The Cooking Thread
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I'd question this, but we had some guys in my dorm who routinely cooked their steaks this way.
Well, a broiler is basically an upside down grill. The follow-up Tweet hits the nail on the head. Put a pan below it, or the better idea is to use a broiler pan. They're designed to provide a reservoir for grease that is shielded from the radiant energy of the oven so they're less likely to smoke.
Later in life, once you're past the "cook just well enough to keep me alive and not give myself food poisoning too often" phase of male life you can learn from professional kitchens. Use a stainless steel or cast iron skillet, do most of your cooking on the stovetop and finish under the broiler. Then use the fondé to make a pan sauce.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
cook just well enough to keep me alive and not give myself food poisoning too often
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@JBert I've participated in a few Eagle Boards of Review for Boy Scouts as their final step to earning Eagle. Part of the Scout Law is that "A Scout is Thrifty." I always ask a question relating their experience in learning to cook and how it relates to thrift. Usually asking either, "What Scout skill have you learned that goes along with A Scout is Thrifty?" or from the other side, "Which part of the Scout Law does cooking go with?"
Because kids usually don't have much of a clue how expensive it is to buy your food at a restaurant vs being able to buy raw ingredients and prepare it yourself. One of the adults usually also follows up with a comment about how cooking can impress girls.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
One of the adults usually also follows up with a comment about how cooking can impress girls.
When my wife and I started dating that was one thing that really impressed her was that I knew how to cook and to cook really well.
But that reminds me of another anecdote on cooking and dating. She and I had been together for a few months and I had made something for dinner and it was a total flop. It was edible, but only just so. She came from an overly polite family (that are almost universally shitty cooks) and in her family no matter what, you put on a smile and ate whatever, no matter how unappetizing it was.
"You're overreacting, it's not that bad."
"Yes it is. You don't have to be nice to save my feelings. I'm not that delicate. This is rubbish. Let's go get Mexican."
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@boomzilla I told my students, many of whom came from wealthy families, that the most important skills they could learn in high school were how to cook simply from basic staples and clean up after themselves (dishes, laundry, and general house cleaning). Many of them had never done any of that. Heck several said that their parents couldn't cook from scratch and they ate prepared food for every meal (packaged or restaurant).
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I think my best cooking and dating story was one night I picked her up from the bar. She had been out with friends. She was, let's say.......mildly inebriated. She mentions how she has a drunken food craving for one of the corn dogs like you get at a fair but frozen microwave corn dogs would be a substitute. So I offered to make homemade corn dogs. Which isn't something people think of making from scratch.
"You can do that?"
"If carnies high on meth can do it then I should be able to."In retrospect, there's probably things that meth heads can do that I can't. If I fell through a ceiling while trying to Mission: Impossible my way to evade arrest I'd probably die but a meth head would just bounce back up and try to run. But the cooking fair food thing I can handle.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Let's go get Mexican
At least the gives you shit the next day?
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@Polygeekery The fun part are the other people. During my time at a church group we had this exchange with Finland going on. One year we'd drive to Oulu, one year they'd come to us. It usually involved the visiting party throwing a dinner as thanks.
Now, that particular year, part of the dinner was gratinated potatoes, something along the lines of this:
However, they had misjudged the time needed (no wonder if you don't regularly cook for 80 people!) and the potatoes were still a bit on the ... crunchy side. So they took it back and tried to save it by baking it a bit more.
A friend of mine had already taken some bites and was quite surprised by their decision to cook the stuff a bit more. I still remember his cry of wonder:
But my mom always does them this way!
Poor guy.
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@Rhywden said in The Cooking Thread:
However, they had misjudged the time needed (no wonder if you don't regularly cook for 80 people!) and the potatoes were still a bit on the ... crunchy side.
