In Chinese green tea, knowledgeable buyers can find the finest in the world. Here is why:

Vast Geography

China is the third largest country in the world, with land area comparable to that of the United States of America. Green tea is grown in the Southern China, where the subtropical climate and fertile soil are ideal for growing tea.

The best Chinese green tea is usually found in regions of exceptional natural beauty, such as West Lake, Huang Shan or Er Mei Shan, where tea has been cultivated for thousands of years.

Many of these high quality green teas are naturally organic. There simply is no need to spray pesticides and fungicides.

Imperial History

Nothing shapes the long history of Chinese green tea as much as Gong Cha, or imperial tea. The development of Gong Cha was as tragic as it will ultimately be glorious.

When Gong Cha was introduced in the Tang Dynasty at around 700 A.D., stringent high standard was imposed. No longer just a medicinal tonic, Chinese green tea became an intergral part of the imperial court’s everyday life.

Emperor Song Wei Zhong was the most eminent tea drinker of his generation. Throughout more than 1,000 years of Gong Cha system, tea makers innovated rapidly to keep up with the shifting taste demanded by the imperial court.

Selective Harvesting

The best Chinese green tea is made from the bud and the adjacent two leaves. They are the purest: they contain the most nutrients and least pollutants.

These tender shoots, called tea flushings, are the sweetest, tastiest and healthiest. They are the richest in polyphenol ,which contains all the antioxidants, and the sweet and fresh tasting theanine, which calms and soothes the mind.

The younger the leaf, the less environmental pollutants it contains. According to some sources, the mature, old leaves can contain 10 to 20 times more fluoride than the young leaves of the same tea plant

One kilogram of top grade Chinese green tea may contain as many as 100,000 tea flushings. Pickers only have a few days at a time to harvest the leaves.

Sophisticated Firing

The long history of Chinese green tea affords it time to experiment with many processing techniques.

Unlike black tea, Chinese green tea is made with minimal processing. A process - called firing - applies heat to kill the enzymes and arrest the oxidation, or fermentation.

Traditionally, the Chinese uses three firing process: steaming, pan-frying and baking. Japanese tea only uses steaming.

Pan-frying was the most popular method in China. It was preferred over steaming for two reasons: it is quicker to pan-fry than to steam, and it stimulates an intense chestnuty aroma and flavor.

Baking can be done using either charcoal or electric oven. It is preferred over pan-frying when it is important to preserve the shape and texture, such as when making floral infused green tea.

Many Chinese green tea are produced using combination of pan-frying and baking, allowing the advantages of each method to be exploited.

Large Varieties

The varieties of Chinese green tea are unrivalled anywhere else in the world.

Chinese green tea expert Mr Hai-Gen Si estimated there are as many as 676 varieties of Famous Green Tea (Ming Cha) in China today. His sample includes only the highly regarded tea where written records exist.

Low Cost of Living

In China, most leaves are still handpicked, which yields a higher quality crop. Many of the top grade teas are still hands-made, allowing tea masters to finetune their process to optimise the quality of the individual leaves.

Knowledgeable tea drinkers can find the best of the finest in the Land of the Dragon. The low cost of living in China often results in affordable prices for many teas.

Visit amazing-green-tea.com/chinese-green-tea.html” target=”_new Chinese Green Tea for a full discussion of this abridged article.

Read about amazing-green-tea.com/dragonwell-tea.html” target=”_new Dragonwell tea, the finest of Chinese green tea.

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Spaghetti has always been a favorite family meal. My teenage daughter will eat leftover spaghetti for breakfast, lunch, and as a mid-afternoon snack. Not everyone loves spaghetti so much that they will go to that extreme, however, and the same meals can getting boring after awhile. Here are some ways to jazz up this old favorite:

Italian Sausage Spaghetti

2 lbs. Italian sausage

48 oz. spaghetti sauce

1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste

Green pepper, sliced thin

1 lg. onion, sliced thin

1 tbsp. Parmesan cheese

1 tsp. parsley flakes

1 c. water

Place sausage in skillet and cover in water. Simmer 10 minutes; drain. Meanwhile, place remaining ingredients in crock pot. Add drained sausage and cover; cook on low 4 hours. Increase to high; cook 1 hour more. Cut sausage in bite-size slices and serve over cooked spaghetti. Sprinkle with more Parmesan, if desired.

