Cooking

I've eaten many a pancake in my life, so you'd think I would have a pretty good idea on what it should be like. But once I started making my own, it was like all my accrued pancake knowledge went right out the window.

What else would be good to cook on a griddle? It'd be good for grilled cheese sandwiches, but probably makes for a shitty frying pan considering the sides are so low. Hmmm.

what does this mean? tasty crust sounds good

One of my favorite ways to get this is London Broil. Use flank steak, which is fairly lean and will be tough if overcooked, but thin, which means you don't have any excuse to overcook it. Marinate for a few hours (marinade contents for another time) then broil for just a few minutes on a side. Flank steak has a very pronounced, fibrous grain, so you absolutely have to slice it against the grain. Let the meat rest for a few minutes while you turn the juices and crusty bits (fond) in the broiler pan into gravy(or, less hectic, have some gravy ready to go from beef stock). Slice very thin and serve with potatoes and steamed asparagus or broccoli. Schwing!

now i have this thing of extra firm tofu. what do i do with it? fry it or boil it or bake it or i dunno

is there anything more awful than planning and preparing food

every once and a while it can be fun but overall it is just a drag

I think the 70 watt stick blender I bought is a bit too powerful. You need a welder's mask when pureeing scorching onion curry bases in the pan ffs!

Really need to find a way to reduce time in chopping for a stir fry. Got a lot of veg stuff and it takes me forever. Much lonfger prep time than actual cooking.
Is it just something that will speed up with practise?

practice, properly sharp knife and it's worth looking at youtube vids for julienning or chopping generally if you haven't already done so. i'm really cackhanded but learning and regularly using a proper method with a sharp knife will soon make it much less painful.

lol calzino - i did spectacular j pollock of curried parsnip soup all over my kitchen once for the same reason.

mandoline?

^

I don’t know how to cook or grocery shop and I’m nearly 30 years old. Whenever I go grocery shopping all the food goes to waste and it’s more expensive than doing seamless. I need some resources—i googled but every recipe calls for bay leaves and bouillon cubes and other things that i don’t really know what they are.

Thank u in advance if u can help. Maybe this is beyond my ability—i’d like to eat a diet rich in vegetables and low in refined grains.

I don't think I have ever used a bay leaf or bouillon cube. Have you watched Top Chef before? That got me super interested in cooking. It was a great thing to watch before bed every night and you really start to absorb how ingredients work together and how to season.

You need to make a grocery list and stick to it and accumulate spices/long shelf life pantry things. We buy the same things every week and pretty much only eat out once a week so I stick to what I buy and actually eat it because I hate food waste. youtube is so good for learning things like knife skills and making simple dishes. Start with something you really like to eat and make that from scratch.

We always have a lot of quinoa, black beans, sushi rice, chickpeas, canned tomatoes, sardines in our pantry as staples. I try to buy 3 green veg every week without thinking and force myself to eat them (kale, brocolli, spinach are usually my defaults (just so quick to steam or sautee them) and then add in bok choy, radishes, brussel sprouts when I see them). We always have fresh garlic and shallots and cilantro on hand. Half of the time I will spend most of Sunday prepping food for the week. Washing and cutting all the vegetables, cooking a big batch of something like quinoa and that helps a lot.

I am very bad with online recipes and usually change half of it because I either don't have all the ingredients or because I tend to like thing spicier, more acidic and drier so don't be put off by the bay leaf thing.

I know buzzfeed have much better list that this but here is one. They do a lot of quick lists for basic cooking.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/maitlandquitmeyer/cooking-basics-you-should-probably-know-by-now

This is pretty helpful, thank you. That’s the thing I need to figure out—what my staples need to be so I can throw something together with seasonal vegetables etc. i’ll watch some top chef to see if i can get inspired. I have some spices but need to take an inventory of whats all there

I find jotting down my own simplified version* of the recipe in my little food stained a4 book helps.

i.e. written in a fluent style of idiotese I can easily understand. And then you can add any modifications you make as you become more confident and comfortable with the recipe.

It's a process. Start with one dish you really like to eat a lot. Even if no cooking is involved. Like how to make a nice salad with dressing from scratch. Or hummus. We don't eat a lot/any meat so I am sure someone else will have better tips for learning how to cook meat. This past year I pretty much added in 4 indian dishes, naan and two different pasta shapes from scratch to my repertoire just from cross referencing a couple of videos.

I was super bored one cold cold winter and had run out of things to watch so I ended up watching 8 seasons of top chef in one month. It was ridiculous. But it totally changed how I cook.

I also am super boring so I will make a spinach salad the night before work and take that in religiously. Basically because I hate salads so if it's already at work, I am super lazy and will end up eating it instead of spending $10 on lunch out.

If you get into making soups no veg should go to waste, and it is the easiest cooking you'll ever learn.

friend of mine took a cooking class last year - was once a week for a month or two, and he seemed to enjoy it and learn quite a bit.

another thing i like to do is go to the library and poke around. i spent like 2 hours going through a gigantic book on Yucatan yesterday and jotted down some simple recipes. even a recipe for a simple pot of beans included a step that i think is more interesting than how i've made them in the past. sry if this is useless for your purposes though

some basic dried spices I keep around:

cumin
"Italian Seasoning" or "Herb de Provence" (needs to have thyme and rosemary at a minimum)
salt
pepper
chili powder
chinese 5-spice
bay leaves

Soup is really easy and keeps for days even if you don't freeze it (which you can).

You will need a stock pot, a ladle and a wooden spoon. Have a sharp knife for cutting veg. Also, measuring spoons and a cup measure.

some liquid ingredients to have around

vinegar
unsalted soup stock
and chili garlic sauce

https://d2ln0cvn4pv5w2.cloudfront.net/unsafe/fit-in/512x400/filters:quality(100):max_bytes(200000):fill(white)/http://dcmzfk78s4reh.cloudfront.net/1434325312624.jpg

this is all good advice. building a pantry is really important.

i learned to cook by starting with cooking light and martha stewart 5-ingredient recipe books, building up my pantry, and practicing a lot. from there i was able to figure out what i was really interested in making and was off and running in most respects.

one thing that's nice to have around based on what you're describing is a basic homemade stir-fry sauce: https://www.recipetineats.com/real-chinese-purpose-stir-fry-sauce/

I watched Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat on Netflix not long ago and it seemed to have a good mix of explaining why things work together and showing how to gather and prepare them. I remember thinking "no shit" a lot when she was explaining some things then realizing that a lot of them were things I had to trial and error my way to over 20 years of cooking.

Learning a dish you like and being able to make it the same (or close) every time from memory is really rewarding, and if you do this enough you'll have a good library of things to choose from. Then you can start to mix and match preparations and ingredients and seasonings and freestyle knowing which things work together, what order to do things in so they'll all be ready at the same time, etc.

I always keep olive oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, rice and sherry vinegar, hot pepper sauce/flakes/powder, cumin, coriander, sugar, salt, and pepper around in my pantry and all will last for ages. I regularly buy ginger, green onions, onions, garlic, lemons, limes, thyme, and cilantro and with all those can probably cook about 85% of the things I make regularly.

Be creative. When I make salads for myself I basically only dress it with grey poupon. It's quick, no calories and gives me that creamy acid that I like. I think I always have 4 mustards, 4 hot sauces, lemons and 3 types of vinegar around. I end up putting balsamic in a lot of things. and since I am half asian we always have those types of foodstuffs around. I think I get anxiety if I don't have eggs in the house because if I am lazy in the evening I will just make a quick omelette or black beans with a fried egg on top.

yeah and salt, fat, acid ^^^ was very good.

i think Treeship is too noob for salt fat acid heat though. it’s good for an amateur chef but not pure beginner

imo this is the learn to cook algorithm
1. look up recipe
2. buy ingredients
3. make it
4. repeat
eventually you drop step 1. it’ll be expensive at first because you won’t have expensive storable like olive oil, but it’ll quickly get cheaper over time. bay leaves and bouillon cubes aren’t as pricy but v important storables that make food tasty.

if your groceries are spoiling in your fridge you either need to cook more frequently or refrigerate. buy some tupperware. also don’t buy too many salad vegetables at once, if it’s easy to pick up fresh produce on your way home. also if you can tell something isn’t gonna make it rub some olive oil salt and pepper on it and roast it in your oven

buy a rice cooker and crock pot/slow cooker at a charity shop. almost impossible to fuck up with these two, and you can make large quantities of stews or chillis in the slow cooker.

rice cookers are great for when you make a curry/chilli type dish and can't arsed with any extra complications to think about.

I was thinking Top Chef and salt fat heat are good just to get excited about cooking and not think of it as a chore (which it is totally a chore most of the time).

As weird as Alton Brown has gotten in his middle age, his Good Eats is a very good resource for the kitchen beginner, if your library has the DVDs. His approach lines up with mine -- don't focus on recipes, focus on ingredients and techniques. Learn why the building blocks of the meal react as they do -- to salt, fat, acid, heat, etc.

Furikake is a great pantry staple -- a relatively cheap hit of flavor on any plain grain.

I'm pro- bay leaf but the trick is to put a lot more than the number called for.

flopson's algorithm otm. and give yourself enough time to get your mise en place so the cooking part is stress free. read the recipes well in advance and think about what's going on. in my experience, you will have some early failures because you won't know what things like "medium-high heat" mean for your stove and cookware until you get some more experience. buy some cheap wood spoons. many recipes use Diamond Crystal kosher salt, which is half as salty as other table salt. so you have to taste the food. find ways to use up older ingredients. some can be revitalized in an ice water bath. or you can use them to make veg stock that you freeze. cooking is awesome, and learning how will be worth it!

I endorse flopson's algorithm. Here's my cooking tips which are more about technique/approach than what food to cook.

If you're cooking for yourself, plan to waste food. Live with wasting food. Don't, like, try to waste food, but there's only so many days in a row you can eat the same thing and only so many things you can cook where you get strictly one serving out of it.

