The Cooking Thread
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@Benjamin-Hall Speaking of cheese sauce, store-bought macaroni and white-cheddar cheese (with gluten-free rice pasta), prepared according to package directions, except I made the sauce with heavy cream instead of low-fat milk (because I happened to have some left over from a previous meal, and which needed to be used up because it's past its expiration date but not yet gone sour), and with the addition of ham, sauteed mushrooms, and substantial amounts of extra-sharp (yellow) cheddar, Monterey jack, mozzarella, and Parmesan and a dash of rosemary.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
"Margaritas" and home made "Doritos"
FTFY
If you're not using fresh lime juice then it's just an artificial bitch drink. Poser.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
artificial bitch ... Poser.
As far as I know, yes, that is the primary use of Poser.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
"Margaritas" and home made "Doritos"
FTFY
If you're not using fresh lime juice then it's just an artificial bitch drink. Poser.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
How it started:
Margaritas and home made "Doritos"
Except for the shitty margaritas.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
But an extra-sharp cheddar that's been aged for 2+ years is one of the best cheeses ever.
The properly aged cheddars are up there with parmesan for flavour, and are really quite dry and hard cheeses. They're also expensive.
Mild cheddar gives the impression of being something made by DuPont rather than a creamery…
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What Is American Cheese, Anyway?
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What's in American cheese? There's a lot of hysteria out there about it being "full of chemicals" and "not real cheese." This explainer helps set the record straight by discussing the ingredients, process, and regulations around those melty slices.
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@boomzilla Horseradish icing? mmmm.
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@dcon probably mashed potatoes.
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We've been doing the HelloFresh thing for a little while and are even keeping up with it despite finally expending the gift certificates we received when my father passed. Although now we are only doing every other week. There are a few of their recipes that we have really liked so we get ingredients and make them on our own.
Baja Fish Tacos Recipe | HelloFresh
Simple, convenient, and delicious: that’s what’s in store with our Baja Fish Tacos recipe, made with pre-measured, high-quality ingredients.
I had always tried making fish tacos but couldn't ever get the batter right. I like their approach better than anything else I have ever tried, tempura batter. Just flour and ice water, mixed to a very thin consistency and with as little mixing as possible so you don't produce too much gluten.
Simple, convenient, and delicious: that’s what’s in store with our Fully Loaded Pork Taquitos recipe, made with pre-measured, high-quality ingredients.
Super tasty and we really like the "creamy guacamole" which is just equal parts of sour cream and guacamole with some fresh lime juice and salt and pepper. Their way of preparing pico de gallo also works really well, even with shitty grocery store tomatoes that have no flavor.
Simple, convenient, and delicious: that’s what’s in store with our Crispy Cajun Chicken Sandwiches recipe, made with pre-measured, high-quality ingredients.
The first time I saw their recommendation to use thinned sour cream as a dredge wash I thought that it couldn't possibly work. I had always used some manner of egg mixture thinking that the egg proteins would help the batter adhere. Well, their method works perfectly. You end up with a super crunchy batter that does not fall off.
They include potatoes with lots of their meals to make oven fries with. I never really liked oven fries but their method of making them with Yukon Gold potatoes works really well. Although, I would suggest changing their method slightly. I slice the potatoes and then first toss them in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper before putting them on a sheet pan that I line with heavy duty aluminum foil and then coat with cooking spray. They suggest tossing them on the sheet pan, which I have my doubts would work. You want an even coat of everything on the potatoes, and if you do not get part of your pan coated with oil the potatoes are going to stick. I assume they suggest that to save washing a bowl, but I would strongly recommend that you dirty up a bowl. I usually rinse it out and use it for whatever else later in the recipe.
Several of their recipes include rice, ginger and/or garlic. Finely mince the garlic and/or ginger, saute it in a saucepan for a moment before adding rice which you then cook for a minute or two and then add water and continue preparing the rice as usual. It works great and really adds a nice flavor to the rice.
Simple, convenient, and delicious: that’s what’s in store with our Italian Pepper Steak Sandos recipe, made with pre-measured, high-quality ingredients.
