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Think about all the options you have for a general ingredient, like a sweetener.sugar image by Aleksandr Ugorenkov from Fotolia.com
Substitute more common ingredients for uncommon ingredients. For instance, many old "Betty Crocker's Cookbook" recipes call for ingredients you might not keep in your house today, such as corn syrup. You can easily substitute a more common, equivalent ingredient. In the case of corn syrup, for example, you may use an equal amount of honey, or an equal amount of granulated sugar plus a quarter that amount of liquid.
Conversely, you may also end up substituting uncommon ingredients for the ones that "Betty Crocker's" uses over and over. For instance, you may swap out white flour for oat flour, and cinnamon for cardamom. - 2). Substitute vegetarian ingredients for animal products. "Betty Crocker's" is very generous with the use of meat, such as crumbled bacon, ham hocks and beef broth, in its older recipes. However, you may want to update these to be vegetarian for health, cost, convenience or ethical reasons. Use herbs and garlic to add flavor instead of bacon or ham, and try a vegetable broth when a recipe calls for meat broth.
- 3). Change the amount of an ingredient in a recipe. Some old "Betty Crocker's" recipes seem to be made entirely of butter and sugar. You can reduce the amounts of sugar and fat by at least a third in many older "Betty Crocker's" recipes, just make sure that you maintain the same proportion of liquids to dry ingredients in the recipe.
- 4). Use a recipe as a guide instead of as fixed instructions. Remember that all recipes can be taken as suggestions. While "Betty Crocker's" has fantastic basic instructions on how to bake bread, knead biscuits or create a white sauce, it's entirely possible to use these recipes as a tool for cooking up your own food creations. Convert yeast bread recipes to a healthier sourdough recipe; make whole wheat biscuits; or turn a white sauces into a spicy paprika sauce.
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