Cook for others when possible as soon as you're comfortable with it even a little bit. It's incredibly motivating, and people enjoy being fed.

Touch the food with your hands. If you ever feel like what you're doing with a spoon is too fiddly, just use your hands.

Acclimate to heat. Move confidently around your stovetop. You'll burn yourself a little bit on a handle or something every now and then, it'll be ok. Run cold water on it.

You can learn basic knife skills through osmosis by watching cooking shows.

You can never own too many prep bowls.

xps rather than the tv prog, the book of "salt fat acid heat" is great and I absolutely *would* recommend it to a beginner as it explains a lot of stuff really well and with bags of enthusiasm.

and also Treeship. assuming you have eaten in the last 30 years, what do you like to eat? google that + "simple recipe" and give it a go.

One of our go-to recipe sources is Smitten Kitchen, she has been blogging recipes for ages and probably has two general American cookbooks' worth of recipes by now. And two actual cookbooks.

don't get one of those silly fucker food processors that have too many washable parts, just get a half decent stainless steel stick blender that can be washed in a minute.

Flopson and Silby offer some good advice.

If you like Italian, pasta recipes are often very simple and therefore offer high reward for your effort. They often can involve many shelf stable items (dry pasta, canned good quality tomatoes, etc.), so you only need to purchase a few perishable items. Vegetarian or near-vegetarian pasta recipes are plentiful. Many pasta recipes will reheat well (or well enough to take to work for lunch for a few days). Did I say I like pasta?

Not necessarily for beginners, but my greatest cooking epiphany was when I started making my own stocks. Very simple and not time consuming when you consider you are free to do other things during most of the cooking time. The difference it makes to most dishes is incredible.

^^ otm on stocks. If you go to any of the big box stores that sell the $5 roast chicken, the best part of the bird is the half gallon of fresh stock you get from the carcass.

don't be intimidated. cooking is pretty easy. (cooking elaborate dishes and/or cooking incredibly tasty things on the regular is more difficult.)
don't be afraid to mess up. if you eat meat, get a (digital) meat thermometer to greatly reduce the chances of messing up.
unless you're cooking for a group or you really really want to eat the same thing for 4 meals, halve the recipe.
splurge on one good pan (relatively large) and one good knife (doesn't have to be super expensive even). I use the same pan and knife 90% of the time.

bay leaves are bullshit. don't give in to big bay leaf

I'm trying out a smallish cast iron pan before buying a bigger one if I'm happy with it. My non-stick Ken Hom wok is getting a bit old now.

I've been thinking of geting a carbon steal pan. Has anyone used one?

treeship if your aim is lots of veggies and non-refined grains, I would really recommend starting with making something like quinoa, which I find easier to get right over brown rice, and then mixing in veggies, spices, beans that you like.

https://www.theawl.com/2016/03/the-vast-bay-leaf-conspiracy/

I would really recommend starting with making something like quinoa, which I find easier to get right over brown rice

I use a rice cooker and it's entirely idiot proof -- i.e. I have no idea how you might get brown rice wrong (well, maybe if you don't put enough water in it).

I got rid of my rice cooker when I got an instant pot and now can't use my instant pot because I am afraid of plugging it into a transformer and blowing something out (different voltage where I am ). I also adhere just eyeing the water added to rice, which totally does not work for brown rice. And it takes forever.

Plus, I hate rice unless for sushi or poke.

This is all great advice but I would also like to add that it’s ok to not enjoy cooking - there are tons of nutritious meal delivery services that are affordable depending on your budget

For years and years I forced myself to cook. I hated it. I can do it reasonably well but I just hate it. Probs bc I had to cook most nights for my family of 5 from the ages of 13-18. So a couple years ago I just decided to stop and started using Freshly

(The last few months I’ve been cooking 4 nights a week but it’s for my husband and he eats literally the same meal for like a year before he gets sick of it, which is the polar opposite to me. Currently his dinner is:
Japanese sweet potato (the best kind of sweet potato)
Brussels sprouts
Broccoli
tossed in olive salt and some dried herbs, roasted till the greens caramlize
Diced tempeh, browned in olive oil
Add diced carrots and green beans and kale plus salt and garlic powder, then a little water or stock to steam it all a little after getting a little brown on the veggies)

It’s also ok to buy precooked components and throw them together if that causes less stress around cooking for you (eg trader Joe’s has lots of this kind of stuff - a bag of frozen cooked rice, a bag of frozen steamed veggies and a jar of some sort of sauce, can make a pretty nutritious meal)

yeah like as much as lex was relentlessly clowned for his stance on cooking it's pretty reasonable to be lex

(controp)

I love cooking but I hate cleaning up

I also adhere just eyeing the water added to rice, which totally does not work for brown rice. And it takes forever.

Yeah, brown rice is definitely slower, but I have yet to screw it up with the variable amounts of water that I've used in the past. Maybe we have different definitions of rice well done (I love rice so)?

I read a brown rice technique a few days ago that I haven't tried yet but am looking forward to trying: boil the rice in loads of water as though it were pasta (40 minutes), turn off heat, drain rice in colander for 10 seconds, put back in the pot and let it steam itself done (10 minutes).

Brown rice is not this hard, unless I'm making terrible rice without realizing it.

Use 2-1 water to rice ratio, rise and drain several times first if desired although ime there's not a lot of dust on brown rice bc the bran layer is protective.

Bring to hard boil and boil until the rising bubbles leave visible holes in the rice layer. This means around to when the water level is about at the same height as the rice surface. Turn ALL THE WAY DOWN as low as poss and cover, leaving the rice to basically steam.

I don't have times for this, I just kinda eyeball it, sorry.

My brown rice cooking method:

1. Add 3 scoops rice (dry)
2. Add water up to the 3.5 mark in the inner pot (as opposed to 3 for white rice).
3. Press the thing (as Abe Lincoln once said).

There are a lot of good suggestions here, thank you. I went to Paradise Burger tonight (my god, so good) but tomorrow I got a grocery list from my mom i will try out. I am going to sub in quinoa for brown rice though—only change to what my mom sent me!

I’m excited for having an adult grocery approach though. I might actually have more money in the end if this works out. I imagine it will be healthier, too, than what i eat now.

Ilx is actually really helpful when I need advice and I appreciate it, even though I spend a lot of my time complaining about this place behind everyone’s back. (Mostly kidding on the last point)

lots of good advice here and I wld echo those saying that soups and salads are a good place to start. I was going to say they're hard to fuck up but then I remembered the first time I made soup it was so thick I stored the leftovers on a plate.

generally I enjoy cooking a lot but I have been through periods of hating it and I think cooking can be a really stressful and miserable experience. with this in mind my advice is:

- have a nice kitchen. this is both largely out of your control and also one of the biggest factors in how enjoyable it is ime. playing some sumptuous music, having a beer, cooking with friends or whatever else you can do to make the ambience agreeable can make a huge difference though.

- cook when you're not hungry (or at least not starving). lack of time pressure is also good. the other day I was stressed abt cooking for some guests and I went to the chippy first and it was a magnificent decision.

- cook little things/not whole meals. it both lowers the stakes and is a good way of experimenting, practising, and building up skills. just try and fry some mushrooms really well. try chopping up carrots in ways which are pleasing and will make them cook differently. when I started cooking I was very focused on cost and scale and tended to cook huge quantities of whatever I made, but it's harder to control and more disheartening if it goes wrong. you don't have to eat a big plateful of one thing at once. being able to eat what you want is the best thing abt cooking, so doing things that free you up and don't feel prescriptive is, for me at least, v useful

- youtube. mb I'm just a visual learner but watching how something changes in a pan and so on is much more useful to me than reading abt theory or getting precise measurements. there is an insane amt of content on there and you can see what looks appealing/feasible quite easily.

I’m glad videos are good for somebody b/c the idea of trying to learn a recipe from a video makes me crazy.

it's easy to overwhelm yourself too and get too many things because you think you're gonna cook all this shit. that's when you waste food. try one thing that you know you will want to eat, make a few portions so you can have leftovers, if you like it enough do it the next week. make another thing the following week, after a while you will have built up a memory of how things work. you can do it if you do one thing at a time. pasta with chickpeas and vegetables or whatever.

a good way to build a pantry of spices is to get a few spice jars or mason jars and visit your local indian store to get the couple things you need, they have most of them for extremely cheap. but the quantities will be large. i cook a lot of indian food and i'm still working on jars of whole spices i got a few years ago. each larger bag was way cheaper than the small quantities you get at the grocery store.

a spicy bean soup would be good too, treesh

otm. indian markets are the absolute best for cheap spices in quantity.

this is more a nesting thing than a cooking thing but i store spices in square plastic containers like these:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HBZZD80/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

due to the fact that square things can stack and store better than round things and big wide containers are much easier to measure out of than stupid little jars.

good posts itt

id only add a few personal learnings that nobidy told me:

1. let a pan/pot heat up good and hot first works musch better for most things. dont be intimidated by the noise/sticking of the initial contact, you'll learn hiw to handle it

2. cooking staples like rice/potatoes/porridge ive always found tough to get right, these days i add the relevant liquid, whack it up fairly high, leave it without poking until the time called for in whatever recipe. results are much better now tho i get the odd pot of mush.

3. allow more time than it said or that you thought

Oh yeah number 1 there is key. Fat goes in hot pans, food goes in hot fat.

This is actually the most important thing: if you skip adding in the ~tablespoon of oil or butter you can substitute that with drinking a beer or glass of wine instead. It's about the same caloric intake.

Alternately be teetotal and constantly bake and eat cookies

I loved cooking for years and sort of thought about getting into it professionally at one point (which I’m kind of glad I didn’t) but grad school and having a kid turned it into an unpleasant burden most of the time. I’ve been easing back into it but totally understand people who get no pleasure at all from it.

