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Succulent Healthy Gourmet Meals Cooked From The Comfort Of Home

Ever wanted to make restaurant-standard meals in your own kitchen? Invest in a sous vide cooker and enjoy perfect homecooked food.

Sous vide cooking is causing a bit of a stir amongst gastronomes. The trend that promises tender cuts of meat, improved vitamin content in your vegetables and a gourmet standard of meals is attracting foodies left, right and centre. But what is sous vide cooking?

History Of Sous Vide Cooking

The origins of this style of cooking date as far back as the turn of the 19^th century when Sir Benjamin Thompson came up with a method of low temperature cooking. This method was later developed further in the 1970s by George Pralus as a technique used in the Restaurant Troisgros in Roanne, France.  He cooked foie gras in vacuum-sealed plastic bags and noticed that little fat was lost, while the meat retained its texture and appearance.

Since then, sous vide cooking has been used in top-class culinary establishments, although in recent years, the trend has entered the domestic environment. Sous vide cookers are more readily available for the general public and allow the creation of gourmet meals in a home setting.

Benefits Of Sous Vide Cooking

In sous vide, meats, seafood, vegetables or even fruit and eggs are put inside vacuum-sealed bags and placed in a water bath for an extended period of time. The food is cooked at a regulated low temperature, often for periods of one to seven hours, but sometimes for more than a day. By doing so, the food is heated evenly resulting in little moisture loss and ensuring that the inside is cooked thoroughly without overheating or causing damage to the outside of the produce.

For health enthusiasts, the nutritional content of the food is preserved. If you look at boiling your food as a comparison, then a study conducted in Germany found that between 22 to 34% of vitamin C would be lost when boiling or steaming vegetables such as broccoli. In sous vide, the nutrients are largely preserved.

Safety

Of course, when heating food in plastic bags, there are some safety concerns. These mainly surround the types of chemicals found in plastics that could leak into your food and be harmful to your general health. In particular, you should use BPA-free food storage bags that will prevent bisphenol-A and phthalates from seeping into your meals. You should also avoid those that contain PVC and use PE bags as a safe alternative. Ziploc bags are often used by sous vide practitioners as they are resealable and can be used for prolonged storage.

Get Started

It’s easy to get stuck into making your first sous vide homecooked meal. First, select the meal that you would like to prepare. Grant Creative Cuisine offer many excellent sous vide recipes which will serve as inspiration. If you are interested in becoming a sous vide devotee in the long term, then investing in a specialist water bath will be essential. However, if you are just trialling this method and have a meal that only needs an hour or less of cooking time, then you can get away with purchasing some resealable bags and an immersion circulator device to keep a constant temperature in your container of choice.

Now it’s time to get stuck in. Wow your dinner guests with a succulent meal full of texture and nutrients!

It isn’t an easy task to get out of the house in the cold winter, especially when one has to consider the several kingdoms and galaxies to be conquered and saved right from your computer desk or sofa. Not only experienced gamers would understand the joy of not even having to put on a trouser, not to talk of heavy winter clothing before one can enjoy all the goodies of Mecca free slots and other casino games. However, gamers are known to be social people who enjoy the game chats and challenging others. This is why we would be looking at some top bars to go to for a pint of beer and the fun of gaming.

Top Bars To Visit To Grab A Pint And Play Games

Four Quarters: This venue came to actualisation at Peckham somewhere in early 2014 and they had just one vision. They aimed at supplying good craft beers, over ten classic cabinets for arcade, several types of toasters for sandwich charms that would go single-handed. The owners invest a lot of effort to ensure that their arcade machines are in perfect shape. This place makes a great affordable venue for one to enjoy classic games like Pac-man, King of Fighters and other several gaming options that don’t involve using a joystick and coin slots.

–           Loading Games Lounge: irrespective of changing its location for the second time to Stoke Newington from Soho and Falmouth, this bar still is the most famous and approachable in London. This is a venue that portrays so many gaming values from the game-themed cocktails to the stacks of board games that everyone can access. Even though they do not offer food, the customers are welcome to bring in their packed food or order a pizza. You can come along with your own board game and pet, if you must. Feel free to join the several tournaments and competitions that they offer at several intervals. Such a relaxed environment supports a superb gaming experience.

–           Meltdown: This one is located not far from Caledonian Road station. It is the true definition of a bar that has competitive advantages. It is marked the first bar in the UK to offer eSports and it is just one of Meltdown’s franchise. You are sure of finding games that are meant for strategic moves and swift reflexes here. A majority of the friendly games and competitions are carried out across a stack of laptops for XMG gaming. The gaming arsenal is equipped with other Wii and Xbox consoles. Which is your favourite: League of Legends, Dota 2, or Starcraft? You are allowed to play these games generally free, however, that doesn’t mean you can just grab a keyboard while a serious raid or tournament is on. As it is known that you don’t necessarily have to take parts in order to enjoy eSports, which is why Meltdown streams the largest eSports tournaments globally on a huge projector at the centre of the bar.

