I graduated from chicken to beef today! Orange Beef Stir-Fry, to be exact. That shit came out orange-y; an entire cup of orange juice really wasn't necessary. The orange drowns out the flavor of the beef, maaan. BUT IT'S OKAY BECAUSE I'M COOKING WITH MEATS AND IT WASN'T RAW OR ANYTHING AND guys i think i may have found another calling. Cooking and babies. hopefully, the two will never mix.
After doubling a recipe that really didn't need to be doubled in the first place, our fridge now contains the North American Strategic Reserve of pasta e fagioli. Bring on the snow!
Meatballs. Fuck me in the goat ass, meatballs. So what have we learned today? 1. If a recipe involves chopped and frozen spinach, it's not worth it. I don't care if you're solving world hunger or making a food blowjob - it's not worth it. Thirty minutes of squeezing on fear of the death of my stuff. Christ, spinach. 2. Fuck Kroger's meat counter. Granted, it's only partially their fault, but not being able to get a half a pound of either pork or lamb ground means that I will now have no fewer than forty meatballs tomorrow. I assume they'll freeze if they're edible. 3. That is, however, also assuming that stuff comes together, which is not a foregone conclusion at this point. You have to mix this shit with your hands, and it feels like giving the Jolly Green Giant a prostate massage. The mixture ended up a little bit wet - I do hope that the eggs got integrated okay. Even better, it sounds like a trained sex ninja beating a five gallon tub of mayonnaise into submission with a Chuck Norris Pleasure Patrol Official Branded Judildo. Now I have to either go out and buy enough miniature muffin tins to cook forty of these things or risk my balls failing to be ball shaped.
The ATK recipe for spaghetti and meatballs (free with registration for now, not sure how long that'll last) is pretty solid, and the meatballs turn out firm enough to just bake them on a wire rack. Also, no frozen spinach. I also hate dealing with that, since it usually means ruinous green stains on a dish towel or spending way too much time trying to squeeze that liquid out by hand or through a strainer.
I just got back from the Viking Cooking School at Ninety Acres Restaurant in Natirar, NJ. Along with my cousin and a group of friends, I did a private cooking class. The focus was on cajun and creole food. The menu was: - Seafood Gumbo - Chicken and Tasso Jamalaya - Salad Sochaux (a salad concept created by the instructor; basically mixed greens with roasted goat cheese rubbed with pesto) - Oysters Thermadore - Crab Shreveport - Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding with Praline Sauce It was fucking amazing. Tons of fun! Our instructor was very knowledgeable and engaging, and he appreciated that we were really involved in what was going on (apparently it's pretty common for people to just kind of watch, rather than participate in the actual preparation). The gumbo he made was out of this world, he started with a black roux and just... Oh man I'm stuffed and just thinking about it makes me hungry again!
What the fuck are you people doing to your meatballs? Wire racks? Muffin tins? Though all this meatball talk reminds me that I need to get my mom's recipe for meatballs cooked in tomato sauce.
I'm sort of with you, when I read about the baking and muffin tins I kind of backed away slowly. For what its worth, I just sautee my meatballs in a hot skillet until they're nice and brown, then cook them the rest of the way in sauce. Although now that I think about it, when my cousin and I did a meatball bar for Christmas we broiled a lot of them. Mostly because it was the only way to prepare meatballs for sixty guests. But if it's just me and one other, they're getting done on the stovetop, not in the oven.
I roll them by hand and usually bake them, or saute them, or whatever the recipe calls for. Often they're not perfectly round and beautiful though, but I don't like overworking the meat.
Ok, what is this? Google's not telling me anything, and despite growing up about 45 minutes away from Shreveport I have never heard of it.
Add (more) breadcrumbs if your fear the mix is to wet. Our favourite meatball recipe is one of Jamie Oliver, where I start the tomato sauce and while that is cooking form the balls, fry them ona skillet and then when brown on all sides I pour the sauve over, add mozarella, parmesan and basil to the top and just pop the skillet in the oven 15-20 minutes to finish. Easy. The lazy version is buying some raw Italian sausage and just forming that meat into meatballs.
