Cooking Thread~ Recipes & Things

[seeing_octarine]

If you have a garden, make the most of it. A bit of leek or an onion makes all dishes savory at little expense.
If the money spent on fresh butter were spent on meat, poor families would be much better fed than they are.

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Those two, at least, are not particularly good advice these days.

The best way to use a garden is to grow high calorie or high micronutrient crops that are preferably also space efficient and that you can't easily buy cheaply. Leeks aren't completely terrible for micronutrients and growing them would likely save you money, but onions? Not worth it at all. Focus on growing leafy herbs instead, like parsley and basil, and maybe some fava beans.

I don't know how it was back in the 1700s, but these days meat is far far more expensive than butter. You need protein from somewhere, sure, but just buying more meat is generally the opposite of what poor families should do. Better advice would be for them to get more legumes and cheaper varieties of offal into their diet.

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Only cheap compared to restaurants. Not even slightly cheap overall.

The thing to realise is that your average daily/weekly calorie intake is more or less constant. So if you really want to cut down the grocery bill you need to minimize the cost per energy, not the cost per weight or cost per meal or whatever. There are other important considerations to eat well like protein, micronutrients, and flavor (generally in that order) but cost per energy is where to start.

As a side benefit cutting your food bill this way almost automatically means you're counting calories, which means you can easily adjust to slowly lose or gain weight if you're overweight or underweight respectively.

 

[Biigoh]

Vegan Unagi Don (うなぎもどき丼 - Unagi Modoki Don)

 

[Autocorruptor]

Here is an easy to make recipe I created myself!

Bloody oatmeal-pour some dry oats into a bowl. Add some ketchup and stir thoroughly. Add some sugar or spices for taste.

 

[Anon̦̦]

Chilaquiles Huevones

 

[Biigoh]

 

[QQmember2021]

 

[Biigoh]

 

[QQmember2021]

 

[wanara009]

I've been getting good result in oven grilling chicken fillet with broth. Method is based on this recipe:

Spoiler

My version uses a broth composed of mostly water, soy sauce, chopped onions, garlic paste, a dash of oyster sauce, and a pinch of salt mixed well. Make enough so that the meat would be just under the broth surface when in the tray. Then I would pour it into a baking tray with chicken fillet, breast or thigh, and let it cook in an oven (preheated to 200C) for 45 minutes.

However, I figured that I could get better result by cutting the fillet into smaller pieces so the broth would seep better. So far the only thing I did to the meat before it's put under is to cut some lines along it.

This bring us to my questions: what's the best way to cut fillet into smaller pieces? Lengthwise or Widthwise?

 

[MadGreenSon]

This bring us to my questions: what's the best way to cut fillet into smaller pieces? Lengthwise or Widthwise?

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I've done both for various things at various times and never seen much difference. I'd say try both at different times and stick with whatever you like better.

 

[Biigoh]

I've been getting good result in oven grilling chicken fillet with broth. Method is based on this recipe:

Spoiler

My version uses a broth composed of mostly water, soy sauce, chopped onions, garlic paste, a dash of oyster sauce, and a pinch of salt mixed well. Make enough so that the meat would be just under the broth surface when in the tray. Then I would pour it into a baking tray with chicken fillet, breast or thigh, and let it cook in an oven (preheated to 200C) for 45 minutes.

However, I figured that I could get better result by cutting the fillet into smaller pieces so the broth would seep better. So far the only thing I did to the meat before it's put under is to cut some lines along it.

This bring us to my questions: what's the best way to cut fillet into smaller pieces? Lengthwise or Widthwise?

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Across the muscle fiber.

 

[Biigoh]

Spoiler: Big Picture

So... made curry.

Curry is simple and easy.

Ingredients
- Bottle of Curry Sauce (VH Mango Curry)
- Can of Coconut Milk
- 1 large Potato (skinned and diced)
- 2 carrots (skinned and sliced)
- 1/2 head of Cauliflower (cut into small florets)
- 1 roma tomato (sliced up roughly)
- 1 medium sized onion (diced roughly)
- 1 piece of ginger (about size of thumb, sliced thinly)
- 2 cloves of garlic (crushed and roughly sliced)
- 4 Fish Cake (totally optional and can be replaced with stewing meat)
- 6 Prawns (totally optional and can be replaced with stewing meat)
- 2 Scallops (totally optional and can be replaced with stewing meat)
- Lemon Juice (please try and use actual lemons and not the stuff in those plastic packs that call themselves 'lemon juice')

