Fix, Freeze, Feast - Kati Neville [6]
One of the most important things to remember as you prepare our recipes is that you must never pour a hot sauce over raw meat. To avoid food-borne illness, hot food should be kept above 140ºF and cold food should be kept below 40ºF. Anywhere in between is considered a danger zone, conducive to bacterial growth. You will need to cool all hot sauces before they can be added to raw meats. To be safe, do this as quickly as possible. When a recipe indicates you should cool a sauce, this is the proper way to do it: Pour the hot sauce into a large shallow pan. Use more than one pan if necessary, as the sauce should not be more than 4 inches deep. Leave the pan uncovered. Place the pan in the sink and carefully add cold water and ice around the pan until the water reaches the outside rim. Stir the sauce in the pan frequently. When the sauce reaches 70ºF, you can transfer it to the refrigerator to keep it cool until it’s used in the recipe. Never pour a hot sauce over raw meat.
Food Safety: You may rarely think about food-borne illness in your day to day cooking. In all likelihood you are already practicing good food safety—washing your hands frequently, keeping raw meat separate from vegetables and condiments, and cleaning up spills promptly. When working with large volumes of food, be even more scrupulous. Use hot, soapy water to clean equipment and cooking surfaces. Keep cold foods in the refrigerator or a cooler with ice until you’re ready to use them in the recipe. Cool hot sauces according to our directions, and cook your foods to the appropriate temperatures.
CORRECTING MISTAKES
Every once in a while you’ll discover you’ve made a mistake while preparing a recipe. Don’t panic! In all our years of cooking for our families and with groups in our businesses, we’ve encountered only a few mistakes that couldn’t be fixed. The rest we were able to repair and, in some cases, preferred the “wrong” version!
We’ve designed our method to help you avoid mistakes in the first place. We’ve tested for the intensity of seasonings, how reliably an entrée comes together in your kitchen, and how well it retains its quality in the freezer. Nevertheless, mistakes still happen, and in order to avoid having to throw away food, here are some suggestions in case you face a kitchen quandary.
HOW CAN I FIX MY RECIPE IF I . . .
MEASURE AN INGREDIENT INCORRECTLY? If you add too much of one ingredient, often you can simply increase the whole recipe proportionately. See our tips on adapting recipes (page 212) for some rules of thumb.
If you put too much of a dry ingredient into a mix and it’s sitting on top of other ingredients or floating on top of a marinade, try to scoop off the excess. Chances are, you’ll be able to approximate the original amount.
FORGET TO USE AN INGREDIENT? If you’re all finished and find an unused ingredient on the counter, determine where you made the error and whether or not it will be easy to add. In a marinade, for example, you can simply add the correct amount to each bag before freezing. Alternatively, you can add it to the entrée when it comes out of the freezer, but remember to make a note of it on the label.
BUY THE WRONG MEAT? Sometimes you’ll find you end up with a cut of meat you didn’t mean to buy. The package may have been placed in the wrong section of the cooler and picked up inadvertently. One of our customers accidentally bought pork instead of beef for the Beef Barley Soup. She ended up making Pork Barley Soup and it was great. If the recipe can be adapted for the cut of meat, go ahead and use it anyway; otherwise, just pick another recipe to use with the meat that you took home.
FIND SOMETHING TOO SALTY? Salt is an ingredient