Chicken is a lot of fun to cook with because it is one of the most versatile ingredients there is. Whether you are new to cooking in general or whether you want to brush up on your chicken food storage skills, here are some tips to make sure your chicken recipes are safe as well as tasty.

How to Buy the Best Chicken

You should choose chicken, which is within its expiration date and cold to the touch. You should not buy fresh chicken, which is damaged or leaking.

Chicken is chilled during its distribution to retail stores to keep it cool and fresh. If you need to buy fresh chicken, it is a good idea to make it the last item you buy before heading to the checkout so it does not get warm. Double bag the chicken separately from your other groceries and put it in the refrigerator as soon as you get home, in its original packaging.

Chilling, Freezing and Thawing Chicken

You might have seen pictures of the old food pyramid on posters in your doctor’s surgery or in magazines but you might not have seen the new food pyramid yet.

The old food pyramid stacks four food groups on top of one another. The largest food group is at the base and this is bread, cereal, rice, and pasta. Next, up you have fruit and vegetables. The second from the top is dairy, meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and beans and right at the top, with the smallest space, is fats and oils. You can use this food pyramid to tell at a glance how much of each type of food you should be eating.

The new food pyramid uses vertical rainbow colored stripes to indicate the different food groups and it tells you how many cups or ounces per day you should have rather than how many servings like on the old food pyramid. Most people would not know how much a “serving” should be, so this does simplify things.

Is it Important to Follow the Food Pyramid?

A lot of people have never used a deep fryer but deep fried food is a wonderful treat that most of us love to savor from time to time. Deep-frying is actually an easy cooking method when you know how to do it and a deep fat fryer is the safest and cleanest way of deep-frying your food.

How to Deep Fry Food

It is important to read the deep fryer instructions carefully because different fryers work in different ways. You will also need to have the correct oil to cook with because oils need different cooking times and the results vary depending, which oil you use.

You need to pour the oil into the fryer, making sure it is well below the max fill line. If there is not a max, fill line, check the fryer instructions. You need to have enough oil so your food is immersed under it but not too much because the food displaces some of the oil and you do not want it to spill over the sides.