I had a similar experience in college the first time I cooked for my church's college group. My mom used to make meatballs with rice. A couple of meals' worth for our family fit in a pressure cooker, and the high-pressure steam was sufficient to cook them fully without pre-cooking the rice. (Also, she may have used parboiled rice; I'm not sure about that. It's probably been over 40 years since I last helped her make them, and she's been dead for 20, so that knowledge is forever lost, at least in this life.) 30-ish servings without a pressure cooker, not so much. It may have been the worst dinner I had in all my years of weekly Sunday dinners in that group.
Edit: Come to think of it, it may have also been the last time I cooked for the group. I helped with the dinners in other ways — set-up, clean-up — but rarely, if ever, cooking.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
Edit: Come to think of it, it may have also been the last time I cooked for the group. I helped with the dinners in other ways — set-up, clean-up — but rarely, if ever, cooking.
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@Rhywden my wife's family are (with one exception) absolutely horrible cooks. I'm not being hyperbolic. Tragically bad.
The first time I visited her parent's house was to pick her up after she'd spent a few days there recovering from a minor surgery. They offered me some of what they'd made for dinner and I lied and said I'd eaten on my way there and that it had not sat well so I wasn't feeling good. I double-dipped on the excuses to make it seem more valid. The truth was that I'd worked all day, went home and took a shower and immediately went to pick her up and was starving but.....
It was some sad looking chicken breast that was somehow cooked (hopefully) but had zero browning. Like it was boiled or something. Then on top of it was some jarred pasta sauce and finished with some cheese that wasn't melted in the slightest.
It was like the saddest, least appetizing attempt at Caprese Chicken that I've ever seen.
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@Rhywden said in The Cooking Thread:
Now, that particular year, part of the dinner was gratinated potatoes, something along the lines of this:
However, they had misjudged the time needed (no wonder if you don't regularly cook for 80 people!) and the potatoes were still a bit on the ... crunchy side. So they took it back and tried to save it by baking it a bit more.
Yeah...potatoes can be tricky.
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@Polygeekery Sounds like my school's experience with our (former) caterer. This caterer had previously been great but at some point something changed (don't even know what exactly) and the resulting meals became e.g. pasta with sad tomato sauce. The potatoes they used were the pre-peeled ones which became those tasteless yellow lumps. Stuff like that. Basically, a lot of pre-made ingredients which were not combined to something that was at least tasty (if not healthy).
Our new caterer definitely does cook everything on their own - even the dessert. I first noticed that when I found a small twig of thyme in my food. And the Tiramisu was to die for. Even if they (sadly enough) had to forgo the Amaretto.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
Edit: Come to think of it, it may have also been the last time I cooked for the group.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
It was some sad looking chicken breast that was somehow cooked (hopefully) but had zero browning. Like it was boiled or something. Then on top of it was some jarred pasta sauce and finished with some cheese that wasn't melted in the slightest.
It doesn't sound great, but at least it might have been edible.
I've had chicken breast which was prepared in the oven which did have a nice color, apparently something my brother cooked up while I was helping my dad with some garden work until late in the evening.
What was rather unusual was that it didn't look like it was braised. Instead it turned out that he had left it in the oven "so that it would keep warm when you would get back from the garden". Driest, toughest and most miserable chicken I've ever had, and the spice rub on the outside sure didn't help anything...
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@Rhywden said in The Cooking Thread:
Even if they (sadly enough) had to forgo the Amaretto.
You should have been French. They would serve red wine in the cafeteria and probably some sort of liqueur with the tiramisu.
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@JBert said in The Cooking Thread:
Instead it turned out that he had left it in the oven "so that it would keep warm when you would get back from the garden".
Chicken jerky. It would have made good chew treats for the dogs.
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@Luhmann that's backwards. They tried to make the French become Germans. But good enough for a cheap joke's sake.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@Luhmann that's backwards. They tried to make the French become Germans. But good enough for a cheap joke's sake.
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@Rhywden fair enough. I always........overlook.......him and his conquests.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
You should have been French. They would serve red wine in the cafeteria and probably some sort of liqueur with the tiramisu.
Alas, my canteen has stopped serving wine (and beer, and cider) for lunch for health and safety reasons years ago.
I'm telling you, things are only ever going downhill.
