The Cooking Thread
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@boomzilla I don't know what it's supposed to be either, but what it is is something I'm not eating.
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Spatchcocked another chicken last night. This time I got a bag of the small, variously colored potatoes (brown, red, blue) and chopped those up, along with some carrots and celery. I tossed those in some olive oil, plus salt and pepper and put them in the bottom of the pan along with some onions and some chopped up pork side meat. Then the chicken went on top.
After I pulled the chicken out I cooked the veggies for a bit on the stove top to reduce the liquid and also get everything well coated.
The chicken was good but the potatoes and stuff were amazing.
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I am going to spatchcock the turkey again this year and it reminded me of last year. For those who have never spatchcocked poultry, you have to cut out the backbone. Easy enough to do on a chicken, but with turkeys it is an order of magnitude more difficult. I fumbled around trying to cut it out with my normal kitchen shears for entirely too long last year before stopping and going to the garage to retrieve my tin snips.
It was another one of those times where my wife gave me a " are you doing" sort of look as I started washing them in the sink. But it worked amazingly well. That's a good thing, because the next step was a reciprocating saw and that would have made me look a bit like Dexter (serial killer, not mad scientist).
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
spatchcock
I've never encountered that word before, but from the way it sounds, I don't want to google it.
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@Zerosquare said in The Cooking Thread:
I've never encountered that word before, but from the way it sounds, I don't want to google it.
I wouldn't go making any "Rule 34" searches for it, but the etymology of the word is from "dispatch the cock". It is just a cooking method where you cut out the backbone and flatten out the bird before roasting.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I fumbled around trying to cut it out with my normal kitchen shears for entirely too long last year before stopping and going to the garage to retrieve my tin snips.
Yeah, I can manage the kitchen shears with chicken but I doubt my wife or daughter could. Maybe if I had more heavy duty expensive ones, but I've considered using tin snips.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
because the next step was a reciprocating saw and that would have made me look a bit like Dexter (serial killer, not mad scientist).
This makes me a bit sad that the tin snips worked...
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
made me look a bit like Dexter (serial killer, not mad scientist)
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NSF
WD
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@Zerosquare said in The Cooking Thread:
I've never encountered that word before, but from the way it sounds, I don't want to google it.
I wouldn't go making any "Rule 34" searches for it, but the etymology of the word is from "dispatch the cock". It is just a cooking method where you cut out the backbone and flatten out the bird before roasting.
For @Zerosquare, the French translation is en crapaudine (the etymology is roughly "make it look like a toad"). But it's really a technical cooking term, I had to search a bit to remember it.
(ETA: the only other use I know of crapaudine is for some sort of protruding mesh that you put at the top of a gutter down pipe, to avoid e.g. leaves blocking the pipe (it's easier to clean if they block the opening, and I'm speaking from experience here as we have a lot of trees close to the house!))
For some reason, it's not a technique that is used that much in French cooking, I don't know why since it gives nice results (and isn't very hard, or requiring special equipment). Maybe you're supposed to have enough staff in the kitchen to have someone watch closely over the roasting bird and turn it, baste it... all the time
:insert_emoji_for_posh:
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@remi said in The Cooking Thread:
and isn't very hard, or requiring special equipment
They like to pretend to do things the hard way?
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@PleegWat I've always told my wife that the key to impressing people with cooking is knowing the ways to cook that look really impressive and complicated but are actually super easy and less complicated. Spatchcocking definitely falls into that.
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@Polygeekery One of the cookbooks I own (a 50 year old edition of a 100 year old standard work, aimed at women having an actual education in cooking) indicates there is no shame in using prepared ingredients and doing things the easy way - as long as your diners cannot tell the difference.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery One of the cookbooks I own (a 50 year old edition of a 100 year old standard work, aimed at women having an actual education in cooking) indicates there is no shame in using prepared ingredients and doing things the easy way - as long as your diners cannot tell the difference.
I wouldn't disagree with the author. It's a cooking corrolary of "If it's dumb, but it works, then it's not dumb".
