Kitchen Essentials: Parchment Paper

Holiday season is fast approaching, and you know that that means! BAKING. Lots and lots and lots of baking. Cookies, muffins, breads, pies, gingerbread men, and more! Within the past year I have discovered something that has changed the way I bake forever: Parchment paper. Found at just about every grocery store known to man, right next to the aluminum foil and plastic wrap.

Why it took me so long, I'll never know. It's not like I never heard of it. My sister, Beth, even mentioned it to me a couple of years ago. I'm a frugal mom (aka "cheap") and in my mind $3.50 just seemed like a high price to pay for more evenly baked cookies. What a limited vision I had.

Yes, parchment paper can make your cookie-making much easier. No need to use cooking spray, no scrubbing the pan afterward, and I generally don't even have to use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the cooling rack.
But this alone would not put parchment paper on my "kitchen essentials" list. Oh, no. There's also French Bread...
...Spinach balls...

...Meatballs....
...and the cherry on top...the "Mac-Daddy" of them all... Oven-Baked Fries.

What do most cooks hate most about cooking? Clean up! That's right, ladies and gentlemen! We may be culinary crazies who love recipes that require all sorts of tedious labor: dipping, stirring, sprinkles, kneading, cutting, peeling, and even pureeing. But what we hate the most is after the fun and games are over and looking over all the bowls, pots, pans, and baking sheets in the sink. Big items that are hard to cram in the dishwasher. This is especially true for anything with baked-on crud that will require hard labor to clean. (Or lots of soaking if you're lazy like me.)

Enter parchment paper. I know there are some of you saying to yourself that you can accomplish the same easy-cleanup step with aluminum foil, but let me tell you something. It's a large step up from aluminum foil for two reasons:
#1 - foil can tear easily
#2 - foil generally needs to be sprayed with cooking spray

I can remember one time when I was making oven fries and I forgot to coat the foil with non-stick cooking spray before baking. It was a disaster. Never mind that the potatoes were coated in oil. They stuck to that foil like white on rice! And when I tried to get them off five minutes into cooking (after I remembered) the foil ripped in several places in the process. I had to start over with a new sheet of foil, this time coated in cooking spray. Had I been using parchment paper, this drama could have been avoided.

I kid you not.

It's the miracle paper. Whatever you're cooking, nothing sticks. Don't believe me? Try it. I double-dog dare you.

Kitchen Essentials: The Microwave Egg Cooker

What a crazy week! For those of you who know me personally, you know that my family is buying a new home and we are gearing up to move. For those who just admire me from afar... now you know. Either way, it means I haven't had a chance to do much creative cooking or photo-snapping this week. However, for some time I have wanted to post about some of my favorite "kitchen essentials" - you know, things that you didn't always know about but now you can't live without them! For me, this microwave egg cooker thingie (I don't even know its real name!) is just one of those things.

Several years ago a good friend of mine (Laresa) told me about it. To be honest, I really stink at making hard-boiled eggs. For some reason I can never get them quite right. Oh, sure, they taste just fine - but getting them out of the shells was like performing delicate surgery! Half of the egg white would come off with the egg shell. I was hopeless. Until now...

So what is this thing anyway? Basically, it looks like a giant plastic egg. The one I have holds 4 eggs, though I believe you can buy some that hold more.

How does it work? The bottom metal piece comes out of the plastic egg and you fill the bottom of the egg cooker with water up to a certain line. Then you place the metal piece back on, gently put on the eggs, and cook the whole thing on high in your microwave as directed - I do my 4 eggs for 10 minutes. Then I leave the eggs sitting in the egg cooker for another 10 minutes or so until it cools some. This also makes sure the eggs are cooked completely. And yes, I know it has metal in it, but trust me - it's microwave safe.

What's so great about it? I can put this in the microwave and forget about it. I don't have to babysit a pan of boiling water on the stove, and I always have four perfect hard-boiled eggs when I'm done. No cracking or leaking, the yolk is perfectly centered, and (joy of joys) the egg shell always comes off for me so easily!

Where do you get it? I got mine at Walmart for $6.95 about four years ago. I assume they still carry them, but if you can't find one at your local stores, use Google and it'll take you to plenty of choices. I've seen them on eBay and other online stores, too. Skip the $30 varieties and just go for the one that is less than $10. Not only is it inexpensive, it will change your life if you are a big fan of hard-boiled or deviled eggs like my family. Hooray for the microwave egg cooker!