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Friday, April 15, 2016

Try plastic squeeze bottles in your home kitchen for time

Try plastic squeeze bottles in your home kitchen for time savings and economy!

With everyone pressed for time in our busy schedules and also looking to save on our food bills, we can all take a page from restaurateurs, who need to quickly and efficiently serve their customers. There isn't a single restaurant that doesn't make use of squeeze bottles for condiments, such as ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard. Restaurant owners also often have their own 'house' recipes for everything from salad dressings to sauces. When a cook or salad maker is preparing a dish, they can't spare the time to be opening jars and bottles, mixing dressings or making individual servings of sauces. All of these sauces and dressings are made daily and organized in a handy rack in the frig, right at hand. Keeping a selection of your favorite condiments can cut your prep time considerably in your own home kitchen.

You can buy these plastic squeeze bottles at restaurant supply houses, either locally or online. These are quite inexpensive and are dishwasher and microwave safe.

Let's say you're making burgers and salad for dinner. Think of the time you spend buttering buns to toast, getting out the mayo, ketchup or what-have-you and then mixing up some dressing. Besides dirtying a number of utensils, which then need washing, the prep work can easily add up to half the time of fixing the entire meal! By organizing a shelf of your most often-used condiments and storing them in the frig, you save lots of time. Instead of buying bottles of salad dressings, make up a batch of vinaigrette or thousand island from scratch and use a funnel to put them in to your plastic squeeze dispenser bottle. This method can shave several dollars off a grocery trip as well.

Think beyond ketchup, mayo and mustard. If your family enjoys fish with tartar sauce, you can make a homemade sauce that's both tastier and far more economical. Supermarkets now carry a squeeze bottle product of premixed mayo with Dijon mustard, but these are not inexpensive. Make your own!

Home made barbecue sauce is another good candidate for the plastic squeeze bottle. You can find some standout recipes online which far surpass the ho-hum varieties at the grocery. You can add liquid smoke, or a bit of fiery hot sauce as it suits your taste.

Clarified butter, available at Indian markets, is quite expensive to buy, but economical and easy to make at home. Stored in its plastic squeeze dispenser in the frig, clarified butter lasts for months. A quick little squirt over a fish filet with a little ramekin of lemon juice on the side, makes an elegant presentation and a restaurant worthy dish in no time.

Another great sauce to have on hand is an orange and ginger sauce. Mix a cup of orange juice, a half cup of brown sugar and add teaspoon of powdered ginger. Cook over low-medium heat until it thickens and store in a squeeze bottle. A dollop of this sauce makes a broiled chicken breast a gourmet meal. This sauce is also excellent stirred into boiled carrots one good way to get the kids to eat their carrots!

Here's a salad dressing that doubles as a great burger spread. Use a basic Thousand Island recipe. Squeeze the mix on your bun and then add a few snips of fresh chives on top. This makes an extraordinary burger dressing.

You can see the many advantages, both in time and money, of using the plastic squeeze bottle method in your kitchen. Now you know one of the secrets of restaurants that can turn out that dish in minutes!





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