Firmitas

Basic Cooking Techniques
Revision 17
© 2021-2024 by Zack Smith. All rights reserved.

This is just a list of basic cooking techniques in no particular order.

Hard boiled eggs

At sea level or near it, boil eggs for 11-12 minutes to ensure they are hard boiled.

Spaghetti and other pasta

  1. Fill a saucepan about half full. Add a dash of salt.
  2. Boil the water.
  3. Add a 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil.
  4. Add 1/3 to 1/2 of an 8-serving package of spaghetti or other pasta.
  5. Boil the spaghetti until it is soft, which takes about 15 minutes. If a sticky film starts forming on the surface of the water, it's definitely done.

Note that if you refrigerate pasta overnight, a chemical reaction occurs that forms resistant starch which according to health experts is beneficial to good gut bacteria.

Corn on the cob

  1. Buy fresh corn on the cob.
  2. Husk it at the store to make sure you don't get diseased corn. This is important because some fungi that attack corn can be dangerous to humans.
  3. Use it while it's fresh. Don't store it, if you can avoid doing so.
  4. Boil the corn for 4-5 minutes or until tender.

Potatoes

Boiling time depends on the potatoes' size.

  1. Tiny 12 minutes
  2. Small 15 minutes
  3. Medium 20-25 minutes
  4. Large 30 minutes

Let cool after cooking for 5-10 minutes.

White Rice

  1. Rinse 1 cup of dry rice twice with water to remove husk particles.
  2. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan.
  3. Add the dry rice, turn down the heat to simmer, and cover.
  4. Cooking time depends on the type of rice e.g. long grain Thai white rice is 10-12 minutes.
  5. After cooking, let sit 5-10 minutes.

Smoothie recipe

There is no need to use ice when you make a smoothie.

  1. Freeze a banana for at least 3 hours, or overnight.
  2. In a blender, add 1 cup milk, 1 frozen banana, 1/2 to 1 cup frozen mango, 1 tbsp peanut butter or almond butter.
  3. Blend and serve.

The nut butter is optional. It's important to remember that nuts contain phytic acid which can block the absorption of calcium, so they should be consumed sparingly.

If amounts and conditions are right, the consistency will be that of soft serve ice cream.

Enhancements:

  • cocoa powder
  • a dash of tumeric
  • cinnamon
  • ginger powder
  • quick oats
  • frozen spinach
  • mini carrots
  • frozen cherries
  • frozen strawberries
  • vanilla extract
  • lavender extract
  • various protein powders

Cinnamon Mango Lassi recipe

The Indian mango milkshake called a Mango Lassi can be considered a variant on the above smoothie recipe.

The traditional Lassi uses high-fat milk but there's really no need for it.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup 1% milk
  • 1 cup frozen mango
  • 1 tbsp peanut butter
  • Cinnamon and ginger powders, 1/4 to 1/2 tbsp each.
  • A small amount of sweetener e.g. date syrup or stevia, to taste.

Hot chocolate recipe

Caveat emptor! A recent Consumer Reports scientific analysis of chocolates sold in the USA showed elevated levels of lead and/or cadmium in half of the products. Consume chocolate and cocoa powder at your own risk.

  1. Boil 1/2 cup water in microwave.
  2. Add 1-2 tbsps cocoa powder. Add a dash of salt and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract.
  3. Mix until cocoa is melted, then add lowfat milk and heat in microwave for 2.5 minutes.

Enhancements:

  • To enhance the flavor, add a dash of cinnamon and/or ginger powder.
  • To add a peanutty flavor, use 1 tbsp peanut powder when you add the cocoa powder. (This is available on Amazon.)
  • To fill out the flavor, add a drop of lavender extract (e.g. Taylor and Colledge's).

Lavender ice cream recipe

If you don't live near a Salt and Straw ice cream shop, which regularly sells lavender ice cream, you can make your own.

