The super-basic questions thread for non-cooks

i'm hard on you lex because i've been there. there have been checks i failed to cash in time purely because i left the envelope lying unopened for like three months

if i could think of any cookbook to give lex it might be the long out of print "a cookbook for poor poets (and others)", which has a whole section on "one pot meals" and whose initial injunction is to have always, at a minimum, some bread, some butter, and a bottle of wine

For example:

Get a rotisserie chicken and pick off all the chicken. Use it to make salads! Tacos/tostadas! Sandwiches. Whatever. You do not have to actually cook the chicken to make things with the chicken. You just have to actually have edible food in your kitchen and put it together and then eat it.

I also hate opening mail btw. Love cooking, though.

problem with always having some bread if one is not actually a poor poet is that it translates to one always having some stale bread, and one always throwing a lot of bread away.

Ducks, ledge, ducks.

Though if you try feeding the ducks in London it quickly becomes a scene from The Birds.

i freeze bread! sometimes on the day of purchase, sometimes if i've had it lying around for a few days and know i won't be able to finish it before it gets mouldy. then it's just raw toast

there have been checks i failed to cash in time purely because i left the envelope lying unopened for like three months

my entire life

I lost (paper) plane tickets about 13 years ago because they were buried under a pile of mail I was avoiding. When I found them, I wrote NEVER LOSE ANYTHING EVER AGAIN on the envelope and I still have it.

and the plane tickets

organising my life is a process. i'm just about getting there w/r/t finances. i know where my keys are about 60% of the time which is a huge improvement.

i actually really like...unmixed food? idk whether this is odd. i like eating ingredients separately and will often do so way before i realise they can be put together.

Fine then, focus on things that require assembly rather than 'cooking'

Or just eat a handful of chicken

then a handful of lettuce followed by a handful of bread. it will make a sandwich in your stomach.

You do not have to actually cook the chicken to make things with the chicken.

This is the truest fact I have seen in all week. It's now on my office wall.

Re. bread freezing. Slice bread, put 2-3 slices per bag into freezer bag, can be debagged and toasted from frozen. Takes only a few seconds longer to toast than fresh bread.

This assumes you need to slice your own bread, I don't buy sliced, but if you do - even easier!

rice cooker oatmeal 4 life

Rotisserie chicken, if you can get a well-seasoned and tasty one that doesn't turn to pools of fat in the bag, from a pretty good grocer, is like the most useful thing ever. It makes SO MANY OTHER THINGS and can last one person like A WEEK.

Then if you are slightly more than a non-cooking cook, you can freeze those suckers to make stock with later without ever cleaning or roasting the chix yourself.

Plus they're like $5 or $6 usually!

We get them at Costco (it's on my way home from work) - inexpensive, hot and tasty. Chop meat + skin, mix with broccoli, cream, shredded cheese of some sort, bake if feeling fancy, nuke for 6 minutes if not, eat.

I like the costco chickens but since I rarely drive during the week, I just roast my own - it's pretty simple.

Yeah, I don't get home until well after 7 most nights anymore. We end up mostly roasting chicken thighs now instead of whole birds.

I do that a lot too. Good portion control and they cook pretty fast.

I don't get the hate for washing dishes upthread, I love washing dishes. anyway, I've never been able to get emulsifying a dressing? Any tips?

do you add mustard?

sometimes, depending on what sort of dressing I'm trying to make, but most of the dressings I've made from scratch failed to taste like I want them to.

I don't usually make "dressing" -- just oil + vinegar. Sometimes I've made vinaigrettes, but usually I just whip with a fork.

i whip my food back and forth

xxpost well mustard helps it emulsify

Just oil and vinegar gets old, I like flavor, like blue cheese vinaigrette or cucumber poppy seed vinaigrette or avocado vinaigrette, but they never work.

maybe you just need to shake them up in something, for a longer amount of time?

I never thought of using a shaker!

I use old jelly jars with screw-on lids. Spoonful of mustard right out of the jar + glug glug of red wine vinegar + 3 shakes of salt and 4 turns of pepper = shake up really well. Then glug glug glug of olive oil. Shake again. Taste. If too sharp and acidic, add more oil. If too tongue-coaty, add more vin.

Not all mustard/jelly jars seal liquid-tight, fyi. Shake over sink if yours leaks.

I've always used a whisk

lemon instead of vinegar can freshen up a salad, esp in summer with some torn up basil amidst the other leaves.

Nuh uh. This was the jelly jar is what the dressing is stored in. So if you end up having to add some ingreds to get it to taste right, you save the rest for later, it's not wasted. And it keeps for weeks and weeks. Just shake up again to use.

xp I love lemon acidity too but shhh was trying not to overwhelm w options.

*This way

rough guide i don't really follow:

lemon = lettuce-only salad, or maybe if you're having the salad alongside fish
vinegar = salad w/ tomatoes in

also sometimes olive oil is too strong to have in a salad and a thinner veg oil will work better

I put lemon on kale, usually, and red wine vin (maybe with a splash of balsamic if I want sweetness) on arugula & spinach salads. Don't really eat lettuce, I guess.

Just oil and vinegar gets old, I like flavor, like blue cheese vinaigrette or cucumber poppy seed vinaigrette or avocado vinaigrette, but they never work.

― JacobSanders, Friday, March 16, 2012 1:19 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

dude sounds like you should get a food processor or blender with that. also those tools totally emulsify the shit out of whatever you put in there

A good stick blender is worth every penny.

true dat i have a small food pro, a blender (which i never use for anything other than beverages) and the stick blender. and i use them often, boyo.

emulsifyin up what have u

realized that i shd probably start talking cooking over here instead of doing wheelies all over the ILE threads :)

- jelly jars for salad dressing is the easiest. emulsifies really good.
- different flavored vinegars like red wine, white wine, balsamic etc is an easy way to change dressing but that's probably super way too obv
- mustard awesome in dressing, also dried herbs can be kinda useful here if you aren't averse to keeping them around

- I was told of a salad mixing trick that tends to work pretty well for distribution:
- put the dressing in the bottom of the empty salad bowl (usually only a couple of TBs is all you need, unless you like a really super-wet-crazily-dressed salad.
- put veggies/all your salad extras in the bowl, minus the leafs
- put the leafs in last
- take your salad mixers or two spoons or w/e and grab what's on the bottom and pull it to the top. Do that a few times til everything's mixed.
- salad: tossed

This assumes you need to slice your own bread, I don't buy sliced, but if you do - even easier!

Where in the world would you even buy unsliced bread?

Of course you can find unsliced baguettes, but not regular loaf bread.

a good bakery will sell unsliced loaves

I often use empty spice jars for my dressing, as it usually makes enough in the jar for one salad!

lemonjuice based dressing, also good on a basic pasta salad (cold cooked spiral pasta, a few chopped things eg olives, spinach leaves, sundried tomatoes, artichokes from a jar, etc), dressing, stir. Tuna also if yr not veggie.

The food co-op here bakes good bread and sells them unsliced. They have a self-serve automatic bread slicing machine by the checkout though should you desire to have it sliced, which I usually opt to do.

Jesse, Treasure Island sells unsliced bread that they will slice for you in their slicing machine.