I need some resources—i googled but every recipe calls for bay leaves and bouillon cubes and other things that i don’t really know what they are.

If you are that much of a blank slate then you need to start off with the very basics and work your way up.

The good news is that even if you can't cook, you've been eating food for a long time. Presumably this means you can distinguish between foods you like and those you dislike, and between a food item that is well prepared and one that is unappealing. So you have a sort of platonic idea of what you are aiming for and have a sound basis to judge how close you came to the desired results.

The bad news is that you appear to have spent almost no time in kitchens either cooking or else observing cooks cooking, and seem to be very ignorant of the first principles of cooking. That will take time and effort to remedy, mainly because you have to learn how your ingredients behave in different combinations, when exposed to different kinds of heat, when cut in different sizes, and placed in different combinations. You learn that by doing, by close observation, and by eating your failures.

Start with salads. Then simple steamed vegetables. Then simple grains and legumes. Then soups. Buy a basic cookbook aimed at inexperienced cooks. There are a ton of these, many of them decades old. Read the introductory materials, not just the recipes. If you fail, think about what went wrong and try again. As you cook, ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION! That's how you see what your ingredients are doing.

Good luck. All it takes is determination, application and a dash of optimism, until it all turns into valuable experience and, eventually, skill. You're smart. I know you can do it, if you put in the work.

nb I was joking about not knowing what that stuff was. But I get scared off of recipes that call for too many ingredients.

id probably say start with stews and bologneses and chillis and suchlike

cant really go wrong if you start careful with amounts of salt/seasoning, nothing needs to be done quickly or too well, lots of room for you to experiment, and the ingredients needed and batches produced will set you up with the basics while also giving you a quick win ito racking up economic results

I suggest Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, which is less than ideal as a general cookbook in some respects but it’s the one that got me going.

I get scared off of recipes that call for too many ingredients.

That's your innate wisdom asserting itself. If they are scary, then wait until they seem more in line with your skill set.

btw, you can cook very, very well while never making any dish with an ingredient list in double digits.

This is actually the most important thing: if you skip adding in the ~tablespoon of oil or butter you can substitute that with drinking a beer or glass of wine instead. It's about the same caloric intake.

― Yerac, Friday, 4 January 2019 01:55 (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is crucial yes

sipping away with a playlist on while a long prep comes together is actually the greatest thing imo

fwiw i don't really consider "number of ingredients" to be telling most of the time, like are they a) shelf-stable spices and pantry items, b) inexpensive vegetables and grains, c) imported cheese, cured meats, wine, and a dozen eggs for pasta dough? it makes a difference, and yes i am outing myself.

My favorite recipes are the ones where the only ingredient is cured meat

reasonable take

I actually should get started learning this stuff bc my current apartment has kind of a great kitchen

that is a great thing to have.

everyone has talked a lot about ingredients and recipes but an important question is do you have access to a decent and really sharp knife?

i have occasionally tried to prep food in foreign kitchens where every knife is dull and it is without question the worst.

I mean, the knifes are bad, I’m still poor even though this apartment is weirdly beautiful for the price

*knives

buy this, it will not set you back much: https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Knife-8-Inch/dp/B008M5U1C2/ref=asc_df_B008M5U1C2/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198090821251&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10091209022275543775&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001821&hvtargid=pla-320868655861&psc=1

i'm really not exaggerating much when i say that if you want to learn how to hate cooking, just do all your prep with shitty knives

otm otm otm

I think the proliferation of cooking shows has been a double-edged sword. They tend to disseminate knowledge and demystify cooking, but imo they also tend to disguise how much sous-chef assistance has happened prior to what the viewer sees. They also downplay how much true knowledge is at play as the chef chatters away, but knows exactly what the food is doing at each moment.

"Just add some chives" the chef says, grabbing a prep bowl brimming with chopped chives sitting conveniently at hand and sprinkling some over the food sizzling away in the pan. No hint that you at home will be the sous-chef who chops up, measures out, and trims up the ingredients in those fifteen little bowls of this-and-that, which the chef has but to reach for at the correct moment on camera. This can lure new cooks into a kind of fantasyland idea of cooking that is very hard to carry off in a home kitchen by a home cook. Then, when they fail to carry it off, they blame themselves and get discouraged.

That Victorinox knife linked by CAD is really good btw; I sharpened a bunch for different people over the holidays and they hold a nice edge.

i learned on that victorinox, the only reason i don't still use it is that i was gifted a very nice shun chef's knife for my wedding.

Cooking like you’re in a cooking show, with everything measured out in advance into prep bowls, is a lot of fun.

i'd recommend actually doing that most of the time, your recipes will take longer overall but you will actually be able to focus on every step of the process and reduce your overall stress level, especially as you're learning.

The main complaint I have with the average recipe is it sneaks steps into the ingredient list, like “1 onion, diced” or whatever.

when the ingredient is a link you are fucked

That Victorinox knife linked by CAD is really good btw

Another vote for that knife as the best one you can get for so little money.

If you're cooking for yourself, plan to waste food. Live with wasting food. Don't, like, try to waste food, but there's only so many days in a row you can eat the same thing and only so many things you can cook where you get strictly one serving out of it.

tbomb

That knife is a great deal; I’ve had the santoku version for years and use it almost exclusively over my much more expensive German chefs knife.

xps rather than the tv prog, the book of "salt fat acid heat" is great and I absolutely *would* recommend it to a beginner as it explains a lot of stuff really well and with bags of enthusiasm.

hard disagree. the book is phenomenal but would be overwhelming for true noobs. charts of how long you should salt each different type of meat or veg for, separating ghee and whey... that shits just too advanced imo and would sow more confusion than it provides insights. maybe after 6 mo or a year

Brown rice is not this hard, unless I'm making terrible rice without realizing it.

Use 2-1 water to rice ratio,

3-1 minimum imo

ha basically came on here to say make sure your knives are sharp and your pan is hot. the rest you'll pick up.
I got my non-serrated knives from ikea, you can buy a knife sharpener there too.
a few chopping boards also useful.

On the "make sure the pan/pot is hot" tip, the best way to test it is to sprinkle water on it. If it sizzles or dances before quickly evaporating, it's hot enough.

I'm Asian so I use a cleaver for pretty much everything.

And for seasoning, salt and pepper go a long way! You don't need to get into turmeric or cumin or whatnot for a meal to taste good (helps too if you get fresh ingredients).

The best thing that ever happened to my cooking was...
...using metric measurements in recipes. Huge opening of recipe floodgates (and Ikea sell a gram/ounce scale that is really helpful).

Scale is good for cooking, amazing for baking.

Treesh if you enjoy following directions carefully you should try baking, which doesn’t get dinner on the table really but it’s enjoyable to crank out cookies

no

baking is the devil u must never go there

darragh come over I’ll bake u some bread

bread occurs in nature bread is a friend of mine i know bread and you sir are no bread why would you even say bread is baked no seriously why would you say that

I grew up in a family of bakers but I spent my whole life studying other stuff. To me the ability to bake a good loaf of bread still seems like magic

that knife linked by CAD - I 've got roughly the exact same one, but mine is Mercer brand. With the £10 sharpener I got it's been my good friend for years now.

I’d suggest that the three best early habits you can develop in cooking are:

- prepping all of your ingredients before starting
- watching YouTube videos on how to cut onions/tomatoes, and practicing with a good but not expensive knife and an ample cutting board
- learning to follow a recipe [to the letter] the first time you make it ,so you establish a baseline for how it’s supposed to taste

1. Maybe focus on a cuisine or general type of food you want to eat and enjoy. This will allow you to buy the herbs and spices etc you need for that type of cooking and have a functioning store cupboard without having to go to the shop over and over. Spices can add up when your cupboard is empty.

2. I agree that currys, stews, that kind of thing are the easiest place to start. They're very forgiving since nothing needs to be exposed to major heat but they'll also teach you some of the core principles of food and the flavour combinations.

3. Essential things: People might differ on this but I would say basically make sure you have: one v good knife for chopping veg etc, doesn't need to be expensive, a big cutting board to chop them on. A big pot for stews etc. a frying pan or I guess Americans call this a skillet, a smaller pot for other things like potatoes or rice. Maybe measuring cups if you're using US recipes. Some wooden spatulas or similar for stirring things.

4. Worth considering: a tongs for flipping meat/fish, a serving spoon, some good plastic containers for storing leftovers. If you want to eat rice I would suggest a rice cooker. I got one recently after years of cooking rice in a pot and I don't know why I wasted all that time and effort. There are some good small ones available. I live alone so I didn't want a gigantic one, the brand "Judge" does good ones if that's available.

5. Again depends what sort of food you want to focus on, but if cooking for just yourself it might be worth starting to use a butchers or fishmongers or an independent grocery store. This could be a UK-centric take but IME this means I can buy eg one chicken leg and a handful of whatever veg and make a meal that way rather than constantly having to do soups and stews etc which mean I have way too much food. It also is nice and makes the shopping enjoyable.

oh another vital thing.

generally, the minute you start cooking or before you start, fill the sink with hot water and add washing up liquid. washing stuff as you go is p much the key to a happy and long life.

and just to say on point 5 there i meant because stuff doesn't come in pre-packaged quantities

a nice addition to my kitchen I found on e-bay recently was: Spanish Ceramic Terracotta Oven / Grill tray. It is made out of some special clay from Valencia and treated with oils so that apparently it's non-stick qualities naturally improve the more you use it. Even if that is a load of bollox - it only cost me a tenner and is very pretty and has been very useful so far.

I walk past about five bay trees between the station and my house, so use a lot in my cooking. They freeze well. They also survive a trip through the wash in a trouser pocket. I would not buy dried ones.

My block of flats has a herb garden with four bay trees next to it, plus rosemary, lemon thyme and (when in season) mint. I have herb pots on my balcony: tarragon, oregano, parsley, thyme, rosemary, red chilli and both Thai and regular basil (both of these are out of commission right now). Invest in herbs, because they are seriously expensive in shops (I still buy coriander, dill and huge parsley bunches because those are cheap at Turkish shops).

