Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Versatility of Frozen Fish

Author: Andrew Burt

Fish is probably the most versatile of all frozen foods. It provides a great source of protein, is low in calories and many varieties contain essential minerals and Omega 3 oil. It is also a very economical way to buy fish as there is no wastage. Brought frozen very little pre-cooking preparation is required.



Health:



People today are more health conscious than ever before. The health benefits of fish make it an excellent food source for children and adults alike. As white fish is easy to digest it is ideal for older people and those recovering from illness. While some people do have an allergic reaction to seafood, few have a reaction to all varieties of fish.



Fish such as sardines, mackerel, tuna, salmon, sea bass are an excellent source of Omega 3 oil. This fish oil can help reduce cholesterol, reduce the risk of heart disease as well as having a beneficial effect in treating anxiety and depression. Recent studies have shown that children who have Omega 3 oil incorporated into their diet on a regular basis are able to concentrate for longer periods of time. Omega 3 is also used to help children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-ADHD.



Fish has very few calories-making it ideal for those on a diet, especially when steamed, baked or grilled. When oven baked or steamed many types of fish have little salt, no sugar or saturated fats. Fish which is frozen retains all the nutritional values of fresh fish when it is cooked following the manufacture's guidelines.



Convenience:



Fish which has been prepared and frozen is the ideal convenience food. The quick freezing techniques used by reputable companies produce small ice crystals which does not impair the flavour, texture or taste of the fish. Buying fish which has been frozen can be cooked straight from the freezer in a relatively short time, making it a perfect meal for people who lead busy lifestyles.



One of the great advantages of buying fish which has been pre-packaged and frozen is that there is no fiddly preparation. Having to fillet, de-scale and de-bone fresh fish can be tricky, time consuming and very off putting for many people. Pre-pared fish is the perfect solution for incorporating fish into a diet without any fuss. Some manufacture companies also include complete meals in their frozen ranges making them some of the most nutritious read-meals available.



Economy:



Fish is the ideal economy food when it has been frozen. There is no wastage, you simply remove the amount you need from the freezer. As fish cooks quickly, compared with many cuts of meat, it can be a cost effective way to save on fuel. With the continuing advances in souring and catching fish, all varieties are available throughout the year if they are frozen and the cost remains stable.



Choose frozen fish from reputable manufactures to ensure you are buying high quality fish which does not incorporate fillers or bulking ingredients. This way you can enjoy the convenience, health benefits and taste of one of the greatest sources of protein with confidence.

About the Author:
Youngs Sea Food offer a wide range of frozen fish.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/food-and-beverage-articles/the-versatility-of-frozen-fish-784728.html

Fish: The Basics: All the Information Needed to Select and Cook Every Kind of Fish and Shellfish

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Delicious Tuna Recipes

Author: Andrew Burt

Tuna fish are a nutrient rich source of food. They are packed full of high quality protein and are rich in minerals such as selenium, magnesium and potassium. They also contain vitamins B1 and B6 and most importantly essential Omega 3 fatty acids.



Essential fatty acids are called Essential because the body cannot make these on their own. Essential fatty acids need to be included and introduced into a healthy diet through eating foods which are rich in these such as tuna.



Tuna is one of the worlds best loved fish. Although canned tuna is delicious and nutritious, if you have never eaten fresh tuna you have been missing out on a pure culinary delight. Fresh tuna retains more of the beneficial Omega 3 than canned tuna.



Selected tuna steaks purchased from reputable companies who source their fish in a sustainable method and respect other aquatic life. To ensure you are buying the highest quality tuna steaks buy from a company who has been working in the fish industry for many years, in other words those who have built their business reputation on only sourcing, catching and selling the highest quality tuna.



If you have never tried tuna without the use of a can opener then the chances are you will not know how to prepare or cook tuna. Fresh tuna is available as either steaks, fillets or chunks. Choosing tuna steaks which have been pre-prepared provides a quick and easy way to enjoy this nutritious food without any fuss or bother.



Ideas for different cooking methods can be found in modern cookery books or online. The online option provides the opportunity to view pod casts and follow the step by step instructions. For some this new visual and audio innovation of learning how to cook a variety of different foods from around the world has provided them with the confidence to experiment and try new delicious recipes.



Tuna steaks and fillets are usually pan fried, grilled or griddled. They are also very tasty when cooked on a barbeque. Tuna chunks are great for making curries and casseroles. The only form of cooking which is not recommended for tuna is baking as this dries out the flesh.



Making a traditional French salad nicoise, a combination of tuna, black olives and green beans, has been a firm favourite for many years. Typically canned tuna is used, however seared tuna steaks are becoming an increasingly fashionable alternative. Tuna steak salads are great for those trying to lose weight, or those who just enjoy the beautiful taste of tuna. As tuna is low in calories, especially fresh tuna, it is the ideal diet food. The firm meaty texture of tuna provides a substantial and nutritious health food for all the family.



