Fresh passion fruit is such a delightful treat to have. Unfortunately, the seeds are not digestible and can lead to unpleasant textures in whatever you are making. I know that some food blogs leave the seeds in their pictures because they look cute, but from a practical point of view, you will want to remove the seeds from the flesh. The problem is that the flesh is very sticky and grabs tightly onto the seed.

So what’s the secret to easily strain passion fruit?

Use a blender on its lowest setting. Blend the passion fruit pulp for about 30 seconds on the lowest setting to break up the membrane of the passion fruit. You want to loosen up the flesh but still keep the seeds intact. We don’t want any seed particles in the passion fruit juice.

After that, use a fine mesh sieve to strain the passion fruit. Use a rubber spatula to help move the seeds around to help pass the passion fruit juice through.

Without the blender trick, it would take forever to strain passion fruit.

Strained passion fruit juice can be stored in the freezer for several months. Simply place into ice cube trays. When they are frozen solid, insert the passion fruit juice cubes into an airtight bag.

Now that your passion fruit is strained and ready to use, go ahead and check out my passion fruit panna cotta recipe.

There are so many delicious ways to preserve your food without using preservatives. Tomatoes are a beautiful produce of summer. Unfortunately, food spoils quicker in the summer. Also, since tomatoes are high in water content and have thin skins, they do not last very long once they are picked. In this post, I will show you how to make beautiful oven sun dried tomatoes to help extend the life of your tomatoes.

In the case of tomatoes, you can do the following to make the most of your harvest.

Of course, you could just choose to use up all of your tomatoes right after harvest. The following recipes use tomatoes: Tomato Beef Stir Fry and Thai Papaya Salad, bruschetta.

Other ideas to use up fresh tomatoes:

• ceviche
• salsa
• pico de gallo
• roasted tomatoes side dish
• bruschetta

What can I make with oven sun dried tomatoes?

• creamy pasta with chicken, spinach, and sun dried tomatoes
• make a romesco sauce
• sprinkle them in your salad
• pizza topping
• add them to your cheeseboard for a tangy contrast to meat and cheese

Price Comparison

Sun dried tomatoes cost $3-5 for a 3-oz pack. But you can essentially make them for free if you already grown cherry tomatoes at home. Or if you buy cherry tomatoes, they cost $3.29/lb. Oven sun dried tomatoes are much cheaper if you make them at home.

Store-bought ($1 – 1.67/ oz) vs. Home-made ($.21/ oz).

Sure, these are not very expensive, but the price mark-up is almost 5x the price if you buy store-bought sun dried tomatoes. Try making oven sun dried tomatoes yourself to skip the preservatives and see if you get a better result!

Print

Oven Sun Dried Tomatoes

Cheating the sun with oven sun dried tomatoes

Course Appetizer, Side Dish

Cuisine American

Keyword roasted tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, vegetables

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 3 hours hours

Total Time 3 hours hours 10 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Equipment

• oven

Ingredients

• 5 lb fresh cherry tomatoes cut in half
• 1 tsp salt or to taste

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
• Using a chef's knife, cut tomatoes in half.
• Sprinkle evenly with salt.
• Roast butternut squash for approximately 3 hours turning the last hour to allow even roasting.
• When tomatoes have become dried but still somewhat chewy and soft, remove from oven.
• Allow tomatoes to cool. Then place them in a sealed container and refrigerate. These can keep for 1-2 months refrigerated.

Happy cooking! Tag me on Instagram @jennskitchendiary if you’ve made this dish! Would love to see how it turned out!

Now, I know it sounds like a very daunting and scary process. But you can do whatever you put your mind to! If you feed your mind positive thoughts, that is what will flourish in your life. It is a simple and powerful truth.

You can definitely learn to cook if you put some effort and time. I believe in you.

But like most things, you will probably have some failures at first. That’s perfectly okay. That’s how we learn. I’ve definitely had my fair share of failed kitchen experiments. And it is to these failures that I owe my basic cooking skills.