I'm trying out a smallish cast iron pan before buying a bigger one if I'm happy with it. My non-stick Ken Hom wok is getting a bit old now.

― calzino, Friday, 4 January 2019 7:49 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've been thinking of geting a carbon steal pan. Has anyone used one?

treeship if your aim is lots of veggies and non-refined grains, I would really recommend starting with making something like quinoa, which I find easier to get right over brown rice, and then mixing in veggies, spices, beans that you like.

― Yerac, Friday, 4 January 2019 8:11 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The answer to both these posts is a carbon steel wok. Cheap as anything and will be more non-stick than anything with a Teflon coating if treated right. Treating it right means seasoning with oil once in a while and only washing with hot water and scrubbing. You can do other carbon steel pans later but a wok is a no brainer and should cost you lest than $15 from a Chinese grocer

Seasoning, btw, is heating the clean pan as hot as it will go and wiping in the inside of the pans with some oil on a wad of kitchen towel.

I'll definitely take that advice, Ed. Is there a particular oil that is best suited for seasoning it?

can I ask a question about hobs. we’re getting a new kitchen next year: gas or induction ?

sheeit! you can get a very impressive looking 40" carbon steel wok for £20 on e-bay.

actually centimetres, lol that would huuuge!

I've ordered a more sensible 30cm one for £13.95.

according to the seller vegetable oil will season it good.

personally I think you can't beat a gas hob, but inductions appeal to me too

Yea, I use whatever veg/canola type of oil i have around for the wok and cast iron. I was interested in a carbon steel pan to try to migrate from non-stick pans for things like cooking eggs etc. Cast iron is just too heavy for quick things. I rarely use it. Although I did get a small tamagoyaki omelette pan that is really, really great.

xpost I prefer gas over induction but I know some countries it's too difficult to do gas. Induction is totally fine if gas seems annoying to put in.

My wife, for whom cooking has always been the enemy, has the bad notion that smaller bowls means less work cleaning up, so she will mix stuff in bowls barely big enough to hold the ingredients, and stuff doesn't get properly mixed. Mix in bowls large enough to really move stuff around, not just turn one teaspoonful at a time.

I've got this huge pyrex mixing bowl with a plastic cover that clips over it. Nice bit of kit.

Once you start putting containers aside to wash later, unless you've got a huge kitchen - you'll soon be in trouble.

My kitchen is quite small. So I got loads of wall mounted hooks and put a couple of shelves below them, so everything is within easy reach.

I have such anxiety about messy kitchens that I end up washing every single thing as soon as it's used. My spouse loves it when he cooks, but I know it annoys other people who want control of their kitchen.

That knife is a great deal; I’ve had the santoku version for years and use it almost exclusively over my much more expensive German chefs knife.

― joygoat, Friday, January 4, 2019 12:48 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i actually didn't know that there was a victorinox santoku for the same price, that's dope

thinking about knives/knife techniques makes cooking seem unfun, I dunno. sure some knives help you cut more easily but if you're not cooking at all, worrying about cutting "better" or whatever may just make you say "fuck this I'm ordering in again".

I don't know anything about what makes a knife good or bad so I went to Kappabashi Street and went to a good knife store and said "tell me what to buy" and I bought a couple of them and they are very nice.

I like to break stuff apart with my hands and use scissors to cut some stuff quickly when it doesn't matter. But I do like the new knives I got last year. I did way too much research, but it's kind of fun.

just been reading that flaxseed oil is best for seasoning my cast iron pan that arrived today, but they don't sell it locally and I'm just going to use some light olive oil. It's been sold as "pre-seasoned" but I figured another seasoning wouldn't do any harm.

idk euler

if youre not cooking at all and intimidated by the thought of it, a few good basic use-everyday utensils are exactly what you need to take advice on to eliminate the common irritants

cleaning as you go def. makes sense imo as there's always a few moments between having to get back to the cooking. Especially if you have mise en place in place

hey, i'm curious abt this tamagoyaki pan. have seen the tamago-making procedure before and it sounds so different to how i've ever made a omelet/eggs previously. do you have a trick or any insight?
xpost to Yerac

no idea why this is the case, but i've found saturated fats work better for seasoning- butter or coconut oil are my go-to fwiw

This is the one I got. It might be something about the pan, but it cooks eggs so well there is really no trick to it. PAN

"Aubergine Purple" This colour signals glory and splendor, pure joy of life.

^^^^ ^^^
it looks good and this a deal sealer for sure!

I still use a butter/oil but egg just basically slides around on it. Be careful resting anything wood on the edge though. It will burn.

I keep a simple kitchen (certainly easier for a plant-based eater who doesn't bake or make fresh pasta).

My only electric appliances are the stove/oven, the microwave, a nice (Bamix) immersion blender, and a cheap blade coffee grinder dedicated to spice grinding. I've had more gizmos like food processors, but for all, their annoyances particularly with cleanup outweighed their incremental value.

Cookware is a big pressure cooker, a carbon steel wok and paella pan that doubles as a roasting pan, and some legacy non-stick cookware that over time I'll replace with more carbon steel (fry pan(s)) or multi-layer stainless (stockpots). Pressure cookers are essential for those who eat legumes regularly, and even as an omnivore they made my soup stocks far richer; I pretty much cook all soups in the pressure cooker these days. Carbon steel is nicer than cast iron, lighter/smoother surface/doesn't fracture if dropped, but requires seasoning.

Seasoning tip: After stripping to bare metal with oven cleaner/vinegar/soap or in my case power tools, apply the thinnest layer of flax oil (cheapest will be the drug store gel caps) with a paper towel, and broil for an hour. This provides an impenetrable polymerized surface preventing rust, but it won't be non stick. For that season again with a cooking oil with higher saturated fat content (coconut oil/ghee/lard etc) which will be less durable but non-stick.

I learned how to sharpen my German knife set to peel daikon (I became a knife hobbyist for a winter), but like some pros with the whole knife roll, I gravitate to a ceramic knife for most veg prep. Can't be dropped or used to pry at meat joints, but its lighter and sharper than exhaustively sharpenned steel knives and keeps its edge for a couple years of use before it needs a factory resharpening. No one bought the black Kyocera nakiri I pined for this Xmas :(. If you get the largest polypropylene cutting board that will fit your sink, you won't need all those little bowls for mise en place, the margins of the board will be enough.

Re: spices, make friends with your local Indian grocer. I've the good fortune to have an Indian immigrant owned international grocer near me, affiliated with their restaurant wholesale warehouse, so I routinely buy 8 oz of spices for half the price of those tiny McCormick bottles. Whole spices will last practically indefinitely compared to pre-ground ones, so I buy whole and grind as needed.

Omitted tip: don't bother with a cutting board with rubber feet, a damp dishtowel underneath is as good.

anyone recommend a good cheapo slow cooker? I've not developed a slow cooker game at all and it looks like a nice lazy option to have.

oh and one important tip that hasn't been covered on here yet today is: get some powder free latex gloves if you are handling chopped chillis/scotch bonnets etc. And for blokes: never go for a piss if you've been foolish enough to handle them without gloves.

uh, men and women should be careful about sticking fingers anywhere for hours after cutting hot peppers.

I think I have had to take out my contact lenses with my wrists before.

yeah it is absolute torture getting it in yr eyes.

I went through a weird phase once where I wanted sliced jalapenos on everything. I had to eventually stop because of all the surprise burning.

slow cooker: other than making great stock, never really had good results from it and not particularly impressed when other people serve slowcooked meals either. maybe just need to get better skills idk

Lidded casserole dish in the oven did the business last night when making stroganoff with beef shin.

I was thinking : is there a diff between slow cooker and just turning down the oven to low.

unless your life will be incomplete without the ability to cook mushy braises while you're out of the house, don't buy a slow cooker

i like the aspect of being able to put on a (slow cooking) pot of beans for a hour or two and just forget about it. on the stove you generally have to keep an eye on 'em so they don't boil too hard, or conversely just sit there in hot water.

i hate to recommend bleach for anything, but it cuts through capsaicin lickety-split, if it's an emergency pour a bit on hand/finger and rinse. have tried olive oil to remove from hands before since capsaicin is fat soluble, but that doesn't work as well

Another vote for that knife as the best one you can get for so little money.

Another vote here. Tho I have a slightly different Victorinox. Use it much more often than the 3x as expensive Japanese one I have.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71R%2BTXG7DmL._SY679_.jpg

The magic ingredient is capsaicin, from hot peppers. Just saying.

if you do get chili in your eye I recommend putting milk in a shot glass (or anything of a similar size) and keeping that pressed against your eye with your head tilted back

I do that anyway

and then go hang out at the playground

I think I have had to take out my contact lenses with my wrists before.

― Yerac, Friday, January 4, 2019 4:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol 100% although ironically wearing contacts also protects your eyes from onion vapors, so ideally you would leave them in for chopping onions and then remove before chopping anything else.

I posted this in the GBBO thread but w/e this is my first attempt at a cheesecake ever: https://imgur.com/gallery/UL9i0dF

Used my Instant Pot and the recipe book that came with it, only adjustment was to substitute stevia for the sugar. The color of the cream cheese is WAAAY off, and the ganache ended up being too thick (used too much chocolate), and I waited too long to pour it over the cheesecake so it doesn't look that smooth. But it's tasty!

ha silby

I love slow-cooked meat stews in my slow cooker but I'm not gonna fart about making bolognese or some side dish in it. it's good if it's more convenient for your day to start cooking 6 hours (or whatever) before you want to eat rather than 2. otherwise I don't really get the whole 'time-saving' aspect - you're still doing the same amount of prep.