Search online for some mouth watering tuna recipes. You will be amazed at the wide variety of supper, lunch and dinner recipes available. Many of the online recipes have been specifically designed by master chefs to bring you tasty tuna dishes in the most fashionable and healthy ways. Bring the health benefits of tuna steaks to your dining table and enjoy the delicious taste of this amazing fish.

About the Author:
Youngs Sea Food offer a variety of

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/food-and-beverage-articles/delicious-tuna-recipes-784415.html

Tasty Fast Fish Recipes

Author: Andrew Burt

Fish is one of the most versatile foods. It can be cooked and prepared in a wide variety of different ways, tasting equally fantastic on its own or combined with other ingredients. One of the greatest advantages of cooking fish is the speed in which nutritious meals can be prepared. Fish requires very little cooking time which ever cooking method is used.



Supper dishes comprising of pan fried langoustine can be prepared and cooked within ten minutes. Fresh fast food at its very best. A wide range of other fish dishes can easily be cooked and ready to eat in twenty minutes.



The days of fish only being covered with batter, deep fried and served with chips or served to children in the form of fish fingers remains popular, however, fast to prepare and easy to cook a wide range of equally delicious but healthier options are widely available.



The introduction of cuisine from around the world provides varied and unusual ways to use fish as part of a sumptuous dinner or as a fast and nutritious family meal. From gourmet dishes with exotic fish as the main ingredient to sardines which are simply grilled, fish offers a wide and varied ways to be cooked. You do not have to be a skilled chef to create wonderful fish dishes.



The importance of using fish as part of a healthy diet is regularly reinforced by nutritional experts and dieticians. Fish is a great source of Omega 3 which is necessary to help reduce the risk of heart disease and help lower cholesterol. Studies have shown that Omega 3 can also be used to help treat depression and anxiety as well as a whole host of other medical conditions. In the past people found the benefits of taking cod liver oil syrup to help prevent colds and ease the pain and inflammation of arthritis. Nowadays, with Omega 3 rich fish available throughout the year the use of cod liver oil syrup is declining among those who eat fish on a regular basis. Dieticians and nutritionists recommend that fish should be eaten twice a week as part of a healthy diet, as long as it is not always served as battered deep fried traditional style fish and chips!


America''s Favorite Fish Recipes

As fish has very few calories when baked or steamed it an ideal food to help weight loss. The natural goodness of fish and the ease in which it can be cooked provides the ideal protein source for people on a diet. Dishes such as pan fried sea bass cooked with chilli soy beans is just one of many delicious fish recipes that can be cooked and prepared within twenty minutes. The mouth, watering combination of sea bass with chilli, served with Pak Choy brings a taste of the Orient to a supper table in no time at all. Treat the taste buds of your family to beautiful fish dishes from around the world by using fish recipes which have been specially designed to make cooking and eating fish a real pleasure. Fish is a great way to bring variety into the diet in a very healthy way.

About the Author:
Youngs Sea

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Do You Have Great Recipes?

Author: Ritu Sharma

Sometimes it seems like cooking is just too difficult to do on a daily basis, but food processors take a lot of the hassle out. If you don’t have a food processor, I highly recommend that you get one. In fact, go out and buy one right now! I use my food processor everyday, keeping it on my kitchen counter for fast use. Why? Because I have so many great recipes! Here is my top 10 favorite food processor recipes guaranteed to make you love your food processor.

1. You can make your own peanut butter or any other nut butter that you like in your processor. Cashews make wonderful nut butter too.

2. Speaking of peanut butter, peanut butter cookies are the easiest recipe in the world: 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1 cup peanut butter, and a teaspoon of vanilla if desired.
For more details go to: www.cooking-groundbeef.com Toss them into your processor; give it a whirl for a few seconds until well mixed. Scoop out a tablespoon of dough and scrap it on the side of the bowl to even the spoon, drop onto a cookie sheet and smash it down with a fork to make the cross hatch design. Bake at 350 degrees for 7 to 9 minutes and you have fabulous, gluten free peanut butter cookies.

3. Make steak sandwiches by chilling, but not freezing, leftover steak in the freezer until firm but not frozen. Slice with your processor and then add to a skillet in which you have been sautéing bell peppers and onions. Put it all on a sandwich bun, top with jack cheese, and enjoy. I know, who has leftover steak? Plan for this and throw an extra steak or two on the grill next time.

