The Cooking Thread
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TIL that the reason for cooking chicken dark meat to a higher internal temperature than white meat is not for safety. Unlike overcooking white meat, which will make it dry and tough, the higher temperature breaks down the connective tissue in dark meat and makes it more tender. Yeah, I probably should have known this already, but I didn't.
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Over the weekend, I tried to adapt my father's chili recipe to working in the Instant Pot.
It...sort of worked? Ended up way too liquidy after the pressure cooking, so I had to turn on the Saute function and reduce it down a fair amount, though that did give me time to decide on other alterations (namely, adding in actual chili powder and some chipotle chili powder so it can properly actually BE chili)
Came out decent enough. Have a few ideas on how to try and rectify the liquidity problem for next time.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
Parboil a little longer. The Brussels sprouts getting tender is still the gating issue in deciding when the meal is adequately cooked. I'm not quite sure where parboiling (to facilitate a later cooking step) crosses into plain boiling ((almost?) fully cooking), but I can push it a bit longer.
3-5 minutes in the microwave is good too.
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Cooking Thread:
Have a few ideas on how to try and rectify the liquidity problem for next time.
Add less liquid.
Any pressure cooker recipe needs significantly less liquid. It is one of their benefits but also a detriment. Evaporation concentrates flavors.
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@Polygeekery That's the basic idea, yes. My father's recipe (for slow-cooking on the stove) is meat + beans + 2 large (family size, 23.9ish oz) cans of Campbell's tomato soup + 1 of those cans worth of water. I had to fudge that since the local grocery was out of the big cans, so I used 5 of the normal cans (10.5 oz) of soup + about 2 of those cans worth of water. I think next time I'll cut out about half the water and maybe one 10.5 oz can worth of soup and see how it does.
Edit: Alternatively, the Instant Pot does have a Slow Cook function I can always use if I can't get this to adapt properly.
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Cooking Thread:
I think next time I'll cut out about half the water and maybe one 10.5 oz can worth of soup and see how it does.
If I were you I would just start by cutting out the water. If you take a can of soup away from the recipe you are removing flavor.
Cooking is chemistry. You are typically using the addition of heat to the equation in order to remove water via boiling. As you boil off water you remove a flavorless component of the food (water) and typically the cooking temperatures rise causing changes to the flavor compounds (like the Maillard reaction, among others).
So if you are trying to adjust a recipe for pressure cooking (which an Instant-Pot is just an electric pressure cooker) I would strongly suggest to only remove the water from the recipe. When you add it all to the pot and mix it up before cooking you can judge the thickness and go from there. Don't forget that heat will make the chili thinner. Think of chili leftovers out of the fridge, versus after reheating.
This is also why some recipes are not well suited for pressure cooking. Not that they will not work, it is just that you lose a lot of the speed and ease when you have to sweat down a bunch of veggies beforehand. My favorite chili recipe for example has a fuckload of veggies in it and I would have to sweat them down beforehand, cooking off flavor and slightly browning them. If not it would end up as a thin soup instead of a thick chili as cooking released the water from the veggies during pressure cooking. Basically, don't forget that a lot of your ingredients can have a lot of water in them.
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@e4tmyl33t in addition to what @polygeekery said, you could consider replacing the canned tomato soup with something less wet, like freeze-dried soup or pasta sauce. Of course I do not know the specific contents of the named brand of soup.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
@e4tmyl33t in addition to what @polygeekery said, you could consider replacing the canned tomato soup with something less wet, like freeze-dried soup or pasta sauce. Of course I do not know the specific contents of the named brand of soup.
I'd suggest tomato paste, which is quite thick.
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@boomzilla Could be doable, though I do have to remember that if I'm going to pressure cook it I do need at least SOME liquid in there to turn to steam to actually make the pressure.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
you could consider replacing the canned tomato soup with something less wet
As his recipe uses Campbell's soup it is likely a condensed soup, meant to be reconstituted with water.
@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
I'd suggest tomato paste, which is quite thick.
If you use that you would want to saute it for a minute or two right before adding your liquids. Tomato paste has a very "raw" flavor that needs high heat to make it generally more palatable.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
If you use that you would want to saute it for a minute or two right before adding your liquids. Tomato paste has a very "raw" flavor that needs high heat to make it generally more palatable.
True. You'd also need to add seasonings, etc, to match the tomato soup, assuming you care. There might be enough other seasoning in there already.