Cooking is actually very intuitive. Not easy, but intuitive.

Now, what does that mean?

It means that you can learn how to cook properly based on what you can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.

Learning to Cook with the Senses

Learning to Cook with Smell

Remember what a delicious pizza smells like when it’s on your table? Well, that’s what you smell from your oven when your pizza is almost done.

Remarkable, isn’t it? Same goes for cookies, breads, lasagna. If it starts smelling like how it’s SUPPOSED to smell when it’s on your plate and done cooking, you know it’s done.

If you smell burning, then that might be a big problem. Might signal the need to re-do your dish.

Learning to Cook with Taste

How do you know that a sauce or stir fry is properly seasoned? You taste it. You take nibble and see if it has the right balance of sweet, savory, sour, spice, etc. that you want.

If not, figure out what seems to be missing and try to add it in. Your dish may need umami (yummy-ness).

Consider putting some soy sauce, anchovy paste, miso, garlic salt, or fish sauce. If it needs salt, then put some sea salt or seasoned salt.

Sometimes a dish is lacking in sweetness. Then you would add some sugar or honey in it. You get the hint.

For sour, add a squeeze of lime juice, a splash of wine, or vinegar.

For spice, black pepper and red pepper flake are great.

Learning to cook with Sight

Look for “GBD”-golden brown and delicious for your seared, broiled, baked, and fried foods.

For boiled veggies, you are looking for the color to intensify (orange becomes more orange and green becomes a deeper brighter green).

For meats, you are looking for the color to change from red/pink to brown on the crust and slightly pink in the middle.

Does your pasta look dry? Add some sauce.

Does your shrimp look too grey? Let it cook a little longer.

These are cues to do something about the food you are cooking in real time.

Learning to Cook with Touch

Poke your bread to see if it bounces back.

Gently squeeze your cupcakes to see if they are still moist and tender.

Touch your steaks to test for doneness-the tougher the meat is, the more done it is.

If you are frying something, run a fork across the surface to see if it has resistance from the crust. If it’s too soft, you likely need to keep frying to achieve a crispier texture.

Are your vegetables too soft? Give them a poke to check for texture. Most veggies should still have some crunch left in them after being cooked.

Learning to Cook with Sound

Listen to your meat sizzle in the pan when you are searing or stir frying. That is a good sign. If there is no sizzle right when you place your meat down on a pan, that is a bad sign. It means you will likely end up with steamed meat instead of creating a sear.

When you first start frying the sizzling sound will be very loud. As you near the end of cooking, listen to it. It starts to quiet down, which is a sign that it’s almost done.

The signs are everywhere when you’re cooking. You just have to open your eyes and ears and pay attention to what the food is telling you.

Easy Dinner Recipes for Beginners

Easy Meal Prep Chicken and Veggies
Zuppa Toscana-Healthy Vegetable Soup
Best Crispy Baked Chicken

A perfect steak should have a nice crispy crust on its outside, achieved by taking several simple but important steps. The inside should be pink and juicy, and seasoned well. Through trial and error, I finally figured out how to make the perfect crusted steak and I’m happy to share that with you all. You no longer have to go to an expensive steakhouse to experience the deliciousness of a big juicy steak that is cooked to perfection. You can do it right from home.

How to buy the perfect steak

To make the perfect crusted steak, you have to first start with an excellent product. My favorite cuts of meat for a nice crusted steak are ribeye and sirloin. Ribeye is lovely because it has lots of fat marbled throughout the meat, so there is a wider margin for error in case you overcook it by a little. It is also more expensive than most cuts of beef. In term of USDA beef grades, you want to go for USDA Prime or USDA Select for a steak. I find excellent quality meats at both Ralph’s and Costco. Otherwise, you will end up with a chewy tough end product. Try to look for a steak with some fat running through it and around it. Fat equals flavor in the world of cooking.

