Refining Your Cooking Skills

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted a few helpful cooking videos. We’re pretty sure the best way to learn how to cook is through practice and watching others cook. That’s how we got to where we are today.

Now we do have a Resources tab up above where you will find other helpful blogs, books and videos but today we are going to focus on a few videos that we have found to be extremely helpful. All these videos are about the basic skills every college student should have aquired by the time they graduate. A lot of our recipes require these skills and thought it would be a good idea to refresh everyone.

Take some time to watch these and if you know of any other helpful videos, add them to the comment section below!

P.S. – if you read or know of any other good cooking blogs, send them our way! We love finding new things on the interwebs.

Learn proper knife etiquette:

Everything you need to know about garlic:

How to properly measure ingredients:

Chopping onions:

Basic steps to cooking pasta:

How to properly crack an egg:

Thawing frozen meats properly:

-D&E

Pasta in a Butter and Mushroom Sauce

Since we are college students we do cook a lot of pasta meals. But, since we like to cook we stay away from “pasta” such as Top Ramen and Spaghetti-Oh’s. Instead we make pasta meals such as pasta in tomato butter sauce, lasagna, asparagus and tomato pasta, and of course pasta with our own marinara sauce.

Today’s post is a nice way to add some veggies to a college classic – buttered noodles. Mushrooms are a perfect way to add a little more texture and flavor to your pasta dish. So next time you are out grocery shopping, grab some mushrooms; you’re most likely have the rest of the ingredients already on hand.

Pasta with a Butter and Mushroom Sauce

Tried to work in a “Fun-guy” joke here but…no.

• Servings – 3
• Prep time – 5 minutes
• Cook time – 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 8 white mushrooms
• 1/2 pound of your favorite pasta
• 3 tablespoons butter
• Salt
• Pepper
• Parmesan cheese (optional)

Protocol

1. While your pasta is cooking according to our instructions, remove the stems from the mushrooms and cut them crosswise into thin slices.

2. Once your pasta is done, drain and set aside. In the same pot, sauté the mushrooms in a little olive oil until they are tender. Add in a pinch of salt and pepper.

3. Turn the heat down to low and add the butter. Let the butter melt, continuing to stir.

4. Once butter is melted, turn off heat and mix in the noodles to coat in the butter sauce.

5. Serve and enjoy! Other veggies are a good addition to this dish, along with a clove or two of garlic.

-D&E

Put that jar back on the shelf, it’s time to make your own sauce!

That’s right, you heard us. For our 50th post on Cooking in College we are going back to our roots, no not our Italian roots (neither of us are Italian), we are going to show you how easy it is to make your own marinara sauce and save you some money!

Now, don’t freak out, marinara sauce is possible to make and is possible for a college kid to make. Trust us, would you rather be trying to make your own sauce or studying for a hard midterm?

The good thing with this recipe is it makes a lot and stores easily. This means you can save the sauce to use for things other than pasta: meatball hoagies, pizza, lasagna, etc.

Now, you are going to need a some herbs and spices for this recipe and you might already have a lot of them on hand. But if you don’t check out our Spices page to see what to get and where to get it.

Marinara Sauce

Once you try this recipe, no more Spaghetti O’s for you!

• Servings – 7 cups of sauce
• Prep time – 5 minutes
• Cook time – 60 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes in puree
• 2 cans (6 ounces each) tomato paste
• 2 cans (6.5 ounces each) tomato sauce
• 1 chopped medium onion
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons dried basil leaves
• 2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper

Protocol

1. In a large pot bring everything together.

2. Correction, open the cans first and then combine everything together in the pot, bring to a simmer, cover and simmer for an hour.

3. Use the sauce any way your heart desires and as always enjoy!

-D&E

P.S. – Store in an air tight container and keep in the refrigerator

Better than your Mom’s Lasagna?

Is it blasphemous if we say that you can learn to make lasagna better than your mom? Or at least good enough to tide you over until your next trip home.

If you haven’t impressed your friends and family yet with any of  our recipes (your recipes, feel free to say you made them up yourself), this meal definitely will. If you want, try practicing this recipe first on a Sunday night after all your homework is done just like our, excuse us, your Mac n Cheese recipe. Trust us, it makes a lot of leftovers which are still so yummy even after a 2 minute zap in the microwave.

Oh yeah, the sauce is made from scratch and not a jar – have fun!

Lasagna

It’s good, it’s good…It’s going to be good. We can’t take all of the credit though for this recipe, we adapted from this recipe.

