Sakthi Kitchen

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Cooking oil -5


PRESSED VS. CHEMICALLY EXTRACTED

      Olive, avocado and walnut oils, for example, are from soft fruit or nuts and need only expeller pressing and centrifuging; they may be labeled “cold pressed.” Hard oilseeds such as soy or canola usually require some pre-treatment such as steam before pressing, but natural extraction methods do not rely on chemical solvents. 
      In contrast, common mass-market oils generally are extracted with toxic chemical solvents such as hexane. These oils then undergo harsh treatment to remove the toxic solvent. More chemicals, very high heat and straining are used to deodorize and bleach the oils, rendering them inferior in taste, fragrance, appearance and especially nutritional quality. Food companies prefer to use chemical solvents to get maximum yields compared to mechanical pressings. 

Storing oils

      All oils, especially unrefined oils, should be refrigerated after opening to prevent oxidation and rancidity. Natural oils should smell and taste fresh and pleasant. If in doubt, throw it out. Rancid fat isn’t just unpleasant in odor and taste, it’s also unhealthy. Studies indicate that rancid fats may promote cancer and heart disease.
       We suggest keeping a small dispenser of your everyday oil in the pantry for what you’ll use in a week or so and keep the larger bottle refrigerated. Oil that’s firmed up in the refrigerator will liquefy at room temperature in a few minutes. Place the bottle in a container of warm — not hot — water for five minutes. The quality will not be harmed.

Hydrogenated oils
        Avoid products with hydrogenated or trans-fats. Hydrogenated fats are highly refined oils that are hardened artificially in a chemical process so they cannot oxidize. They raise cholesterol and are the main source of dangerous trans-fats. Hydrogenated and trans-fats are found in many shortenings, margarines and processed snack foods that require a long shelf life.
        The National Academy of Sciences has declared trans-fats unsafe in any amount. The Food and Drug Administration has ordered food manufacturers to disclose trans-fat levels on all nutrition labels by 2006.

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The Sakthi Kitchen-2
What is needed?

The two important appliances needed to make healthy, quick and tasty food are a pressure cooker and a blender (mixer-grinder).

Pressure cooker:

      We recommend stainless steel pressure cookers for health reasons but if you want you could use aluminum cookers too. We prefer to avoid Teflon quoted utensils or non-stick vessels which are not good for health. The chemicals used for coating the non-stick vessels leach into the food and invade our body. For safety we recommend Hawkins pressure cooker which has a lid that goes in. cooker

When pressure builds up it keeps the lid really tight as a part of the pressure cooker. An 8-liter or 10- liter pressure cooker is a good size for a small family or even for a bachelor. The use of separators with the cooker is important to save time in cooking. Usually there will be three separators provided with the cooker, sometimes even four. Three are convenient because in one you can cook rice; in another you could cook vegetables and in the third beans or dal. This is how you save time, by cooking all three at the same time. Usually it takes less than 15 minutes to cook all three items in one time.
Save time using separators

If you want to take food to work, then first thing in the morning set the cooker and then by the time you get ready your food will be ready. It is convenient if you soak brown rice the previous night in the cooker separator and keep it in the cooker. The rice will cook in one separator with twice the amount of water (add a little less of water to avoid over cooking, example, for one glass of rice instead of adding two glass of water I add one and ¾ glass of water).

In the next separator add dal and in the third vegetables. To save more time I keep the cooker on stove with water and by the time I get my separators ready, the water in the cooker boils and so instead of 15 minutes it takes more like 8 -10 minutes. You can save 5 minutes. In the morning when you have to rush to work, 5 minutes are very valuable!

Keeping the separators in a particular order is important. The lowest separator should contain hard things to be cooked, or whatever will take the longest to cook, for example, lentils, beans or even dal like toor etc. The center or the middle separator should contain the vegetables. Do not add water to vegetables so that they will not be mushy. The top one will have rice.

After the cooker whistles three or four times (steam comes out through the vent) switch off the stove. Allow five or six whistles if you want to open immediately. Wait for the steam to die down naturally and then open, if you have the time. If you are rushed for time, after five or six whistles, hold the closed cooker under a cold stream of water, with the water pointed at the whistle. The steam will die down quickly and the cooker will open. Your food is ready!
Parent Category: Earth Therapy
Category: Sakthi Kitchen
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What is needed?

The two important appliances needed  to make healthy, quick and tasty food are a pressure cooker and a blender (mixer-grinder).

Pressure cooker:

                                        We recommend stainless steel pressure cookers  for health reasons but if you want you could use alumi num cookers too. We prefer to avoid Teflon quoted utensils or non-stick vessels which are not good for health. The chemicals used for coating the non-stick vessels leach into the food and invade our body. For safety we recommend Hawkins pressure cooker which has a lid that goes in.

