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Health consciousness and an aversion to eating store food have led to many of us spending more time in our kitchens. However, the main disadvantage of home cooking is that we often end up spending way “too much” time in the kitchen; time that can be more valuably spent in other activities with family and friends. Another major downside to cooking at home is that it often ends up costing way too much because you end up buying special ingredients for dishes of which major portions expire before they are used. To remedy both these downsides of cooking at home, we provide you here with a couple of simple recipes and ideas for entrees that are not just fast and easy to make, but can also be made with regular ingredients that you always have on hand.

Noodle and Pasta Soups: While a soup can always be served before a meal, you can convert the soup dish to a main course by adding noodles, vermicelli or pasta to your soup. Check out our entry “Cooking Recipes: Make A Three Course Meal In Less Than An Hour” for a Simple And Nutritious Tomato Soup Recipe. You can put in noodles boiled in salt water to the tomato soup once it is done.

Or you can prepare a nice Hot And Sour Noodle Soup in fifteen minutes. Take three cups of water, about 75 gms of instant or fast cooking noodles, finely chopped onions, beans, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, bell peppers, peas and corn and boil for four to five minutes. Once the veggies and noodles go soft, add salt to taste, a little pepper, a teaspoon of soy sauce, a quarter spoon of sugar, a teaspoon of red chili sauce and two to three heaped spoonfuls of tomato puree. You can also use ketchup if you do not have puree, but in a smaller quantity. Add a little cornstarch to thicken you soup, boil for a minute more and your hot and sour noodle soup is ready. The recipe is perfect for winters and is a good alternative to hot chicken soup when you are down with a cold. You can make umpteen variations by experimenting with vegetables, chicken broth and by using different types of non vegetarian foods with the veggies.

Casseroles: Casseroles are not just healthy and nutritious; they are a great way of taking care of leftovers as well. Take cooked noodles, spaghetti, pasta or rice as a base for your casserole. Add in chopped vegetables and cooked chicken, beef or sea food. To save time, use store ready peas or corn kernels and for flavor, use shallots, tomatoes and bits of ginger and garlic. Mix with some broth or your favorite soup, add in herbs or sauces that you like and feel would complement the other ingredients. Top the casserole with dried bread crumbs or sprinkle all purpose flour, cover with grated cheese and bake till the casserole bubbles. Garnish with fresh herbs and serve your family a healthy, nutritious and balanced meal. You can make a wide number of variations with casseroles depending upon what you like and what you don’t and you will very soon have your own collection of recipes for quick and tasty casseroles.

Baking can be different things to different people. While as an experienced baker, I use baking to unwind and relax, it can provide the opposite stimulus to someone who has just started baking. While most of us can eat almost anything that we cook as long as it is not burnt, raw or over salted, the same cannot be said about baking. Unsuccessful baking experiments generally end up in the garbage bin sooner rather than later, instilling a fear of failure in beginners who are learning this cooking technique. Keeping this phenomenon in mind, we provide you here with a list of some online baking tips for beginners that will help you get better baking results and become friends with your oven.

• Always Start Simple: Baking is a skill that needs to be learned step by step. You can start out trying to make a three tiered cake as your first baking project, but it is a given that you will somehow mess up. Choose and try easy recipes in the beginning since this will not only result in success most of the time, it will also give you the required confidence to handle complicated recipes in the future. As a beginner, do not go for a recipe where the preparation time is more than thirty minutes or the number of ingredients is more than 10.

• Do Not Substitute: While cooking food, we often substitute one thing for the other and it still turns out to be tasty and edible. However, unless a sub is mentioned in your baking recipe, it is best to use all original ingredients. The key to do this is to check that you have all ingredients in your pantry and fridge before you start mixing them. If you do not have all the ingredients for a recipe, select a different recipe or do not start till you buy all of them.

• Get Everything Together Before You Start: Timing is quite crucial in baking, and therefore it is important that you have everything at one place before you start mixing your ingredients. Beginners often get confused and add things to the recipe before or after they are supposed to be added. This will definitely result in imperfect products. So have everything on hand before you take out the mixing bowls.

• Preheat The Oven: You might get so mixed up preparing your dough or batter that when the time comes to put it in the oven, you will find that you have forgotten to preheat it. Not preheating your oven, or letting your batter stand for long after it has been prepared does not make for good baking. Always ensure that your oven is preheated at the right temperature before you put your dough or batter in it. Otherwise be prepared for partially raw or burned cookies and cakes.

• Use The Correct Measures: Not mixing ingredients in the proper ratio when baking is a major cause of failed baking attempts. If you want your recipe to turn out properly, take care to mix everything in the exact amount that it is mentioned—no more, no less. Remember the main fundamentals of baking are proportion, temperatures (ingredients and ovens) and timing. Getting these right will take you long on the way to successful baking.

Tandoori chicken is an amazingly tasty dish, especially if you like food that is slightly spicy. The best part about tandoori chicken is that it is not fatty at all and still tastes good. On top of this, making tandoori chicken is extremely easy, and just about anyone can make it. It is not time consuming either, so busy, working people can easily add this dish to their repertoire of party or home cooking.