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery One of the cookbooks I own (a 50 year old edition of a 100 year old standard work, aimed at women having an actual education in cooking) indicates there is no shame in using prepared ingredients and doing things the easy way - as long as your diners cannot tell the difference.
Yep. If you find something you like, why not? The main difference is often cost (trading time for money), which might not matter so much for special occasions. But it depends on what it is, too.
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Turkey [breast] is in the oven!
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Roughly a month ago my boys and I made homemade ginger ale. Water, sugar, grated ginger and a pinch of yeast. Allow it to ferment at room temperature for a day or so and then put it in the fridge. It is a fun little experiment to do with the kids. Since I home brew occasionally I even had fun Grolsch type swing top bottles to make it in.
So that’s been hanging out in the back of the fridge for the best part of a month. The refrigeration all but stops the fermentation process, but you really should pop the top every day or so and blow off the pressure and drink it within a week or so.
After dinner I am in the other room and I hear my wife talking in the kitchen to her mother and a friend.
“Hey, have you ever had homemade ginger ale?”
I start heading towards the kitchen to tell her that it might not be a good idea to drink it and I hear. BOOM!!!
When she went to open the top the bottle must have been 1psi from blowing open like a hand grenade and all that pressure was released instantly. Thankfully it didn’t shatter, but it didn’t do anyone’s hearing any favors. I opened the second bottle outside. We will see if the police stop by here in a bit.
As an added bonus, since it had cold fermented for so long my mother-in-law is now about half drunk.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
Turkey [breast] is in the oven!
Mine, too, except I just put it in there. It's going to be a late dinner.
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Pies and stuffing are ready; waiting on the turkey.
Everything is gluten-free, of course.
Apple-cranberry-sausage stuffing from scratch, combined and adapted from about three different recipes. One half of this is the sausage I used.
Cherry pie with store-bought filling and crust from scratch (because apparently the gluten-free frozen pie crust I bought a couple weeks ago was the last one in the whole, Texas-wide grocery chain); serious fail (aesthetically, at least) on the top crust.
Pecan pie with store-bought crust and homemade filling. Classic recipe from the bottle of Karo corn syrup.
Bacon-wrapped turkey breast is still in the oven. Meat thermometer says it has about another 30° (F) to go. Edit: I discovered I had turned the oven temperature down to bake the cherry pie, because it's in a glass pan, and neglected to turn it up for the turkey. That didn't help it cook in a timely manner. It's not a huge difference, but I'm hungry and I want my turkey finished now.
Edit: And the turkey breast, fresh out of the oven:
It would probably look better if the bacon didn't slide off the toothpicks that are (supposed to be) holding it wrapped around the turkey.
Edit: Presentation left a lot to be desired, and the stuffing was not improved by having to wait so long for the turkey, but the turkey was moist and flavorful, and the pie crust turned out great. That recipe is definitely a keeper. Actually, all of them are.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
When she went to open the top the bottle must have been 1psi from blowing open like a hand grenade and all that pressure was released instantly. Thankfully it didn’t shatter, but it didn’t do anyone’s hearing any favors.
I had this kind of things happening a few times with homebrews.
Once we had made some poor-man's flavoured beer by just opening some bottles of weissbeer, stuffing some spices in there and reclosing them. It worked pretty well, but putting a foreign object (e.g. a stick of cinnamon) into a carbonated liquid is a good way to create the mentos+coke effect. That didn't happen when we put the spices in, but then when we reopened the bottles a couple of weeks later, some of them made a nice geyser that went probably at least a metre above the bottle!
More scary, I once had a bottle that truly exploded. We were in the next room and heard a muffled "bang." Thankfully the bottle was in a cupboard (hence the "muffled"), because the inside of that cupboard was full of glass shards, some firmly embedded into the planks! I guess that specific bottle must have had a weakness, because that's the only time I saw that -- and all other bottles of that brew were over-carbonated, but didn't explode.
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@Zerosquare I've deep fried a couple of turkeys. It was alright. I don't see the big appeal. But I do think that a simple IQ test should be a prerequisite for the purchase of the equipment. Maybe just a requirement that they give a reasonable definition for "displacement"?
