Cooking

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).

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.