You might have seen people making tandoori chicken by putting meat on trays in their ovens, but this is not the way real tandoori chicken is made. In fact, this is nowhere near it.  Tandoori cooking takes its name from the “tandoor”, which is an open clay oven. Food is cooked by the heat provided by burning coals at the bottom of the tandoor. While a tandoor is quite cumbersome to get and use, you can easily get almost authentic tandoori flavor by using a barbeque or a rotisserie. You can also make tandoori chicken in your oven, but by putting the chicken pieces to be cooked on skewers rather than on trays inside your oven. This should make your chicken crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, exactly the way it is supposed to be. Now that you know the secret to making authentic tandoori chicken, here is the recipe for it:
You Will Need:

2 medium sized chickens, skinned and quartered
4 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons salt
6 teaspoons allspice or garam masala powder
8-10 tablespoons thick plain yogurt
2 teaspoons red chilli powder
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons ginger garlic paste
A pinch of red food color
3-4 tablespoons ghee(clarified butter) or regular butter.

Method of Preparation:

• Pierce the chicken pieces with a sharp knife at different places without cutting the pieces. This will ensure that the spices permeate the meat properly.
• Mix all other ingredients, except the ghee to form a paste. You can vary the amount of salt or chilli powder based on your taste and preferences.
• Marinate the chicken in this paste, covering all the chicken pieces with this mixture properly and keep it in the fridge. You should let the chicken soak in the marinade for at least 4 hours. However, leaving it overnight gives the best results.
• Take the chicken out of the fridge at least half an hour before cooking so that it attains room temperature.
• The best way to cook the chicken is to barbeque it. However, if you want to make it in an oven, then either put the chicken pieces on skewers and hang them in the middle of your oven or use a rotisserie. If you have neither, then just put the marinated pieces on a greased grill. Preheat your oven for 10 minutes before putting the chicken in at a temperature of 175 C of 350F.
• Once one side of the chicken is slightly cooked (20 minutes), baste the cooked side with ghee or butter. Turn the pieces around when cooked or ten minutes after basting. Repeat the process on the other side. This will not only give your chicken a great look, it will also enhance its crispiness and flavor. The chicken should be done within an hour or so, but the time varies with your time and size of oven. So keep checking the chicken manually every fifteen minutes, so that it does not get inadvertently burned. When the chicken pieces look reddish brown on the outside and can be easily pierced to the bone with a fork, that means your tandoori chicken is done.
• Serve hot with lots of salad and raw onion rings.

The Wok, a bowl shaped cooking pan, is instrumental to traditional Chinese cooking. While a wok is not a necessity for everyone, you should definitely go out and buy one if you plan to make Chinese food regularly in your kitchen. The traditional Chinese wok looks like a large metal soup bowl with handles on both sides. If you’ve ever been on the inside of a Chinese kitchen, you might have seen cooks using woks as large as four-seater round tables. Nowadays, flat bottomed woks are also easily available in the market and you also have a large variety of materials and styles to choose from. Some tips that will help you in becoming an expert with the wok are:

Buying a Wok: There are a number of things that you need to consider before buying a wok. For one, the shape of the wok is important because a round bottomed wok might end up harming your cooking range if you use electric burners. On the other hand, a flat bottomed wok can work perfectly well on such a burner. Then comes the material of the wok. You will find woks made of stainless steel, carbon steel, iron and non stick ones. While traditional Chinese cooks swear by carbon woks, if you are a modern cook, you can do just as well with a non –stick one. You will save your self a lot of hassle by buying a heavy non stick wok that allows for equal heating all over. It would give you a similar performance as a carbon steel one but will be rust free and cook food faster.

Seasoning your wok: In case you follow after traditionalists and buy a non stick, iron or carbon steel wok, then you will first have to season it. Seasoning is important because it removes the residual oil left on woks by the manufacturer to prevent rusting. In order to season your wok, first wash it with a fat removing detergent properly and dry it. Then put it on a low flame and let it heat up. Soak a kitchen towel with a little amount of cooking oil and rub it on the inside of the wok. After the wok has been heated for at least ten minutes, rub the towel on the wok again. You will see your kitchen towel turning gray black. Keep repeating the process till your towel comes away clean. Wash it with water, dry it and your wok is ready for use whenever you want it. You will not need to season a non stick wok because it will not rust anyway.

Cooking With a Wok: Keep these tips in mind when cooking with your wok to get the best results—
• Put food in the wok only after it has heated up properly.
• Keep everything prepared because you will find that food cooks very fast in the wok.
• Use the wok for deep frying because it is much more efficient than regular sauce pans and deep fryers.
• When deep frying, put food to be fried into the wok only when the oil is hot enough (it should form little bubbles when you put food in it), otherwise your food will turn out to be full of oil. 
• Use wooden spoons—slotted spoons for deep frying and spatulas for other purposes even if do not use a non stick wok. It will save a lot of commotion while you keep stirring food around in your wok!