Hot Spices & Garnishes How-Tos

How To: Make garlic herb butter

This quick video will show you how to make delicious garlic and herb butter. To make this delicious garlic and herb butter, do the following: Put 8 ounces of Plugra Butter into a mixing bowl. Add salt, green onion, flat leaf parsley, minced garlic, fresh basil and ground pepper. Gently blend everything together and refrigerate till needed. You can make your own variations of this butter by using different ingredients.

How To: Preserve Sooji for roasting

Anuja and Hetal from Show Me The Curry show how to roast Sooji. Sooji is otherwise known as semolina which is purified wheat used for making pasta. Semolina is known as Sooji in India and is used in many many dishes as a grain and sometimes as a meat substitute. Some recipes like Upma require that the Sooji be roasted before being added into the recipe. This video shows you the easiest way that you can roast Sooji in your microwave so that it can be used in various Indian dishes.

How To: Peel ginger without using a knife

Gourmet Magazine's food editor Lillian Chou introduces cooking enthusiasts to a little-known method to peeling a ginger. She addresses the problem of cooks taking too much of the ginger off with the skin when peeling with a knife. To reduce this wasteful practice and get dependable results every time, she encourages the use of a spoon! This simple tool can take the skin (and only the skin!) off ginger without any hassle. It also is apparently very good at getting the hard-to-peel spots on gin...

How To: Make lemon zest with or without a zesting tool

Making lemon zest isn't hard and doesn't take a long time, especially if you have a lemon zester. A zesting tool is the number one preferred way to get that lemon zest with no mess and no fuss. So, in the first video tutorial, see how to make lemon zest with a zester. Use a zesting tool for the peeling, and make sure to wash the outside of the lemon thoroughly to remove dirt and residue. Then zest away!

How To: Keep ginger fresh

Have you ever had ginger and watched it go bad because you had no use for it right away? Well, now there is a answer to that problem. The only thing you will need is a cup and some water and of course your ginger. First, pour some water into a jar or cup of some sort and then stick the ginger in the cup. Put it in the refrigerator and it should last up to a week this way. One thing to remember to do is to change the water that the ginger is sitting in every single day. Doing this should add a...

How To: Peel, chop and crush garlic like a chef

Check out this video cooking tip from The Chef's Toolbox in Australia. Watch this tutorial to learn how to peel, chop and crush garlic like a chef. Peeling garlic for recipes is easy with a little know-how, see how to do it right here. If there is a little green germ in the clove, make sure you remove it, because it is known to give people indigestion.

How To: Cook with garlic

Learn how to cook with garlic and avoid hose tiny bits of burned, minced garlic. Chowhound fayehess, also known as Faye Delicious of Blip.tv, puts whole cloves and heads of garlic into her saute pan to extract the flavor. The secret is to cook before mincing. Garlic, yum.

How To: Make a container herb garden

Container gardening is a great way to grow plants, vegetables and herbs without needing a lot of space. Herbs do especially well and can be grown right outside your kitchen door. In this video, you'll learn how to use an old farmer's market basket to make a great container garden. Fill it with your favorite herbs and your cooking will be full of flavor all summer long.

How To: Make a southwestern dry rub

Dry rub recipes are used on all most every type of meat. Rubs add flavor, color and texture. From pork tenderloin to southern ribs, a dry rub draws out the flavor of meat and can give it a kick. Many rubs are spicy, but also add a bit of sweetness pork, beef and even chicken.

How To: Chop and mince herbs

Fresh herbs can transform almost any dish. Watch this how to video and let Bon Appetite show you how to chop herbs for your recipes. Learn to chop and mince herbs with woody stems or leafy herbs. Even get tips on how to chiffenade mint and basil leaves.

How To: Make a garlic puree garnish for seasoning recipes

Chef Jason Hill uses this garlic puree for most recipes that call for fresh garlic. The addition of the shallot gives this puree more depth. It keeps up to ten days covered in the refrigerator, and keeps frozen for up to six months in the freezer. The ingredients are garlic and shallots. Learn how to prepare this recipe by watching this video cooking tutorial.

How To: Make chocolate curls for garnishing

Okay, so knowing how to make chocolate curls isn't exactly a necessary culinary skill, but when it comes to dessert making, how much of that dessert is there more for show than for taste? We're thinking it's 50/50. Plus, if you're a chocolate lover then chocolate curls may just be the perfect addition to your creme brulee or chocolate ganache cake.