4. Specialty butters are definitely a favorite of mine. In fact, I get ideas from many restaurants, constantly seeking new flavors to spread across bread. Armed with my food processor, making specialty butter has never been so easy. My favorite is basil-garlic butter. By processing a stick of butter with a couple cloves of garlic, I can then add some crushed basil leaves and let it sit in the fridge for a week or so in an air-tight container. Then, it’s French bread and wine for dinner. Sometimes I even use it on grilled cheese with mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, and bacon. So delicious!

5. For fresh lemon sherbet, mix equal amounts sugar, milk, and half-and-half with freshly grated lemon rind and some lemon juice.
For help visit: www.cat-head-biscuit.com then pours into a pan and freezes it, covering it for at least two hours. After frozen, use your food processor to blend it until smooth. Four hours in the freezer later, you have a wonderful dessert to go with anything you can cook up!

6. Another great idea is to take blackberries and sugar, blending them with your food processor until they’re smooth. Then, pour the mixture through a strainer into a pan and stir in some buttermilk. When frozen, break into chucks and beat with an electric mixer until smooth again, and then pour it back into a pan and cover it until firm. This is a great way to make a cold, berry concoction that the whole family will love, especially on hot summer days. And you can substitute blueberries or raspberries as well.

About the Author:

www.delicious-sandwich-recipes.com



www.chow-chows-secrets.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/recipes-articles/do-you-have-great-recipes-767164.html

Monday, February 9, 2009

Salmonella

Salmonella in our Food

Author: mike

It is becoming all too common of an event; salmonella is making its way into our foods and the FDA doesn’t seem to be able to get a handle on the problem. If it’s not tainted meat, it’s packaged lettuce or spinach that’s bringing this danger into our homes, our lives. There was the jalapeño scare that affected many prepackaged peppers, and not so long ago the big scare was tomatoes. The areas within the food industry it affected were astronomical; from the local grocery stores, to restaurants and fast-food joints. If that wasn’t bad enough, the latest scare may even top that one; tainted peanut butter. This has affected many prepackaged and processed foods, going way beyond the simple jar of peanut butter.

So what does this tell us about the current state of our food Industry and those who govern it? It tells me that it’s become such a profit driven money hungry business that safety and quality are less important as the bottom line, and with pockets this deep unsanitary practices and working conditions are somehow “overlooked” by those who are supposed to be there to protect us. Since it could take years, if at all, for such a broken system to right itself, we must see this as a wakeup call and rethink the way we eat. We have let our busy on-the-go lifestyles govern the way we eat for far too long, depending on manufactures to do all the meal preparations (premixed, precooked, premade) which allows the average person to know nothing more than how to operate a microwave. It’s time to get back to the simplicity of food, and leave behind what food manufactures are trying to pass as such.

Throughout all of the salmonella outbreaks I’ve mentioned, I have been able steer clear of the hazards without having to change my buying and eating habits. This is because my diet consists of mostly organic whole foods and minimally processed foods. The less number of processes food goes through, the less number of times it is touched by man or machine, and limiting this handling limits the chance of contamination; not to mention yields a food much higher in nutrients (which is commonly lost during processing and later added back in as in the form of synthetic vitamins and minerals). Instead of packaged produce, look for the fresh organic variety; local health food stores or farms can be a great place to purchase these, and your support will go locally instead of to the already deep pockets of large corporations. Instead of highly processed foods, look for organic minimally processed foods. Take the current peanut butter scare; I purchase freshly ground organic peanuts. That means there is nothing in the peanut butter other than, well, peanuts…fresh organic minimally processed peanuts.

Now compare that to the ingredients of a typical jar of peanut butter from a popular brand:

* “Made from Roasted Peanuts and Sugar, Contains 2% or Less of Molasses, Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed and Soybean), Mono- and Diglycerides, Salt”

In deciphering this you can see they have sugar listed twice (once as sugar and again as “molasses”), and fat listed twice (once as “mono- and diglycerides” and again as “Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils “), both of which require a lot of processing; not to mention, neither of which are helping the obesity problem in this country. All of this added to increase the shelf life, but at what cost to your health?

Maybe people would be less likely to buy highly processed foods if the labels listed in detail these processes instead of their “pseudo names”. What if instead of “Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils”, the label read, “Hydrogenation is a high tech process. Vegetable seeds are cleaned and bleached to remove all color, taste, smells and impurities. The liquid vegetable oil is then heated to high temperatures and a catalyst (commonly nickel, but could be palladium, platinum or rhodium) is added. Hydrogen is bubbled through the liquid. The mixture is then filtered to remove the metal, leaving hydrogenated vegetable oil. Water, whey, salt, vitamins, colorings, flavorings and emulsifiers may then be added to produce hydrogenated margarine.”; or instead of “mono-glycerides and di-glycerides” the label read “The MGs and DGs added are usually by-products of fats and oils processing such as partial hydrogenation and various forms of extraction and interesterification processes.”

