What's cooking? part 4

I roasted a bunch of turnips and rutabagas the other day. I've been using them as the starch in my meals instead of potatoes or rice or pasta. Pretty satisfied with the results so far.

I have some leftover Thai chicken that is oily and meh. Would it be a very bad idea to blend with stock, herbs and a lot more chilis and turn it into soup?

sounds like a fine idea.

Will report back.

no!! don't put chicken in a blender it will be so aesthetically unappealing. tear it into pieces and put in soup. blend the rest, but i've seen someone do this once with Mexican tortilla soup and it was an abomination, culinarily speaking, imho

oh yeah i didn't read blend as literally, do what outdoor miner says.

yeah I wasn't going to blend the actual chicken, agree that would be odd, I'll tear it up. Wait, what kind of leftovers was the tortilla soup made of?...

it wasn't leftovers. it was a actual Mexican sous chef in a cafe kitchen making soup for service and being a complete idiot

OH MY GOD I AFTER 3 FAILED ATTEMPTS I FOUND THE TORTILLALAND BRAND TORTILLAS AT A SHOPRITE IN NEW JERSEY!!!!!!

https://media.giphy.com/media/MEtSuIu6qu0HC/giphy.gif

omg these tortillas

how are these real

in my own home????

i can die now after having these tortillas, i am at peace w/ life

I wonder if they'd be good as chips - fluff them in the pan then fry or stick them in an oven for a while?

Roasted brussels sprouts in pork fat - tasty but man do I burn out on them after about ten.

Somebody that ESPN pays money to talk about basketball said that he'd be a bust because he "has soft eyes"

help i need a few pots and can't decide between tri-ply stainless steel or hard anodized aluminum! All my exp w/ stainless steel before has been STICKY STICKY STICKY, everything sticks! But maybe I'm just not doing it right. Also you can apparently use metal stuff w/ steel where yr not supposed to w/ anodized. But any advice? What is the real advantage of stainless steel?

feel like anodized gets a bad rap but i have a big calphalon straight-sided sautee pan with a lid that i really like, i am unaware of any abuse that pan can't handle. great for searing, braising, all sorts of one-pot dishes.

Yeah! From what I gather, it's more nonstick than str8 fire stainless but it still develops a nice fond for deglazing

I love my stainless steel – got a nice set about 17 years ago and it's still in great shape. I can't think of anything I cook that is prone to sticking other than eggs, and I keep a good nonstick skillet in the house for them.

we got a set of calphalon tri-ply saucepans & sautee pans 13 years ago and love them. cleanup is easy, never had any problems.

we have a couple of anodized frying pans & they are good for eggs, omelets & when you need a slippery surface.

no reason it has to be either/or - you can have both!

i love cooking with stainless and hate everything else. if it sticks you aren't heating it up enough and not leaving things to cook for long enough before trying to flip. with some exceptions. the advantage of it is imo the fact that it does not stick and great browning!

Yeah let the pan get hotter and let the food sit longer and it will eventually release from the pan. Not totally nonstick but that's a feature not a bug if you're making pan sauces. Like WilliamC I've got some stainless pieces that are over 15 years old now and are totally unbreakable.

i use cast iron for everything tbh, unless I need a saucepan or a soup pot, in which case stainless steel is fine

never made a pie from scratch before ... until yesterday. :)

Congratulations! Pies have simple ingredients, but getting them to behave requires a deft touch. I hope your turned out satisfactorily.

pies rule

My mom's apricot nectar cake is what rules.

whoa that sounds delicious

Basically a sour cream pound cake with some apricot nectar in the cake batter, + some more soaked into the cooling cake, + a simple glaze of more apricot nectar + powdered sugar + a little lemon juice for tartness.

O_O

want!!!

Modify with the Jumex nectar of your choice – mango or peach would be good. Actually now that I have a line on really good sour cherry nectar, I might make one of those.
http://www.sayadmarket.com/product_images/f/459/Tamek_Sour_Cherry_Nectar_Juice_11_5oz__48366_zoom.jpg

anyone played with ~aquafaba~? i tried a chocolate mousse but i fucked it somehow and the chocolate seized. tasted alright though. i want to eventually be able to make vegan macarons, but would be happy achieving a nice meringue or mousse.

i would like to know what type of pot stevie decided to get and i hope he got stainless because it is the best

cosign

i second the "i use cast iron for everything" when i don't want something to stick (eg when cooking a protein), and a strong acid isn't being used. my fave cooking utensil is my le creuset cocotte (cast iron with enamel inside coating) - you can braise or fry, it has tight fitting lid and can go from oven to tabletop, it's pretty non-stick by nature. . . stainless is terrific, too - i kinda need all three

God I hate stainless so much, which obviously means I don't know what I'm doing because you cooks seem to love it. Give me cast iron for everything that needs to get brown, though.

stellar pots otm

For stainless steel imo there's a big difference between cheap and pricier stuff. I bought an entry-level set, but bought an all-clad frying pan and don't regret the extra expense. The cheaper stuff is great for boiling but not so good for sauteeing or searing.

