Cooking Tips

Poultry, such as chicken and turkey, is high in vitamin B6. About 3 ounces of light turkey or chicken meat contains nearly one-third of your daily recommended amount B6. Vitamin B6 is an important player in many of the chemical reactions that happen in the body. It's also vital to the formation of new and healthy red blood cells. Stock or broth made by boiling chicken bones contains gelatin, chondroitin, and other nutrients helpful for gut healing and immunity.

Shellfish isn't what jumps to mind for many who are trying to boost their immune system, but some types of shellfish are packed with zinc. Zinc doesn't get as much attention as many other vitamins and minerals, but our bodies need it so that our immune cells can function as intended. Varieties of shellfish that are high in zinc include: oysters, crab, lobster and mussels.

Keep in mind that you don't want to have more than the daily recommended amount of zinc in your diet: 11mg for adult men and 8mg for most adult women. Too much zinc can actually inhibit immunity system function.

The only difference between salted and unsalted butter is literally the salt: all butter is made from milk-fat in cream and contains at least 80% milk-fat, 18% water, and 2% solids (mainly protein and salt). The process goes like this: Pasteurized cream is shaken or churned until the milk-fat separates from the remaining fluid, which is known as buttermilk. After churning, the butter is rinsed, and salted, if making salted butter, and the excess buttermilk is removed.

It's the best kind to use for the table and general cooking. You'll often see salt added to table butter or whipped butter at a restaurant, without the salt, it may taste just fatty. Use salted butter in recipes that you really want to taste savory, so you don't have to worry about the salt content (soup, for example). In this case, you may want to use slightly less salt than the recipe calls for to account for the saltiness of the butter.

It should be your go-to for baking and pastry. Because most recipes call for the addition of salt as an ingredient, using salted butter in things like cookies and pies can take them over the edge in saltiness. Also, in a high-fat yeast dough for example, such as brioche, using salted butter may not only lead to an overly salty flavor, but something that doesn't look or feel as brioche should. This is because the salt can kill the yeast in a bread and lead to improper leavening.