Yeah, a slow cooker isn't so much about time-saving as about time-shifting

a slow cooker allows you to leave the house while deliciousness increases

i no longer eat meat and really feel like slow-cooked meats are the only thing they're particularly useful for - i guess porridge and grits and that sort of thing too - but i always found i preferred meat cooked slow and low in the oven than in the slow cooker. ymmv

I had baked beans in the oven today. I just left them in the oven while I went out of the house to run errands and the deliciousness increased, but no slow cooker was involved. This can also happen with pot on the stovetop. The added abilities of a slow cooker are fairly marginal, and I rarely use the one we own, but the ability to use a timer to delay cooking is handy sometimes when no one can attend to the dish for a great many hours.

I'm relaxed about a lot of risks but I can't leave the hob on while I'm out

same, im not rly happy with oven on if im not there either

unless your life will be incomplete without the ability to cook mushy braises while you're out of the house, don't buy a slow cooker

― call all destroyer, Friday, January 4, 2019 12:28 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure how useful thread devolving into stating snarky advanced cooking opinions such as 'buy japanese knife' and 'don't use commonplace easy tool to cook' is to treesh's original q. slowcooker is excellent for noobs imo, and i still use mine on occasion. it's great when you're short on time and it's nice to come home or wake up to the smell. you can get em used at any charity shop for like 10$

My oven is electric so I’m OK with leaving it on to go out, but if it were gas, NO WAY.

treeish, pret or au bon pain used to have a quinoa small bowl that was really good/healthy/easy that i reproduce sometimes. Quinoa, arugula, tomato, hardboiled egg, shelled edamame, lemon. Easy to swap out any of those ingredients for like spinach or other beans but the hard boil egg in it was a revelation when I first saw it.

La Lechera has a game-changing recipe for slow-cooker pulled pork. I'm serious. I've served it to multiple crowds of ppl to universal acclaim. The hype is real.

slow cooker stuff I make on the regular and can't imagine bothering doing any other way:
masoor daal
saag paneer
whole roasted chicken
pulled pork
brisket

lol it is really good :)
i don't have the energy to educate anyone on cooking atm but i wish you the best of luck treesh
experiment and learn

Thank you! I think I got more information than I can process just in this thread. Food is this whole sphere of life that I just haven’t really been embracing it seems.

I don’t have a slow cooker but I have a huge wok that Imll use for stir fries.

slow cookers, pressure cookers, and instant pots are divisive conversation topics, I think because the camps tend to be the Can't Live Without It camp and the What A Pointless Invention camp

I think Yerac's initial advice is pretty good tbh. you will accumulate staples/figure out what you need to have on hand to consistently make what you like.

For my part, doing most of the cooking for a family of four, my major constraints usually come down to a) what will the majority of my family eat without complaint and b) what did we get in our CSA veggie box that week. Then I map out what to make for dinner for at least 5 nights of the week (assuming one night will be either leftovers or takeout/eating out), figure out what ingredients I need to make those dinners that I don't have on-hand, and that's my grocery list.

Cooking for one, though, is a particular bitch, I dunno how you do that with quality ingredients without wasting a ton of food tbh.

i'm not sure how useful thread devolving into stating snarky advanced cooking opinions such as 'buy japanese knife' and 'don't use commonplace easy tool to cook' is to treesh's original q. slowcooker is excellent for noobs imo, and i still use mine on occasion. it's great when you're short on time and it's nice to come home or wake up to the smell. you can get em used at any charity shop for like 10$

― flopson, Friday, January 4, 2019 4:56 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wasn't trying to be snarky (and i don't think anyone told anyone to buy a japanese knife?) but my problem with slow cookers is that they completely destroy the texture of vegetables and stews that come out of them are oftentimes mushy and insipid. i recognize that they have a place in many kitchens because they are convenient and don't need to be attended to, and if you're making things like pulled pork or legumes my problem isn't really a problem. that said, understanding that we all have different goals for our cooking and levels of ambition, i would recommend learning just about any other method of stewing and braising first.

I lived without a slow cooker for years and could do so again, but the things that I've learned to make in it are definitely better than whatever shitty version I was making before I had one

xp

fwiw I wouldn't bother making chicken noodle soup or beef stew or the like in a slow cooker, that seems kind of pointless

I've never had any mushy results from my slow cooker. Even cubes of sweet potato that were in there for 6 hours were soft but had their shape/texture still.

I don't think you need to dive in with bulky equipment to start off with though, treeship. Just some recipes that look fairly simple. I use bbcgoodfood.com for like 75% of my meals although it is British so terminology and ingredients may be unfamiliar - also the website has gone down the shitter and is becoming less easy to use.

don't you mean down the loo

I cook(ed) for one for years in NYC and I was Trader Joes all the way. Pretty perfect for one person cooking. I would go every Saturday morning, spend $40-$45 and have all my food for the week. Breakfast burritos (egg, veg sausage, on a whole grain wrap) for breakfast, spinach/broccoli salad with the balsamic/rosemary chicken, or I would make chicken encrusted with almond meal they sell there, and dinner would be random stuff. Their frozen stuff is great for quick things during the work week and they sell so many veggies, cuts of protein in good proportions for one person.

yeah TJ's does seem more geared to this kind of thing than most. But even there it means buying a fair amount of pre-prepared stuff, no?

I think I'll give a slow cooker a try, it's not like they are pricey.

I got into tortilla a few years back, which I loved but my kid didn't like it so I changed the recipe to include tomatoes, cabbage, chick peas, cumin, coriander, chilli and garlic. And made it a more scrambled type very spicy, semi-omelette/masala and he loves it now. Nothing wrong with doing meals that don't have no name that you are aware of.

cooking for one is depressing but i can’t imagine eating out 3 meals a day

i can imagine eating out 3 meals a day but i would need to earn like double what i do

anything that's eggs mixed up with stuff is called 'Skip's Scramble' in our house

Don't order the Skip's Scramble

lol

I cook for myself and haven't had any real issues with spoilage or portion size. Being able to portion out some and putting in the freezer when necessary (seldom happens for me but obviously that's good to have), though usually refrigerating is enough and lasts me a week. I do find that I'm a little gunshy about buying certain things from e.g. TJ's because it's clearly not intended for one person to consume, but then I have a coop grocery that offers more customizable portions.

NB: I've eaten moldy fruit/bread on several occasions, and probably will again in the future.

ok are we gonna get this slow cooker pulled pork recipe posted here or what??!??

no but here's a non-slowcooker carnitas recipe

https://www.homesicktexan.com/2008/07/carnitas-houston-style.html

NB cannot account for why the author chose to illustrate this recipe with weird close ups of the food

xpost TJ's has a lot of prepared stuff but it was really the only grocery store I went to (besides a local veg/fruit stand) and I eat pretty healthy. They have an easy selection of vegetables, things I like: shishito peppers, avocados, brussell sprouts, haricots verts, persian cucumbers, and the bags of baby spinach and broccoli florets made making salads easy, sizes were perfect for one week. I always kept almonds from there in my desk too. Oh and they have pretty good hummus/guac/pesto/ types of things. Nothing ever really goes bad for me but I always try to keep my overhead super low so I pointedly try not to waste food. I will juice everything in the fridge before that happens.

Oh man, I do not look at the serving size at TJ's. If it comes in one container it's for one person.

Also I like cooking for one person. I find I eat a lot better because I don't have to alter things, change things up for other tastes or feel compelled to make something taste better by adding more oil or salt. So like if treeish is trying to eat better, it's easier to only be concerned with yourself.

TJ's veggie selection is actually something that I tend to avoid! In some cases it's portion size (those zucchinis(?) are way comically enormous, I will never make anything with however many celery stalks as they come in), but also because I'm trying to reduce the amount of packaging waste from stuff I buy (which is where the unpackaged produce of my coop comes in).

Yeah the packaging is ridiculous. Although at least it's mostly bags rather than clamshells. I only see those tiny/baby zucchinis? But I also typically cook all my veg at once and then snack on them through the week or use it for salads/toppings.

Maybe I'm the one due the Japanese knife accusations. I really like $40 ceramic chefs knives, and you would too if you get angry that you can't seem to cleanly slice tomatoes with conventional knives after a month's use. At least I'm not pushing $200 knives like Alton Brown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a783vEF2yYA

this isn't the smoothest presentation on seasoning a wok, but he knows what he's talking about.

Holy shit, just did an egg fried rice/minced beef/ stir fry concoction on my seasoned carbon steel wok and the fucker passed the non-stick test with flying colours 🍳🍳🍳🍳🍳. I'm now a believer, and I had some moments of doubt last night when the smoke kept setting off alarms, I was thinking I might be losing my marbles.

I made a vegetarian white sauce lasagna with cremini mushrooms, but the sauce ended up being gray. I've used this recipe before, though this time I used unsweetened almond milk (I probably used whole milk previously) and flour to make the sauce. Could that be why it turned out gray? It tastes fine, so I'm asking mostly out of aesthetic curiosity.

Yep. Some brands of non-dairy milk add yellow coloring, like annatto, to give a buttery hue.

Personally, I just avoid most prepared non-dairy milks for cooking, as I can taste the calcium carbonate (chalk) that many use for calcium when warmed. Anyway, soaking raw cashews in water, then blending, makes for a perfectly fine substitute for creamy soups. As does blending unsalted almond butter with water.

can you explain what you mean by "use for calcium when warmed", Sanpaku? idgi

one of the reasons i love trader joe's unsweetened plain soymilk so much is that it's just water and soybeans.

It's missing a comma, I read it as: "when warmed, I can taste the calcium carbonate (chalk) that many [brands use to fortify with calcium]."

I've been making my own tofu recently and sometimes its hard to get past the soy milk stage, fresh warm soy milk is so delicious. The left over bean meal is a great addition to potato salad too.

This is like when I always get a jolt when my garlic turns blue because of the vinegar I added.