With cast iron, you don't have to pay much to get great results, and you can do a lot of stuff you can't do with stainless.

well, there is but i think the most important thing is it has to be 3-ply. last year i got an all-clad saute pan and it's the best thing that ever happened to me. however, for several years i was using a kitchen aid pan i got for like $20-30 at target. it was also great but had no lid. i think the major difference and part of why it was so cheap was only the bottom was thick. you can see the seam between the bottom and the upper part of the pan.

well, there is but i think the most important thing is it has to be 3-ply.

^^^ yessssss

I kind of hate to admit to buying stuff from HSN, but I was channel surfing one day right after we first got Directv and Wolfgang Puck was flogging his first (I think) signature cookware collection. My wife says "ehhh, you're impossible to shop for – buy that and that's my birthday present to you this year." Anyway, that was some top quality shit and it serves me well to this day, the end.

agree w/all, for saucepans and stockpots i am a big believer in restaurant supply brands but would drop $$$ on a skillet/sautee pan.

yup my only stockpot is like target's cheapest piece of shit and it's fine. i want a much bigger one though. i made a big batch of mashed sweet potatoes yesterday for freezing and i could only fit 6 in my pot. i need to fit about 9 to make use of all of costco's $10 sack of sweet potatoes.

3-ply is u&k

Best deal I ever got on anything in my life is my 8qt all-clad stockpot. Someone had broken up a set and there was some slight model change happening so I got it for $44. I was returning a wedding gift so I traded a crystal punch bowl or something equally useless for that and $10.

A disk bottom one would be fine for most stuff I use it for but man is it nice.

Ya I would never not buy 3-ply if buying stainless. Aggghh, I came in here looking for reassurance to buy hard anodized but everyone loves stainless but I still don't understand why stainless is better than hard anodized!!

I have one anodized piece, and it's an odd slope sided pan so I don't use it that often. It seems to do all the things that stainless does but all things being equal I would much rather have the bright shiny surface as it makes browning of pan juices much easier to see.

Nonstick and cast iron are similarly dark but have other advantages that make up for this.

Sorry Stevie, but I'm on Team Stainless. I've used nice anodized stuff when housesitting, and I just didn't bond with it like I did with my All-Clad. All-Clad protip: you can get factory seconds online; basically all of my pieces are seconds and I'll be damned if they aren't excellent. Maybe a scratch on the outside but whatever, I bang mine up anyway.

Tramontina makes a line of good nonstick with an off-white cooking surface. xp

I got a Oxo stainless set with a BB&B gift card because the handles were super comfortable and everything I've bought from Oxo has been pretty good. Made the mistake of making scrambled eggs in the saucepan day two and wasn't gentle enough with the heat I guess. Scrambled eggs freaking weld themselves to stainless.

i don't have the patience to learn to cook eggs in stainless & can't control heat well enough on my stupid electric stovetop. i believe that it is possible.

i grew up w/ an electric range, we had those coil things for a while, then my parents bought one of those flat glass/ceramic electric ranges and they've had that since. i hate the fucking thing, also you can't use cast iron on it because it can scratch or crack the ceramic surface. but growing up, my dad taught me how to cook fried eggs "peruvian style" which is basically heating a shitload of olive oil super hot (almost to smoking) in a skillet, crack the eggs in, and spoon all that excess oil over the top of the egg, and the eggs cook very very fast, and they come out super crispy on the edges, white is perfectly cooked, yolk is drippy and perfect for bread dipping, somehow the hot oil spooned over puts this very thin membrane of cooked egg white over the yolk like you might achieve doing over-easy, the whole technique is like flash-frying your eggs in hot olive oil. it's my favorite way to cook eggs, and a stainless steel skillet on my parents' electric ceramic range is honestly the very best way i've ever been able to achieve the ideal peruvian eggs. i have gas in my home now and i would never, ever, choose to have electric but i have tried and tried to cook eggs this way in my cast iron skillet on my gas range and it never comes out the way it does at my folks house in a stainless steel skillet on their glass smoothtop electric. that said i would never try scrambled eggs in a stainless steel skillet.

like something about the extremely high heat you can get from an electric range in such a short period of time combined with the heat conduction of stainless lets me flash fry these eggs in a way that i cannot achieve w/ cast iron on my gas stove at home. i heat this stainless skillet for like just a few minutes and it is hot as fuck. the eggs bubble up and the edges crisp immediately and oil is splattering every and it is a little scary tbh because i always get a little burned from the oil flying everywhere but it is so good. my dad always has good crusty bread around plus some alphonso olives and some feta cheese and that is always breakfast at my folks' house