Against all odds, they actually turned out spectacular. And round. Which is why the mini-muffin tins. Because they will cause your balls to remain round instead of flattening out as they would otherwise be wont to do. Although I either need to get my scale checked or the regulation size of a miniature muffin is one hell of a lot smaller in Georgia than it is in Texas, because those little bastards didn't balance on the lip at all. I'm still not entirely convinced that it was fully worth it, but maybe I'll just get a gigantic steel mixing bowl and make, like, eighty of these things a couple times a year (because doubling this already doubled batch would require six pounds of meat and some sort of weird spinach mammography machine that hasn't been invented yet because I'm clearly smarter than every chef, ever). If they reheat properly. Which is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm hopeful because, I mean, c'mon - it's balled meat. The outside of the bulbous, possibly sentient lump that I started ripping hunks off of to roll was still a lot slicker on the outside than it was on the inside, though. Maybe I made a mistake in rupturing and homogenizing the eggs before I dumped them into the horrible squelching meat nightmare.
I nunderstand those individual words, but not in the sentences you strung together. Making meat balls is not hard.
So I bought a pressure cooker on Saturday and made pulled pork for the first time. I will make it again today. And probably on Wednesday. In fact, I may never eat anything else again.
Which did you buy? My wife just suggested that instead of buying each other gifts for our 12½ wedding anniversary, we should buy the pressure cooker, I've been talking about. Made a slow cooker vegetarian curry this sunday in our new slow cooker - that's the second success with our new thing. We like it a lot.
Pressure cookers are really nice to have. I got mine two years, and got a second, smaller one last year. The big one is mainly used for stocks, which turn out so much better than with a standard pot ! Highly recommended.
So I made homemade pretzels last weekend, and I'm in the middle of my first batch of bagels today. Why do all my boiled baked goods keep deflating into wrinkled messes as soon as I pull them out of the water? WHY? I was hoping to make big round sandwich bagels, not wrinkly dough sausages! Any tips from any more experienced cooks out there? Help me, Broken Forum, you're my only hope!
Boiling with baking soda and sugar. Various sources suggest my problem is either over-proofing (which shouldn't have happened with a fridge rising, should it?) or not enough baking soda.
Start them in the oven, finish them in the sauce. Seems pretty simple to me. Much easier than trying to turn 40 meatballs in a pan to brown them evenly.
You can over-proof in the fridge but it takes a while - over 24 hours. Since pretzels are typically treated with lye, I'm going to guess that your problem is not enough baking soda.
Made jalapeño poppers(without the batter and deep fry bit, but with bacon wrapping and hot-air oven). So good. SO good.
I made this a little while ago: Caesar's salad. (Although I'm sure I probably added a few extra things that aren't strictly speaking part of the original recipe) And some experimental onion/mozzarella bread, which turned out great in the end.
Hello comrades in the cooking thread ! I had an idea - judging by the postings here you all like to cook at least as much as I do. Or you at least like to talk about cooking. Now, when it comes to cooking I like to try new things every once in a while, and this thread has given me quite a few ideas in the past. But I think a more communal experience might be nice. Also, having an incentive to get off my ass more often to actually cook would come in handy as well. For the book/move/whatever lovers we have several threads that accomplish both. So how about we have a monthly Food Appreciation Thread ? The idea would be that someone (starting with myself) suggests a topic, and if people are so inclined they can use that as a suggestion to try something out, and can use the thread to share recipes or pictures. If you are not able to participate, or want to but can't cook, you could of course also just share pictures of of your favourite take out food that just happens to fit the theme. Or wax more-or-less poetic about the wonderful theme-related dinner that you had that one time in northern Siberia/Idaho/Atlantis. What is a theme ? Well, the list can be long – I'd probably start with a food pairing randomly chosen from a book I own, but other ideas might be a celebrity chef (Sandra Lee anyone ?), or perhaps the cuisine of a specific area might work for you. Maybe you always wanted to challenge the forum to a sandwich contest, or wanted to explore medieval cooking. October will probably go to Turkey day preparation. All themes should of course be inclusive – suggestions like 'Dom Perignon and oysters handpicked by my trophy wife' are not useful. However, a bit of a challenge would be appreciated at least by me. What do you think ?