Step 1
- prep the veggies

Step 2
- Boil the Potatos and Carrots for 5 minutes
- Make sure to drain most of the water away
- This step CAN be taken out if you include the Potatos and Carrots in Step 4

Step 3
- Panfry the Onion, Ginger, Garlic together for fragrance until onions are almost translucent
- Set it aside

Step 4
- in your frying pan or pot, add a cup of water, some oil, throw in the Cauliflower florets
- steam on medium heat until water is evaporated

Step 5
- Add the Onion, Ginger, Garlic set aside earlier
- Add the Carrots and Potatos from Step 2
- Stir it about for a minute or two

Step 6
- Add the curry sauce and Coconut milk
- Add the tomato
- Gently mix them together with the veggies
- Bring to a boil

Step 7
- Add the sea food or meat
- wait for it to return to a boil before slowly reducing heat
- Simmer for 20-30 minutes

Step 8
- Add tomato juice in at this step before serving, it changes the flavor profile.

 

[schpariel]

- 4 Fish Cake (totally optional and can be replaced with stewing meat)
- 6 Prawns (totally optional and can be replaced with stewing meat)
- 2 Scallops (totally optional and can be replaced with stewing meat)

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Which stewing meats do you suggest? Beef? Pork? Tanuki?

Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[Biigoh]

Which stewing meats do you suggest? Beef? Pork? Tanuki?

Inquiring minds want to know!

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Whatever you like... you can sub in fish, meatballs, chicken...

 

[Biigoh]

 

[QQmember2021]

 

[kinglugia]

I might have screwed up making ginger in syrup, especially the part where you cut up the ginger.

Internet says something about bite-sized chunks, which I did, but uh, it's still a bit too spicy. Maybe it's because I used old ginger when it specified young / fresh ginger?

I mean, I like the spiciness of the old ginger, but man, takes away the sweetness.

Or perhaps I used too little sugar while making it, but the syrup undiluted is, well... syrupy. A bit viscous and all that.

... Maybe I should've cut it into smaller sizes and cooked it longer, but in my defense, it was made from 2am to 4am, so might be a bit biased.

 

[QQmember2021]

 

[UrsaTempest]

You've heard about adding other ingredients on ramen noodles to spice it up and making it a more complete meal, rather than just starch and flavour packet.

But what if you turn it around?

Add flavour packet to your huge pot of soup! Depending on the flavour, you may need one packet per 1-2 liter of soup. Or maybe the one I can source here is hilariously strong.

But think about it: the flavour packet need to make instant noodle enticing considering it's just a noodle. So it is indeed very strong!

 

[Biigoh]

You've heard about adding other ingredients on ramen noodles to spice it up and making it a more complete meal, rather than just starch and flavour packet.

But what if you turn it around?

Add flavour packet to your huge pot of soup! Depending on the flavour, you may need one packet per 1-2 liter of soup. Or maybe the one I can source here is hilariously strong.

But think about it: the flavour packet need to make instant noodle enticing considering it's just a noodle. So it is indeed very strong!

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Yes, tanuki has done that.

 

[QQmember2021]

 

[Evillevi]

Basics for tips for meals (rice edition).

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Situation: I have not much equipment (rice cooker pot + Induction cooker + pan) and have a few basic tips to make things go further for literally no additional effort.

Tip 1 : Low starch rice generally keeps better then starchier or fragrant rice. In particular I like Basmathi ricce as it keeps much much longer and in a far better state in the fridge then you'll normally expect rice to keep. Meaning that you can make big batches of basmathi rice and eat it over the course of the week with minimal problems.

Tip 2: Put stock cubes, spices and or animal/coconut fat in the water you're using to cook the rice with. Generally you might need to stir the rice if you put it directly into the pot without mixing it into hot water first. This is an easy way to flavor rice and if you use low starch rice it taste much more like fried rice or chicken rice then you initially expect .

Tip 3: With regard to dishes to eat with rice, the basic guideline for home cooking is lower starch ricce is better for saucier foods since it doesn't go soggy as easily. So for example really dry and slightly under cook rice won't get soggy if drowned in curry. On the other hand stuff with less sauce such as fried pork belly generally goes better with fully cook or starchy rice.

Tip 4: You don't have to season your rice, but it really really goes a long way.

Tip 5: Rice cookers will always cook until they run out of water, meaning with a measuring cup you can measure exactly enough water to cook rice for X minutes, add in additional ingredients, then measure enough water to finish the cooking process.

