Thursday 22 May 2014

Best Dairy Free Butter Substitute

Whether you're thinking of cutting down on the amount of butter for a more balanced diet or looking to cut it out all together, we have all the facts about what makes the best substitute for butter in your everyday diet.

There are some great butter substitutes out there - many bakers prefer to use unsweetened applesauce in their recipes, as it has the right consistency and it's vegan friendly. Olive oil and other vegetable oils are lower-fat butter substitutes for frying, roasting and grilling too and some people love to spread coconut oil onto their breakfast toast as a quirky butter alternative.

Our favourite substitute for butter, however, has got to be margarine. It fills the same roles (rolls?!) as butter in our daily cooking requirements, whilst containing fewer of the bad fats. Margarine today also contains only traces of those infamous trans-fats which nutrition experts warn us against. In fact, the plant oils that margarine is made from contain the good unsaturated fats, such as omega 3 and 6, which our bodies actually need to maintain normal cholesterol levels.

Margarine makers even add vitamins into their margarine recipes. Vitamin A helps keeps hair, skin and eyes healthy, while vitamin D takes care of bones and teeth. Vitamin E helps protect cells from oxidative stress.

There are margarines which are dairy free, suitable for vegans and vegetarian, as well as low fat versions which make it a great butter substitute. Whatever your tastes, eating habits or lifestyle choice there is a blend out there for you. There are also margarines specifically for baking and loads of different flavours, too.

If you're looking for some cooking inspiration there are absolutely loads of margarine recipes to try and they just might change the way you look at cooking forever! Lots of bakers swear by margarine for creating the lightest sponges and chewiest cookies so why not test it out for yourself by searching online for some margarine-inspired recipes? There are lots of them about, with themes for every occasion; from Christmas to Halloween! Or maybe dig out some old recipe books and try substituting butter for margarine and taste the difference.

Margarine is rumoured to be the secret key to the perfect curry and is a delicious addition to warming winter soups. You can fry, grill, baste and roast with it, it's so versatile! A handy tip to know is that liquid margarine turns transparent when it's hot, so you can tell when your pan is hot enough to get started - a chef's dream come true! Cooking with liquid margarine means that there is less hot, spitting fat and oil too.

Tuesday 6 May 2014

Food and Success in Business

If you want to be successful selling food, it is imperative that you make the right choices of the following; a fair price, fantastic quality, great taste, place in the food supply chain, and location. In fact, location should be your primary focus, because location can make or break a business - you may have heard it said, "Location, location, location - it determines 50% of any retail business."

The extent of the food industry is vast and crosses international boundaries. As long as there are people, there are going to be hungry mouths to feed, and where there are hungry people there is a need for nutrition. The demand is never going to die out. Therefore, this is one business that flourishes in all parts of the world, especially in metros where people do not have the time to cook; they rely on takeaways and fast food restaurants instead.

Which part of the industry should a position be taken up? As mentioned earlier, this is one industry that is so vast it has to rely on international markets to fulfill its demands. The chain includes: farming; food processing; packaging; transportation; retail; outlets, such as, restaurants, eating stalls, drive through eating joints, and of course - the food and beverage regulators!

Beginning with the farmer, who manages the fields and supplies agricultural produce such as; wheat for flour, food grains, and vegetables, sugarcane and beets for mills to produce sugar, various plants from which vegetable cooking medium is extracted, tea leaves and coffee beans, spices and fruit, and dairy farm products such as milk, meat and eggs. The farmer is the beginning and the end of the raw material in the supply chain.

Food processors such as sugar mills, cooking oil manufacturers, beverage manufacturers among others, who link the raw production to the outlets that sell the final product.

Packaging and transportation can be food processor's in-house department of it can be contractual, which in most cases it is. This forms a large segment of the industry and keeps the retail segment stocked.

The retail segment supplies to the outlets such as; supermarkets that sell processed eatables, raw material such as flour, vegetables, fruit, cooking oil, spices and so on. They also supply to restaurants and eating stalls and the like.