Interesting idea, Farnsworth! I'm a budget-minded cook who takes terrible photographs, but I'm always up for a challenge. :)
I like the idea! I am an incompetent cook who takes terrible photographs, but given how often I find myself wandering the grocery store going, "I want to make something interesting tonight, I dunno, what should I make?" it'd be a lot of fun to have one Challenge a month to give me ideas. And once a month is infrequent enough that I can just schedule it for whenever I do have the gumption and patience to chop/measure/sautee a zillion things.
Alligator's Twin Mashed Potatoes They are horrible for you. And American. First, start with two potato-sized potatoes. Not those huge Idaho baking potatoes, regular potatoes. Then, MURDER THEM. You can peel them if you wish. You don't have to. I don't like to, but CrocoBiscuit doesn't like potato skins in his mashed potatoes so they got peeled this time. Large pan on medium heat. Add ~2tbsp of butter. MELT IT Then add about a clove a minced garlic. Or more, if you like more garlic. Ain't nothin' wrong with that. Also, curse your phone for having automatic white balance, and yourself for not being able how to figure out a way to balance that shit yourself. ADD POTATOES Let 'em cook for a while over medium heat. 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, however long it takes. Don't rush it. Don't let them brown, keep turning them. The goal is to get them soft the whole way through, not to fry them. Aww yiss. Buttery, garlicky potatoes. This shit is about to GET REAL Add some seasoning salt, because you are a lazy American. If you don't have seasoning salt, you can make it yourself by adding paprika, salt, pepper, celery salt, more garlic, and some other shit that tickles your fancy. I don't know how much that is. Use as much as you feel like. Stir 'em up, let the seasonings coat the potatoes evenly, and let the heat release some aromas into your nose. By now you're like "BOY THIS SMELLS AWESOME I CAN EAT NOW" but you are WRONG. Put it all into a big bowl. MASHING. There's no wrong way to mash potatoes. I use a masher. Some people use a hand mixer. Some people use their fists. Just mash them into a consistency you're happy with. Then put them back into the pan. I like mine pretty chunky. AMERICAN CHEESE. Also, add about 1/4 cup of milk. Or more, if you want them not quite so thick. Experiment! MORE CHEESE! Plain cheddar is probably fine but this is all we had on hand. Let the cheese melt, add more milk if you feel like you need it. SERVE IT. It can be a meal by itself if you're a fatty like me, or you can split it in half to share with someone special as a side dish.
An experiment happened today, in preparation for a grand experiment Saturday. This is dual-layer rice krispie treats. The recipe I used for the red velvet layer had at least two critical misses in the instructions for tools: 1) too big of a pan, which would have made krispies way too thin, and 2) line with greased wax paper WTF!!!11!) so in the future instead of being lazy and going by what they say I'm going to stick with my old reliables and just use other ones as ideas to modify instead. But otherwise than that it turned out pretty nice for a first go. The hybridizing method, which hopefully will keep the layers from coming apart accidentally, is my own idea as far as I know. Woot!
I had no experience with Rice Krispies treats before I started baking sculptured cakes - now I just make a batch in a pot, roughly sculpt it with my hands, leave to cool and then fine sculpt with a big paring knife. Fun stuff. This was our latest (for my wife the marathon-runner): It might not quite look like the stuff you see on TV, but it was a team effort, so the 11-year old did the sculpture and the 7-year old the medals. The cake is Vanilla sponge with a middle layer of banana/lemon creme and buttercream topping - the podium is Rice Krispies treats. The zang of lemon in the creme really contrasts the sweetness of the rest well. Actually that's one problem with American cake recipes and American style cakes - fuck do you guys like your sugar! Take fondant. It's a great decoration tool, but it tastes like sugary shit, so when using thick layer upon layer on top of buttercream (which is basically a ton of sugar and butter) makes for sickingly sweet cakes. This one was actually good.
Awesome. Yeah for years I didn't eat the frosting on pieces of cake and such because it was generally put on way too thick and was made way too sweet. To me the key is having a main body, whether cake or anything else, that has an almost minimal acceptable amount of sugar and then dressing it with super-sweet (thin) frosting or marzipan decor or whatever. When I make pure sugar stuff like divinity, I can have maybe two pieces of the whole batch and that's it because it is just far too sweet in general. One of my long-term ideas is try to find out good ways to use more molasses and less pure sugar to see if it cuts down the sickingly sweetness a bit; problem is molasses has a whole different chemistry and flavor than sugar or corn syrup so it ain't easy.