• Servings – 10 to 12
• Prep time – 90 mins
• Cook time – 50 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 pound sweet Italian sausage links
• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
• 1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes
• 1 can (6 ounce) tomato paste
• 1 can (6.5 ounce) tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons dried basil leaves
• 1 teaspoons Italian seasoning
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 12 lasagna noodles
• 16 ounces ricotta cheese
• 1 egg
• 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 5 ounces grated Parmesan cheese

Protocol

1.Take your sausage links, slice down the middle and peel off the casing.

2. Brown the sausage, ground beef, and onions together in a large pot over medium heat.

3. Once the meat is browned, drain off most of the liquid (this is mostly fat from the ground beef). Reserve some for flavor.

4. Add the crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, garlic, 1/2 tablespoon salt, pepper, basil, Italian seasoning, sugar and 1.5 tablespoons of parsley to the pot. Stir to combine and bring to a simmer. Simmer covered for 1 hour stirring every 15 minutes.

5. While the sauce is simmering, combine in a large bowl the ricotta cheese, 2 cups of the mozzarella, half of the Parmesan cheese (reserve 2 cups of mozzarella and half of the Parmesan for later), 1/2 tablespoon salt and 1/2 tablespoon parsley.

6. Once the sauce is done simmering grab a 9×13 inch baking dish and pour 1.5 cups of the sauce on the bottom and evenly spread (add a little more if you feel there is not enough sauce). Preheat your oven to 375ºF.

7. Take your lasagna noodles and line them so they cover all of the sauce. There is no need to boil the noodles ahead of time, all the moisture in the sauce will cook them in the oven.

8. Over the noodles spread half of the cheese mixture. You might want to use your fingers to help spread.

9. Repeat steps 6 to 8 – 1.5 cups sauce, lasagna noodles (placed them in the opposite direction as the first layer), and other half of the cheese mixture.

10. Top off with the rest of the sauce and the mozzarella and Parmesan cheese you reserved earlier.

11. Spray one side of aluminum foil with a non-stick spray and cover the lasagna (non-stick side down) and place in the oven for 25 minutes.

12. After 25 minutes, remove the aluminum foil and bake for another 25 minutes.

13. Remove from the oven and let rest for 15 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

-D&E

Pasta Salad

Here in Pittsburgh, we know it’s summer time when we have 3 consecutive days of beautiful sunshine or road construction is in full swing. We’ve had 3 consecutive days of 80° weather and traffic cones are starting to pop up everywhere…summer is here.

One of our favorite dishes to make during the summer is pasta salad. It is perfect on a hot day when all you want to eat is something light and cool. It also makes a perfect side dish…or a main course. Whatever your heart desires, pasta salad will always be there for you…until it betrays you after you finish the last bite!

WARNING: You may experience symptoms of withdraw after you finish the last noodle of pasta salad. Please do not eat alone. Not for pregnant women, this recipe may develop life-long addictive pasta salad cravings for your child. We’re just kidding about all that, but this pasta salad is addicting.

• Servings – 6 cups
• Prep time – 90 minutes
• Cook time – 12 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 pound of tri-colored pasta
• 8 ounces of your favorite Italian dressing (we like Kraft Zesty Low Fat)
• 1 chopped green pepper
• 1 chopped red pepper
• 1 medium chopped onion
• 2 ounces of grated or shredded Parmesan cheese

Protocol

1.) Follow these steps to cook your pasta.

2.) Once pasta is cooked, drain and place in fridge to cool for about an hour.

3.) Remove from fridge and mix together the chopped red and green peppers, chopped onion, Italian dressing and Parmesan cheese into the bowl.

4.) Place this in the fridge for another 30 minutes.

5.) Enjoy as a side dish or an entire main course!

-D&E

P.S. – Use the hashtag #cookingincollege anytime you tweet about, well, cooking in college!

Asparagus and Tomato Pasta

Yes we are already putting you to the test to make sure you paid attention to Tuesday’s post! This is our first pasta recipe and you better be ready, because it is not your traditional red sauce and spaghetti. “But D&E, I’m only in college, I thought tomato sauce from a jar would be okay to make?” We only have one quip with tomato sauce from jars…or maybe two or three:

• Why pay the $4?
• You can easily make your own – with more nutritional value
• They just don’t taste good as homemade!