I can't leave my copyeditor hat off: "when the milk substitute is warmed, I can taste the calcium carbonate (chalk) that many [brands use to fortify with calcium]."

i felt like a ninny. but i kept reading that, knowing the calcium carbonate is a ionic compound so dissociates in liquid and the calcium doesn't require heat to be reactive, and missed the point.

Google: my boyfriend thinks my bolognese is unimpressive please help me

would it help to add a splash of acidity? what's the deficiency, or is your boyfriend inarticulate about food?

How is there not a show about couple cooking difficulties? I would love to be the asshole on that show giving f'd up advice.

xxp
go for the Antonio Carluccio trad bolog recipe, which doesn't use garlic or herbs and is just a nice simple beef, onions, carrots, celery, wine, tomato puree, butter and pasta type deal iirc.

https://antonio-carluccio.co.uk/recipes/tagliatelle-al-ragu-bolognese/

if in doubt, add MSG

I really like the Robert Sinskey recipe, which uses bone-in cuts, equal parts homemade stock/wine/milk, and a long cooking time. The secret is orange peel, which gives it a slightly exotic flavor.

http://www.robertsinskey.com/kitchen/recipe/bolognese-authentic-style

I think the 1 1/2 hour simmer is one of the most important steps, but ppl don't always have time to do this. I tend to avoid diced pancetta because I blame it for making me ill once - probably need to give it another try - cos bacon isn't a proper substitute and there aren't any fancy delis that sell the quality stuff you see italian chefs using in my neck of the woods.

Milk in a bolognese sauce is a secret I picked up on Facebook (from an ILXOR actually) a while ago that definitely works.

I've used cream before, but never milk.

The milk works because you don't actually want a creamy sauce, but the milk still gives the sauce some body.

I used to do a very long, like 2 hour simmer, with first drying out the meat then doing a milk evaporation process, then a wine evaporation process, and then adding the tomato element and some anchovies somewhere at the end. It's a lot.

I like the tomato-less bolognese that someone tried to convince me was the most legit, just pure beef goo

I made an oxtail ragu this winter that was basically just oxtail, onion, tomato, stock, and wine and cooked for 5 hours. It was incredible.

I love the idea of ancient and very simple recipes. Was listening to this Indian master chef on BBC WS the other week and he was waxing lyrical about the simple pleasures of cooking - talking about throwing loads of onions into the pan and frying them with loads of garam masala and taking pleasure in this simple act. and i could smell those frying onions.

We're vulgar people, but in my house the answer is always more garlic, more acid, more heat, and more salt.

Calz, is there a Booths near you for pancetta and other posh bits?

nah only 3 branches in Yorkshire + in distant places like Settle and Ilkley by tat!

how are there only 3 booths in yorkshire

My friend from high school (American but so embedded she’s got an English accent unless yelling at her kids/husband) is the PR for Booths - food retailers do a press event called Christmas in July where they serve journos and editors their holiday range far ahead because of lead times. I went to Booths’ one last summer and it was insane/amazing/more expensive than Waitrose.

they are all mostly in Lancashire, unless I'm looking at the wrong Booths. but of course most people in Yorkshire just need an Iceland and will be fully understood when they walk into one and say "fugging chips"!

No, that’s right (lots in the Lake District too), but I keep suggesting to J that they should do an Xmas pop-up in Kings Cross/St Pancras...

I like the tomato-less bolognese that someone tried to convince me was the most legit, just pure beef goo

― ogmor, Wednesday, May 8, 2019 2:55 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know this is bolognese cannon, that it's not as tomatoey as people think from Americanized versions which are basically just red sauce with ground beef added, that in fact it's still bolog with NO tomato. But I like a healthy thumblength of tomato paste for umami and tang.

I'm not against a little puree but I like the pure umami tangless verzh & I think making it is instructive bc it forces you to get the beef right

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/08/classic-elizabeth-david-recipes

I used to like this Elizabeth David recipe, havent had it in years tho as I no longer eat meat. I wouldn't use the liver

As someone who makes a lot of Korean food, this is the best method for getting garlic peeled!
👌 pic.twitter.com/14GGJDQhRj

— 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖆 ✣ 𝖑𝖔𝖗𝖉 🌑 (@VPestilenZ) June 17, 2019

nice technique.

Gonna try this tonight, will probably lose a finger in the process

i can't tell exactly what tool she's using where you can safely choke up on a sharp blade like that?

I still crush the bulb in my hand and then chop a thin slice off the top and bottom of each clove and awkwardly peel. But will try this at some point, preferably when sober!

Buzzfeed tried this method with three different heads of garlic (tightly packed, loose etc.) They had mixed results. I probably wouldn't do a whole head at once, worried about drying out the insides.

I do use the two mixing bowls or tupperware/shake method but sometimes it's just too loud.

I still crush the bulb in my hand and then chop a thin slice off the top and bottom of each clove and awkwardly peel.

This is how I do it, too. I'll try the above method but in all honesty can't see myself pulling it off.

once you've cut the bottom off a clove if you crush it under your knife the skin m/l pops off

I don't cut at all, just crush with the knife and skin usually just pops off

I cut the ‘attached’ end off if the skin is hard and crush the clove with the narrow end of a pestle.

I took to taking off top and bottom of the clove, shaking them up in a jar and then peel normally slides off a lot easier.

tried that method in the video. didn't work. but yeah not that hard to just rip off a clove and crush it with flat side of knife.

i just remove them by hand from the bulb, top and tail them and then crush them under the blade of the knife, the crushing usually also lets you easily excise the germ if it's gone green. don't see any reason to stop doing that

we're still talking about penises right

Why are we topping these cloves of garlic? Only tailing is ever necessary.

the crushing usually also lets you easily excise the germ if it's gone green

As long as it's not fully grown outside of the clove, I just keep the green.

I was in the Basque Country last November on holiday. We had a bulb of garlic left over, which I took back home to Holland. I'm a terrible shopper - I'll buy onions and garlic etc forgetting/not knowing I still have loads at home (it's a bug). Anyway, I've had the Basque garlic for FOUR months and it still didn't sprout any germ, whereas if I buy garlic here it starts sprouting after two, three weeks. I learned from my BIL, who's a chef, that garlic here is sold when it's way older and nearer to sprouting than in Mediterranean countries. Just because the industry can, I suppose?

immersing the bulb/clove in boiling water for about ten seconds heats it up

immersing things in boiling water a very versatile cooking technique

keeping it in a dark room like an attic or a basement, even at the back of a cupboard would keep light from it

Why are we topping these cloves of garlic? Only tailing is ever necessary.

― suzy, Wednesday, June 19, 2019 10:50 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark

the crush splits the clove open better and the peel comes off easier if it's topped and tailed prior to crushing ime

a mixture of activities with other bulbs of garlic and a little alone time probably healthy

I get really nice garlic akin to the Basque stuff described upthread (grown by a particular market farmer) and it never sprouts, even when kept over winter. Also when there’s a long skin I only need to tail it, whack it, and pull off the little hat shape instead of top and tailing. These bulbs are easily the size of my fist, too.

the garlic I get from Tescos is often very small and short-dated, need to start find some fresher and bigger bulbs ffs!

Usually the answer to this problem (for those of us who don’t have a side hustle working with a market farmer who grows amazing garlic) is Asian/Turkish supermarket (the garlic at those shops is probably less expensive).

this doesn't surprise me. i tasted a sprout on its own recently and it rly didn't seem different than the clove from which it was taken
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/the-truth-about-sprouted-garlic?extcode=NSCIF19FB&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=photo&utm_content=sproutedgarlic&utm_campaign=cioarticles&fbclid=IwAR2waKyyAE48qTe-hp4GAyuVG8tsyFm7dzkLFkojE0qcU1tGpilY2_aJSdI

bout to do some cookin rn

ilx follow my food instagram @sam_eatz

is there any spam

c’mon bro

heh

finding myself in the position of having a lot of random ingredients used to make various recipes over the years but very few staples/binders* to go with them; any suggestions for adaptable templates?

* that said I do have staple ingredients like flour (semolina and regular, the semolina is probably going to go faster since I've been using it as a thickener), a ton of sugar, and oil, no eggs currently, just one box of tomato puree and two cans of hopefully-still-good whole tomatoes, no milk as of right now

basically, just imagine the candles meme except with, like, culinary lavender

crackers are good if you only have flour/water/salt/other

eat the crackers w some soup if you have anything you can puree into soup

not at the moment unfortunately, I do have stuff to make anchovy stock though (left over from making a few korean stews a few months ago during my then-rare windows of having time to cook)

you can make tomato soup!

could, yeah, at least once (also have a lot of miso)

idk if there are asian groceries near you but they are open and stocked pretty well afaict
get some kombu + bonito flakes + dried shiitakes + noodles/greens of your choice and go nuts w miso soup!
i made it recently w this recipe https://thewoksoflife.com/superfood-miso-soup/

you can toss in whatever you like
dried shiitakes are pretty versatile too

all that stuff is shelf-stable too
miso soup is the best, i'm gonna make it again as soon as i run out of things to eat

there's an H Mart that normally I would say is "near" me but without public transportation it's about 30-40 blocks

this may be too personal but do you live in chicago?

i have heard that Devon Market is pretty well stocked, Tai Nam on Broadway, Fresh Farms on Touhy looked surprisingly well stocked this morning aside from chicken and butter ?!!?

katherine, have you tried a bodega for just some pasta/rice/noodles/eggs.

nope, nyc

xp -- yeah, I'm planning on doing a grocery run later today, at last check the bodega still had that kind of thing; what I am more concerned about is two, three, four, etc. weeks out

don't worry about that yet, just focus on now
worrying about the future is futile/catastrophizing doesn't help

hard to tell what's catastrophizing in a catastrophe but that is a topic for another thread

my point is that if you have no food right now, get some eggs and whatnot and worry about the rest later! there are eggs on shelves.