Hangar, skirt, and flank are also delicious, but they contain less fat and have tougher muscle fibers. Because of this, they do well when they have been marinated in some kind of tenderizing liquid (e.g., lemon juice, orange juice, pineapple juice). The crust you get from searing marinated meats is not as satisfying as the one you get from a steak that has only had the treatment of salt.

FAQ

How do I season my steak?

For a ribeye or sirloin, I would flavor it very simply with lots of salt and pepper if you want the perfect crusted steak. Flavor your oil with whole cloves of garlic and a sprig of rosemary before placing your steak on to sear. That will infuse your steak with the aromatic perfume of these herbs. Marinades are great for skirt steak, hangar steak, and flank steak because they are a bit tougher. However, note that the wetness and sugar that are in most marinades prevent you from achieving that perfect crust unless you grill the steak over an open grill. So this post does not focus on marinated steaks. You can also cook a steak stir-fry style, just like my soy sauce glazed steak.

How do I cook my steak?

1. Leave your steak out on your kitchen countertop for at least an hour to let it reach room temperature. This helps with even cooking. A cold piece of meat will have uneven cooking, leaving some parts too red and some parts overcooked.
2. Pat dry your steak. Make sure it is really dry. Liquid is the enemy of a crust.
3. Cover your steak with lots of sea salt. I use about 1/2 tsp of salt per steak. Use more than you think you need. Rub the salt into the meat so that it sticks and forms a layer of salt on the surface of the meat. Optional: add fresh cracked black pepper.
4. Heat a cast iron skillet on high. There is no way around this. Please buy yourself this amazing cookware. Cast iron skillets provide great insulation and even heat for cooking. They are the best for frying!
5. Once you see some smoke from your cast iron skillet, reduce heat slightly to prevent burning. Still have it on high, but just 1-2 notches below the highest setting. Add lots of oil-at least 4 tbsp. You want your meat to be sitting in a layer of oil because that contact with the hot oil creates the crust. Extra virgin oil and butter will burn at such high temperatures, so canola and non-virgin olive oil are fine.
6. Optional: Place in 2-3 cloves of whole garlic and 1 spring of rosemary to flavor the oil. Move around in the pan for 1 minute. Then, place garlic and rosemary to the side of the pan.
7. Place your steak into the pan. Do not move the steak from the surface of the pan for at least 4-5 minutes. This step is critical.
8. Keeping the steak in place on the pan, use tongs or a spatula to gently pat the meat down/caress the meat so that it makes maximal contact with the pan. Again, do not move the steak around the pan. This will create moisture and steam, which will ruin your crust.
9. Remove rosemary and garlic when garlic has become golden brown.
10. Take a peak at the steak to make sure a nice thick crust has formed. When you see that it has a crust similar to the picture below, flip the steak. Repeat step #7, again, without moving the steak around.
11. Press down on the steak to feel for its firmness. The firmer it is, the more well done. Curtis Stone has a great video tutorial on this topic. I live by this rule because it works every time. I don’t even own a food thermometer.
12. Once the crust is formed on both sides, your steak may or may not be done. Check for doneness using the finger push method. If the steak is still too raw in the middle, place in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 5-7 minutes.
13. Place a tablespoon of butter on your steak to finish. Top with freshly ground black pepper and additional salt to taste.
14. Once the steak is done cooking, let it rest at least 10 minutes outside of the oven, uncovered. This will allow the juices to redistribute into the steak. Cutting immediately after cooking will make all its juices run out and you will have a dry steak.

Best Sides with Steak

• Make it surf & turf with Orange Miso Glazed Salmon or Creamy Shrimp and Leek
• Creamy Cheesy Potato Leek Casserole
• Balsamic Glazed Bacon Brussels Sprouts
• Caramelized Butternut Squash with Thyme
• Lightened Caesar Salad
• And if you have room for dessert, go ahead and end your decadent meal with some Fresh Peach Crisp

Happy cooking! Tag me on Instagram @jennskitchendiary if you’ve made a crusted steak with my instructions! Would love to see how it turned out.