If you want to give your homemade creations a gourmet flavor, try using sweetened condensed milk (SCM) in your recipes. This has long been a secret that chefs have used and now you can use it too, but you don't have to be a professional chef to cook like one. I learned this secret from my grandmother who was an award-winning southern cook and I'm going to pass it on to you.

Years ago, condensed milk was the preferred milk for cooking. Given that more families lived a rural lifestyle, sometimes getting in to town to the store wasn't as easy as it is today. Necessity for milk that wouldn't spoil as quickly created a demand for sweetened condensed milk because of its prolonged shelf life: It would keep unopened and unrefrigerated for nearly a year. Cow's milk tended to have a higher incidence of bacteria so more people used the SCM and adapted their recipes. Aside from the safety and the convenience issues, they discovered SCM simply made the foods much richer in taste, texture and aroma.

Most everyone knows about using SCM in coffee, in fact, my parents always put a small syrup pitcher of it on the table and used it exclusively in their morning java. But there are other uses you may not know about. Try experimenting with these ideas and expand your world of culinary creations.

PREPARE THE MILK FOR RECIPES
First, prepare the milk: When using sweetened condensed milk in recipes, it's important to evaluate what type of food you'll be using it in. For dishes that don't have a sweet base flavor, you'll want to cut the sweetness of the milk. You can do this by diluting the SCM in a 50/50 ratio with cold water. Pour it into an airtight container and refrigerate. When your recipe calls for milk, dilute it again 50/50. It won't alter the effectiveness of your recipe, plus the perk is, the milk goes further.

POTATOES
Have you shunned using instant potatoes because of the boxy, flat taste? Use the twice-diluted SCM in place of the WATER that's called for in the recipe on the package. Then, use once-diluted SCM for the MILK ingredient. Reduce the milk ingredient by 1/4 and make up the difference by using chicken broth. (Example: if the package calls for 1 cup of milk, replace that with 3/4 cup of once-diluted SCM and 1/4 cup of chicken broth.) Add your butter, salt, pepper and any other seasonings and you won't be able to tell the instant potatoes from the real thing. Follow the cooking directions on the box.

If you don't want to use instant

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