It’s a full-on recipe, but it’s incredibly easy, so fuck the rules.
Chili Dip
Ingredients:
1 Stick cream cheese (8oz.)
2 or 3 cans of chili (ordinary can of food size, ~15oz – any brand, type, whatever)
Tortilla chips (for serving)
Steps:
Pick a pot large enough to hold the chili and cream cheese.
Dump all the chili into the pot. Cut the cream cheese up into a few big chunks, toss them into the pot.
Put the pot on medium heat on stove. Stir every minute or so.
When it comes to a low simmer (five minutes) lower the heat, start stirring more often.
Keep stirring until the cream cheese has fully mixed into the chili and there are aren’t any obvious cream cheese chunks anymore.
Take off heat. Serve with tortilla chips.
Probably the first recipe I ever learned. Been making it since before I was a teenager. Bless these last two decades of chili dip by my own hands.
Bonus:
Can also make it in a microwave easily. Just cover the bowl with something – paper towel, microwave-safe plate, whatever – so you don’t get splatters. Nuke it for 2 minutes, stir, 2 minutes, stir, then 1 minute, stir, 1 minute, stir, etc, etc, until it’s fully mixed.
Refrigerates well, can easily keep for a week or longer. I have some in my fridge right now in fact. Just warm it back up in the microwave and it’s good as new.
If you want it spicier, throw in some cayenne pepper (to taste, probably like ~1/4tsp per can? you do you though).
I think a thing it’s often useful to remember is how, like, all cuisine comes about for the same reason Mario has a mustache and a hat and overalls. Most of the things we like to eat, someone didn’t just get clever and invent them for the hell of it; they’re a result of people trying to make the best of what they had on-hand. They didn’t want to throw stuff away, so they found clever ways to preserve or reuse it.
Ergo the thing I said in the other thread about how I realized I had several bags of tortilla chip crumbs that I was reluctant to throw away, and then I remembered that nachos are a thing. It’s almost a waste to make nachos with full, fresh chips. You can use those for other things. But when you’ve got a bunch of broken ends going stale, you’ve got a choice of tossing them (don’t!), eating them as-is (annoying and unsatisfying), or trussing them up and making something out of them.
Yep! God making do is how all of the best shit happened
Hang on to all your vegetable trimmings - the skins, the stems, all those bits you don’t want to eat, and those whole veg that are on their way out and need to be used like, yesterday. Throw them in a pot, pit in enough water to cover, let it simmer for as long as you are willing and you’ve got stock that’s better n anything you’ll find at the store. If ya do meat then also pleeeaaase hang on to the bones for this
You want a darker stock? Brown the vegetables in the pot first. Want a clearer stock? Baby it for the first hour of simmering and skim off all the scum that rises to the surface with a spoon
After it’s cooked for the amount of time you want it to (I usually put it on in the morning on a Sunday or something and kill it at night) you’ll have stock with a bunch of terrible gray vegetables in it - all of their flavor color and nutrients has been sucked out and made into the broth! Strain them out when you pour the stock into containers
The common wisdom is to not season it since you’ll season in whatever you use it in
All fermentation is also just making do! Alchohol and pickles and lactofermentations it’s all just making shit go farther
Vinegar is just alchohol that got fermented, again
I saw a street food video of someone making egg sandwiches in a particular way so I recreated it at home, and it turns out to be the easy + best egg sandwiches I’ve ever had
Start making a french style omelet, and when the edges have solidified, dip two slices of bread, both sides, into the center of the omelet. Leave the bread in the omelet while the omelet continues to cook. Once it’s solid enough that you can flip it, do so, so that the bread is on the bottom. Wait maybe 15 seconds, flip the edges of the omelet into the center, flip one slice of bread + egg onto the other, so that it forms a sandwich. Press down once or twice, and wait for the bread to brown on the bottom. Flip over so that the other slice can brown on the bottom, and serve onto a plate.
It’s basically an egg sandwich where the bread is savory french toast, and it takes maybe 5 minutes to make if you know how to make omelets. If you don’t, just
i just made this and (a) hot dang that was quick, easy, and good and (b) i think this might supplant one-eyed gashouse eggs in circle bread basket owned by a toad named Jack in a hole as my preferred method of cooking eggs and bread together
DAPHNY: I think it’s cool you smoke green with me.
DAPHNY: Have you ever toked out and played videogames?
TULPA: Ah, [hitting joint] I’m older than most. It’s beyond me.
DAPHNY: I’ll teach you.
TULPA: I’m not sure.
DAPHNY: Why? It’s easy, father.
this all happened except i would never say THE GREEN. i am way more embarassing than that, its called Giggle Grass
i was going to post the julia child omelette video! the beans made me brave the flip! once you flip shit you get excited and flip everything and its so easy and fun
We should have a related baking thread called Be Attitude for Grains.
Weirdly unlike half the Internet I have not been doing bread stuff since the lockdown. I was ahead of the curve, using up all my flour just before I was discouraged to return to the supermarket at threat of sickness and death.
cabbage: chop into reasonably thin strips, heat oil (I usually use a mix of butter and olive) in medium-sized skillet or pot, add cabbage and a bit of salt and mix to coat, add some chopped onion or shallot or garlic if you feel like it, saute over medium-high for about 20 minutes until it’s nice and browned in bits and all the harder white pieces have softened; add pepper, parmesan, & lemon juice