It’s time to simplify what we eat, down to the basic organic ingredients, and leave behind all of the processes found in highly processed foods!

About the Author:

http://www.cookingallergyfree.blogspot.com



Living with allergies can be difficult, some harder than others. Being allergic to both soy and dairy, I know this first hand. So with the hopes of educating others, I have created a very informative blog with a focus on living soy and dairy free, while maintaining a healthy diet. My belief in natural healing and natural cures is the driving force behind my desire to be as healthy as I can be...body and mind.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/nutrition-articles/salmonella-in-our-food-762598.html

Salmonella - A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet References

How to Make Easy Lemon Meringue Pie

Author: Vincent Platania

Easy lemon meringue pie is a great way to make an impressive looking and tasting dessert without a lot of fuss. Regular lemon meringue pie takes a lot of effort but there are a few shortcuts you can take in order to make an easy lemon meringue pie that tastes as good as one from scratch.

The first step in easy lemon meringue pie is the crust. If you’re in a really big hurry, you can use a pre-made refrigerated crust. If you have a little extra time, use one half of a box of graham crackers (one package) and a stick of butter. Let the butter soften at room temperature, and crush the graham crackers until they’re fairly fine. Mix the two and spread over the bottom of your pie pan and bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. This is a delicious pie crust that will make your easy lemon meringue pie taste even better.

The next step in making easy lemon meringue pie is to prepare a lemon pudding mix according to the package instructions. Choose one like Rawleigh’s Lemon Dessert Mix that’s smooth and creamy and mix it carefully so it doesn’t taste powdery and no one will be able to tell the difference between this and lemon filling made from scratch.

Pour the dessert mix into the pie crust and add some lemon zest for a little extra flavor. The final step in making easy lemon meringue pie before baking is to create the meringue. There are no shortcuts for this step, but don’t let it intimidate you. Take three egg whites and ¼ a teaspoon of cream of tartar and beat with an electric mixer until the mixture is foamy. Add 6 tablespoons full of sugar a little at a time and beat the mixture until stiff peaks form in it.

Spoon the meringue on top of the pie filling and make sure the edges are completely covered, otherwise the inside of the pie will get soggy. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes; when the meringue starts to brown slightly your easy lemon meringue pie is almost done. Finally, let it cool for at least three hours before serving. This easy lemon meringue pie is a real crowd pleaser that will earn you the same street cred as a chef as if you’d made it from scratch.

About the Author:

Rawleigh Products was founded in the late 1800s to create a line of "Good Health Products" that possessed both strength and quality. Visit http://www.rawleigh-products.com or Call # 1-800-992-1089

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/recipes-articles/how-to-make-easy-lemon-meringue-pie-762628.html

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Caramel Streusel Topped Apple Pie With Flaky Pie Crust

Caramel Streusel Topped Apple Pie With Flaky Pie Crust

Author: Linda Wilson

There may be nothing more American than apple pie but you just haven't had apple pie until you've tried this Caramel Streusel Topped Apple Pie. If you love caramel apples, you just have to try this pie! We have also included a recipe for a flaky crust that is easy and stays flaky. Yes, you, too, can make a good flaky pie crust. Don't let the long name of this delicious pie put you off--it is not hard to make, in fact it is easy.



FLAKY PIE CRUST:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup solid vegetable shortening
4 to 6 tbsp ice water



Combine flour and salt in a large bowl. Cut in shortening with a pastry blender or two butter knives. Add ice water, tossing with a fork, until mixture comes together; form into a bowl. On a floured surface, roll dough into a 13-inch circle. Place in a 9-inch glass pie plate. Trim the overhang to 1-inch and fold under. Flute the edge. Use with the following pie.



CARAMEL STREUSEL TOPPING:
9 tbsp butter or margarine
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup toffee bits



APPLE FILLING:
6 or 7 Golden Delicious apples
3/4 cup toffee bits
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/8 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter or margarine



Preheat oven to 400 degrees. To make the topping combine butter, flour, sugar, and toffee bits. Form mixture into two balls; refrigerate.



Filling: Cut each of the apples into quarters. Peel and core each quarter, then cut each in half. Toss the apples with the toffee chips, sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Spoon the mixture into the crust. Dot with the butter. Remove the topping from the refrigerator and break into pieces over the apples. Bake for 20 minutes. Loosely cover pie with a tent of foil with a quarter-sized hole in the center to allow steam to escape. Bake for 1 hour or until bubbly and crust is golden at 400 degrees.



Enjoy!

About the Author:

For more Sweet Treats visit "Motherhood, Apple Pie & Other Fattening Things"
href="http://ladybugssweettreats.blogspot.com">http://ladybugssweettreats.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/desserts-articles/caramel-streusel-topped-apple-pie-with-flaky-pie-crust-750043.html