  1. Purchase vanilla ice cream, preferably 100% all natural (no natural flavors, no artificial flavors, no carageenen, no MSG etc).
  2. Spoon out however many servings you will consume into a sealable plastic container.
  3. Let it thaw at room temperature for perhaps 15 minutes.
  4. Add 1 or 2 drops of lavender extract per serving size, stir it, reseal and freeze again.

Caveat: Don't go hog-wild with lavender. While it's thought to reduce stress in cancer patients, it's also been found to cause gynecomastia in boys.

Garlic ice cream recipe

Garlic ice cream is commonly sold at garlic festivals across the world. These festivals happen wherever garlic in grown, including in Gilroy (California), the UK, Estonia, Finland, etc.

Rather than make garlic ice cream from scratch with an ice cream maker, you can simply add garlic flavor to vanilla ice cream:

  1. Take one garlic clove and skin it.
  2. Crush it and mince it.
  3. Put it in a blender (e.g. Vitamix) and add 1/2 cup water and blend to break down the garlic to create a garlic water mixture.
  4. Mix several tablespoons of the garlic water mixture with 1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream.

Fig Quesadilla

The best quesadilla in my humble opinion is one that is sweetened with figs.

Ingredients:

  • Trader Joe's fig butter (contains added sugar)
  • Trader Joe's flour tortillas
  • Shredded cheese

This is very simple: Smear fig butter on a tortilla, then add shredded cheese on top.

Microwave for 30 seconds, and fold it once or twice. Or you can fry it.

If you can find affordable fig butter without added sugar, that would certainly be healthier than TJ's.

Chicken

Pizza-flavored Chicken

Take one container of Trader Joe's Just the Chicken unseasoned, precooked chicken strips, heat it in a closed saucepan with 1/4 cup water until the temperature rises enough to kill any bacteria.

Then add Trader Joe's Pizza Sprinkle seasoning, to taste, stir and close again for a couple minutes, lowering the temperature.

The chicken and that particular seasoning go well together.

Note, the proper pronunciation of pizza in standard Italian is peed-zuh.

Coffee

Coffee brewing

The ideal temperature at which to brew coffee is 200°F. Over 205°F and the coffee will taste burnt and bitter.

If you're brewing pour-over coffee and you use a microwave oven to boil the water, and you don't have a non-laser thermometer, you'll have to use trial and error to determine

  1. just the right amount of water and
  2. just the right number of seconds

to heat the water to achieve the perfect temperature.

If you plan to buy an espresso maker, make sure it has a stainless steel brewing unit. People are concerned brass ones leach lead into the coffee.

Bean grinding

If you bought whole-bean coffee by mistake, but you have a Vitamix or similar high-power blender, no worry. You can easily grind coffee beans in your blender to a fine powder.

Note! Coffee grinds are a good fertilizer and not to be wasted.

Bean roasting

You will need a stovetop that has a vent above it because manual roasting creates smoke.

  1. Put about 1 cup of green beans in a saucepan.
  2. Turn on the vent fan and set the stovetop heat to medium. NOTE: Too high will just burn the beans.
  3. Stir them as you roast. Do not use a plastic spoon; wooden is better. The beans will get progressively browner.
  4. At some point the beans will begin making a cracking sound known as First Crack. Vapor will arise from the beans due to water being released.
  5. As you continue to stir the beans they will eventually take on a black oily appearance and smoke will be generated, accompanied by a softer cracking sound. This is known as Second Crack.
  6. When the beans are entirely black and oily, turn off the heat and deposit the beans into a strainer that set upon a plate.
  7. Under the vent, over the plate, stir the beans to remove husk particles.
  8. Let the coffee sit until cool, or refrigerate in a jar in order to cool them, then grind the roasted beans.

Green beans can be bought online e.g. I bought some from Sweet Marias.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) avoidance

Glutamate is an excitotoxin (a kind of neurotoxin) that began to be used very widely in the processed food industry in the USA after World War II. During the war it was discovered that captured Japanese soldiers' rations were considerably more tasty than Americans' and it was deduced that MSG was the reason.

The definitive book on this subject is:

MSG is significant because it can cross the blood-brain barrier in some circumstances and it is believed to accelerate the development of Alzheimer's disease.