When pressure builds up it keeps the lid really tight as a part of the pressure cooker. An 8-liter or 10- liter pressure cooker is a good size for a small family or even for a bachelor. The use of separators with the cooker is important to save time in cooking.  Usually there will be three separators provided with the cooker, sometimes even four. Three are convenient because in one you can cook rice; in another you could cook vegetables and in the third beans or dal. This is how you save time, by cooking all three at the same time. Usually it takes less than 15 minutes to cook all  three items in one time. 

Save time using separators

           If you want to take food to work, then first thing in the morning  set the cooker and then by the time you get ready your food will be ready. It is convenient if you soak brown rice the previous night  in the cooker separator and keep it in the cooker. The rice will cook in one separator with twice the amount of water (add a little less of water to avoid over cooking, example, for one glass of rice instead of adding two glass of water I add one and ¾ glass of water).

            In the next separator add dal and in the third vegetables. To save more time I keep the cooker on stove with water and by the time I get my separators ready, the water in the cooker boils and so instead of 15 minutes it takes more like 8 -10 minutes. You can save 5 minutes. In the morning when you have to rush to work, 5 minutes are very valuable!

 Keeping the separators in a particular order is important. The lowest separator should contain hard things to be cooked, or whatever will take the longest to cook, for example, lentils, beans or even dal like toor etc. The center or the middle separator should contain the vegetables. Do not add water to vegetables so that they will not be mushy. The top one will have rice.

 After the cooker whistles three or four times (steam comes out through the vent) switch off the stove. Allow five or six whistles if you want to open immediately. Wait for the steam to die down naturally and then open, if you have the time. If you are rushed for time, after five or six whistles, hold the closed cooker under a cold stream of water, with the water pointed at the whistle. The steam will die down quickly and the cooker will open. Your food is ready!

 

Research on cooking and oxidation

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The Sakthi Kitchen

Cooking tasty and healthy food is everyone’s wish but cooking it with less time and work                   is everyone’s dream. In this fast life, spending less time cooking becomes mandatory. Sakthi’s kitchen will help you to cook tasty, healthy food in less time. We recommend here tips based on our experience. This is for mostly Indian style cooking but we will share cooking tips for other nationalities too. We would like you to give us feed back and share with us your tips so we can help others with the knowledge.

Send us a quick recipe with your name and e-mail. We will post it here for  all to benefit.                               It would be good if you can give us feed back (good or bad) so that we can improve the kitchen.
What takes the most time in Cooking?

If we understand where we lose time in cooking, we can save time. 

  1. Cooking the vegetables, dals (lentils) and beans.   Maximum time in cooking goes in cooking these ingredients. If we could lessen this time we would be more inclined to cook. A pressure cooker is the best way. It is healthy because it uses steam to cook. Steam cooked food requires less oil than cooking in a pan. This is another health benefit. Another advantage is that cooking in separators using a pressure cooker saves lot of time by cooking three different items in one time. See below for details.
  1. Adding spices: By making a mix of spices that you commonly use, you can save time adding just the mix. We have provided recipes to make a flavor mix and spice mix.
  1. Cutting vegetables and other ingredients. This is unavoidable; many people buy frozen and canned foods. Personally we don’t feel this is healthy. To save time,  you could cut vegetables and store in the fridge. Onions, tomatoes, coriander leaves could be chopped and stored in zip lock bags even for a week.

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Healthy mixtures of a kitchen

Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.  - Henry Ford

Why to make our own spice mixes?

        Most of the Food companies are interested in improving their business by catering to the taste of the customer and not to their health. Therefore even in spice mixes flavoring agents are added to make the food tasty. Unapproved and dangerous health food additives are added. MSG or mono-sodium glutamate are added to enhance the flavors of food. Apart from the low costs, the home made spice mixes are free from these chemical additives. by making your own mixes you will know what your spice mixes contain.

Flavor Mix 
Mix 10  gm each of Cumin seeds, Mustard seeds, 2 gm of Fenugreek seeds. Use one teaspoon in all the preparations. 

Spice Mix 
10gm ( one table spoon) of Chili powder (vary this amount based on the spice level) 
5gm ( two table spoons) of Coriander seed powder 
2gm one teaspoon) of Turmeric powder 
1 (1/2 teaspoon) gm of Asafoetida

Do not add urid dal, other grams while spicing. This mixed proteins cause severe allergies and inflammation in gut. 

Adding salt:
Adding salt at the end of cooking allows less salt to be absorbed and so uses only less salt.  You can observe this by finding that  the food would be too salty in-spite of using usual quantity, if you add salt after cooking is done. So  adding salt at the end of cooking will decrease the qty of salt without compromising on the taste.  




Nut mix saves time    (But this comes with a price. People can develop allergies if you mix proteins of nuts or seeds. Better to eat them one at a time. Please read our book, allergic foods.  

It is better to eat one nut  or any protein,  one at a time instead of a mix to avoid leaky gut , food allergies, gut microbiota microbiome dysbiosis.

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  1. The Ideal Kitchen
  2. Tips about Oils

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