Irish Italian Spaghetti

1 onion, chopped

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 lb. ground beef

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

Dash of red pepper

1/2 tsp. chili powder

1/2 tsp. tabasco sauce

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 can condensed tomato soup

1 (8 oz.) package spaghetti

1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese

Brown onion in oil. Add meat and seasonings. Brown lightly, cover. Simmer 10 minutes. Add soups, cover and simmer 45 minutes. Cook spaghetti. Cover with sauce and Parmesan cheese.

Baked Spaghetti

1 c. chopped onion

1 c. chopped green pepper

1 tbsp. butter or margarine

1 (28 oz.) can tomatoes with liquid, cut up

1 (4 oz.) can mushroom stems and pieces, drained

1 (2 1/4 oz.) can sliced ripe olives, drained

2 tsp. dried oregano

1 lb. hamburger, browned

12 oz. spaghetti, cooked and drained

2 c. shredded Cheddar cheese

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1/4 c. water

1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese

In a large skillet, saute onion and green pepper in butter until tender. Add tomatoes, mushrooms, olives, and oregano. Add ground beef. Simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes. Place half of the spaghetti in a greased 13×9x2-inch baking dish. Top with half of the vegetable mixture. Sprinkle with 1 c. cheddar cheese. Repeat layers. Mix soup and water until smooth; pour over casserole. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Six to 8 servings.

Chicken Spaghetti Casserole

1/2 c. margarine

1 c. chopped red bell pepper

1 (4 oz.) can sliced mushrooms, chopped

1/4 c. chopped hot pepper rings

2 c. chicken broth

1/4 c. flour

2 c. cooked chicken, chopped

1 (4 oz.) can diced pimento

1 tsp. salt

1 oz. chopped slivered almonds

1/2 lb. spaghetti, broken

4 slices American cheese

Melt margarine and cook peppers and mushrooms until tender; add flour and blend well. Add chicken broth. Cook and stir until thickened. Add chicken, pimento, and seasonings; heat and add almonds.

Cook spaghetti in boiling water for about 9 minutes. Drain and mix with previous ingredients. Place in casserole dish and cover with slices of American cheese. Heat at 325 degrees until cheese is melted (approx. 30 to 45 minutes). Serve.

About The Author

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom who is the author of What’s for Dinner?, an e-cookbook containing more than 250 quick easy dinner ideas. For more recipes, organizing tips, home decorating, crafts, holiday hints, and more, visit Creative Homemaking at creativehomemaking.com” target=”_new creativehomemaking.com.

If your cookies are too tough . . .
You may have used too much flour or a flour with too high of a protein content. Unless you want a chewy cookie, do not use bread flour. Check your measurements–the cookies may not have enough fat or the amount of sugar may be wrong.

If your cookies are too crumbly . . .
They may have too much sugar, shortening, or leavening or may not be thoroughly mixed. Try adding more eggs.

If your cookies are too hard . . .
They may have been baked too long or at a temperature that was too low. Too much flour or not enough shortening or liquid will make them hard also.

If your cookies are too dry . . .
The same elements that make cookies too hard, may make them too dry. Try baking them at a higher temperature for a shorter period. Substitute brown sugar (with its higher moisture content) for part of the granulated sugar.

If your cookies are too brown . . .
The cookies were most likely baked too long or at too high of a temperature. Too much sugar may make a cookie brown too readily.

If your cookies are not browned enough . . .
The baking temperature was too low, they were not baked long enough, or there was too little sugar.