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
You'd also need to add seasonings, etc, to match the tomato soup, assuming you care.
There's a product that I frequently substitute for tomato sauce in recipes. It is "Italian Sauce" by Dei Fratelli. Roughly the same cost as tomato sauce but it is lightly seasoned and is of very high quality. Good stuff.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
As his recipe uses Campbell's soup it is likely a condensed soup, meant to be reconstituted with water.
You would be correct.
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@boomzilla And doing so, he'll be even able to nail it!
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@Polygeekery "The last thing a sausage sees."
In other news, you're gonna want to see the MST3K rendition of
Mitchell
, with Joe Don Baker.
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Sadly I'm guessing this doesn't actually work that well. And it would kill me due to the dairy. But in concept, I'm on board.
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@Benjamin-Hall I think my arteries just clogged from looking at that photo, but I too am on board.
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Lil'Dude once again asked for my homemade rainbow birthday cake. Now to hope that we are able to find our cake pans so that the price of this cake doesn't go up another $20-30 if I have to buy more.
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If you're flipping an omelet you're but still a funny meme.
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@Polygeekery For me, that's usually: "Eggs over easy" (flips) "Scrambled"
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@dcon am I one of the chosen few that is able to properly cook eggs?
I got hosed, this is a really shitty superpower.
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@Polygeekery yeah but at least breakfast is good.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@dcon am I one of the chosen few that is able to properly cook eggs?
I got hosed, this is a really shitty superpower.
Back in the day (high school / college), I was good. I could even flip them with a flick of the pan. Helped to work in a kitchen (specifically, I got good when working on a dude ranch in Colorado over the summers). I've lost that skill with age.
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My absolute #1 summer salad:
Garden-ripened tomatoes with green onions, Parmesan cheese and toast (in this case with a pesto sauce, though cream cheese or butter would never be wrong)
Just don't forget to add salt, pepper and some oregano, then drizzle with your best olive oil and balsamic vinegar (ideally the syruppy kind).
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@JBert said in The Cooking Thread:
Parmegan
I thought that was a typo. But:
Tsk tsk. You were so close.
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@Zerosquare probably a typo. He hasn't been obnoxious about being a vegan so I find it unlikely that he is one.
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@Zerosquare said in The Cooking Thread:
@JBert said in The Cooking Thread:
Parmegan
I thought that was a typo. But:
Tsk tsk. You were so close.
Oh fuck no, there goes my appetite.
The "Nope, you eat it" thread is
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@JBert eh...it's not like it's anything really awful:
Ingredients
½ cup cashews (roasted or raw)
½ cup macadamia nuts
½ cup nutritional yeast
½ teaspoon saltBut I seriously doubt it's a good substitute. Anyways, my wife is allergic to tree nuts so I'd never make it.
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@e4tmyl33t Attempting this again, with some changes (and my notes on these changes so far):
- I cut out the water entirely. (This appears to be at least a partial negative, as without some of this it appears that either it's too thick or the soup tends to migrate to the top while boiling, so I've gotten a couple burn warnings from the Instant Pot so far, as well as it seems to not have enough steam-generation capability to get the device up to pressure before it starts burning.)
- I wrote down everything I was adding in what quantities so I can make an actual, repeatable recipe out of this if it does work.
However...I'm not entirely convinced actually pressure cooking it is entirely necessary. Given that there's basically no extra water to "boil off" to reduce it down, just chucking the meat + beans + soup + spices in together with it on saute to heat up the soup + beans and get it all evenly heated might just be enough.
I'm letting the rest of the Chili timer on the IP run out just to see, but I think I might have an abomination I can call "quick chili".
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Cooking Thread:
I think I might have an abomination I can call "quick chili".
...it works.
If I basically cut out the pressure cooking entirely and just use the IP as a big boiling pot, this takes however long it takes to brown + drain the meat plus about 20 minutes to get to good & edible.
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@e4tmyl33t
In case anyone else wants to try my abomination, here's what I have as the recipe:- 3lbs 80/20 ground beef
- 5 10.5 oz cans Campbell's condensed tomato soup
- 1 40.5 oz can light red kidney beans
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp onion powder
- 1/2 tbsp white pepper
- 2 tbsp chili powder
- 1 tbsp chipotle chili powder
Use the Instant Pot's Saute function to brown the ground beef, adding the salt, white pepper, garlic, and onion powders to the meat during the cooking. Turn off the IP, drain the meat and return to the IP pot.
