Description:
Jack Piccolo's Timing Is Everything, a guide to food timing and storage, sets out to dispel the when-is-it-done doubts. In chart after chart, Piccolo provides shorthand preparation information and cooking times for most fruits and vegetables, grains, meat, poultry, fish, sausages, and more. Additional chapters on microwaving, pressure cooking, and food storage supply similarly useful data. If dish success is based on a number of variables in addition to (and as important as) cooking time, Piccolo is, nonetheless, on the right track. Most cooks will welcome a "fingertips" source for better-than-ballpark dish and storage timing plus the kind of succinct preparation advice he offers. How long will the roast beef take? Find the book's beef section and consult the comprehensive charts. Choose your cut, then learn, for example, that a seven- to eight-pound rib roast, started in a 550-degree oven, is cooked to rare--an internal temperature of 115 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit--in one-and-a-half to one-and-three-fourths hours. Piccolo also includes explicit data on defrosting and heating in the microwave and on shelf, refrigerator, and freezer storage. Whether used to resolve timing quandaries or as a cookbook adjunct, Timing Is Everything should help cooks become more confident as well as knowledgeable. --Arthur Boehm
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