Kitchen Tip: The Use of Parchment Paper

I love to bake, grill, roast and even steam using the oven! It's my way of saving myself the trouble of cleaning up pots and pans laboriously that's because I don't have a helper and neither do I enjoy standing before the kitchen sink for long periods of time whenever I have to prepare and clean up after each meal.

I love my oven to bits! Therefore, I use it heavily. But because I detest all that washing and cleaning up, I'd tend to find ways of minimising the cleaning up process! So I use a lot of these -

Top two rolls of cooking sheet were bought at Daiso, Glad Bake was bought at local supermarket, the bottom roll of parchment paper (with Korean words) was bought through Taobao.com

Yes! Parchment paper. It's a life saver! I've read up and also heard a lot of horror stories about aluminium poisoning that causes brain and nerve issues (read more details here), I try as hard as I could to reduce the contact of aluminium foil on the food that I prepare.

Those are the various brands of parchment paper that I use for oven-cooked/baked food. There's a difference between wax and parchment paper as I've read here and here, so read in detail if you are interested.

Nonetheless, I still use aluminium foil to save me from cleaning the baking tray/sheet in case there's spillage in the process of cooking/baking in the oven.

Baking Tray wrapped in aluminium foil to save from washing

How I use the parchment paper -

Ingredients wrapped up in parchment paper to prevent direct contact with aluminium foil

Here's a quick and easy way of preparing salmon or even cod fish -

Oven Baked Miso Glaze Fish

Ingredients:
200gms of fish fillet (salmon or cod)
1 Tbsp Miso Paste
2 tsp Sugar
1 tsp Mirin
1 tsp Sake
1 Tbsp Water

Process:
1) Mix Miso Paste, Sugar, Mirin, Sake and water till well combined
2) Prepare baking tray with aluminium foil and parchment paper
3) Place the fish fillet on the parchment paper
4) Coat fish with the miso mixture evenly
5) Preheat oven to 180C
6) Grill fish (on middle rack) for approximately 20mins
7) Remove tray from oven and glaze the fish fillet with another thin layer of miso mixture
8) Place the tray of fish just below the heating element in the oven to grill it for 5-10mins or till surface of fillet is nicely browned (the fish should turn brown very quickly so beware to standby the oven)

Serve immediately with steamed rice! It's so simple and tasty, try it some time!