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Best of all, you won’t have to dwell on the decision for days or weeks before your event.

Garnish with basil leaves for a pop of color..Do you cook the meat before adding to sauce?.

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and similar meat sauces, it's typical (though not always mandatory) to cook the meat a bit first in oil, usually with onions and other aromatics, before adding liquid ingredients.This helps create flavor, browning the meat through the Maillard reaction and creating a fond that adds depth to the entire sauce.Cooking the ground beef first also gives you the option to pour off some (or all) of the fat that renders out to keep the sauce from becoming too oily.. Do I have to boil pasta before baking?.

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There are certainly "no-boil" baked pasta recipes out there specifically written for using dry, uncooked pasta; these are usually saucier than would be the case if the pasta were pre-cooked, with enough liquid that the pasta can cook in the oven.For other recipes, the pasta is at least partially cooked before the casserole is assembled and goes in the oven.

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This is often achieved through par-boiling — cooking the pasta until it's semi-done, and letting the rest happen as it bakes in the sauce so it doesn't end up too mushy.

Some people like to soak the dried pasta in water for about 30 minutes instead of par-boiling, which achieves the same goal of partially rehydrating the pasta.. Notes from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen.The following day, I soft-scramble the infused raw eggs for breakfast.

They taste like I cooked them in truffle oil.. Get the F&W Pro Newsletter.Learn more here.Brooklyn, New York.

Kiersten Hickman is a Sommelier with a Level 4 Diploma from Le Cordon Bleu London, and an experienced food and beverage journalist for 10+ years..Hickman's work has been published in Eating Well, Simply Recipes, The Kitchn, Taste of Home, Stacker, Eat This, Not That!, Reader’s Digest, INSIDER, and others.