 

[Nitramy]

Don't forget that the first finger knuckle water measuring method never fails.

 

[Raven1138]

Not to mention the golden rule: always wash your rice. Does't take much, just a strainer, bowl, a good bit of tap water and a few minuets. Just make sure the water run off from the rice is clear before putting it in the rice cooker.

 

[kinglugia]

Ma taught me to wash the rice thrice with tap water, and once with filtered water, then let it soak in the following batch of filtered water for like half an hour before switching on the rice cooker.

Granted, we use brown rice, so...

 

[Scribe32]

Ma taught me to wash the rice thrice with tap water, and once with filtered water, then let it soak in the following batch of filtered water for like half an hour before switching on the rice cooker.

Granted, we use brown rice, so...

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Does that kind of stuff help with brown rice? We've been starting to use brown rice more and I've noticed that its coming out of the cooker a bit less cooked than the white rice was.... Though it may also be my imagination or us using short grain brown rice after using long-grain Basmathi rice for so long.

 

[Evillevi]

Don't forget that the first finger knuckle water measuring method never fails.

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The knuckle method is not reliable since difference riice needs different amounts of water and even the same type of rice in different conditions needs different amounts of water.

Starchy rice for instance needs different levels of water depending on how much you wash it.

Measuring cups are simply more precise and allows for greater reliabilty when aiming for rice of different levels of cookedness

Not to mention the golden rule: always wash your rice. Does't take much, just a strainer, bowl, a good bit of tap water and a few minuets. Just make sure the water run off from the rice is clear before putting it in the rice cooker.

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Technically this isn't needed for good low starch rice.

Straining helps when rice is very starchy or dirty. In most places only the cheapest possible rice fit this criteria. For rice that already runs clean washing rice doesn't help much.

Does that kind of stuff help with brown rice? We've been starting to use brown rice more and I've noticed that its coming out of the cooker a bit less cooked than the white rice was.... Though it may also be my imagination or us using short grain brown rice after using long-grain Basmathi rice for so long.

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Yes

 

[Stephen the barbarian]

Straining helps when rice is very starchy or dirty. In most places only the cheapest possible rice fit this criteria. For rice that already runs clean washing rice doesn't help much.

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note that a good chunk of the rice sold in the us is fortified by dusting, and you may not want to wash that stuff.

 

[seeing_octarine]

Not to mention the golden rule: always wash your rice. Does't take much, just a strainer, bowl, a good bit of tap water and a few minuets. Just make sure the water run off from the rice is clear before putting it in the rice cooker.

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That's not a golden rule. That's a superstition. Whether you should wash your rice before cooking, after cooking, or not at all, and whether you should boil your rice in just enough water or a large excess depends on what you're doing with it and what noteworthy pollutants are in your rice, if any.

I never wash my rice. Shockingly, I'm not dead.

 

[wanara009]

So, I've been into making burgers lately. Mostly chicken-based since chicken mince is 2 dollar cheapter than pork mince and whole 4 dollars cheaper than beef mince per kilo

My current recipe is as follow: (makes 4 patties)
Ingredients:
300g chicken mince
2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp smoked paprika powder
1 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp Italian herb mix (straight from bottle)
3 - 5 tbsp of bread crumbs (depending on the chicken mince)
2 tbsp finely grated parmesan
1 or 2 eggs (depending on chicken mince)

Method:
Mix all ingredient together in a bowl until homogenized

Treat it like a bread dough. You want a mix that doesn't stick to the bowl but also not rubbery and dry. If it's too dry, add egg (or maybe just a bit of water). If it's too watery, add bread crumbs. Hence why I said before 'depending on chicken mince' since from my experience, no two tub of chicken mince is the same in term of moisture and fat content so you'll have to adjust the egg and breadcrumbs content.

Shape into 4 equally sized balls. Put them on wax paper (or alfoil, so long they don't stick). Refrigerate for 5 minutes.
If you don't want burger, you can instead shape into steak shape to serve alongside chips.

In the mean time, get a pan hot with a little oil. I use olive currently, but I think normal vegetable or peanut will be alright.

Put the balls into the pan, mushing it down to form the patties according to the size of your buns while also making indentation in the middle with a spoon. Normally, I mush it down until each patty is about 2 or less cm thick. It's just faster to cook through at that size.


I'm still tweaking the recipe. So any suggestion will be welcome.