Easter is coming, so egg suppliers have been gearing up to deliver a much larger quantity of eggs than normal.

The overall supply of non-perishable groceries hasn't shrunk at all. The big problem right now is that the normal smooth flow of supply and demand disappeared under a tsunami of end-consumer demand, so that 5x more carloads of stuff than normal swiftly got transferred from stores into people's homes. This can't instantly be replaced. It will take many extra truckloads of stuff getting delivered t stores to remedy this imbalance and there aren't any more trucks out there than there were last week. Give it time and the stuff will arrive.

thought jesus said easter was cancelled this year

But He didn't cancel the hens.

has cancel culture gone too far

(also, for an actually worthwhile contribution to this thread, this is a very adaptable template; just made this the other day: https://smittenkitchen.com/2010/03/spinach-and-chickpeas)

btw: The I Love Cheese Board has much more recent, active cooking threads.

fuck it, going to make me some onion bhajis with 6 month past its sell-by date gram flour, because google told me its ok and it would be a sin to waste good flour at this current time of scarcity.

We found a kg bag of 00 flour in the cupboard, expiration date 2017. What exactly goes bad in flour anyway?

as a precaution I spooned some of the the top layer of the bag in the bin, but probably didn't need to it looks absolutely fine.

I wouldn't hesitate to use 6 month past flour. Might not have optimal results/flavor depending on the application, but it won't hurt you.

onion bhajis turned out fine by my standards, fuck the modesty they were extra nice!

I recently made arepas with areapa flour that expired in January 2019 because I really wanted arepas. They tasted like something that expired a year and a half ago.

6 months is probably not so bad but i had some chickpea flour that was 18 months past and it had that characteristic rancid stink. 00 flour probably fine because it's white--no oily brown parts to go bad.

yeah - in California i have found my only caveat to using old white flour is checking for weevils/flour moths - our summers get SO hot that it can def fuck w my flour if i am not careful.

but otherwise, go crazy!

what are people's fave falafel recipes? I've been getting into the habit of making them frequently recently. Mine are quite boring but nice: processed chick peas, onion, garlic, gram flour, cumin, coriander, fresh flat-leaf parsley, sesame seeds, cayenne pepper. just would be interested to hear other falafel ideas.

I too am interested

i always just buy the mix :/

I do not and will not own a deep fat fryer but luckily Leather Lane has about 10 different great falafel joints.

big pot! frying oil! slotted spoon! cheesecloth to strain the oil and re-use (next time more fragrantly!)

Tiny flat! Fine mist of frying oil over everything!

Also the best felafel I know can be had for five pieces for £1 (“If you can wait two minutes we’ll give you fresh ones!”) at the Middle Eastern ship on my way home from the farmer’s market.

looking at online recipes the only ingredient mine have been missing is fresh dill and some recommend refrigerating the mix for at least an hour before cooking and add a little baking powder before rolling them.

oh god fresh dill. One of the greatest things ever. My kids hate potatoes (!?) so I haven't made any dill potato salad in a long time. fuck em though. It's that time of year.

How does anyone hate a potato! I need to dig into this, what are their views on chips and crisps?

One of them will tolerate them, the other refuses to countenance even a Walker's BBQ. It's astounding. The root of it (heh) as far as I can tell is a memory of eating a particularly 'floury' jacket potato once and finding the texture so disgusting that its memory has tainted everything potato-related since.

i have been making this lentil soup w fresh dill weekly for what feels like months -- i love it and never get sick of it!
https://myheartbeets.com/instant-pot-dill-lentil-soup/

as for falafel, when i have made it at home i have used a mix from a middle eastern bakery and baked it in the oven rather than deep frying. still tastes great! don't miss the frying or the oil.

I've gotten into regular shallow frying recently partly cos I like it and also for the quite weirdly ridic reason that when I do it in my carbon steel wok it seasons it beautifully for when I do stir fries/fried rice type scram!

might have to get some cheesecloth my habit of filtering the fat with a funnel and kitchen roll are often too messy.

made the bon apetit falafel and it went over much better than expected. Got rave reviews from my partner and 2 friends. Partner said 'take out quality' and then upgraded to 'best ever had' which is super rare.

we were on 2nd bottle of wine, though. That said, it is a good recipe. Made the zahav mujadara to eat with and an herby tahini sauce that was a hybrid of the bon apetit and zahav recipes.

made potato salad today with dill relish and fresh dill, used Yukon gold potatoes and managed not to overcook them

one cooking gadget i got recently that i highly recommend: a Dash egg cooker. Makes perfect hard boiled eggs way more easily and quickly than cooking them in a pot. Haven't tried the poach or soft-boil settings yet.

"Boils up to 12 eggs at a time"

not a recommended feature to test out if you have a prescription for lactulose solution!

sorry not being flippant, but don't understand how you can fuck up a perfect hard-boiled egg in a simple pan full of boiling water.

I would like to try the egg cooker.

I boil multiple eggs at once for convenience, starting with placing them in a pot in cold water, bringing it to a boil, then immediately covering the pot, taking it off the heat and letting them sit for 8-10 minutes. I like that the egg yolks are slightly soft and not gray around the edges, but it seems like at least one of the eggs splits during the heating process, which I am always confounded by.

also, sometimes the hard-boiled eggs are almost impossible to peel easily, I read somewhere that has to do with their freshness, but I've never found a remedy for that

you just cool them down for a few minutes in cold water, maybe with an occasional running cold tap. You only have problems peeling them if you do do it too soon imo

I will try that

finicky first world solutions! Sorry I'm not trying to be rude here and will shut up.

Use a pressure cooker (4 min high pressure) to hard cook eggs and even the fresh ones are easy to peel. That's how commercial hard cooked peeled eggs are done.

that sounds pretty definitive. I don't use pressure cookers at all and would be interested to hear more on what you can do with them.

I used to get up at 4.30 am every morn and make egg mayo and grilled bacon sandwiches to get me through my working day 10 years ago, seems like a different world to me now.

pressure cookers are so good, big rec as well if you like making curries

The Dash cooker steams them and they’re easy to peel. As Dan says, there’s all these steps that I can’t be bothered with, esp if I just want a couple of eggs.

had my first go with a pressure cooker earlier. Waiting on a supermarket delivery so there wasn't much to play with but did a sauce with some vine tomatoes that were left. Was very impressed with how rich + flavoursome the sauce was just after 20 mins of cooking. Going to have some fun with this.

It's like magic, it's crazy

It's crazy fun playing with the floating release valve when it's at full pressure as well!

i would suggest not doing that especially if there's a lot of liquid in there!

it makes really good chili that doesn't have to cook for a long time. i just basically throw in every single ingredient, stir, and cook it at high pressure for 10 min. i've even done it without breaking up the meat. i just broke it up after it was done, though it's probably better to saute it first and break it up, then dump the rest of the stuff in. it really is magic.

this lady has a bunch of great pressure cooker recipes https://twosleevers.com/cookingstyle/instant-pot/

Nice one, harbl thanks.

I'm so annoyed it's taken me so long to get one. I used to think it would be expensive with loads of annoying removeable parts that are a pain in the arse to wash. Got a decent 5 l stovetop one for 25 quid and there is only one part including the lid!

I made this last night & goddamn it turned out so freaking good

https://nomnompaleo.com/instant-pot-vietnamese-pork-stew

(the site name gives me the cringe but she has great recipes! her slow cooker recipes are almost always reliably good too)

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VS0AAOSw4z5ftVQL/s-l140.jpg

got this silicone garlic peeler for two quid, and it's a game changer.

yes they’re great! i got one for Mr Veg a while back & he uses it all the time. I still like the old fashioned knife-bash myself mostly but theyre excellent when you need intact cloves

and some cloves are much harder to peel than others, sometimes you get those "miracle cloves" where the skin practically falls off with one little tap!

I always give them a good snack with a pestle. Job done!

lol I used to have a pebble that I pounded them with, which I saw someone on cooking youtube doing, but I gave it up when I kept splatting them!

JFC autocorrect is actively hostile to me rn

fair enough correct in the context tbf!

I have lamb and puff pastry and I'm thinking of making Borek but that recipe calls for filo dough. Can I make this work with puff pastry?
https://www.recipetineats.com/borek-turkish-spiced-lamb-filo-pastry/

YO someone just gave us a used Instant Pot and I am TOTALLY making that woman's butter chicken recipe, harbl!!! Tonight.

I've never used one of these so I may have questions later.

I wasn't actually crazy about the butter chicken recipe as is, but at one point I took that recipe, added more cumin and some coriander to the spices, pre-cooked them with onions before putting them in the pot, dumped in a bag of frozen spinach, and ended up with a pretty good though completely inauthentic chicken spinach curry thing.

You do have to make sure you have enough liquid in the pot with improvised recipes like that or it doesn't seal. Especially if you sauté anything in the pot before pouring everything else in, make sure you deglaze it really well and then listen/watch for it actually sealing up and starting to pressure cook. I've accidentally boiled chicken a couple of times bc the pot just kept cooking and not sealing.

I don't know what any of that means but I'll try!

The recipe I meant is from https://twosleevers.com/cookingstyle/instant-pot/ I was also thinking about a spinach component, though I can do that separately. I'm intrigued by the idea of cooking the rice in the pot at the same time, with something holding the rice bowl above the sauce. Was def planning to add some cardamom etc since we have all that stuff.

Yes, sorry, that was a really unclear post I just wrote.

The two sleevers butter chicken recipe is the first instant pot recipe I ever made. And I'm glad I made it! It didn't end up being my favorite recipe ever - I think it's just richer than I actually like - but it's a really good base for adding things to once you get more confident with the instant pot and are ready to improvise.

No it was fine! I just don't really understand how pressure cooking works, w/r/t what you said about it not sealing if there's not enough liquid?

i agree. the butter chicken is a little bland. you need to add stuff.