Now, you have three great bars in London that can take care of just about any gambling and social needs. However, if you have a favourite one that you think deserves to be on such a list, you are free to let us know in the comment.

As temperatures start to rise this spring, it’s time to roll out the picnic tables and clip the roses in preparation of garden party season. If you’ve ever thrown a backyard soiree, you’ll know that juggling the menu and decor are stressful enough without having to worry about potential rain. But with these garden party tips and tricks, you can stay cooler than ever.

Eat buffet-style

The worry of serving up meals isn’t fun for anyone. It’s not fun for you as you stress over everyone having the perfect plate, and it’s not fun for your guests as you stand and sit constantly. Just relax! Buffet set-ups might be more informal, but they keep the tone light and allow for your guests to help themselves at their own leisure. Plus, you can still create a beautiful table with individual place settings to up the ambiance.

Go frozen

You don’t need to spend hours in the kitchen preparing for your garden party – cooking a few finger food dishes from frozen will allow you to spend time on other things. These Lightly Spiced Wedges from McCain are seasoned with herbs that will complement other seasonal dishes, while frozen mini quiches offer a garden party favourite with none of the hassle. Potato wedges and other light bites will still taste fresh and delicious, and nobody will know you didn’t spend hours individually prepping each.

Use household items for decoration

The more mismatched, the better. Garden parties are a notoriously high-brow affair, but they don’t need to be. In fact, recent party trends show us that rustic chic is the way to go. Even basic household items make for creative decor, keeping the atmosphere laid-back while still having that wow factor. Mismatched china and drinks served in jam jars are informal but quirky, and will give your garden party that stylish, rustic edge.

For dessert, opt for store-bought

Your garden party’s grand finale shouldn’t give you sleepless nights. After all, by dessert time the party is starting to wind down – and so should you. That’s why we suggest a store-bought dessert, preferably something with fruit and heaps of whipped cream. If your store of choice has skimped on the toppings, this is your opportunity to make the premade dessert your own. You can even go as basic as fluffing it up with a creamy topping, fresh fruit or a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Don’t be afraid to delegate

We know that shouldering the entire menu of your garden party can seem like a point of pride, but you shouldn’t be afraid to let others help you out where food prep is concerned. Any good guest will offer to bring something, so you shouldn’t worry about accepting. Just make sure that if you do allocate dishes to other guests, you’re explicit about what they should bring. It would be a shame to end up with twelve bags of spicy wedges and no sausage rolls, after all.

Have a wet weather plan

There’s nothing quite as stressful trying to predict the weather, especially in the UK. What will be will be, and so the only thing you can do is plan ahead in case there’s an unexpected summer shower. Setting up tables in a gazebo or having a tent on hand is optimal, but if your garden is too small for either, no bother. You can always have just-in-case tables set up indoors where you can flee until the rain passes and it’s safe to return outside.

Garden parties are the perfect time to kick back and luxuriate in warmer weather, so don’t spend all day stressing about the rise on your cake. If you’re a seasoned host or hostess, how do you settle your party-throwing jitters?

The year 2017 is a very interesting year, to be sure. Some are predicting that 2017 will be the year of disruption such as disruption has never been seen before. No money will become new money, and old money will become no money. Industries are shifting.

This definitely rings true when we come to the area of food and beverages. There have been massive shifts recently in the way we view what we are going to take into our bodies, and many are predicting that this is just the tip of  a massive wave of innovation that will sweep through us all.

For thousands of years in cultures all across the world, alcoholic drinks have been the first choice for people going out to have a good time. There are of course various sound reasons for this. But there is a new wave of drinks called Botanicals, beverage products that are based around super ingredients, or “hero” ingredients, and are designed to be healthful, deliciously flavorful and stimulating from the bottom up.

How many of us are just frankly exhausted, and the last thing we want to do in our precious free time is be imbibing a substance that makes us even more tired (since it is, after all, a central nervous system depressant)? Adding to this, people are now more aware than ever of just how bad for your health drinking alcohol actually is. Botanicals are a hot new product that have a lot of potential to stay in the market because they actually promote health.

Not to mention the recipes are put together with input from people working in gastronomy, people with refined palates who know how to make something taste good!

So the end result are lines of drinks that have amazing new flavors (and every one is vastly different from all the others so variety never is lacking), provide health benefits, are super agreeable to the discerning palate, and in addition to all this, provide proven health benefits. No more hangovers, no more negative effects etc. And you can pick them up everywhere. They even have a My Voucher Codes for it.

Let’s face it; it’s about time that we started thinking more about our health and changed our habits, and this includes not only our work but also our leisure. We see how sick the generations that came before us and how quickly they got that way, and how hard it is to get out of it. So we want to fix the problem at the root, and if that means disruptive changes in our environment, so be it!