthy is not just a fad. It’s not just for hippie granola types, it’s not something to practice only under a doctors direction. Carefully choosing the foods you eat has an impact on every aspect of your life, happiness, social interactions, and overall well-being. However, eating healthy means different things to different people, and that’s okay. To some, it means salads and carrot sticks at every meal. To others, it’s simply finding a new way to enjoy more wholesome ingredients without feeling like they’re depriving themselves of flavor and enjoyment.
Nutrients in vegetables usually wind up in the green colored water you’ve just cooked them in. Have you ever noticed that if you cook carrots in water, you’ve got orange colored liquid and carrots that taste like water? Where do you think the nutrients go? If you want to avoid destroying the color, texture, and nutrients in your vegetables, there are some simple adjustments you can make in your cooking. By controlling the heat and understanding the effect of acids and bases in cooking, you can make vegetables even children will eat!
Thanksgiving potatoes are boring. If you’re serving the same mashed potatoes year-after-year, you know what I’m talking about. Do you have relatives that insist on the same old menu each holiday? Will Aunt Francis refuse to attend if you don’t serve the family mashed potato recipe? Face it, tradition always gets in the way of innovation. I want to share some ideas, inspirations, and methods from the professional kitchen that will become the start of a new holiday tradition this year.
Choosing a flaky pie crust or a mealy pie crust for you pie can mean the difference between pie pride and pie purgatory. It’s not that you need different recipes for the two types of pie crust, you just need to employ two different methods. Flaky pie crust will absorb more moisture than a mealy pie crust. Thus, they’re best used for a top crust or lattice design. The flaky variety is also great for cold pies when pre-baked and filled with mousse or cream fillings.
Spritz cookies are my favorite cookie at the holidays. I don’t make them any other time of the year, just as I don’t watch “A Christmas Carol” or “The Grinch” in July. These cookies bring back strong childhood memories for me, mostly of my Mom’s frustration with her antique cookie press. If I had only known how to use a pastry bag when I was 5, I would have helped ease some of that mate al angst. The correct use of a pastry bag is an easier way to make spritz cookies, and it allows you to make many different shapes with one bag.
I can cook better tha I ever have because I don’t follow recipes anymore. They’ve let me down too many times. However, if I don’t have written instructions, how do I create amazing meals at home? There are 5 elements, or necessary skills that I use to be able to cook the way I want, with the ingredients I desire. The first way to cook better is to change your thought process a bit. You must admit to yourself that recipes are good simply for ideas. Blindly following someone else’s idea of how something should be cooked is destined for frustration.
The best steaks for grilling are the ones that will return the best flavor and nutrition while retaining moisture and tende ess. To accomplish the best results, I always start with the best ingredients I can find.
It’s time to eliminate the idea that you have in your head that you don’t know how to cook and possibly can’t even learn how to cook! In fact, I say that you already have some cooking knowledge and I’m going to prove it to you. How? Well, you are eating something at home right? We all have to feed ourselves at some point, even if it’s opening a can of soup and heating it up.
The concept of having Mother Sauces from which to create most other sauces is a relatively new concept. Sauces have been used in cooking just about as long as fire has. Sauces in French cuisine date back to the middle ages. In those days, sauces were used to hide the bad texture and flavor of spoiling meats or preserving other foods by blocking out air.
Cooking shrimp at home is a wonderful, casual alte ative to a night out at a restaurant. But that's only if you know how to handle shrimp and produce those beautiful professional results yourself. Unfortunately, most people have trouble with shrimp for a couple of reasons. First, there is the cleaning of the shrimp. This can be a bit challenging, but with the right technique and a little bit of practice, it's a lot easier than you think. The second main obstacle that many face in preparing shrimp at home is not handling shrimp correctly and ruining a great ingredient.
Pumpkin tarts are always the first thing I make when I have access to the fresh ingredients of Fall. I know it’s time to start enjoying Fall foods when the colorful assortment of squash come to my local farmers market.
I really need some tips for healthy living. The New Year is in full swing, and like I said earlier this week during my 7 Tips for Healthy Cooking, I feel like crap. Perhaps it’s not JUST the food I eat. Maybe there are items in my environment that could be affecting my mood, health and wellness.
Professional Chefs know how to make homemade sauces using basic cooking methods, not written instructions. That’s why you won’t see a truly skilled cook run for a recipe when they need a sauce. Empowered with HOW to make a sauce, they don’t need a recipe to say WHAT to put in it. A good sauce can make or break a dish. An overcooked piece of chicken can be saved by a flavorful, rich and attractive sauce covering it. However, a bad sauce will ruin the flavor, texture and appearance of even the best cooked piece of protein.
Cooking at home is certainly more cost effective than eating out. But in order to cook on a budget, it doesn’t mean that you have to buy cheaper food. Generally, cheaper food is less healthy for you, and everyday cooking should call for the most wholesome ingredients you can find. If you have stress over cooking at home while still cooking on a budget, the first place to start is in the grocery store where your food bill originates. There are some simple ways that you can lower your grocery bill without having to buy inferior products and still make cooking at home nutritious and fun.
Stir Fry is the best way to create your own quick dinner recipe using ingredients you have on hand. It’s also a great way to create healthy meals using fresh ingredients and free yourself from the kitchen faster than following a written recipe would ever allow. In the video that accompanies this recipe, you’re able to look directly over my shoulder as I create Chicken Stir Fry Over Quinoa, using just two pans, one for the quinoa and another to steam and then stir fry the ingredients Here’s what you’ll need to follow along:r
Want to make some easy healthy recipes and ensure that your kitchen is only producing healthy cooking? Then you are going to love the idea that I’m going to share with you today. I just received my first Produce Box! The Produce Box is filled with healthy, fresh ingredients that practically guarantees that I will be cooking light recipes all week. Why The Produce Box?
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
When I go clam digging and I am as successful as I was on this particular trip, my favorite clam recipe to cook is baked stuffed clams. Today, I’m going to share how I create this fantastic dish! Knife Skills First and foremost, all of the clams need to be cut into small, yet uniformly sized pieces. While you are chopping the clams, it’s good to keep a watchful eye out for pieces of shell. You may also feel these unwanted pieces with your hands. Into the Panr