Add the condensed soup, kidney beans, and chili powders. Mix well.
Turn the IP back on Saute and heat for ~20 minutes, stirring occasionally (maybe stirring frequently?) to avoid anything burning to the bottom of the pot.
Tada, quick chili!
Edit: I somehow forgot to add the cocoa powder to this incarnation, and I've been recommended elsewhere to also add cumin to this, so those will definitely be getting added to the recipe (probably 1 tbsp of each) the next time I make this to enhance it further.
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That's how it's done.
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@Polygeekery Sad cholesterol noises
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@HardwareGeek oh but you're fine with the gluten now?
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
@HardwareGeek oh but you're fine with the gluten now?
That could be gluten free toast...
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@boomzilla Gluten-free bread (or "bread") exists. Turkey or other relatively low-cholesterol "bacon" also exists. Both are poor imitations of the real thing, but the fake "bacon" isn't even free of the harmful substance.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Lil'Dude once again asked for my homemade rainbow birthday cake. Now to hope that we are able to find our cake pans so that the price of this cake doesn't go up another $20-30 if I have to buy more.
My daughter has her teachers calling her Rainbow*. She would like Lil'Dude. She's good with younger children. Regularly tells parents their baby is cute.
*It was bad enough when I had to remember to spell her full name out when contacting teachers...now I have to try to remember an unrelated name.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@dcon said in The Cooking Thread:
That could be gluten free toast...
Can you toast dish sponges?
Sure! And they'll taste better.
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@JBert said in The Cooking Thread:
My absolute #1 summer salad:
Garden-ripened tomatoes with green onions, Parmesan cheese and toast (in this case with a pesto sauce, though cream cheese or butter would never be wrong)
Just don't forget to add salt, pepper and some oregano, then drizzle with your best olive oil and balsamic vinegar (ideally the syruppy kind).
I grew up with a sort of German immigrant version of this. Ours was garden ripened tomatoes, onion and cucumber marinated in apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper. She did full strength vinegar, but the modern recipes I see call for it diluted with water 1:1-1:4. The longer you let it sit the more sour flavor the tomatoes will take on. I have always loved it the next day when the tomatoes were basically vinegar in tomato form, but to each their own.
Another favorite salad she made was one it’s a warm bacon dressing. Alton Brown did a good version of it:
Her version was apple cider vinegar and whatever greens were ready from the garden along with tomato and onion. The key is to apply the dressing right before eating and to do so when the dressing is quite warm so that it wilts the greens.
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Cooking Thread:
I somehow forgot to add the cocoa powder to this incarnation, and I've been recommended elsewhere to also add cumin to this, so those will definitely be getting added to the recipe (probably 1 tbsp of each) the next time I make this to enhance it further.
A tbsp of cocoa in that amount of chili might be a bit much. You may want to start with a tsp and go from there. Maybe 1.5tsp.
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did you just nicked my grandmothers plates?
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@e4tmyl33t said in The Cooking Thread:
I think next time I'll cut out about half the water and maybe one 10.5 oz can worth of soup and see how it does.
If I were you I would just start by cutting out the water. If you take a can of soup away from the recipe you are removing flavor.
Cooking is chemistry. You are typically using the addition of heat to the equation in order to remove water via boiling. As you boil off water you remove a flavorless component of the food (water) and typically the cooking temperatures rise causing changes to the flavor compounds (like the Maillard reaction, among others).
So if you are trying to adjust a recipe for pressure cooking (which an Instant-Pot is just an electric pressure cooker) I would strongly suggest to only remove the water from the recipe. When you add it all to the pot and mix it up before cooking you can judge the thickness and go from there. Don't forget that heat will make the chili thinner. Think of chili leftovers out of the fridge, versus after reheating.
This is also why some recipes are not well suited for pressure cooking. Not that they will not work, it is just that you lose a lot of the speed and ease when you have to sweat down a bunch of veggies beforehand. My favorite chili recipe for example has a fuckload of veggies in it and I would have to sweat them down beforehand, cooking off flavor and slightly browning them. If not it would end up as a thin soup instead of a thick chili as cooking released the water from the veggies during pressure cooking. Basically, don't forget that a lot of your ingredients can have a lot of water in them.
I would like to try that recipe.