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Archive for May, 2009

Gourmet Sauces & Marinades

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Marinades are just a simple way to prepare certain foods that you want to have an extra kick to. Marinades to meats, serve two different purposes to tenderize and to give more flavor. Less fatty foods have a blander taste than most steaks and such. Marinades are just an easy way to tenderize and add a lot more flavor.

To make a marinade you need something of acidic base with herbs and vinegar to make the meats tasty. A marinade with a little bit of chili powder, garlic and oregano with give the food you are a making sort of a Mexican taste. Maybe for an Asian marinade some ginger and sesame seeds with a little soy sauce and hot sauce. A lot of sodas give great taste as well such as sprite goes good with chicken and coca cola is another.

The different foods you may be making are different from each other so you might need a couple of different sauces. Marinades with an acidic base give both flavor and tenderization. These marinades with acidic bases tenderize by unraveling the protein strands in the meats and fish in which you are marinating. When you are using an acidic base marinade never use aluminum or such because it will cause discoloration in the food and might cause it to have a bad taste so just use glass or other plates rather than aluminum.

The other type of marinade is dry marinade. These types are usually made of dry spices and can be rubbed right into the meats which you are trying to add flavor to. This will enhance the flavor but will not do to good as a tenderizer.

Yes, most marinades have a secret ingredient which the chefs refuse to reveal. And marinades without the secret ingredient simply taste bland. Now, when there are hundreds of marinade companies out there, why would you want to try making your own marinade?

Simply log on to any search engine and look for marinades. You will come across hundreds of websites selling these marinades. Wine Country Chef is a good website you should consider when buying marinades online. It is a place where a sense of time and place is skillfully blended with fresh and flavorful ingredients to capture the essence of the wine country. Gourmet marinade with fresh local ingredients and a flavor that captures the essence of the wine country to be enjoyed with chicken and beef.

Wine Country Chef’s mission is simple: to provide the best products and service to customers. Wine Country Chef takes great pride in what it do, the commitment to customer service and in the products it sells. The online store is designed to provide you with a safe and secure environment to browse the product catalog.

The longer you leave food and meats to marinade the more flavor and tender your food is going to be. If you have steaks it is good to either buy a 30 minute marinade or get a better marinade and let it sit and soak in the marinade all night until the next day.

Leftover marinades are useful for sauces but they need to be cooked to a heat that will kill any bacteria that grew over night. These sauces are good to add to fish steak and other foods. Just be sure to kill all the bacteria before you use the leftover marinades.

Some Good Homemade Wine Recipes

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

If you’re into homemade wine, you know the importance of getting some good homemade wine recipes. Just throwing some fruit juice and a fermenting agent in a jar and letting it sit for awhile will get you nothing but nasty fruit juice. You can of course try your own mixtures if you’re adventurous, and of course doing so is part of the fun of making your own wine, but especially if you are a beginner you’ll want to follow the easy wine recipes to the tee. Once you’re a bit more experienced, you can start experimenting with different fruit mixes and sugar levels, and who knows – you may even come up with some of your own homemade wine recipes over time! But to get you started, here are some basic recipes you can try.

Mulled wines are a great alternative to hot cocoas, ciders, and other such drinks. They are very easy to make, and once you get the hang of it, you can come up with your own mulled wine recipes. Usually you just take one regular bottle of any red wine and put it into a large stewing pot. Add a quarter cup of brandy, about 10 cloves, 2/3 cup of sugar, some whole cinnamon sticks, and about a teaspoon of ginger or allspice. Let it simmer over very low heat, stirring it occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved. You can experiment with this type of easy wine recipe by adding some favorite pureed fruit or fruit juice, or by using honey instead of sugar as a sweetener. By using different types of red wines, you’ll also be able to get either stronger or mellower flavors.

Apple wine is also a favorite for homemade wines, and while these easy wine recipes are a bit longer, they yield a very good product. Your wine mix is merely 2 containers of frozen apple juice (thawed) and 4 cups of sugar, more or less to taste, with about 2-1/2 quarts of water. As with most easy wine recipes, you boil the sugar in about a quart of the water until it is dissolved, and add this to the apple juice. Add about 6 teaspoons of acid blend, a campden tablet, a quarter teaspoon of grape tannin, a half teaspoon of pectic enzyme, and a package of wine yeast. You then prepare it as you would any other wine. Since this is one of the most basic homemade wine recipes there is, you can experiment with it by mixing the apple juice with other fruit juices. Half apple juice and half grape juice is good; cherry or blackberry juice works well too.

The important thing to remember when mixing up the fruits that you use in your homemade wine recipes is that you don’t want to use all tart fruits or all sweet fruits. A good way to remember this is to think of the colors of the fruit, and use two from different colors. For instance, grape and apple, banana and cherry, and so on. These types of mixtures usually make the best easy wine recipes for homemade wines.