If your cookies spread too much . . .
The baking temperature may be too low. Too much sugar, shortening, or leavening will cause spread. If pans are greased with too much shortening, spread may occur. Add a little more flour or chill your dough before forming the cookies.

If your cookies don’t spread enough . . .
The opposite conditions that create too much spread may cause your cookies not to spread enough. There may not be enough sugar, shortening, or leavening, or the temperature is too high. Try adding more grease to the pan and baking at a lower temperature.

If the edges or crust turns out sugary . . .
The cookies probably have too much sugar. The dough may have been inadequately mixed.

If your cookies have a poor flavor . . .
Make sure all the flavoring ingredients were added. Dated or low quality ingredients may not impart strong enough flavors. Improperly washed baking pans will sometimes cause a cookie to taste bad.

If your cookies stick to the pans . . .
The pans probably weren’t greased adequately. Too much sugar will make cookies stick. Cookies are usually easier to remove from their pans immediately after coming from the oven.

This article was taken from preparedpantry.com/cookieinfopage.htm A Baker’s Cookie Guide and is available free for download.

For more articles like this visit preparedpantry.com/bakerslibrary.htm The Baker’s Library.

© 2004, preparedpantry.com The Prepared Pantry

Raspberry Revel

8 ounces of vanilla wafers
3/4 cup butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pint frozen raspberries, thawed and drained
8 ounce container of whipped topping

Grease a 9 x 11-inch pan. Crush the vanilla wafers. (The easiest way to do this is to put the wafers in a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin.) Reserve 1/4 cup of the crushed vanilla wafers and put the rest in the bottom of the greased pan. Beat the butter, powdered sugar, eggs, and vanilla together. Put this mixture on top of the crumbs. Spread the mixture from the edges of the pan inward to help keep the wafer crumbs in place. Spread the drained raspberries on top of that mixture. Add the whipped cream and sprinkle the 1/4 cup cookie crumbs over the top. Refrigerate overnight. Serves 12.

Chocolate Mint Dazzle

18 graham crackers
1/2 cup melted butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
3 eggs, slightly beaten
2 (1 ounce) squares chocolate, melted
1 1/2 cup cream
1 package miniature marshmallows
1/4 cup crushed peppermint candy

Grease a 9 x 13-inch pan. Crush the graham crackers and mix them with the 1/2 cup of melted butter and the sugar. Press the mixture into the prepared pan. Cream the 1/2 cup softened butter and powdered sugar together in a medium bowl. Add in the eggs and melted chocolate. Beat well and spread the mixture over the top of the graham cracker crust. Beat the cream and marshmallows together and put that over the chocolate layer. Sprinkle the top with the crushed peppermint candy. Refrigerate overnight.

A quick note about raw eggs: According to the American Egg Board, the chance of salmonella is only 1 in 20,000 eggs. You can find out more at aeb.org/LearnMore/EggSafety.htm aeb.org/LearnMore/EggSafety.htm

Jill Seader enjoys sharing all sorts of yourbakingstory.com free baking recipes, including no bake recipes like the ones above, at her website YourBakingStory.com Come find a baking recipe to make or share your own. Happy Baking!

Lobsters are large marine crustaceans and considered economically important seafood. Although once considered a poor man’s food, it is now relished and enjoyed by the elite all over the world. Lobsters are dropped into boiling water while they are still alive, and many people feel uncomfortable with this practice. They consider this a cruelty and discourage capturing lobsters for food.

Lobster lives on rocky, sandy or muddy bottoms of the shoreline. Most of lobsters are caught from the northeastern coast of North America. The State of Maine is one of the largest producers of lobster. Lobsters are caught with the help of lobster traps. These devices are made in such a way that they allow a lobster to enter, but make it impossible for them to exit. This method helps capture live lobsters. They are segregated as male, female, green, red, soft shell or hard shell lobsters.