I really like the preparation of the beef in that one. It is similar to how "Italian Beef" is prepared in Chicago. It is heavily flavored with the Italian seasoning and then deglaze the pan with beef stock and cook until reduced to a sauce. It works well on sandwiches or in salads and such. They have "Long Green Pepper" in the recipe, virtually anything will work. I have used Cubanelles, Poblanos, green bell peppers, all turned out well. I probably like Poblano the best. The flavor profile works well and it adds just a tiny bit of heat.
When assembled together as a sandwich like in the recipe it is really good. The garlic bread preparation of the baguette and garlic mayo with melted cheese and a dash of hot sauce is really tasty.
One word of warning about HelloFresh recipes, their seasoning and sauce pouches are pretty high in sodium. Which I don't care about the sodium as much as I do that I have to be careful to not over salt things. I am pretty sure that they do it that way because most home cooks drastically under salt their food, which leads to bland food. By really upping the salt content of their ingredients it keeps them from getting bad reviews saying their food is bland. But then people like myself who have learned to properly season food can very easily way over salt their stuff.
Something to keep in mind.
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@dcon Who makes that bacon? I seriously want to buy some.
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@MrL said in The Cooking Thread:
Wtf is celery powder?
A curing agent. It replaces other sources of nitrates/nitrites, which are required to get the taste (and maybe more importantly, colour!) that we expect from cured meat, but it's not a great foodstuff. Not that celery powder is really any better, it's the same stuff chemically but coming from a different source...
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@remi said in The Cooking Thread:
@MrL said in The Cooking Thread:
Wtf is celery powder?
A curing agent. It replaces other sources of nitrates/nitrites, which are required to get the taste (and maybe more importantly, colour!) that we expect from cured meat, but it's not a great foodstuff. Not that celery powder is really any better, it's the same stuff chemically but coming from a different source...
Ah, I understand now. Artificial nitrates in food are illegal in US, so they had to come up with something like this. At first I thought it's about celery flavor.
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@MrL I got curious and interestingly, it seems that artificial nitrate salts started to be used in the 18th/19th century, roughly, but that they didn't replace some sort of older traditional ingredient (which the industry could have used at least as a research starting-point when looking for a modern substitute). It's not that the meat industry discovered you could replace some traditional ingredient with artificial nitrates, but rather that they discovered that adding nitrates was giving nice results.
Which, I guess, means that the idea that e.g. ham is pink (rather than the dullish gray that cured-without-nitrates meat has) is a fairly modern one?
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@remi said in The Cooking Thread:
Which, I guess, means that the idea that e.g. ham is pink (rather than the dullish gray that cured-without-nitrates meat has) is a fairly modern one?
So modern that I even remember gray ham from my childhood. But only because my grandfather used to buy the real, expensive stuff - one of the few things he could eat even without working pancreas.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@MrL said in The Cooking Thread:
Artificial nitrates in food are illegal in US
They are?
According to wikipedia.
In the United States, treated celery powder is sometimes used as a meat curing agent in organic meat products, which is allowed per USDA regulations because the nitrate/nitrite is naturally occurring.[2] USDA regulations do not allow artificially added nitrate or nitrite to be used directly in organic food products.
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@MrL that is only for organic products. They're allowed in standard foodstuffs.
Our "organic" food regulations are a total
of their own.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@MrL that is only for organic products. They're allowed in standard foodstuffs.
I was surprised to see they were banned, but it makes sense (well... as much as any of this does...) if it's only for organic products. Getting them banned (everywhere) is one of the big on-going fight about food in the EU, so it would be surprising if the US was banning them altogether.
Our "organic" food regulations are a total
of their own.Don't worry, organic food regulations are
everywhere, not just in the US. I mean, even more than regular food regulations. One that cracks me up is that some chemicals that are not allowed in non-organic produces in the EU are allowed for organic produces imported in the EU...
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@remi said in The Cooking Thread:
One that cracks me up is that some chemicals that are not allowed in non-organic produces in the EU are allowed for organic produces imported in the EU...