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@remi
Sacre bleu!
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We tend to do an hours d'oeuvres Christmas Eve dinner. I think these will be making an appearance this year.
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@boomzilla Easy to make gluten-free. The only gluten is in the bread crumb coating, and I have gluten-free bread crumbs. And a pound of bacon that needs to be eaten really soon; it just passed its best-by date.
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@HardwareGeek yeah, I've done low carb (and gluten free) deep frying with both almond and soy flour. Of course, the potatoes nix the low carb angle, so I'm going to wait for a special occasion. Trying to make some progress here before the holidays.
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@TimeBandit I used the British spelling.
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This may have to happen this holiday season:
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@boomzilla
All paths lead to the nope thread
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Did a household dinner with the roommates since we couldn't go do family things this year. Turned out surprisingly good, though exhausting.
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Vodka Christmas Cake
Ingredients
1 cup sugar 1 tsp. Baking powder
1 cup water 1 tsp. salt
1 cup of brown sugar lemon juice
4 large eggs Some nuts
1 bottle vodka 1 bottle vodka
InstructionsSample a cup of vodka to check quality
Take a large bowl
Check the vodka again to be sure it is of the highest quality then repeat.
Turn on the electric mixer.
Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add 1 teaspoon of sugar.
Beat again.
At this point, it is best to make sure the vodka is still ok.
Try another cup just in case.
Turn off the mixer thingy.
Break 2 eegs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Pick the fruit up off the floor, wash it and put it in the bowl a piece at a time trying to count.
Mix on the turner. If the fried druit getas stuck in the beaterers, just pry it loose with the drewscriver
Sample the vodka to test for tonsisticity.
Next sift 2 cups of salt, or something.
Check the vodka.
Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table.
Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink.
Whatever you can find.
Greash the oven.
Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.
Don’t forget to beat off the turner.
Finally, throw the bowl through the window.
Finish the vodka and wipe the counter with the cat
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@boomzilla The bad
recipesjokes thread is over yonder...
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An interesting experiment:
Waffles made from leftover stuffing! Wafflings? Stuffles? Either way...delicious!
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@boomzilla
forMOD ABUSENOPE thread leakage
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@izzion said in The Cooking Thread:
@boomzilla
forMOD ABUSENOPE thread leakageIf I hadn't forgotten, I would have done that with my leftovers...
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Status: I love my wife's muffins.
I was too busy eating them this morning to take a picture, sorry.
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@remi said in The Cooking Thread:
Status: I love my wife's muffins.
I was too busy eating them this morning to take a picture, sorry.
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@Applied-Mediocrity Oh, I never thought my post could be read this way
Basically something like this (I don't remember where she found the recipe and she tweaked it anyway), with coarse flour to give it a bit more taste:
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My big concern with lab grown meat is that they'll only grow lean muscle tissue and no skin or fat.
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My grocery store has had rib roasts on sale like they usually do around Christmas so I picked a couple up. Tried this last night:
Before:
Next one I'm going to use a bit less butter. Ended up having to do a *lot* of reduction at the end.
After:
It was a big hit, though.
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I should make syllabub more often.
It's really nice, and sounds fancy, and I always assumed it'd be something quite complicated to make like a lot of other creamy desserts. But it turns out it's literally just whipped cream with flavours in.
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Had a superb Xmas Eve blow-out today:
- Cold fish:
- Smoked salmon
- Smoked trout
- Gravadlax
- Smoked eel
- Pickled herring (with small potatoes)
- Cold meat:
- Ham (with apple sauce made from the produce of our apple tree)
- 2 types of paté (Ardennes, venison)
- Brawn
- 3 types of smoked meat (pork, duck, lamb)
- Pastrami
- Salami
- I think I've forgotten some things here…
- Hot meat:
- Bratwurst
- Super-succulent pork rib
- Home-made meatballs (with red cabbage)
- Cheeseboard (theoretically; I was outfaced at this point):
All washed down with beer and Swedish schnapps, plus some fine coffee to finish.
Status: Foodstroke…
- Cold fish: