I have been meaning to saute a bunch of onions and then just stick them in tupperware for later misuse.
n’duja is a really easy way to make a good meat sauce, if you can find it. trader joe’s had it like 5 years ago and then stopped carrying it.
soy chorizo plus 3 cans beans, 1 can corn, 1 can tomatoes is the lowest effort good chili. if you want to make it real good, saute an onion and 1-2 bell peppers til they’re soft, then add garlic, soy sauce, cumin, and whatever spices strike your fancy, maybe some worcestershire and some vinegar, and add that in along with the canned things.
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I am cosigning on the quesadillas - they are seriously my favorite quick “I’m hungry and need to eat” thing. They’re easy, they’re tasty, they’re a vehicle for condiments, they’re carbs! Put fried eggs on top of finished quesadillas and you have a weird delicious take on a breakfast sandwich. Open them up and use them as tortillas for a burrito or taco!
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This thread made me remember I have had an unopened thing of tortillas in the back of the fridge since forever. Which I have now filled with cheese and diced onions, and am toasting.
Hi this is gonna be a big post talking about and (hopefully) demystifying cheffy bullshit that is actually way simpler than it seems, and will hugely boost your food’s quality, imo, imo
More stuff on salt:
- So in my last post I said to switch to kosher if you’re currently using like ground sea salt because its more tactile. That’s still true just wanted to say it again. The shits pretty cheap too in them boxes with the lil spouts on the side
- Another question is when do you salt? At every step of the way! salt each product before it cooks, and salt as things come together, to taste. Salt makes things taste more, but there is obviously a line where it starts to taste like salt, and learning to skirt the line takes practice. Thats okay!
- When working with something you want to get crisp on the outside, salt it AHEAD OF TIME. For meats you can, and even should if you have the time and forethought and fridge room (I have none of these ever but hey maybe you will) salt it, then leave it uncovered in the fridge overnight the day before you’re going to use it. It’ll give the salt time to penetrate and flavor deeper inside, and combined with the fridge fan, will dry out the outside. BUT if you’re like me, just salt it and leave it out for like 20 minutes before you cook it. It’ll at least give it the time to penetrate some.
What the Fuck is a Maillard Reaction?
It’s the chemical reaction of heat causing sugar to caramellize! Obviously, this is what makes caramel, but it is ALSO what makes things golden brown and crispy! And, because it changes things chemically, it changes (improves) the flavor! It’s a big part of making food better, because it adds a new textural element and develops flavor (the bullshit term for making it taste better) To get that good good browning here are some tips:
- Moisture is the enemy of browning, because the heat will boil / steam the water, instead of causing reactions with the sugars. So, if you want to brown something with a lot of moisture inside of it that will leak out in cooking, like most vegetables or meat, then salt it well, and let it sit for a little bit (give it longer the bigger it is - a few minutes is fine for diced or sliced onion, but a big cut of something will need longer) to let the salt absorb moisture. The other easy trick is to dab it off with a towel so its dry on its exterior!
- The other big trick to browning is don’t fuck with it. Just let it hang out. If you try to move it and it doesn’t want to release from the pan, it’s not done browning!
Tricks of the Trade:
- Exact measurements are not as important as you think they are, unless you’re baking, in which case cups are pretty inexact and weighing in grams is way better
- Everything is a learning process, be kind to yourself! I fuck up everything on the regular not even just cooking, shit happens. It doesn’t matter what your mistake was, they happen and it’s how you learn!
Just don’t start a grease fire in your home making mozzarella sticks because you’re the dumbass who thought it would be fine to deep fry without a thermometer in the oil - that one was bad
There’s a million things I could talk about but I worry that 1) noone wants to hear this shit and 2) that I’m not actually wording this in an accessible way so I’m gonna stop now okay bye
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You were 100% accessible, and as long as it’s stuff that can easily be followed by complete cooking doofuses like me (which it has been so far) I definitely wanna hear more! Feel free to parse it out in installments if it makes you feel better, but regardless.
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salting scrambled eggs 5, 10, 15 minutes before you use them in whatever is very good, too - they hold onto their moisture
you’re doing great, organization is such a luxury here
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hello it is me, shrug, who some of you may have seen scowling at one or more rental house kitchen knives between scrapes on a synthetic rock–possibly while sporting bandaged hands because recent surgery/ies–in some of my greatest moments of self parody
you may be thinking to yourself: “dang, I have some knives that could really use a sharpening”
you may have lived a life unengaged with edge abrading, edge geometries, etc. up until now
because of this, you may go on to think, “I will just grab some strange machine that assures me of its ease, or some bits set at a fixed V in a plastic handle for $9 that will do all the sharpening work for me”
you may do these things, of course, if you are set on them
it’s your life; nobody can make you do anything; maybe your knives want/need some kind of sex swing
that’s between you and them!
but–as a weird obsessive and one-time Knife Professional–I would like to encourage anyone who has the time and/or inclination to carve (D:) out the space in their life and on some stable surface for a flat, and probably synthetic, rock
get a $15-25 india stone*
feel out the angle the edge wants to be, on that $15-25 india stone
rub that edge on that stone, over and again
maybe watch a youtube tutorial? idk? I’ve always done everything by feel but I also have adhd, etc.
don’t be afraid of the stone
the stone is here to help; the stone was made to help
working at the pace of your hands with the stone, it’s extremely difficult to fuck up an edge so badly that you cannot repair it with a tiny bit more work of hands + stone
thank you, and stone bless
*could also be an arkansas stone, a japanese water stone (just like in your japanese animes); many other stones that do not necessarily involve a Place Name
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I mean you can also pay somebody I guess
I was having trouble thinking of anything to add to this thread even though I cook constantly but
get a butter dish so you can always have usable, spreadable room temp butter
also get a salt pig so you can always salt stuff like @Khan says without using two hands for it
this is just about objects, pretty boring and probably barely usable if you aren’t a scab
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Listen to knifemaster Shrug, a whetstone is gonna get you a much better result than those bastardous scraping machines. We used them in a lot of the kitchens I’ve been in for quick fixes, because we went through over a dozen knives a week and received them professionally sharpened! But they aren’t good for your actual knife longevity
There’s lots of stuff online for how to use these and also how to use honing edges (which don’t actually sharpen your knife they, hone, it) but I will link this video from man-after-my-own-heart, Brad Leone
If you want to get into fermentation I wholeheartedly recommend his It’s Alive series, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, he’s a madman who can’t remember anything and doesn’t measure, which I respect because that’s how I live my life
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Yeah I just put salt in like a rammican or small bowl that I don’t use for much else and just leave it out all the time next to my pepper grinder
Brad Leone is the best ever, I love It’s Alive so much and I don’t even really like cooking shows. He’s just great.
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If anybody has a recommendation for what to do with a few tilapia filets I am all ears
Buy Chef Pauls Magic Seasoning and Tony Chachere’s and put it on everything.
Here’s how a Rudie cooks when it isn’t the six recipes his dad taught him. I read a dozen YUMMY QUICK EASY recipes by white women that have a fucking essay before the recipe until my eye starts twitching from /the madness/. I then take those 12 recipes and trianglate what is actually YUMMY (shit I add because none of these ding dongs believe in spice) EASY and QUICK (This is my first time cooking something it will take an hour and I will do some step backwards.)
Also if you are not vegetarian and live in America just buy andouille sausage because I can’t.
I recently asked a prochef I know saying I don’t know how to make a gravy. “You can make a roux though? Just make a lighter roux and add some water.” Oh. i said.
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dom deluise is killing it in the spice game
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THEY WERE CONTEMPORARIES 
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- cook finely diced/minced onions in pan with excess butter, med heat until translucent, use lots of salt
- coat tilap with salt+pep and turmeric, add and cook until just opaque both sides, remove
- squirt that pan with a bunch of lemon juice, scrape
- squirt in a little chicken broth if you want
- put in a little heavy cream
- put in some fresh herbs or dried stuff whatever you got that’s green in small bits and not a salad
- if it is watery let it cook, whatev; taste and add salt until slightly too salty
- pour over tilap, eat with long grain rice and steamed veggies
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what can you do with dried split peas that isnt split pea soup? can i do a lentil thing and replace the lentils with split peas?
Green split peas taste very distinctly like peas which I’ve always found very distracting in dal. Should work fine in a lentil soup or stew context, with tomatoes and onions and garlic and ground meat or broth, or in more of a varied curry with potatoes and tomatoes.
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