Here in the US one thing that "organic" means is that the food was not grown using modern and proven safe pesticides that have a very short half life in UV so there is basically zero concern that it will ever make it to your table and instead uses copper sulfate which is particularly bad stuff that sticks around forever and can accumulate in your body (not a huge concern in all likelihood, but possible) if you don't religiously wash your produce. It also accumulates in soil and can be very bad for aquatic life. It is frequently used in aquariums to treat ich (at very low doses), kill snails (still a tiny dose) and other things. It used to be that dosage was literally a drop per ten gallons of water for treating ich, 3-4 drops would kill snails and much more than that and you could probably say goodbye to any fish that don't have scales (loaches and such).
For me "organic" just means "old methods that we stopped using", it doesn't mean it is necessarily safer.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
For me "organic" just means "old methods that we stopped using and that are more expensive so you're overpaying for your food", it doesn't mean it is necessarily safer.
The only time I buy organic is when there's no alternative at the store that day (usually lettuce or herbs).
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In one of my FB cooking groups someone mentioned using whey powder as a flour substitute in breading. That hadn't occurred to me before but I have a ton of it for
. I looked around and saw that other people were using it as a low carb substitute, too, so I went for it.It works pretty well. The texture is pretty light and crispy after frying. Maybe a bit dry, and I definitely didn't season it enough but also I will definitely be using it again.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
In one of my FB cooking groups someone mentioned using whey powder as a flour substitute in breading. That hadn't occurred to me before but I have a ton of it for
. I looked around and saw that other people were using it as a low carb substitute, too, so I went for it.It works pretty well. The texture is pretty light and crispy after frying. Maybe a bit dry, and I definitely didn't season it enough but also I will definitely be using it again.
However...does not work in beer batter. Will not do that again.
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Did this on the barbecue yesterday. Very nice. Very simple.
(Also did burgers and lamb chops, but the tuna steak was the best bit.)
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DEGLAZING!!!!111
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@boomzilla huh? What about it?
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@Polygeekery sorry, should have been:
Status: DEGLAZING!!!!!11
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@Polygeekery Will post pictures (and recipe) of the final product. But might not happen until tomorrow.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery sorry, should have been:
Status: DEGLAZING!!!!!11
There better be goddamn fire if you're getting this excited.
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@Polygeekery uh...well...there's alcohol...
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@boomzilla somewhere we have a kitchen sign that reads, "I cook with wine. Occasionally I even put some in the food."
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@Polygeekery the picture doesn't do it justice:
...anyways, it was this:
French Onion Stuffed Chicken
French Onion Stuffed Chicken Casserole with caramelized onions and glorious melted cheese makes a perfect weeknight or weekend dinner. KETO.
I thought it was very good. My wife was not taken by it. I cannot explain why.
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I swear...I love this recipe...so easy...so good:
This Homemade Spaghetti Sauce Is What Family Pasta Nights Are All About
Put the jar back on the shelf.
My only alteration is that I add some red wine.
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@boomzilla for Father's Day I made this:
Beef Birria
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This beef birria is Chef John's recipe for a full-flavored meat stew featuring short ribs and chuck simmered with guajillo chiles and various spices.
Well, technically I made that before Father's Day and on Father's Day I made tacos out of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rt-cgWx1dM
It is one of the best recipes I have ever made and I am salivating just thinking about it. Total Pavlovian response.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:
Also, people who write recipes are liars. I just spent 2.75 hours fixing a dish that says it has a prep time of 15 minutes.
So, yeah. Seafood enchiladas. I took two recipes I found online and combined the best from both. One recipe claimed 15 minutes prep time; the other claimed 40.
Ingredients (Quantities approximate. Some were adjusted to fit the (larger) amount of seafood I had; others weren't, either because I didn't have more or because
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1 lb halibut, cod, tilapia or sea bass (I used tilapia)
1 lb scallops
1 1/2 lbs shrimp (it was a 2 lb package, but I'd previously used some, so 1 1/2 left, maybe)
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 poblano peppers, chopped
1/2 – 1 cup chunky salsa
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped (I'm not a big fan, and probably used somewhat less)
3 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp cumin
16 oz cream cheese (For better authenticity, use a Mexican equivalent, but I'm not sure what that would be.)
3 cups Monterrey jack cheese, shredded
16 oz sour cream (I substitute unsweetened whole-milk Greek yogurt for less fat)
1 cup milk
1 tbsp oil
30-ish corn tortillas- Preheat oven to 350°F
- Wrap tortillas in foil and heat in oven for ~10 minutes for easier rolling.