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The statistics on how many significant fires there are every Thanksgiving that are caused by deep frying turkeys is alarming, and near as makes no difference every single one of them could be prevented if they did one thing.
Turn off the burner when you add the turkey.
If it boils over at least it won't do so into a fire.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@Zerosquare I've deep fried a couple of turkeys. It was alright. I don't see the big appeal. But I do think that a simple IQ test should be a prerequisite for the purchase of the equipment. Maybe just a requirement that they give a reasonable definition for "displacement"?
Yeah, I've fried a couple. It's good and it doesn't take nearly as long as other methods. Having had a countertop fryer for several years before I tried frying a turkey, I was very familiar with putting stuff in oil and had no problems.
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Status: 3 pans more or less ruined because dough got stuck to the paper. What the goddamn... fucking Polish cheap... ass goddamn crap...
It was probably not even for baking. But I don't know Polish, and apparently neither do the importers, because it was clearly labeled as such
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in The Cooking Thread:
Status: 3 pans more or less ruined because dough got stuck to the paper. What the goddamn... fucking Polish cheap... ass goddamn crap...
It was probably not even for baking. But I don't know Polish, and apparently neither do the importers, because it was clearly labeled as such
It was labeled "we don't know Polish"?
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@MrL
the label said qurwa
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@MrL said in The Cooking Thread:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in The Cooking Thread:
Status: 3 pans more or less ruined because dough got stuck to the paper. What the goddamn... fucking Polish cheap... ass goddamn crap...
It was probably not even for baking. But I don't know Polish, and apparently neither do the importers, because it was clearly labeled as such
It was labeled "we don't know Polish"?
"Nie rozumiem po polsku" was the phrase I heard very often when I visited the Elbonian states some 30 years ago. Perhaps it is still the same there, and they still cannot tell the difference between english and polish...
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Well that and making sure that the Turkey is completely thawed.
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@Dragoon even if the turkey is still frozen and in encased in several gallons of ice, if you turn off the burner before adding the turkey you still won't start a fire.
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Philosophical question: if @Polygeekery gives advice on how not to start a fire, should he be trusted?
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@Zerosquare you probably shouldn't if you are @Luhmann, but most other people should be fine.
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@Polygeekery
is this some reverse psychology shit to try and get me to deep fry a turkey ?
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@Luhmann if you do, make sure you do it indoors. Sudden rain storms can cause it to boil over. Better safe than Belgian.
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@Polygeekery
and fill to pot till the brim and never, ever cut the gas?
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Cooking status: My goulash is more like soup.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
Cooking status: My goulash is more like soup.
Well, gulyás is a soup, in contrast to pörkölt. But who understands Hungarian?
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@BernieTheBernie Hm, the way I've always heard it it's relatively dry, and it it's more soupy that's specified separately. Interesting to learn it's a soup originally.
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@PleegWat I'm not Hungarian, so I don't know with any degree of certainty one way or the other, but the Great Infallible Repository of All Human Knowledge and Begging for Money describes it as "a soup or stew". However, some images do seem to show dishes with less liquid.
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@HardwareGeek Soup's flexible anyway. Last week I had Dutch pea soup. You can just about stand up a spoon in that.
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@PleegWat Yeah, it seems like the amount of liquid can be varied to suit your preferences.
And, darn it, now I'm hungry for goulash, but it's hours until lunchtime, and I don't have any goulash available anyway.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
Soup's flexible anyway.
If your soup is flexible, it's probably jelly.
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Trying this tonight (sans mushrooms, because that's how I roll):
Currently simmering but tastes and looks pretty good so far.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
sans mushrooms, because that's how I roll
You failed your perception check?
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
sans mushrooms, because that's how I roll
You failed your perception check?
Hmm...I don't think anyone snuck mushrooms in. Guess we'll find out.
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@boomzilla If you'd passed your perception check, you'd notice that mushrooms are very good.
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Either this is half a tri-tip and they sold the other half to someone else, or this cut is from a midget cow: