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Articles by Chef Todd Mohr

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By Chef Todd MohrSep 14, 20111 topic

Avoid Destroying the Color Texture and Nutrients in Vegetables!

Nutrients in vegetables usually wind up in the green colored water you’ve just cooked them in. Have you ever noticed that if you cook carrots in water, you’ve got orange colored liquid and carrots that taste like water? Where do you think the nutrients go? If you want to avoid destroying the color, texture, and nutrients in your vegetables, there are some simple adjustments you can make in your cooking. By controlling the heat and understanding the effect of acids and bases

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

1,022 views

By Chef Todd MohrApr 22, 20111 topic

Crepes Are an Easy and Elegant Brunch Menu Idea

Cray-pe or Creh-pe, no matter how you say it, the simple French pancake makes an easy and elegant brunch menu idea. They’re incredibly simple to make, and flexible enough that they can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or late night snack. However, their delicate nature makes them perfectly suitable for the meal between breakfast and lunch. The American Buttermilk Pancake cannot be compared to the Crepe! Mon deux! The brutish American looks so bourgeois next to the lacy and refin

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

1,013 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

How Drying Herbs Saves You More Green

If you love cooking healthy using fresh ingredients, you’re in good company. The trend today is away from the large, corporate agri-businesses and in support of your local farmer. This is great news as you can have more healthy cooking using locally grown, fresh produce. And, nothing helps your cooking to taste fresher than cooking with herbs especially those grown locally. Sometimes, you may gets a great deal on your herbs and decide that you need to dry them. This week, you’re going to learn about what to do with your local herb bounty as well as the secret to drying herbs.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

1,006 views

By Chef Todd MohrAug 2, 20111 topic

The 5 Skills You Need To Cook Better

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

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

1,002 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Boil Corn On The Cob and You Lose

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 cooking. Also, the cooked item absorbs bland water, affecting the taste of your fresh ingredients.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

989 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Crepes Are an Easy and Elegant Brunch Menu Idea

Cray-pe or Creh-pe, no matter how you say it, the simple French pancake makes an easy and elegant brunch menu idea. They’re incredibly simple to make, and flexible enough that they can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or late night snack. However, their delicate nature makes them perfectly suitable for the meal between breakfast and lunch.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

973 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Summer Cooking: How to Marinate

Everyone loves to have their favorite foods cooked to perfection on the grill. And learning how to marinate is an important step in achieving this perfection. Marinating is a cooking method - or at the very least an important prelude to many cooking methods - that needs to be understood in itself. It is much more than simply soaking your favorite meat in your favorite salad dressing before slapping it on the grill. Or at least it should be! There are some tricks to getting it right and lucky for you, they are simple and you will learn them right here!

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

972 views

By Chef Todd MohrAug 9, 20111 topic

Fresh Cooking Starts With Finding Out Where Your Food Comes From

Are you looking for fresh cooking ideas for your family? You may need to start paying more attention to where your food comes from. Fresh cooking starts with fresh ingredients and the fresher your ingredients, the more "gourmet" your cooking is going to taste. Where my food comes from is of great conce to me because I want to make the best dishes that I can. And, I know that the best ingredients yield the best dishes. You don’t need to be a chef to know good ingredients, you

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

968 views

By Chef Todd MohrMay 13, 20111 topic

How To Create a 6 Course French Dinner Without Recipes

Would you break into a sweat if you had to create a 6 course French dinner for friends? Most people would, it can be intimidating cooking for other people. What makes this cooking stress even greater is trying to follow written recipes. Cooking is fun. Referring back-and-forth to written instructions is not. I avoid recipe stress entirely by ignoring recipes and using the basic methods I know to be successful along with the ingredients I desire. I call it “living a no recipe

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

964 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

The Only 4 Cooking Knives You Need

There are plenty of cooking knives for sale on late night TV. You’ve seen the info-mercials. These amazing knives cut aluminum cans and shoes! I’ve been cooking for a long time, and I’ve never had to cut a can or a shoe. What makes this the test of a great knife? I saw a TV commercial that offered a 26 knife set. It came with 12 steak knives. Again, when has anyone had to cook steak for 12 people in there home? Rarely, I’d say.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

958 views

By Chef Todd MohrAug 3, 20111 topic

Cutting Vegetables Blindfolded is Still Easier

Cutting vegetables is so much easier when you don’t have to take out your chopper/dicer device. You might think that the electric gadget is quicker and easier than your standard chef’s knife, but you’d be wrong. Let’s have a race. Ready, go! Get your chopper appliance down from the cabinet. Plug it in to the electric outlet. Then, fiddle with the bowl a little because it never fits just right the first time. Next comes the blade. You have to twist it a few times before it fi

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

947 views

By Chef Todd MohrApr 13, 20111 topic

Mixing is More Important Than Baking in Christmas Cake Recipes

Have you ever taken the results of your family’s Christmas cake recipe out of the oven and been disappointed? How can the same recipe created year after year always come out differently? “Why didn’t my cake BAKE correctly?” I’m here to tell you that the problem with most home baking mistakes isn’t in the BAKING, it’s in the MIXING of your cakes that most mistakes are made. There are three goals in cake mixing, whether it’s a Christmas cake recipe, or any other baked good at

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

945 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

The Secrets of a Parisian Spice Store Owner: Good Food is Simple Food

It doesn’t taste like simple food. In fact, the Paris cuisine that I’ve experienced since arriving in France, food that has tasted fresher and cleaner tha I’ve experienced, is raising more questions in my mind. In an effort to find the answers to these questions, I’ve returned to the Rue Cler market to visit with Pascal Mievre, owner of L’ Epicerie Fine, a gourmet foods and exotic spice store on the Rive Gauche, the right bank of the Paris cuisine scene.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

943 views

By Chef Todd MohrAug 4, 20111 topic

How to Make Sauces Quickly

Knowing how to make sauces is a necessary kitchen skill. The best sauce can make up for a dry piece of chicken, but the worst sauce will certainly ruin any dish. There are three basic ways to thicken liquids, but they all have to do with gelatinization of starches, the point at which starch molecules absorb liquids and swell. This is what thickens sauces. The quickest and easiest way to thicken a flavorful liquid is something that Grandma has been doing for years. She makes

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

941 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Essential Cooking Instruction: Why Most Home Cooks Fail Before They Even Begin

When you follow a recipe to a disappointing outcome, you probably say, "well, that didn't cook right." What you don't realize is that the actual cooking is usually the least important factor in culinary success. In fact, most issues start right in the beginning with inadequate knife skills. Professional chefs know this, but they rarely share this simple truth with the public, which leaves very frustrated cooks out there, who are looking for answers. So, what is the essential cooking instruction that all home cooks need to know?

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

933 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

The 9 Steps of Basic Saute Are Not Only For Bourbon Chicken

They asked me to make Bourbon Chicken for the Beer Bourbon BBQ Festival this year. The mistake they made was asking me to send the recipe. They should know better than to ask the guy famous for burning recipes to write something down. That’s just the point, I don’t use recipes. Bourbon Chicken could be White Wine Chicken or Tequila Chicken using the same basic cooking method. Knowing how to saute allows you to create simple and quick dishes using the ingredients you desire. All you have to do is duplicate the basic procedure:

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

931 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Avoid Destroying the Color Texture and Nutrients in Vegetables!

Nutrients in vegetables usually wind up in the green colored water you’ve just cooked them in. Have you ever noticed that if you cook carrots in water, you’ve got orange colored liquid and carrots that taste like water? Where do you think the nutrients go? If you want to avoid destroying the color, texture, and nutrients in your vegetables, there are some simple adjustments you can make in your cooking. By controlling the heat and understanding the effect of acids and bases in cooking, you can make vegetables even children will eat!

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

924 views

By Chef Todd MohrOct 28, 20111 topic

Baking-How-To Answers Are In The Mixer, NOT The Oven

I get more baking-how-to questions about oven temperatures than any other query. Home bakers have been duped into thinking that somehow oven temperature and baking time are the keys to successful baked goods. It’s not true. The greatest amount of baked good worry from home bakers comes from what happens in the oven. “How long should it bake?” “What’s the correct temperature?” “How do I know when it’s done?” These are all conce s expressed to me that the baker has very little

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

906 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

The Canning How To on Barbeque Sauce

These canning how-to tips came out of necessity. You see, I’ve been making my own barbeque sauce since I was a kid, but it caused conflict in my household. I loved using the sauce as a grilling marinade so I’d make gallons of my “New York Attitude” Barbeque Sauce and portion it into used plastic Wonton Soup containers. The shear number of containers would fill my Mom’s refrigerator.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

905 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Peel Tomatoes in 2 Easy Steps

In my efforts to help you understand how to cook healthy foods for yourself and your family, the most important thing to remember is that the most nutritious food comes from fresh produce. So go ahead, enjoy the summer harvest and the flavor of just-picked items, you might even want to enjoy the flavors of some unfamiliar fruits and vegetables. Today, I want to share information about an item that you probably very familiar with and already understand the health benefits and eat it every summer. The tomato.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

903 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Grocery Shop to Cook on a Budget

Cooking at home is certainly more cost effective than eating out. But in order to cook on a budget, it doesn’t mean that you have to buy cheaper food. Generally, cheaper food is less healthy for you, and everyday cooking should call for the most wholesome ingredients you can find. If you have stress over cooking at home while still cooking on a budget, the first place to start is in the grocery store where your food bill originates. There are some simple ways that you can lower your grocery bill without having to buy inferior products and still make cooking at home nutritious and fun.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

899 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Why Does This Chef Want You To Know His Chef Secrets?

Whether you take cooking classes in person or from an online course, it’s important to understand the significance of the chef’s knife. In fact, one of the 5 Chef Secrets that professionals use to create amazing meals at home and on the job is the use of the chef’s knife.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

881 views

By Chef Todd MohrAug 5, 20111 topic

Learn How to Saute For Countless Quick Dinners

When you know how to sauté, then you have power over your food choices. It’s quick, easy, and you can sauté almost anything! Most cookbooks concentrate on the list of ingredients and forget to tell you HOW to cook. When you can repeat one cooking method, then the ingredients don’t matter. Certainly there are other very important skills to have in the kitchen, such as using your knives for cutting vegetables, and how to make sauces, but HOW you transfer heat to food makes th

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

879 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Food TV Won’t Teach You To Cook

Watching Food TV won’t teach you to cook. Perhaps you shouldn’t believe or attempt everything on your flat screen that’s designed for entertainment value, not educational value. Neither will you learn to cook from a cookbook. Written recipes won’t teach you to cook any more than sheet music teaches you how to play piano. However, with 5 basic skills, you can empower yourself past the advertising and written rules to cook the way you want, with what you want.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

878 views

By Chef Todd MohrSep 8, 20111 topic

The Only 4 Cooking Knives You Need

There are plenty of cooking knives for sale on late night TV. You’ve seen the info-mercials. These amazing knives cut aluminum cans and shoes! I’ve been cooking for a long time, and I’ve never had to cut a can or a shoe. What makes this the test of a great knife? I saw a TV commercial that offered a 26 knife set. It came with 12 steak knives. Again, when has anyone had to cook steak for 12 people in there home? Rarely, I’d say. You don’t need an entire set of knives to be a

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

875 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

4 Cooking Tips Will End Your Recipe Guessing

Cooking is not made easy when you’re still guessing. In fact, guessing at cooking increases the stress because guessing makes you unsure of the results to come. I’m going to give you a little cooking help by offering some tips on how to end your guessing. One of the reasons that you guess is because it’s hard to believe something until you can actually see it. But I want to help you to wrap your head around the idea that you have to believe it first and then you’ll see it.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

872 views

By Chef Todd MohrSep 6, 20111 topic

Food TV Won’t Teach You To Cook

Watching Food TV won’t teach you to cook. Perhaps you shouldn’t believe or attempt everything on your flat screen that’s designed for entertainment value, not educational value. Neither will you learn to cook from a cookbook. Written recipes won’t teach you to cook any more than sheet music teaches you how to play piano. However, with 5 basic skills, you can empower yourself past the advertising and written rules to cook the way you want, with what you want. I consider the

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

868 views

By Chef Todd MohrSep 16, 20111 topic

Great Sauces Always Start With Roux

Great sauces can save a badly cooked piece of chicken. However, a bad sauce will ruin the best cooked meal. Being able to consistently create flavorful and smooth sauces is one of the best skills to have in the home kitchen. When you can make a variety of sauces, you multiply the number of meals you can create. A grilled chicken breast is an entirely different dish with a white cheese sauce over it than a dark Cajun spicy sauce. It’s still a chicken breast, but now it’s two

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

848 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

What To Do After You’ve Discovered Your Recipe Book is Lying to You

Let’s say that you are depending on a teacher or a mentor…someone you trust. What would happen if you found out that they’re not telling the truth, or at least, they aren’t telling you the whole truth? If you’re depending on a book to teach you a new kitchen culinary skill, you need to know now that the book isn’t telling you everything you need to know about cooking meals at home. In fact, it might shake your faith and think, well, I can’t even cook water now!

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

841 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Cutting Vegetables Blindfolded is Still Easier

Cutting vegetables is so much easier when you don’t have to take out your chopper/dicer device. You might think that the electric gadget is quicker and easier than your standard chef’s knife, but you’d be wrong. Let’s have a race. Ready, go! Get your chopper appliance down from the cabinet. Plug it in to the electric outlet. Then, fiddle with the bowl a little because it never fits just right the first time. Next comes the blade. You have to twist it a few times before it finally clicks into place.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

829 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Baking-How-To Answers Are In The Mixer, NOT The Oven

I get more baking-how-to questions about oven temperatures than any other query. Home bakers have been duped into thinking that somehow oven temperature and baking time are the keys to successful baked goods. It’s not true. The greatest amount of baked good worry from home bakers comes from what happens in the oven. “How long should it bake?” “What’s the correct temperature?” “How do I know when it’s done?” These are all conce s expressed to me that the baker has very little control over.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

826 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

5 Simple Steps to Cook Healthy Nutritious Food

Every night when you go home, you have to make a decision about what to have for dinner. For the most part, we would like to eat nutritious food, but many of us didn’t grow up learning how to cook healthy meals. If you’re watching your health, eating out is not the best option, so most people look in their cookbooks for recipes. This isn’t always the best solution, because recipes lie. But, if you know the right way, it’s very easy to cook nutritious food every night of the week. This is the process that many people go through:r

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

819 views

By Chef Todd MohrApr 13, 20111 topic

Spritz Cookies – It’s All In The Bagging!

Spritz cookies are my favorite cookie at the holidays. I don’t make them any other time of the year, just as I don’t watch “A Christmas Carol” or “The Grinch” in July. These cookies bring back strong childhood memories for me, mostly of my Mom’s frustration with her antique cookie press. If I had only known how to use a pastry bag when I was 5, I would have helped ease some of that mate al angst. The correct use of a pastry bag is an easier way to make spritz cookies, and it

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

812 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

The Harsh Realities of Inconsistent Cooking

I know I’ve been asking you a lot of questions lately and I want you to know that it’s with good reason. To cook like a chef at home, you have to break old habits and old habits can’t be broken if you aren’t aware of them. It’s important to me to make sure that you understand the science of cooking as well as the cooking techniques that are going to make you feel more comfortable and confident.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

808 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

The Number 1 Method for Great Cookies From Scratch

The idea of great cookies from scratch is what brings people back to their kitchens this time of year. Even people that don’t bake for the other eleven months of the year, somehow find themselves back in the kitchen for holiday cookie time. Whether you have fond childhood memories of baking with Mom or Grandma, want to be sure of the ingredients that go into your cookies, or share time with your children, making cookies from scratch is a great way to accomplish all these things.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

797 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Spritz Cookies – It’s All In The Bagging!

Spritz cookies are my favorite cookie at the holidays. I don’t make them any other time of the year, just as I don’t watch “A Christmas Carol” or “The Grinch” in July. These cookies bring back strong childhood memories for me, mostly of my Mom’s frustration with her antique cookie press. If I had only known how to use a pastry bag when I was 5, I would have helped ease some of that mate al angst. The correct use of a pastry bag is an easier way to make spritz cookies, and it allows you to make many different shapes with one bag.

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

785 views

By Chef Todd MohrApr 13, 20111 topic

The Number 1 Method for Great Cookies From Scratch

The idea of great cookies from scratch is what brings people back to their kitchens this time of year. Even people that don’t bake for the other eleven months of the year, somehow find themselves back in the kitchen for holiday cookie time. Whether you have fond childhood memories of baking with Mom or Grandma, want to be sure of the ingredients that go into your cookies, or share time with your children, making cookies from scratch is a great way to accomplish all these thi

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

770 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

You Won’t Believe This Easy, Simple Method for Cooking Sauce

One of the most difficult things for a cook at home to make is a flavorful sauce. A great sauce will cover some of the worst cooking mistakes, enhance most of the best cooking successes and make you appear to be a home cooking genius. Cooking a sauce means adding flavor, texture, and appearance to your home cooking dishes. A sauce or gravy is made of three simple ingredients: liquid, thickener, and flavorings. When you need easy cooking ideas for cooking sauces at home, you need only think of these three things. Liquid for Your Sauce

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

743 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

We Got Endless New Dinner Ideas Last Night, Did You?

If you missed the live cooking webcast last night, you missed a tremendous evening of fun, food, entertainment and education in basic cooking methods…a virtual cooking guide. In fact, I showed everyone watching how basic cooking methods can help you make dinner quick every night and still have endless dinner ideas. Here’s a bit of what went on last night:

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

740 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Don’t Buy Another Recipe Book Until You See This Video!

In the daily challenge of cooking meals for your family, home cooking recipes can be a help or a hindrance. How recipes work for you depends on what you expect them to tell you. Remember, recipes are good at telling you some things, but don’t help you with an overall kitchen culinary journey. If this is what you’re expecting, if you’re expecting guidance that will help you to become a master chef in your home, you will be disappointed. Here is a review of some of the things that recipes don’t tell you about cooking meals at home: • Variations in ingredients or potential substitutionsr

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

732 views

By Chef Todd MohrRecently published1 topic

Do you recognize these things that make your cooking inconsistent?

Today’s cooking tip: Guessing does not help to make cooking easy. In fact, guessing doesn’t help your cooking at all and will make your cooking inconsistent. Think about it… people don’t guess at things they’re sure and confident in: • You don’t guess whether your left foot will follow your right in walking • You don’t guess how to drive your car today, you’ve practiced • You don’t guess how successful you’ll be, you plan it and work the plan

Primary topic: Cooking and Recipes

Cooking and Recipes

681 views

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