In this special episode from 2004, Arlene shares some of her favorite kitchen tips and tricks! They include knife skills and how to cut vegetables, how to make garnishes like radish roses and scallion brushes, and how to clean and prepare shrimp. It’s an interesting show filled with tips you can use in your kitchen!
Note: There were no “recipes” from this episode, since all the things she makes are shown step-by-step in the video.
Transcript
- Oh hi, thanks for joining us today on “At Home.” I’m just looking through my latest cookbook, this “At Home for the Holidays” one. And this is the one where we take the 10 most popular holidays throughout the year and have helped you with recipes and menus and stories and everything else. And I can’t believe we’re getting into that season where we do a lot of entertaining because it’s picnic time, cookout time, time for a barbecue, time to invite some folks over out on the deck. We’ve been through a long, long winter and I think it’s time. Let’s enjoy the sunshine. Let’s crack out the lawn furniture. Let’s paint up the porch, get the plants all put in their places, and let’s start to entertain. And today, I’m not making things. I’m showing you some things. I’ve titled this show today called Kitchen Tricks, tricks in the kitchen that will make your job easier. A long time ago, I did a program called “Coming to Term with Cooking Terms” because when I would say to you “Well, let it braze for a little bit,” I would get letters that say, “Arlene, what do you mean by braze?” “Well, when it comes to a simmer.” “Well, what’s the difference between a boil and a simmer?” And so I realized, I’m taking for granted everybody knows and everybody doesn’t know, so today’s a teaching class. And in our newsletter this month that will cover this program, we have all of these decorations and directions for these decorations included so that when you entertain for your picnics or your late night dinners on the deck or whatever you’re doing, you’ll be able to decorate them very beautifully and really make them not just look like a nice dinner, but a really nice dinner, okay? We’re gonna take our today’s “At Home” hint, and then we’ll be back with kitchen tricks. Stay with us. Here’s today’s “At Home” hint. The quickest and easiest way to grease cake pans is to slip your hand into a sandwich bag, and then use it as a glove to spread shortening or butter around the pan. If you’ve got a helpful hint you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, Cornerstone TeleVision, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. All right, if you’ve just joined us, you’ve just got here in time ’cause we’re doing kitchen tricks. And the first thing I wanna show you is when you’re doing any of this stuff, you really need a good cutting board. And under your cutting board, you always need a damp cloth because if you don’t, that board will walk all over your counter. But when you put the cloth, see it makes it nice and firm, you wanna be sure to do that, that’s really important. Okay, I’m gonna do some very basic things. First of all, how to cut an onion without cutting your fingers, very important. First of all, you have a nice sharp knife. This is known as a French chef’s knife. This is what you want. You cut the top. Now, I cut the root off, some people don’t. This is where the smell all comes from, from that root end. If you leave that on, you won’t have that problem, so I’m gonna leave it on. And then, you peel back, being very careful, keep your fingers outta the way at all times. Peel back one layer and just begin to peel, peel it back. And if you don’t wanna take this off, the peeling, sometimes it stays on for you. You don’t have to, but you can sometimes use that as part of the handle. You can get a grip on it better because what you wanna do is there’s a film. See that little film? You wanna make sure that that gets away from you ’cause that’s very slippery and get that off. Just go around like that. Now, get rid of this into our trash. Now, what you do, you hold it like this, and you want chopped onion, right? If you’re just slicing, you begin to slice and proceed. Keeping your fingers out of the way clear across the grain of the onion. This would be across the grain. Do you see these little lines here? It’s kind of a gauge if you want chopped onion. Because you’re going to take the tip of your knife, you’re gonna plunge it into just about every quarter of an inch. You see if we’re as wide as these little things are? That’s about how wide you want to put the slices of your onion. Keep your fingers outta the way. You can make it a little bit more comfortable for yourself if you wanna put your thumb and forefinger on either end. Now, once you have them clear across, try not to have it go clear through where it slices it off. Now, you hold it together. Now, you’re going to make slices in the, keep your fingers way to the top. Keep them up and start about every quarter to a half inch going up, okay? Keep your fingers out of the way. Just keep your fingers out of the way. Try to hold those. Try to hold that onion together. Don’t worry if it comes apart, it’s okay. Better it to come apart you chop it, then for you to chop a finger. We don’t want that. No fingers lost here. Now, keep your fingers. There we go. You already have some that have fallen. Now, you’re gonna go down through all those cuts. Very finely cut. Look, how easy. You know what the key to this is? Having a large enough knife that cuts through that onion because that’s a big onion and it has to be very sharp. More accidents happen because somebody’s knife was not sharp. And what they think is, “This isn’t a sharp knife.” Hello. Goodbye. So you don’t want that to happen, so you have to make sure, sorry about that, but you have to make sure that you do it right because if you don’t, you really end up with a really bad problem. Okay, that’s our onion. Easy. Just simple instruction, all right? Now, we’re gonna take our green pepper. Easy to do. A lot of people, they cut around, cut around, this is a simple, easy way to do it. Just start to cut here and go down. Cut here, go down. Cut here, go down. Cut here, go down. It’s gone. That’s your garbage. Then, you take these. Holding this, cut them. If you want slices, cut like that. If you want it chopped, bunch them together. That’s simple. Chopped green peppers. Easy to do, you can do all your peppers like that. If you cut jalapenos, wear rubber gloves. Absolutely necessary, absolutely. All right. Now next, we’re gonna do some garlic. We have a clove of garlic here. People sit there and they try to pick this stuff. I’ve seen them, you work and work. Take the flat end. Let me wipe this off. Take the flat end of your chef knife and just give it a little pop like that. You see what that does? It breaks down everything. Guess what comes out? Hello, a clove of garlic, nicely clean. Now, I like to take that little end off ’cause sometimes that’s a little strong. Now I want to mince it again. We want to use the same principles. Don’t go clear to your finger with it. Only cut back so far, but you wanna do slices again. Turn it around and then you’re gonna slice it in the opposite direction of what you’ve just done. And then, this is called mincing garlic. Okay? Now, somebody will tell me, “Arlene, I never saw anybody use a French chef knife ’cause you don’t look like those professional people.” Guess what? You’re right. I’m not a professional person, but this is the way I use a knife. I do it safely. I do it so I don’t get hurt, thank God. Now usually, that’s fine if it’s minced, but sometimes you want it to be mixed with some salt. So what you do is you start on the flat and just start to mash it, mash it to the side. Just begin to break down those fibers. Then, you take your salt and just add your salt right to it. Whatever’s in your recipe, calls for half a teaspoon, add your half a teaspoon of salt. And again, with the flat end of your knife, just keep going like that. Keep collecting it and just keep mashing. Pretty soon, you have a wonderful, like a paste almost, that works great in your recipes, and you really have the true, true favor of the garlic. See how that works? Ain’t it great? Okay. Next, I wanna show you how to cut an avocado. That’s what this is. This is that big green thing that’s in the grocery shelves that nobody seems to know what to do with it because we aren’t from California. However, they’re getting more and more popular. I’ve seen people to work and work and slave trying to get that seed out of there. Take your French chef knife and begin to cut it at the top and just hold it. Let it go the whole way around, and you’ll come back to where you cut it to begin with. You see? I’ve gone the whole way around. Now, I’m just gonna loosen it up a little bit in there like that. Now, I take it and I twist in opposite directions. There it is. Now, you have to get that big rock and seed out of there. People dig and dig and they lose all the pulp. Just whack it, twist it. Oh sure, now it’s not gonna do it. There it is, and it comes right out easy and simple. Next, what you’ll do when you’re serving this, you’re gonna take a spoon, go around the outer edge. Now, this has to be a nice ripe one. Can’t do them if they’re, and you say, “How will I know?” You’ll know because this’ll give a little bit when you’re testing them in the grocery. It gives a little bit, there’s a little give to it so you know it’s pretty ripe. Don’t put them in the refrigerator. Let them set out a day or two before you need them. And there you have it. Look at this whole big, beautiful, wonderful avocado. On a salad, yum, yum. We’ll be right back with more kitchen tricks in just a moment, stay with us. All right, once you have your avocado done, lime juice keeps it best until you’re ready to use it because it will start to turn a brown. It’ll start to discolor, kinda like apples do. So just hit it with the lime juice and it will be fine. That’s your avocado. Now, let’s move on to some garnishes, which I think are great. I’m gonna show you my carrot curls. See these? You take these off. These decorate nicely. Look how nice. Now, the longer you leave them in there to curl, the better it is, and the thinner the slices, the better it is. So you say, “How do you do that?” I’m glad you asked. I’m here to show you. I feel like the Ginsu lady showing you how the Ginsu knife works and all that. Not exactly right, but it feels like it. Okay, you’re gonna clean your carrot. Take it all off. And with the same potato peeler, carrot peeler, vegetable peeler, whatever you wanna call it, you take it. And you go from the bottom, the shorter smaller side to the higher side, the thicker side. And you start to put a little pressure in the same place you do another one. You keep doing it till the carrot, keep doing slices just like that, shouldn’t be real big long ones. Don’t get those carrots that are like this big and think, “Oh, I’ll really make some,” ’cause that doesn’t work. And if it breaks off, don’t worry about it, it’ll still work fine. Now, what you do, take it, roll it from the wider end inside to the thinner end. Take your little toothpick. And you definitely want, don’t go clear through, you only want to go halfway. And then, you plunge it in ice water. Do these for a party tonight, do them early in the day because the longer they stay in that cold water, the longer they’ll keep their curl. These are great for like when you have appetizers or something that’s a little dull in color that you want to add some color to it. Perfect, inexpensive, easy to do. You can even let the kids help you with something like that. Okay, that’s for your carrot curls. Next to them, you can see here in this bowl of water, look at these, aren’t these neat? You know what that is? That’s made from a green onion. Okay, we have a green onion, a scallion. And what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna use up to where this green starts to separate you’ll cut it off there. And you cut the root off like that, any little bumpy pieces that are still on there. Now, you’re gonna hold it in the middle ’cause you want half of it to go this way, half of it to go that way. So you’re gonna cut down the middle once. And then, you’re gonna turn it over and cut down another way. Keeping your fingers outta the way. And any more slits, if you get the real big ones that are real thick like your finger, boy, they look like brushes by the time you get done, it’s beautiful. Once you have all the slices in that end, turn it around and do the same thing with the other end. And you just keep making slits from halfway in the middle, out to the end. When you have that done, you pop those in the ice water too, and the ice water just really opens them up. And again, look how pretty that would be. Imagine that in one of our, look how nice that is, to decorate your trays or hors d’oeuvres or even your dinner. It’d be very nice, very easy to do. Now, talk radish roses. Now, these are huge radishes. I would use a smaller one, but these are what we have for today. This is just a lot of little xs, lines across, just like we did the onion really that we did on the top of the radish. But then, I just went around and did a scallop the whole way around the edge after I had finished with these little slits across the top, put that in that water and that will open up too. And these will open up, if you get them the scallops and you get these, this takes a little longer than the carrots or the scallions, you wanna do this the day before even. And they have to be completely submerged in water. So you wanna make these nice and deep ’cause the deeper they are when they open up, they really open up like a rose and it’s called a radish rose, and I think you’ll enjoy that. Okay, so there’s three garnishes that we’ve made: radish rose, some people call these onion sticks or brushes I’ve heard them called too, and then of course our carrot curls. Now, I wanna go onto something here a little more involved than garnish. These things are just simple important things to know. And I’m gonna put my dish here. These are gorgeous asparagus, I love them when they’re pencil-thin like this, hardly ever get them when they’re like this, they’re usually like big, big, big. These are so tender. In fact, we even snuck some today and we had a little lunch with them. But you say, “How do I know where I’m supposed to cut these off?” Because there is a stringy end, which is this end, and you don’t want to eat this part of it. You see where that dry hard part is? We really don’t want to be eating them. So a rule of thumb, you hold it like this and you begin to bend wherever it breaks. It will break because if it’s hard up so far, and then it’s tender, that’s where it’ll break. So that’s where you know, “Oh, it’s gonna be good from there on.” Now, you can take a bunch of them like this and I’ve just done like this. And they will all break at different heights because they’re dry at different heights, and you just disregard that. You’ll never have a tough stringy asparagus if you’ll do that. Grab them at the bottom. Grab them so far up. Well, those are pretty good. And, oh man, the most wonderful… Oh, we used to do, Linda will remember, you would make hard boiled eggs and you would put them on, yes, Cindy Chester’s ants or asparagus sandwich it was called. Oh, incredible. That’s the way you wanna clean your asparagus, okay? Important to get the bottom of that off ’cause it’s not gonna taste good. And the last one, I feel like this is a family here on this plate. I mean, these are big enough shrimp to, I think two of these would probably fill you up. But I wanted to show you, because when you’re entertaining and a lot of times you put these on the make kebabs like shrimp kebabs with some carrots and stuff, onions and pineapple, you put them on your grill, we’re getting into that season, how to clean. Now, these are raw. They’re not cooked. They still have the shell on. So the first thing you want to do is you’re gonna take that shell, that outside shell off. And basically, you just grab it and pull it and it cracks off. It’s a hard shell. These are jumbo, jumbo. Oh, baby, these are big shrimp. And pull them off. I mean, you have to be meticulous about this. Nothing worse than getting shell in your mouth. Now, you wanna leave the tail end, this little part here, ’cause that’s kind of nice to hold when you’re eating it. I mean, you can take it off if you want to, but it’s just kind of nice to leave it there. And you wanna be sure go from the top to the bottom. Make sure it’s completely, all that black stuff, we don’t want any of that there. It all has to go for this to be clean so that I’m gonna eat it, it has to be really clean. Okay now, you’re gonna know that right in this part right here there’s a vein. It’s called the sand vein. And I just take that little sharp knife, again, this is a small knife. You don’t wanna do the French chef, shrimp would be gone. But you just cut it right along that vein line. From there, clear around, come clear down, and see what it does? It exposes the vein and everything that’s in there and allows you to go in and just meticulously clean that out. Nobody would want that as part of their dinner. That’s not what you want to do there. So you clean it out, and immediately you’re gonna submerge that in some really good cold water, okay? We’re gonna be back with the end of the program. Can’t believe it’s over already, but we’ll see you in just a moment. Stay with us. Well, don’t forget to write or get your recipes either by our online easy newsletter Enjoy or by sending snail mail. We always like to make them available to you because it’s important for you to have them so you can follow them and learn how to do, particularly the kitchen tricks that we did today for you. I hope you learned some things. It’s not hard to do, just taking a little bit of time, but the effect it has on what you’re putting out there, garnishing it, adding that little extra touch, it goes and goes and goes and you get a lot of compliments back, okay? I really am happy that you’re writing to us and giving us hints and sending us your favorite recipes. But you know what I’d really like to know? I’d really like to know when you have received Jesus as your savior. You’ve invited him to come in and live in your heart. When you’ve decided, “God, I love you, and I want to serve you the rest of my life.” If you’ve not made that decision today or any day, this would be the day to do it. It’s so important. It will affect you for the rest of your life and eternity beyond. Just knowing that Jesus died on calvary so that your sins could be washed away, you’d be born into the family of God, nothing like it in the world. Write me and let me know today. We’ll see you the next time because it wouldn’t be the same without you here “At Home.” Bye-bye.
- [Announcer] Furnishings provided by Levin Furniture featuring Lane’s Country Living collection. Food provided by Jordan Banana Company, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania.
- [Announcer] Cornerstone TeleVision wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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