Since lobster meat can stale quickly, it is necessary to cook a lobster while it’s still alive. It is recommended that they be put in the freezer for few minutes before immersing them in boiling water for cooking. They can be steamed in seawater or salted water for 10-15 minutes, and are often eaten plain, with butter, lemon juice, white vinegar or vegetables. There are a number of recipes available for cooking lobster dishes.

Eating lobsters is a slow process, especially for novices because of its shell. A number of implements including nutcrackers, forks, picks and a plastic bibs are recommended accessories.

The majority of a lobster’s meat is in the tail and the two front claws, although smaller quantities can be found in the legs and torso. One should be careful of the sharp edges of the lobster’s shell when breaking it apart. Depending on the season, lobsters are generally quite expensive and are available at local seafood stores or on the Internet.

z-Lobster.com Lobster provides detailed information on Lobster, Lobster Tails, Lobster Recipes, Maine Lobster and more. Lobster is affiliated with i-Salmon.com Salmon Fishing.

Hey, Restaurant Guy, we’re your customers. That’s right, we pay your bills – so listen up. Why are your bar stools so uncomfortable? Do you really want us to jump ship and move to another bar where we can adjust our attitude in comfort? Before you defend your bar stools, sit in one for thirty minutes without getting up. Do you feel relieved to get up, or do you want to order another toddy and kick back.

There are thousands of attempts at bar stool design – meaning no bar stool designer has yet gotten it right. Bar stool design is a classic case of function forgotten by form. It is obvious to us, just by inspection (even more so by imperiling our posteriors), that bar stools are designed and selected for appearance – not for our comfort. Somewhere there has to be an annual international competition for “The World’s Most Uncomfortable Bar stool.” Judges would sit designers in their own creations and observe their pained expressions to establish each bar stool’s discomfort index. A perennial winner must to be the grape-pattern cast iron bar stool: cast iron legs, cast iron seat, cast iron arms and cast iron back. It takes two people to move one of these horrors, and the discomfort index is just below “The Iron Maiden” used in the Spanish Inquisition.

Some importance has to be attached to the type of bar you operate. All bars can be lumped into three categories: 1) drinking bars, including those that serve some food; 2) holding-tanks for restaurant diners waiting to be seated; 3) body shops whose denizens prowl for companionship.

Body shop bar stools require the least comfort. Sitting too long in a body shop might be construed negatively and be self defeating in our quest for Mr. or Ms. Goodbar. Hence, we must mingle – not stake a bar claim. An uncomfortable bar stool is a reminder to move out into the melee.

Comfortable bar stools offer commercial opportunity for restaurant holding-tank bars. Given a comfy spot to cozy up to your bar, some of us might migrate to and nest in your operation during happy hour and when there is no restaurant wait. This extra income might pay for comfortable bar stools.

We insist on comfortable bar stools in drinking bars. Without delving into the psychological manifestations, your drinking bar exists so we can escape from whatever is bugging us. We come to you for relief. Whether the relief comes from a bottle, from companionship, or from solitude – escaping reality is impossible when your bar stool keeps hounding our heinies back into real time.

Since designers have yet to produce the perfect bar stool, we will give you a shopping list of features for you as a bar operator to look for when replacing your bar stools.

1) Large, soft padded seat – essential! A real positive for the plentiful posterior.

2) Soft padded back – prevents back pain. Don’t bother with a bar stool back unless it’s comfortable.

3) Swivel seat – prevents neck pain when talking to or ogling the person next to us.

4) Arms – nice, but optional. They take up room and might debilitate another bar patron if we swivel suddenly.

5) Adjustable footrest – prevents leg cramps while dangling in midair.

6) Roller casters – make it easy to pull ourselves up to the bar. Also useful for wheeling overly relaxed patrons out to a cab.

