My top 5 cooking tips.
EXTRA TIP:
You will notice that every soup recipe I share will end with a clear warning to not blend soup fresh out the pan.
“But Nish, why? I just wanna eat it!!”
Because it is too hot and this pressure inside a sealed container could explode your blender. Take it from me, who is speaking from experience… don’t. blend. hot. soup.
No girls were harmed in the making of the soup you see opposite (but it was a close one, don’t make the same mistake we did. And by ‘we’, I of course mean… ‘I’).
Alternative if you want to eat it straight away: buy a hand/immersion blender instead. This can also be used to make smoothies and are often easier to clean than standard blenders.
Here are 5 of my favourite cooking tips and hacks.
Your food, straight after cooking it, is likely to be a little too hot to eat immediately. Quickly do your washing up whilst it cools down to the perfect temperature. Everything will scrub off pans more easily, and by the time you’re done, your kitchen is clean and your food is at the perfect temperature to eat! Saves the hassle of doing it later. Let’s be honest, the minute we start saying we’ll do it later… we’ve already lost.
Before squeezing a lemon, roll it on your work surface using your hand, particularly the heel of your palm. It’ll make it much easier to juice and means you can get the most out of it for your meals.
A quick and easy way to pack more veg into a soup is to wilt in some spinach in after having blended the soup. In Portugal, this is really commonly done, as well as adding sliced, cooked cabbage.
Shop around when it comes to condiments and spices. In my first year at uni, I managed to buy 300g of paprika (6 times the weight of those glass jars of spices you buy in supermarkets) for only double the price. All those saved pennies add up!
Eating something simple is still eating something. There’s plenty of meals that don’t need recipes e.g. pasta and sauce from a jar but if you’re really short on time for whatever reason, just grab something from a box. Meat alternatives have advanced hugely since I first went vegan and there’s so much choice now! Consider it on the odd occasion if you don’t feel like cooking - you still need to eat and fuel your body and mind.