What I was trying to say is that the instant pot only works if you're making something with at least a quarter cup of liquid in it, ideally more, and if there's nothing stuck to the pot itself. When in doubt, pour in a little water or broth and stir to make sure nothing is stuck.

It will make a quiet roaring noise as it's getting up to pressure, and it will shoot out steam for a minute as it's getting ready to seal, and you'll wonder if it's supposed to be doing that, and then the noise and the steam will suddenly stop and it will lock down and start counting down the minutes. Mine occasionally does a thing where it fails to do that, and I end up with boiled chicken instead of pressure-cooked chicken, but that only happens when I'm trying variations on recipes and I've messed up.

Hahah that play-by-play is actually very helpful, ty.

That little metal thingie needs to have enough steam under it to push it all the way up and keep it there. It something gums up its movement, it can't seal, so make sure it moves freely before you put the lid on. Also, if it gets a little sideways, it can help to poke it with a chopstick or something long and narrow so you don't get burned, to kind of knock it straight.

yeah my old one used to sometimes fail to seal properly and boil off the water because i was covering the valve up a tiny bit so it couldn't pop up. new one is designed better.

I've just discovered cooked.wiki/ and hoo boy...

It takes out all the rambling and noise of a recipe webpage. Completely life changing.

My Step Mom used to make a appetizer called (salupbow). They were pork filled steamed DUMPLINGS!. Do you know of which I speak

― Sharon Welles, Friday, April 23, 2004 12:12 PM (nineteen years ago)

I believe OP was referring to 小笼包, the mighty xiaolongbao and yes Sharon, I am embarrassingly familiar with that which you speak.

omg brownie thank you - incredible!

My partner can't eat alliums (garlic, onion, shallots etc) which is challenging. Recently realized that ginger and lemongrass makes a great alternate flavor base.

nice! have you ever seen the chef's table episode with Jeong Kwan? she doesn't use alliums, so there might be some more ideas there for you.

Holy shit at cooked.wiki!

I haven't seen that episode, but will check it out. Thanks!

talking of garlic - the callouses on my left hand mincing veg fingers have cracked again and feel very sore in contact with wet minced garlic. A minor quibble, but I need to learn how to stop my skin cracking.

BROWNIE YOU LEGEND ILU

^^^

Bon Appetit!

Oh sheesh, my current (terrible) method of saving recipes involves editing the text of the bookmark to mention "add more salt", "too much flour", etc. I'll have to give cooked.wiki a go, looks way better

I got the Paprika recipe when it was on sale for like $2 and it’s amazing - you put the recipe url into the app’s browser and it pulls the ingredients and directions into two separate tabs (and cuts out everything else). It’s been great because I’ve been telling myself for years I’ll write down all these recipes and I never do.

I was in an Asian supermarket earlier and noticed that a mediumish (100g?) sized box of saffron costs £120 these days. I haven't bought any for years and paid about £6 for a tiny matchbox sized supply of it last time, probably ten years ago. It's not like I wasn't aware that it was expensive af. I appreciate it's an ingredient you use sparingly and small amounts go a long way. But still... I think I'll pass.

100g is probably a lifetime supply of saffron.

I used to put a pinch into some warm milk for biriyani. Not used it as an ingredient for years and can't remember if it's worth its weight in gold!

You should always buy it in the smallest quantity possible as freshness matters. That big box will go stale before anyone other than a restaurant could use it up.

For 120$ it must have been ten grams. Saffron is handpicked and only produced in a few countries.

I get the matchbox of saffron every few years but the Il Tre Cuochi brand of sachets are great and if there’s an Italian shop near you, they should have them.

fuck, yeah. 100g was a crazy overestimation of weight. That would be your retirement saffron.

ive got a while off work and i went through my pinned or saved lists of recipes id put aside for when i had the chance and ive done a big shop today to cover:

harissa roast chicken with chickpeas, peach/hot pepper sauce

Basque baked cheesecake

housekeepers cut for slow roast, maybe put into a pie?

normandy cider chicken pot

gruyuere cabbage

when exactly we are going to eat it all idk tbh

normandy cider chicken pot
this sounds intriguing

Dug out the slow cooker this morning: beef, onion, potatoes, carrots & mushrooms in a beef stock, with a half can of diced tomatoes
stole some rosemary from my neighbor... I didn't have any red wine open so I added a little amontillado medium sherry.. some savory, thyme, pepper corns, garlic

Smelling pretty good so far

I'm guessing that's gonna be some combo of chicken, garlic, shallots or onions, cider, cream, Dijon mustard, maybe tarragon or whatever? Can also be done with white wine. You can't really go wrong there.

harissa roast chicken with chickpeas, peach/hot pepper sauce

This sounds tasty, do you remember where you found the recipe? I made something similar last night with harissa-tossed cauliflower and chickpeas, with pomegranate seeds providing the sweetness.

i think its findable under "urfa chicken" but im short on urfa rn

i saw it as a short on Instagram

xp to lg that wouldnt be far off

at the moment I'm doing a lot of a Spanish fried potatoes, bell peppers, onions, garlic and ev olive oil recipe sometimes known as Papas a lo pobre. That title is rather at odds with the extortionate price of extra virgin olive oil at the moment. In terms of the taste quality to minimum effort to cook ratio, it's a winner. It's the perfect side and is so healthy. Also a simple recipe with infinite adaptations you can make. Love this stuff.

It sounds like a twist on what I might call “home fries”? I made some for breakfast today - some paprika, garlic, Old Bay, and er, butter rather than olive oil

yeah this recipe uses sweet paprika as well and I guess most fried potato dishes are samey. But I think the extra virgin olive oil makes a whole lot of difference to taste and cholesterol, not that I'm knocking butter, because I love it and definitely overuse it!

was going to say the low smoke point of extra virgin olive oil means you cook the potatoes slower at a lower heat, but apparently this is a misconception and it actually has a smoke point between 175-210°C.

We also do a lot of potatoes in the oven - pre-boil them and then roast them with plenty of olive oil and you can add you herb of choice (parsley or rosemary). Goes with a lot of things, fish and salad for example.

Since this thread is open, had delicious meatballs yesterday, the new recipe is to add coriander leaves + pods in the meat with the usual (onion, breadcrumbs, egg, garlic). Those pods are the best thing ever. Once the meatballs are fried and removed, you do your sauce in the same pan: onion, tomato, cumin, coriander powder, we used to add yoghurt but that's optional. Usually have them with rice.

at some point I got it in my head that extra virgin olive oil was for drizzling on bread, salads etc and you only should use the lighter coloured higher smoke point olive oil when cooking. I was wrong.

the lovely Emma B frowns on it for cooking but not because of smokepoint but because she says it’s more expensive so it’s a waste to fry with it because you can’t taste the flavour. we have an ongoing low-level feud about this.

I think if I was cooking a steak I'd use groundnut or whatever, for general stuff I use olive oil but not EV cos of the price.

Tho idk frying an egg or something you can do gently and EV can add nice flavour.

*furtively adds lg’s post to the dossier*

A quick fried egg in extra virgin olive oil is so good. No flipping required; just tilt the pan and use a spoon to bath the top in the olive oil just to set it. Takes like 2 minutes total.

xps as Tracer says that's what we call "home fries" in the USA, it is standard Greek-American diner ("greasy spoon") fare. Went through a brief phase of making it for breakfast every day a couple of months back, that was a mistake. I'm up 20 lbs since December.

eggs fried in olive oil is nuts to me. that’s like the one time butter is mandatory

otherwise I agree with this emma person, esp for weeknight dinners where food critics are not involved. any oil will do, the taste is not going to overwhelm provided you’re not overdoing the oil

Butter first, until it starts to foam, then a small splash of olive oil to keep it from burning, then the eggs.

my default recipe these days is something like this:

cabbage (napa, savoy or red), thinly sliced
golden beets, peeled and thinly sliced, grilled on both sides and then matchsticked
chile (serrano, etc.), thinly sliced
shallot or red onion, thinly sliced, rinsed through water
crushed peanuts
cilantro
option carrot and red pepper if they're around

toss all that together, proportion amounts as you see fit, and then dress it with either a olive oil/red wine vinaigrette or go an asian route with sesame oil/fish sauce/etc.

This is the "Patatas a lo Pobre" recipe I got into, for those extra virgin olive oil sceptics - I say try dis!

Ingredients
3 yukon gold potatoes
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
2 small onions
6 cloves garlic
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil 65 ml
sea salt & black pepper
handful freshly chopped parsley
Instructions
Cut 3 yukon gold potatoes into rounds that are a 1/4 inch thick, then cut each slice into 4 evenly sized quarters, add the potatoes into a stock pot, fill with cold water, just enough to cover the potatoes, heat with a high heat

Meanwhile, cut 1 green bell pepper into thin strips, 1 red bell pepper into thin strips, thinly slice 2 small (or 1 large) onions, and cut a slit on 6 cloves of garlic (skins on)

Exactly 10 minutes after turning the heat on the potatoes they should be cooked al dente, you dont want to over cook them, or they will break apart when you fry them, pierce one with a toothpick, if it easily goes in but with resistance, they are perfect, drain into a strainer and run some cold water over the potatoes

Heat a large deep pan with a medium-high heat and add in 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, after 1 minute add in the sliced onion and the cloves of garlic, mix with the olive oil, after 2 to 3 minutes and the onions are translucent, add in the strips of green and red bell pepper, continue to mix with the olive oil, after 6 minutes and the bell peppers are tender, add in the boiled potatoes, gently mix together so the olive oil is coating all the potatoes, mix every 1 to 2 minutes

About 12 to 15 minutes after adding the potatoes and they have developed a light golden color, season everything with sea salt & black pepper, mix together and transfer everything into a large serving dish, sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley.

I don't boil the potatoes for 10 mins, that's effing ridiculous - just 2 minutes is plenty.

2 minutes from rolling boil, that is.

I think tbf if doing a Spanish dish like that I would use EV.