Then of course, there is the one style bar stool as yet not attempted – The Recliner! The first bar with reclining bar stools will become a tourist attraction.

copyright 2006 Bill Stephens

Bill Stephens writes the syndicated column heyrestaurantguy.com heyrestaurantguy.com His 35 year career in food serivce includes restauratuer, caterer, food and wine columnist for Harte-Hanks, Murdoch and Hearst Newspapers, food and wine magazine journalist, and he consults for restaurants with Bill Stephens Associates billstephensassociates.com billstephensassociates.com

Can you imagine a better way to warm up than with a big mug of hot chocolate on a cold windy winter’s night? Things sure have changed from the xocolatl as it was known by the Mayans.

The Origins of Hot Chocolate

Xocolatl when it was transported to Europe by the conquistadors, was the reserve of the rich who first called the drink itself chocolate. Later, when solid bars of chocolate became more common, the term “hot chocolate” was used to avoid confusion. In fact at first the beverage was consumed cold and had a spicy flavor and was valued as much for its healing properties as much as an exclusive treat.

Originally, chili was a key ingredient of the drink hence the spicy overtones. It is only today that chili is making reappearance in chocolate as an enhancer of the cacao bean base of all good chocolate.

The xocolatl was first boiled then allowed to rest and was later drunk cold as a frothy but bitter concoction. The Europeans initially did not find the drink in its original from to suit their palate and made numerous changes, including using milk instead of water and adding sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. The Europeans also preferred their drink hot instead of cold, leading to what we now know as hot chocolate.

Varieties Available Today

Hot chocolate or hot cocoa, which came first? The Europeans were the first to melt chocolate bars in milk and called it hot chocolate. Cocoa powder became the base of a very different drink with a more bitter flavor. But the two drinks eventually malted into each other and the term hot chocolate was adopted as a generic term for both methods. The only real common ingredient however was milk and at least one form of a cacao bean!

You will quickly find a shop that will make your chocolate drink “just right”. You can take the same ingredients for every drink but it’s how you use them that matters. A little bit like coffee. If you don’t treat the ingredients right, you’ll ruin the drink. Of course there are a thousand and one varieties open to you, from frozen hot chocolate to fruit and herb infused varieties. It seems that there is no end in sight.

You can look at online services and find plenty of home delivery services. Several pre mixed powdered versions of all the latest drinks are just waiting for your pleasure!

Michael is the owner of ChocolateMad.com Chocolate Lovers, the BEST site for all things chocolate. You will also find great chocolate based gift ideas at ChocolateMad.com ChocolateMad.com

To the winemaker, one of the most exciting things about wine is its ability to mold into all kinds of flavors: like a mad scientist who mixes the contents of test tubes, laughing arrogantly as he knows he‘s invented greatness, winemakers are able to make a product where no two types are alike. Wine is the snowflake of the alcohol world and winemakers are the snow clouds.

It is this diversity that constantly gives wine drinkers a chance to sample new products. Recently, a sampling occurred with the introduction of One Last Kiss. Released by Creative Wine Concepts just in time for the holiday season, this wine appears to be what all of the connoisseurs are asking Santa for.

A blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscat, One Last Kiss is a dry white wine with hints of melon and orange. While it goes well with Asian food, fish, poultry, and pasta, many people may find that it also goes well simply with taste buds. Produced by the Scott Harvey family, One Last Kiss comes from the grapes of Napa Valley and Amador County. It’s the latest in a long line of wines known for utmost quality.

One Last Kiss debuted on December 1st and 2nd of this year in Santa Monica. At an event hosted by Billion Dollar Babes, drinkers sampled the product, wine tasters gave their opinions, and, of course, wine bottles took a bow and waved to fans.

This wine, like many of the wines produced by the Scott Harvey line, is aimed at a target audience. The audience sought for One Last Kiss is the new generation of female wine drinkers. Made specifically for the girls, many may find that the freshness, flavor, and lightness of this drink is the best thing since women’s suffrage: it has our vote.

Jana Harvey developed One Last Kiss as a way to mirror the romantic conundrums of many Hollywood films such as Casablanca. Just a sip of it may leave a person wanting to drink it again, Sam. It contains the personality of many of the Harvey family creations and, unlike other wines, it is meant to be consumed immediately.

One Last Kiss is currently available for purchase in Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin. It can also be purchased online at www.scottharveywines.com. Buying just a bottle may leave every consumer of One Last Kiss puckering up for more.

Jennifer Jordan is the senior editor at savoreachglass.com savoreachglass.com. With a vast knowledge of wine etiquette, she writes articles on everything from how to hold a glass of wine to how to hold your hair back after too many glasses. Ultimately, she writes her articles with the intention that readers will remember wine is fun and each glass of anything fun should always be savored.

By the 17th Century, with the popularity of coffee ever increasing in Europe, the interest of the then World Superpowers - Britain, France, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain - also grew. Up until this point, coffee imported into Europe had come from the Arabian Peninsula, over which none of these nations had any control. The Europeans had sample coffee and liked it, and now they wanted to start producing it for themselves. The race was on to establish their own coffee plantations in their respective colonies.

It was the Netherlands who took an early lead in this race. In 1616, Dutch spies successfully managed to smuggle a coffee plant out of Mocha (Yemen). Although, to begin with, they were only involved in small scale cultivation. This changed in 1658, when they defeated the Portuguese to take control of Sri Lanka. Very soon coffee plantations spread all over Sri Lanka and into Southern India. Then, in 1699, the Dutch started production in Indonesia, when cuttings were successfully transplanted from Malabar (India) to Java.

Without help from the Dutch, the other Superpowers would not have got out the starting blocks. By 1706, the first coffee beans from Java had reached Amsterdam, along with a coffee plant for the Botanical Garden. From this plant, a number of successful cuttings were made. These new plants soon found their way into various botanical gardens throughout Europe as they were given as gifts to visiting dignitaries.

One such plant was given to King Louis XIV of France in 1714, by the Burgermeister of Amsterdam. The plant was re-homed in le Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Several years later, a French Naval Officer named Mathieu Gabriel de Clieu, while on leave from his station in Martinique, asked for the King’s permission to take a cutting of this plant back with him. Unfortunately for him, the King refused his request. Convinced that the Caribbean would be an ideal place to cultivate coffee, de Clieu led a daring moonlight raid on the Jardin des Plantes to secure a cutting.

In 1723, de Clieu began his journey back to Martinique, with his newly procured coffee cutting in tow. He kept the shoot in a glass cabinet, which he would bring up onto the deck each day so it could be warmed by the sun. If de Clieu had thought that the hard part of his mission was over, he would have been wrong. As, during the journey, one of the men on board (allegedly with a Dutch accent) tried to wrestle the plant off de Clieu, managing to break a side-shoot in the process. The crew had to fend off an attack by pirates which lasted nearly a whole day; a storm descended that shattered the glass cabinet; and the portable water supply ran so low that de Clieu had to share his water ration with the plant.

Finally de Clieu returned to Martinique, where he successfully cultivated the coffee plant. Some twenty months later de Clieu had his first harvest, which he distributed among the island’s doctors and other intellectuals. As luck would have it, at the time the cocoa plants on the island were doing badly after a recent volcanic eruption, so coffee was soon adopted by the locals. Within three years, coffee plantations spread all over Martinique and to the neighbouring islands of St. Dominique and Guadeloupe. Coffee production was so successful in the Caribbean that King Louis XIV forgave de Clieu for his earlier transgression, making him governor of the Antilles.

The coffee plant had become a very desirable object. In 1727, the Brazilian government decided it was time they joined the coffee market. Using the guise of an intermediary in a boundary dispute between the French and Dutch in the Guianas, Brazil sent Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Mello Palheta on a mission to steal a coffee plant from the French. Using his charm and charisma, Palheta befriended the governor of French Guiana’s wife. Once the dispute was resolved, the governor’s wife presented Palheta with a farewell gift, a coffee cutting concealed in a bouquet of flowers. From this scant shoot grew the world’s largest coffee empire.