MSG's use originates in Japan. It is a component of seaweed.

As it happens, monosodium glutamate has long been used in restaurants, with some restaurants becoming more notorious than others, however it seems that today they all use it. It increases profits at the expense of the customers' health, as do other ingredients like salt, sugar, saturated fat, trans fat, and so on.

Unless you eat primarily at restaurants, most of your exposure to MSG will be the result of eating processed foods which also contain considerable amounts of MSG.

No one should be surprised that any restaurant or processed food company puts profits over protecting consumers' health.

But how is it possible that even processed food contains some form of MSG, you ask, when most ingredients lists do not actually specify monosodium glutamate. How does it get into processed food?

It is due to the fact that the U.S. FDA has allowed roughly 40 common ingredients to be adulterated with an equivalent form of glutamate, called manufactured free glutamate (MfG).

A processed food's ingredients list may never include glutamate or MSG, but the product itself may contain quite a lot of it nevertheless.

Some of the 40 ingredients that may be, or are intentionally contaminated with MfG include:

  • Natural flavors
  • Artificial flavors
  • Yeast extract
  • Autolyzed yeast
  • Malt extract
  • Sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate
  • Barley malt, malted barley
  • Citric acid, citrate
  • Pectin
  • Gelatin
  • Whey protein, whey protein isolate
  • Textured protein
  • Soy protein, soy extract
  • Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
  • Protease
  • Ajinomoto flavor (maker of MSG)
  • Carrageenan
  • Maltodextrin
  • Enzymes
  • Spices
  • Seasonings
  • Corn starch (suspected)
  • Dextrose (suspected)
  • And so on...

Of course sometimes manufacturers do quite openly list glutamate, glutamic acid, or ingredients ending in glutamate.

A quick check of ingredients lists for processed foods will show however that the above glutamate-contaminated ingredients are pervasive.

Not only do processed foods now include MSG, but also other excitotoxins as well:

  1. Aspartate (used in Aspartame) and
  2. L-cysteine (found in cheap bread).

In the case of L-cysteine it is not even required to be listed.

To avoid these excitotoxins, stick to basic and raw foods and commit to cooking your own food yourself.

But beware, even basic uncooked foods may have added spices or flavorings, specficially uncooked meats.

And note as well that some basic foods naturally contain high levels of glutamic acid (i.e. ionized glutamate):

These are from the USDA foods database.

  • Parmesian cheese 8.21g per 100g
  • Almond butter 5.91g per 100g
  • Cheddar cheese (lowfat) 5.48g per 100g
  • Walnuts (black) 5.15g per 100g
  • Peanut butter 5.02g per 100g
  • Mozzarella cheese (whole) 4.46g per 100g
  • Cocoa powder 2.95g per 100g
  • Walnuts (English) 2.82g per 100g
  • Tuna light 4.35g per 100g
  • Salmon 2.9g per 100g
  • Bread, multigrain 2.2g per 100g
  • Oats, quick 2.83g per 100g
  • Pasta 2.02g per 100g
  • Pasta, spinach 1.62g per 100g
  • Garbanzo beans 1.24g per 100g (e.g. hummus)
  • Peas 0.733g per 100g
  • Tomatoes 0.451g per 100g
  • Carob powder 0.362 per 100g

If you recognize some of these as your favorite foods, their glutamate content may be a primary reason.

By comparison some basic foods have low levels of glutamate:

  • Cantaloupe 0.174g per 100g
  • Bananas 0.152g per 100g
  • Grape juice 0.11g per 100g
  • Blueberries 0.092g per 100g
  • Mango 0.096g per 100g
  • Celery 0.09g per 100g
  • Cherries 0.083g per 100g
  • Brewed coffee 0.02g per 100g

Milk contains much less glutamate than cheese:

  • Nonfat 0.832g per 100g
  • Lowfat 0.809g per 100g
  • Whole milk 0.788g per 100g
  • Half and half 0.629g per 100g
  • Soy milk (plain, unsweetened) 0.619g per 100g


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