Browse published articles attributed to Chef Todd Mohr, with full-archive search.
No recipe will tell me what to do when it’s strawberry season. It’s one of the great seasonal joys in fresh food, and I take full advantage of the short time. The best strawberries come from your local farm, local farmer, local rain and soil. I celebrate the beginning of strawberry season with a visit to DJ’s Berry Patch and speak with Jessica, the owner/farmer.
I’m inspired to create this “Grilling How To” because outdoor cooking season is now upon us! It’s my favorite cooking time of the year, but before I actually get grilling, I’ll have to inspect my barbeque and decide whether it will survive another summer. My poor, poor barbeque grill, it took some abuse this winter. It had snow piled on top of it, freezing temperatures, spiders, dust, and carbonized pieces of last year’s hamburger spend an intimate winter with it. A clean g
Easy family dinners can come from your own kitchen but have the flavors of far away. I mean that you don’t need to cook like the greatest Italian Chef to make an Italian inspired meal. You don’t need to study in Thailand to use the characteristic flavors in a simple cooking method. Basically, if it’s good to you, it’s good. I’ve had some commenters on the internet tell me that “You didn’t make the crepes in the authentic way.” Or, “real beef bourguignon isn’t made that way”.
Christmas dinner ideas come easy. Turkey, Ham, or Beef with potatoes and vegetables. However, how you START your meal can be a more perplexing problem. There are infinite choices of holiday appetizers to choose from. How do you find the right recipe? You don’t FIND the right recipe, you create one. And you can create any holiday appetizer you’d like once you discover the secrets behind Pate’ a Choux. This is a basic puff pastry dough, often called éclair paste, but it makes an attractive shell for any filling you choose, creating an appealing holiday appetizer.
I have a friend that plays guitar. He can hear a song and figure out how to play it. This has always impressed me. I watch him intently listening to the song, nodding his head, humming a bit, and then his fingers go to work. The left hand forms chords, the right strums or picks at the strings. “Oh, it’s A, then C, then D,” he mumbles. Because my friend knows HOW to play guitar, because he knows the basic chords he can recreate any song he hears. Why doesn’t he just buy the s
If you’re writing a menu for brunch, don’t forget Shirred Eggs. They’re extremely simple, can be made well in advance, and make a great table presentation. People love foods in individual serving dishes. In my many years of Catering, I’ve seen the trends come and go, but high visual appeal never goes out of style. Individual appetizers in a flat-bottomed Asian spoon are always a hit. Hors d’ oeuvres served in martin glasses or desserts in chocolate cups are delicious to the eye.
Apple Cranberry Sauce is something unique that you can add to your holiday table this year and avoid the gelatinous creature that slides from a can every holiday meal. I’m not crazy about cranberry sauce in the first place. Cranberries are very tart and sour. That’s why they’re combined with sugars and corn syrups, binders, and preservatives before being molded into the shape of a can. Rather than eating what the cranberry cannery is serving up, I choose to make my own cran
Gravlax Roses can make a simple and attractive holiday appetizer from dry-cured salmon. Whether you cure the salmon yourself, or just purchase it, my simple procedure can be the focus of a fancy appetizer selection that only you know was quite simple. To me, the definition of cooking is coagulating proteins in a food product. Most often, this is accomplished by applying heat. You’ve seen the coagulation of proteins in any hamburger on your barbeque grill. The raw hamburger is twice the size of the cooked hamburger. Coagulation is the stiffening and shrinking of proteins.
I’ve got a lot of cooking turkey tips for you this year, but the very first must be choosing your bird. There are many different classifications and labels that are placed on Thanksgiving fowl, and it can be confusing knowing which type of poultry to purchase. A “Free Range” bird may not have as much free range as you think. The USDA requires only that birds have “some access to the outdoors”. It’s more important to know what your turkey was fed than the USDA label placed upon it by narrow definitions.
When preparing food for the grill, the greatest challenge for home cooks is that grilling is an intense form of direct heat cooking, and controlling the heat can be tricky. Although most people see it as easy, grilling is actually one of the most challenging of the basic cooking methods. If cooking is like driving a car, grilling is like being strapped to a rocket ship! Now more than ever, creative home cooks are looking for the best cooking tips for gas grills.
Professional Chefs know how to make homemade sauces using basic cooking methods, not written instructions. That’s why you won’t see a truly skilled cook run for a recipe when they need a sauce. Empowered with HOW to make a sauce, they don’t need a recipe to say WHAT to put in it. A good sauce can make or break a dish. An overcooked piece of chicken can be saved by a flavorful, rich and attractive sauce covering it. However, a bad sauce will ruin the flavor, texture and appea
I’m inspired to create this “Grilling How To” because outdoor cooking season is now upon us! It’s my favorite cooking time of the year, but before I actually get grilling, I’ll have to inspect my barbeque and decide whether it will survive another summer. My poor, poor barbeque grill, it took some abuse this winter. It had snow piled on top of it, freezing temperatures, spiders, dust, and carbonized pieces of last year’s hamburger spend an intimate winter with it.
Welcome back to culinary college! Today’s lesson is How To Steam Food. I’m glad you are punctual to class because you’ll want every minute of this four and one half hour lecture and laboratory class. The students at Stratford University in Baltimore aspire to careers as professional chefs, hospitality managers, and entrepreneurs of many different kinds. One particular graduate of the Baltimore culinary college actually became a cooking instructor on the internet! He now help
No recipe will tell me what to do when it’s strawberry season. It’s one of the great seasonal joys in fresh food, and I take full advantage of the short time. The best strawberries come from your local farm, local farmer, local rain and soil. I celebrate the beginning of strawberry season with a visit to DJ’s Berry Patch and speak with Jessica, the owner/farmer. Strawberries are one of the most difficult crops to grow because of the long season, hard labor, and fragile natu
Simple cooking is the best cooking. There, I said it for the 1000th time! No matter where I travel, no matter to whom I speak, those people and cultures that know good food say the same thing. In Paris, the spice store shared his incredibly simple secret to eating healthy, “Simple things are good things”. In a fish market on Hawaii, the local fish monger advised me to cook my tuna very rare and very simply. “Only scare the fish with a fry pan, it will be Ono”, he said. Ono i
Eating healthy is not just a fad. It’s not just for hippie granola types, it’s not something to practice only under a doctors direction. Carefully choosing the foods you eat has an impact on every aspect of your life, happiness, social interactions, and overall well-being. However, eating healthy means different things to different people, and that’s okay. To some, it means salads and carrot sticks at every meal. To others, it’s simply finding a new way to enjoy more wholeso
I really need some tips for healthy living. The New Year is in full swing, and like I said earlier this week during my 7 Tips for Healthy Cooking, I feel like crap. Perhaps it’s not JUST the food I eat. Maybe there are items in my environment that could be affecting my mood, health and wellness.
Of the many Thanksgiving cooking tips I can give you, this is perhaps the most important. It can be the difference between a triumphant meal and an undercooked case of food borne illness. I get many questions on email about correct roasting temperatures. “What temperature should my oven be for turkey”? “What is the correct temperature for chicken”? “How hot should my oven be for…?”
I can cook better tha I ever have because I don’t follow recipes anymore. They’ve let me down too many times. However, if I don’t have written instructions, how do I create amazing meals at home? There are 5 elements, or necessary skills that I use to be able to cook the way I want, with the ingredients I desire. The first way to cook better is to change your thought process a bit. You must admit to yourself that recipes are good simply for ideas. Blindly following someone else’s idea of how something should be cooked is destined for frustration.
This Strawberry Pie Recipe Is a Great Method for Any Other Fresh Fruit Pie. Unlike canned fruit, fresh fruit does not come with extra liquid. However, we do need some liquid to use as a binder for our pie. If we just sliced strawberries, placed them on the right type of flakes pie crust, and baked them, this would be considered a tart. But a true pie has a binding agent, something that brings all the fresh fruit ingredients together so you get an attractive triangle slice of
Thanksgiving potatoes are boring. If you’re serving the same mashed potatoes year-after-year, you know what I’m talking about. Do you have relatives that insist on the same old menu each holiday? Will Aunt Francis refuse to attend if you don’t serve the family mashed potato recipe? Face it, tradition always gets in the way of innovation. I want to share some ideas, inspirations, and methods from the professional kitchen that will become the start of a new holiday tradition this year.
A grilling marinade is a very simple way to add flavor and moisture to grilled items. If you follow these basic rules, you’ll be able to create a long list of unique combinations of ingredients and invent your own grilling marinade.
Knowing how to braise is a cooking skill that’s widely misunderstood. Knowing WHAT to braise is even more confusing to most home cooks. Now, it’s time to end any confusion about this ignored way of cooking because I’m presenting the information to tomorrow’s chefs at culinary college. Our braised food will be served by the companion hospitality class in the school’s dining room in an ‘a la carte’ style. This means they’ll be bringing us restaurant tickets like real waiters a
If you have a love of cooking like I do, you’re excited about the days getting longer. Honestly, with the exception of cooking for the holidays, cooking in the winter seems more like a chore to me. However, cooking in the spring and summer is cooking for fun. In fact, I can’t wait to start grilling outside! But, before we all explore our love of cooking in the spring and summer, we need to address the art of cooking and prepare the kitchen.
If you want to know how to cut onions and aren’t easily fooled by late night TV commercials, I’m about to save you a tremendous amount of time and money. I have a neighbor that owns every kitchen gadget and appliance available. She must have the QVC shopping network on speed-dial. These devices are advertised to save your time and lower your kitchen stress, but they do just the opposite. I imagine a race between my neighbor and I. We’ll both dice an onion, she with her chopper/dicer device, me with my chef’s knife that I bought 17 years ago for twenty dollars. Ready? Go!
Cooking brown rice can be very confusing if you pay attention to a written recipe or package instructions. There’s more than one way to cook brown rice, just like there’s more than one way to cook chicken, beef, or vegetables. Brown rice is whole-grain rice that is less processed than white rice, giving it greater nutritional qualities than processed rice. Because brown rice has its outer hull left in tact, it is a more wholesome and natural grain. White rice and brown rice
The best steaks for grilling are the ones that will return the best flavor and nutrition while retaining moisture and tende ess. To accomplish the best results, I always start with the best ingredients I can find.
A potluck party can be a food nightmare. As a professional Chef and caterer, few things offend my culinary senses more than the holiday potluck party. With hot items going cold, badly portioned and picked-through platters, nacho dip next to brownies, and unidentifiable entrees all sharing the same table, it’s no wonder that this random buffet will impugn all the work you’ve put into your dish. To be a stand out in this noise of nourishment, this cafeteria of chaos, you need a
This Strawberry Pie Recipe Is a Great Method for Any Other Fresh Fruit Pie. Unlike canned fruit, fresh fruit does not come with extra liquid. However, we do need some liquid to use as a binder for our pie. If we just sliced strawberries, placed them on the right type of flakes pie crust, and baked them, this would be considered a tart.
I’m so happy to share more quick dishes for everyday cooking with you. Earlier this week, I caught a Taco Fish and helped you discover the simplicity of a basic breading procedure you can use on any ingredient in your pantry. In the time it takes most people to just FIND the right recipe, I can apply a basic cooking method to the ingredients already found in my kitchen. In the time it takes most people to go back to the grocery store because the recipe told them to, I’ll ha
I’d be worried if I made cookies for Santa and he didn’t eat them. What would that mean? Was I too naughty this year for him to even take a bite? Or, is Santa expecting more from me than stale cookies from the store? Santa expects cookies from scratch and I’ve let him down in past years. That would probably explain the amount of coal I’ve been receiving. I now know that cookies for Santa should be sugar cookies, and sugar cookies are rolled cookies. Rolled cookies are great
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
It’s turkey time! The bird is out of the oven and it’s time to carve turkey! Rather than trying to cut all the meat directly from the carcass at the table, consider creating an attractive platter behind the scenes this year.
Thanksgiving potatoes are boring. If you’re serving the same mashed potatoes year-after-year, you know what I’m talking about. Do you have relatives that insist on the same old menu each holiday? Will Aunt Francis refuse to attend if you don’t serve the family mashed potato recipe? Face it, tradition always gets in the way of innovation. I want to share some ideas, inspirations, and methods from the professional kitchen that will become the start of a new holiday tradition t
Fathers day presents from the kitchen are a great idea for the dad that cooks. Men and women cook differently. Men need gadgets, men like tools, and some of the best new dishes he’ll create may be because of the new device you’ve given him. Today, I’ll go through my kitchen drawers and share some of the small and large tools and gadgets I can’t live without in my kitchen. It might give you an idea for a fathers day present you never considered. Starting with the inexpensive
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
Even an American Idiot can learn there’s more than one method to poaching salmon. I’ve come to the realization that neither MTV nor Food TV are doing their jobs these days. MTV doesn’t play much music, and Food TV doesn’t teach anyone to cook. I’ll accept the challenge that’s been ignored by both media outlets. I’ll use their leftovers, their scraps, their b-sides to create a new and exciting combination of cooking and music. It’s my Food iPod. Green Day is cranked in my ea
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
Do you start thinking about uses for leftover turkey as soon as the meal begins or does all that food just get loaded into your refrigerator? Since thanksgiving cooking planning starts at your desk and not your stove, you may not have any food remaining after the meal. To reduce wasted time, money, and food, this is the best approach.
Do you start thinking about uses for leftover turkey as soon as the meal begins or does all that food just get loaded into your refrigerator? Since thanksgiving cooking planning starts at your desk and not your stove, you may not have any food remaining after the meal. To reduce wasted time, money, and food, this is the best approach. However, if you’ve planned to create leftovers or it just worked out that way, there are many uses for leftover turkey that you can assemble
Christmas dinner ideas come easy. Turkey, Ham, or Beef with potatoes and vegetables. However, how you START your meal can be a more perplexing problem. There are infinite choices of holiday appetizers to choose from. How do you find the right recipe? You don’t FIND the right recipe, you create one. And you can create any holiday appetizer you’d like once you discover the secrets behind Pate’ a Choux. This is a basic puff pastry dough, often called éclair paste, but it makes an attractive shell for any filling you choose, creating an appealing holiday appetizer.
It’s turkey time! The bird is out of the oven and it’s time to carve turkey! Rather than trying to cut all the meat directly from the carcass at the table, consider creating an attractive platter behind the scenes this year. The turkey is fully roasted when my thermometer reads 165F (74C) at the thickest part of the bird. If you stuff your turkey in the traditional way, filling the cavity with your favorite holiday stuffing recipe, then the temperature should be taken there.
Choosing a flaky pie crust or a mealy pie crust for you pie can mean the difference between pie pride and pie purgatory. It’s not that you need different recipes for the two types of pie crust, you just need to employ two different methods. Flaky pie crust will absorb more moisture than a mealy pie crust. Thus, they’re best used for a top crust or lattice design. The flaky variety is also great for cold pies when pre-baked and filled with mousse or cream fillings.
Eating healthy is not just a fad. It’s not just for hippie granola types, it’s not something to practice only under a doctors direction. Carefully choosing the foods you eat has an impact on every aspect of your life, happiness, social interactions, and overall well-being. However, eating healthy means different things to different people, and that’s okay. To some, it means salads and carrot sticks at every meal. To others, it’s simply finding a new way to enjoy more wholesome ingredients without feeling like they’re depriving themselves of flavor and enjoyment.
Boil corn on the cob and you’ll notice the corn tastes like water and the water like corn. If you think about it, you can make a flavorful vegetable broth by simmering onions, carrots, and celery in water. So, are you trying to cook your corn or make corn broth? Boiling is a moist conductive cooking process. This means that your corn is in direct contact with the heat, in this case it’s boiling water. The flavorless liquid takes on the characteristics of the item you’re cook
Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe. I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes. They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently. If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place? Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions. However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.
When I go clam digging and I am as successful as I was on this particular trip, my favorite clam recipe to cook is baked stuffed clams. Today, I’m going to share how I create this fantastic dish! Knife Skills First and foremost, all of the clams need to be cut into small, yet uniformly sized pieces. While you are chopping the clams, it’s good to keep a watchful eye out for pieces of shell. You may also feel these unwanted pieces with your hands. Into the Panr
Fathers day presents from the kitchen are a great idea for the dad that cooks. Men and women cook differently. Men need gadgets, men like tools, and some of the best new dishes he’ll create may be because of the new device you’ve given him. Today, I’ll go through my kitchen drawers and share some of the small and large tools and gadgets I can’t live without in my kitchen. It might give you an idea for a fathers day present you never considered. Starting with the inexpensive
I really need some tips for healthy living. The New Year is in full swing, and like I said earlier this week during my 7 Tips for Healthy Cooking, I feel like crap. Perhaps it’s not JUST the food I eat. Maybe there are items in my environment that could be affecting my mood, health and wellness. I’ve got the food and nutrition part covered, being a former Executive Chef at a large hospital, but I wonder what other tips for healthy living I can incorporate into my daily lifes