The British did not seriously compete in the coffee race until 1796, when they took control of Sri Lanka from the Dutch. With the arrival of the British, even more land was cleared for coffee plantations. So much so, that the relatively small island of Sri Lanka briefly became the world’s largest coffee producer in the 1860s. However, in 1869, a lethal fungus known as coffee rust arrived on the island. This fungus causes premature defoliation of a coffee plant, seriously weakening its structure and reducing its yield of berries. Since rust was not considered to be a serious disease, the British continued to clear more land for coffee plantations during the next decade. It was not until 1879 that they realised the seriousness of the situation. Unfortunately by then it was too late: the productivity of the plants had declined so greatly that they were no longer economically viable.

Luckily for the British, a successful marketing campaign led by the British East India Company for tea entitled “the cup that cheers”, back in the early 18th Century, had laid the foundations for tea to become the British national drink. Between 1700 and 1757 the average annual tea imports into Britain more than quadrupled and consumption continued to grow steadily for the rest of the century. So when coffee rust devastated the coffee plantations of Sri Lanka, and later India, production simply switched and the coffee plants were uprooted and replanted with tea. Although Britain continued to cultivate coffee on a limited amount of colonial land, mostly in Jamaica, Uganda and Kenya, by the end of the 19th Century tea had surpassed coffee as the beverage of choice.

James Grierson is the owner of Galla Coffee: gallacoffee.co.uk gallacoffee.co.uk - Uk online retailer of designer coffee accessories.
Through the Coffee Knowledge section of his website he aims to help people understand more about coffee and give them tips on how to make great tasting coffee in their home.

Check out gallacoffee.co.uk/acatalog/Coffee_Knowledge.html gallacoffee.co.uk/acatalog/Coffee_Knowledge.html for more articles or if you have a question send it to: mailto:coffeeknowledge@gallacoffee.co.uk coffeeknowledge@gallacoffee.co.uk

There are thousands of tips to be found when it comes having a successful barbeque. There’s a wide variety of subjects that can be covered from how to cook different cuts of meat and what type of grill to use to how to achieve a particular taste for your barbequed foods. But there are some basic tips that can help anyone with the basics and will get them started successfully barbequing. By following the 9 tips listed below you can start you career as a backyard barbeque master the next time you fire up your grill.

1. The most important thing you need to do when barbequing is to control the heat. If your fire gets to hot or flares up out of control you can easily burn and dry out your meat. This is not something that is fun to have happen because it effectively kills the whole barbeque experience.

2. Rub you grill with oil before you fire it up to help prevent your meat sticking to the grates. If your grill is already hot you can use a regular spray bottle filled with cooking oil. Just spray the grates before you set your meat on it.

3. Use tongs or a spatula to turn your meat. Never use a fork because piercing the meat allows the juices to escape.

4. Bring your meat to room temperature before grilling. This will allow your meat to cook evenly throughout.

5. Always pre-heat your barbeque. For gas turn on high for 5-10 minutes then adjust temperature as needed. For charcoal light the coals 30 minutes before you intend to start cooking.

6. A clean barbeque grill is a happy grill. See step 2 above. By keeping your food from sticking to the grill it will stay cleaner.

7. When using a barbeque sauce be sure to wait until the outside of the meat is cooked before applying the sauce with your brush. If you add your barbeque sauce to early it can char and cause flares ups when it drips off the meat.

8. The larger the cut of meat the further away it should be from the heat source. This will allow the meat to cook evenly all the way through.

9. If you are doing shish-kabobs and using wooden skewers be sure to soak them in cold water for an hour or so to prevent them from burning.

These tips are a great general guideline to follow for anyone wishing to become a backyard barbeque master. They will give you a good base to start from and any recipe or technique you attempt will have a much better chance of success.

Andrew Bicknell is a barbeque aficionado with a website about barbequing.
For more backyard-barbeque.home-choices-net.com tips for a successful barbeque visit his web site backyard-barbeque.home-choices-net.com Backyard Barbeque.