- If using sea scallops, cut into quarters; not necessary if using smaller bay scallops, but the &*^%$ store was out of bay scallops. Cut fish into similar size pieces (or flake it into small pieces after cooking, which is what the recipe says to do, but did I bother reading that until after I had my son cut the fish? Of course not). If you're an idiot and use raw jumbo shrimp with shells still on, peel them and cut into small pieces; skip this if using small shrimp. Keep fish, scallops, and shrimp separate, because they all have to be cooked individually, because of course they do.
- Boil ~1.5 quarts of water in a saucepan. Add shrimp and cook for 1 – 3 minutes until opaque. Rinse with cold water. Drain. Chop, if necessary (and you didn't do it already; oh, yeah, that's another thing I didn't read). Obviously, skip this whole step if you were smart enough to buy pre-cooked shrimp. Set aside.
- Find a big pan (skillet, Dutch over, or stock pot) with a tight-fitting lid. Spend 5 minutes trying to find the @#$%^&* lid; use lid from another set of pans that happens to be the right size. Put a steamer basket in the pan and fill the pan with water to just below the steamer basket. Bring to boil. Add fish and steam for ~5 minutes, depending on thickness of fish, until fish flakes easily. Set aside.
- Turn the oven off, because it's going to be at least a half-hour before you're going to be ready to put anything in it.
- Chop cilantro. Slice green onions. Search every drawer and cabinet in the kitchen, twice, looking for the #&%(#& lime juicer. Juice lime. Combine with salsa and cumin, set aside.
- Remove stems, seeds and membranes from peppers. Chop onion and peppers. Mince garlic.
- Heat oil in large skillet or wok. Saute onion, peppers and garlic for about 5 minutes.
- Add scallops and saute another 5 minutes.
- Add salsa, cilantro, lime juice, and cumin.
- Add cream cheese and half of the Monterrey jack. Swear profusely when you realize you didn't buy and cream cheese. Add extra Monterrey jack in futile attempt to compensate for your many deficiencies. Heat until cheese, such as it is, is melted. Add milk and sour cream/yogurt.
- Remove from heat and add fish and shrimp.
- Grease the biggest baking pan you have, because you'll need it. Grease the second-biggest, because you'll need it, too.
- Turn the oven back on, because at this point, there's a chance you might actually have something to put in it eventually. You can probably wait until about half-way through the next step; you'll still have time for it heat up again.
- Divide the filling evenly between the tortillas, rolling them and placing seam side down in the prepared baking dish. I had a package of 30 tortillas and had a little filling left over; I probably could have used about 5 more tortillas, if I'd had them. Pretend the tortillas aren't falling apart as you try to roll them.
- Top with any leftover sauce, then the remainder of the jack cheese.
- Bake 15 – 20 minutes, or until lightly browned.
- Garnish with cilantro and more sliced green onion, if you remember and you're not too tired and to care.
- Eat.
- Leave the huge mess, including the cilantro and green onions you forgot to put back in the refrigerator, for tomorrow
morningafternoon.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
One recipe claimed 15 minutes prep time; the other claimed 40.
They tend to not include time spent locating pans, knives, etc. Often they also don't count time spent cutting vegetables, though in that case the ingredient list tends to include this (so rather than '500g potatoes' they'll state '500g potatoes, diced' and there will be no reference in the recipe to peeling and dicing the potatoes.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
Often they also don't count time spent cutting vegetables, though in that case the ingredient list tends to include this (so rather than '500g potatoes' they'll state '500g potatoes, diced' and there will be no reference in the recipe to peeling and dicing the potatoes.
And therein lies the lie. That often takes as much time, or more, than all the other prep.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
One recipe claimed 15 minutes prep time; the other claimed 40.
They tend to not include time spent locating pans, knives, etc. Often they also don't count time spent cutting vegetables, though in that case the ingredient list tends to include this (so rather than '500g potatoes' they'll state '500g potatoes, diced' and there will be no reference in the recipe to peeling and dicing the potatoes.
I'd cook more if I didn't have to cut vegetables. Besides just not wanting to do it, leaving me with a sharp knife is just a recipe for trouble.
