Cooking Technique | Gotta Eat, Can't Cook

Archive for the ‘Cooking Technique’ Category

February 8th, 2022

Blog, Cooking Technique, How To & Tips

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Is It Safe to Cook with a Microwave Oven?

Cooking with a well working microwave oven is quick, easy and safe

Next couple posts – and many more in the future – will show how to warm easy to make pasta meals in the microwave oven. Before actually showing how to make any of those meals, I first want to address a concern some people have about microwave oven cooking safety prompted by a recent comment left on my “How to Make Microwave Cooked Broccoli” video stating that microwave cooking changes vegetable cell structure and therefore makes those microwave cooked vegetables potentially cancerous.

I’ve heard that comment before. I’m sure you have, too. It is not true. Microwave cooking does not change cell structure other than potentially bursting their cell walls as steam builds inside the cells when they are heated the same way vegetable cells can burst through stove top or oven cooking.

Here is a description explaining how microwave ovens cook food that I paraphrased from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and World Health Organization (WHO) resources listed at the end of this article: An electronic tube, called a magnetron, inside a microwave oven converts ordinary wall socket electric power into 2450 Megahertz microwaves (electromagnetic waves that are about 5 inches long) that cause molecules in water, fats and sugars in food to vibrate very quickly. That fast vibration and friction, like rapidly rubbing your hands together, causes heat which then cooks the food.

Here’s what the magnetron looks like in my microwave oven.

In order the ensure safe cooking, as detailed in your microwave oven owner’s manual,…

…make sure there are no cracks inside the microwave walls or door seal. Use only microwave safe containers or dishes when cooking food in a microwave oven and don’t cover foods with plastic wrap to prevent splatter because some of the plastic can melt and get into your food. As shown below, I use a wetted paper towel to prevent splatter, which works great!

Below are some excellent resources for more detailed information and answers to common microwave oven use questions.

Click this link or the picture below for Cooking with Microwave Ovens from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Click this link or the picture below for the US Food & Drug Administration’s Microwave Oven Radiation webpage.

Click this link or the picture below for Questions and Answers about Microwave Radiation by the World Health Organization (WHO).

February 4th, 2022

Blog, Cooking Technique, Cycling Food, Pasta, Running Food

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Full-On Flavorful Lighter Pasta Alfredo Picture Book Recipe

Last couple food posts showed how to cook traditional wheat-based pasta and high protein-high fiber pasta to perfection – very easily.

You’re probably well aware that there’s nothing much more flavorful than the combination of freshly cooked pasta, cheese and cream you get with fettuccine – or any shape pasta – Alfredo. The only problem, Alfredo sauce is usually very heavy, and the culprit is heavy cream.

There’s an easy fix to that. Just substitute unsweetened evaporated milk for heavy cream. As shown in the label comparisons below, ounce for ounce (1 ounce = 2 tablespoons), evaporated milk has fewer than half the calories and 1/5th the fat of heavy cream, though I find the cooking properties and flavor qualities to be the same, especially for a dish like this.

You’ll also notice in the ingredients pictured below that I use garlic and a shot of balsamic vinegar to pump up the flavor, which is entirely optional when you make this dish. Flavor always rules!

Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete Lighter Pasta Alfredo picture book recipe.

November 25th, 2021

Blog, Chicken & Turkey, Cooking Technique, Special Recipes, Thanksgiving Dinner

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How to Roast a Thanksgiving Turkey: Picture Book Directions

First, I wish you, your family and your friends a fun, relaxing (ha!) and fully flavorful Thanksgiving!

A very close second: there’s not a lot that feels and smells better than being in a kitchen while a turkey roasts in the over and all the side dishes cook on the stove. Terrific stuff!

The last few posts showed how to prepare Thanksgiving side dishes and desserts. This post shows how to make the traditional Thanksgiving centerpiece, roast turkey, which I found best to roast at high heat – and upside down – to start and then finish off a more moderate heat, as shown below.

I also strongly suggest not cooking the turkey stuffed but instead cooking the turkey and stuffing separately. The reason: roasting a stuffed turkey only adds mores cooking time and causes the meat to dry out.

Click this link or the picture below for step-by-step picture book directions that show both how to roast a turkey and remove the meat from the bird.

You can also click this link or picture below for complete Gotta’ Eat, Can’t Cook Thanksgiving help.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 15th, 2021

Blog, Chicken & Turkey, Cooking Technique, Poultry, Special Recipes, Thanksgiving Dinner, Vegetables

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Thanksgiving Dinner Help: Stress-Free and All in Pictures

Just 10 days out to Thanksgiving, by far my favorite holiday because all that’s expected is a fully-flavorful meal and being together with family and friends.

At the same time, I know from my own experience that laying down a Thanksgiving dinner for those same family and friends, especially if it’s your first time around, can be stressful. The goal here is to provide straight-forward stress-relief, which you can access by:

clicking this link or the tab above labeled Thanksgiving Help for a Thanksgiving dinner planning and timing guide and uniquely easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipes that show how to make roast turkey, turkey gravy, mashed potatoes, bread stuffing, apple pie, and fresh whipped cream and more.
getting your own first-of-a-kind Stress-Free, Quick & Easy Thanksgiving Dinner video/picture ebook for $2.99 (it’s extraordinarily affordably priced, especially these days, to make it as widely accessible as possible). Click this link to a short video trailer about the ebook. The ebook itself is available at:

February 27th, 2021

Blog, Breakfast, Cooking Technique, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, How To & Tips, Nutrition, One Bowl Meals, Pancakes, Running Food

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How to Take Scrambled Pancakes From Simple to Exciting!

Last post showed how to make scrambled pancakes, which are really just modified scrambled eggs with pumped up flavor (flavor rules!) and nutrition.

This post shows how to take those scrambled pancakes from simple to exciting…

…using only “commonly” found ingredients, like those shown below. I put commonly in parentheses because ingredients that might be common to me – or anyone else in particular – might not be common to you. As always, what you see below are only suggestions to stir up your imagination and give you a sense of technique. Use any added ingredients you want to take your scrambled pancakes from simple to exciting.

With your portion of scrambled pancakes in a bowl either fresh off the stove or warmed in the microwave oven, start topping with a good spoonful of peanut, almond or any nut butter (to make your own in advance, click this link), a good spoon of jam (honey or maple syrup), and 1-2 tablespoons of yogurt (I like non-fat Greek yogurt for its flavor and potent protein content).

Add your choice of quickly rinsed fresh fruit. I’m using pitted fresh cherries (in the winter, from Chile – killer flavor and crisp crunch!) and blueberries.

Add any dried fruit – optional but something I always do. I’m using chopped dried dates, but you can substitute with raisins, dried cranberries, dried prunes – you get the idea.

Finish off with a good shot of kefir, whipped cream or anything you like.

And that is all there is to taking easy, completely improvised scrambled pancakes from simple to exciting, also by improvising to satisfy your drive for full on flavor.

As I mentioned in the last post, that you see above just as is powered me through the 40 mile bike ride shown below at a decent pace – no problem at all, except for keeping up with Josh, Greg and hammer-fast Juan.

February 24th, 2021

Blog, Breakfast, Cooking Technique, Cycling Food, Eggs, Fitness Food, Running Food

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Scrambled Pancake Picture Directions

The other day I wanted something a little different for breakfast with flavor and substance to power me through a good late winter Hickory, NC, group bike ride. Here’s what I came up with. I call it scrambled pancake because I used most of the ingredients I use to make a fruit pancake but scrambled the batter like scrambled eggs.

These are the ingredients that I mixed in the bowl you see at the bottom of the picture below.

Those ingredients and rough proportions are (no need to measure precisely: with these ingredients, your result will turn out great): 2 eggs, dash of salt, good shake of ground cinnamon, about 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 big tablespoon of each: ground flaxseed, cooked quinoa (the red grains in the square container above the butter), cooked steel cut oats (the white grains in the square container between the vanilla extract), and a handful of raisins.

Of course, as an improvised recipe, which is just a guide, and I was using what I already had in the fridge, specifically regarding the quinoa and steel cut oats. I can imagine you don’t have those – and possibly not ground flaxseed also – ready to grab and go. No problem: just substitute any or all the grains above with any favorite cooked or ready to eat grain, like cold oat cereal, granola or wheat germ. Your imagination is your only limit.

Here’s how to cook what you’ve mixed.

Add about as much butter as you see above to a frying pan warmed to the same temperature needed to make scrambled or fried eggs. Add and spread the batter, and give the pan a good back and forth shuffle like you see in the last picture above to “encourage” the batter not to stick to the pan surface.

After a 1-3 minutes, when the bottom of the cooked batter looks lightly browned like the top photo above, use a spatula to turn the batter. Don’t worry about trying to turn it all in one piece. (I tried doing that myself – and failed with a smile). Then use the spatula to break and turn the batter, like you would do to make scrambled eggs, until it is cooked through as shown below.

You can then scoop what you’ve cooked into a bowl and add whatever you want want: maple syrup, honey, jam, peanut or any nut butter, yogurt, whipped cream – anything. Next post, I’ll show what I added to make what you see below that easily sustained me for 40 miles on the bike, no problem.

More very soon!

February 20th, 2021

Blog, Breakfast, Cooking Technique, Cycling Food, Drinks

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Cacao Coffee & Whipped Cream

This piece is really about improvising on the fly to meet the flavor you want at a particular time. Here’s an example. This morning I woke up wanting some chocolate in my coffee. I love those two flavors together – and wanted to brew them together as easily as possible.

I pulled these three ingredients together – easy: cacao powder (you can substitute that with cocoa powder – the two are quite different), sugar (I’m using coconut sugar, but any sugar will work) and salt.

To make 4 “cups” of cacao coffee (4 cups = 12 ounces of coffee in my coffee machine), I added 1 piled teaspoon of cacao powder, 1 teaspoon sugar and a dash of salt directly into the coffee carafe.

I put the carafe in the coffee maker and brewed. For added help to make freshly brewed coffee, click this link for easy to follow “Great Coffee Made Easy” picture book directions.

When the coffee was just about done brewing, I mixed equal parts half and half and coconut water and warmed them for 50 seconds in the microwave oven. (I added coconut water for just a bit of added flavor and added potassium to prep for a good crunch on the bike.)

As soon as the coffee finished brewing, I stirred the cacao mix, poured the hot cacao coffee to together with the freshly warmed half and half and coconut water, and…

…added a good shot of freshly made whipped cream, which you can learn how to make very easily by clicking this link.

Next post: what I ate with the cacao coffee to ride 40 miles at a good pace without feeling hungry at all along the way.

April 3rd, 2019

Blog, Cooking Technique, Fitness Food, Grains, How To & Tips

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Microwave Cooked Quinoa Alfredo – Fast and Flavorful

Last post showed how to microwave oven cook quinoa. Like rice and pasta, quinoa, with it’s nutty flavor and snap-and-pop texture is incredibly versatile

Here’s one of my favorite fast and flavorful quinoa meals: microwave cooked quinoa Alfredo, Read more »

May 6th, 2018

Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Breakfast, Cooking Technique, Cycling, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Grains, How To & Tips

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Microwave Cooked Oatmeal: Great Move Your Body Food!

Want fuel move your body: prep for a good ride on the bike, run, workout, or to feel fully alive to start your day? Oatmeal’s a great favorite of mine – packed with complex flavorful carbs and fiber, and both those attributes can be well enhanced if you oppose them (i.e. supplement them) with protein or healthy fat.

More about opposing real soon. But first, click the picture above to learn how to cook oatmeal as quickly and easily as possible and that means cooking it in the microwave oven.

May 1st, 2017

Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Cooking Technique, Vegetables

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Picture Book Directions Show How to Microwave Cook Fresh Spinach

The most important tip regarding spinach is that the less you cook it, the more you retain its flavor, texture, and terrific nutritional value – high in the oil soluble vitamins A, E and K and water soluble vitamins B2, B6 and C as well as rich iron and magnesium content. There’s just no comparison between quickly cooked fresh spinach and spinach that’s been cooked to a very distasteful mushy mass. (My favorite source for spinach’s nutrition and health benefits is The World’s Healthiest Foods: http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=43)