Okay we are done quipping for now. The point we are trying to make is that although you are in college, you can still make a fantastic meal instead of always buying one in a jar, or in a can, or in a box. But don’t worry, we’ll start you off easy with this more original pasta recipe.

Oh, and one more thing (promise it is not a quip) – don’t be afraid of asparagus! It really is delicious and easy to incorporate into a lot of recipes (hint: this won’t be the last time you see it on this blog!).

If you haven’t tried asparagus yet, or you have and didn’t like it, this is the perfect recipe to try (or re-try) it! With so many flavors and textures you won’t even know it’s even there. AWKWARD DISCLAIMER: Asparagus can make your pee smell funny…just wanted to give you a heads up since we were confused when it happened to us.

• Servings – 3 to 4
• Prep time – 10 minutes
• Cook time – 10 to 12 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound of your favorite pasta
• 1 pound fresh asparagus stalks
• 1 can (15 ounces) crushed tomatoes
• 4 ounces of crumbled Gorgonzola or grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 teaspoons dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Protocol

1. Start the water for the pasta.

2. Rinse the asparagus under cool water and break off the bottom third of the stalk. If you bend the stalk, it will naturally break off where it needs to. Discard the bottom portion.

3. Cut the asparagus stalks into 1 inch pieces.

4. After the water is boiling and you’ve added a pinch of salt, add the pasta to the pot.

5. When there is 5 minutes left cooking the pasta, add the asparagus to the water. For example, we used fettuccine which has a cooking time of 12 minutes according to the box; so, we added the asparagus after 7 minutes of cooking.

6. Drain the pasta and asparagus after the allotted time and set aside. Do not rinse.

7. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large sauce pan. Add the diced onion and garlic and saute for 2 minutes.

8. Drain the can of tomatoes and add to the sauce pan as well as the basil and parsley. Heat for 1-2 minutes.

9. Add the asparagus and pasta and cheese to the pan and stir to get everything incorporated.

10. Enjoy!

Let us know how this recipe went and if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments below!

-D&E

Pasta Perfection

There are plenty of myths out there on how to properly cook pasta such as adding olive oil to the boiling water, rinsing the pasta after you cook it, or speaking to the pasta with an Italian accent as it cooks. “D&E, how hard can cooking pasta be?” You’d be surprised at how many people still have trouble with cooking pasta (it took Declan months to master it – probably because he is Irish and not Italian). But once you properly learn to cook pasta, you will go far in life…or just in the kitchen.

Step 1 – Measure out the water. The perfect water to pasta ratio is 1 gallon (16 cups) of water for every 1 pound of pasta. Too much water will take too long to boil and too little water will cause the pasta to clump.

Step 2 – Add COLD water to the pot. Hot sink water will contain more impurities than cold sink water. Use a big enough pot that will hold the water and pasta. Make sure it has a large base so that the water will boil faster. This is a pretty easy step.

Step 3 – Bring the water to a fast, raging boil. Also, add a little bit of salt to the water (about 1-2 tablespoons) but don’t add any olive oil! This will season the pasta as well as quicken the time for the water to boil.

Step 4 – Add the pasta to the water and do NOT cover with a lid. Also, do not add the pasta until Step 3 is reached and make sure the water is back to boiling after the pasta is added. Start your timer after the water reaches a boil again.

Step 5 – After 1 minute, give the pasta a stir. After that leave it alone!

Step 6 – Test your pasta after 4 minutes. The proper amount of time it takes to cook pasta “al dente,” or tender but firm, varies for all the different types of pastas. So keep testing your pasta every minute from here on out. The entire time to cook should probably it between 8 to 12 minutes.

Step 7 – Once the pasta is “al dente,” remove it from the heat and drain it immediately into a colander to stop the cooking process. If you wait too long, your pasta will over cook and become too mushy. If for some strange, unforeseen reason, you can’t immediately do this, add about 1/2 to 1 cup of cold water to the pot. This will lower the temperature enough to stop the cooking.

Step 8 – Don’t over drain the pasta, it should still remain moist. Also, NEVER RINSE OFF THE PASTA! Unless the recipe calls for it. After you have drained the pasta, return it to the pot or a pan and add whatever sauce you made to it. This will keep the pasta from sticking together.

Step 9 – Enjoy.

As you can see, cooking pasta is very time sensitive. But, if you remain patient and diligent during the process, you will cook perfect pasta and impress your friends and family! If you have any more questions, email us at declanandericacook@gmail.com or visit this link for more help.

-D&E