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[Cooking Thread] Burning questions and searing remarks
Steel Angel
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Since we've been without a new cooking thread for a bit and the old OP had a fair share of outdated links, I figured it was time for a new one/add some my favorite food resources.
Whether you're new to cooking and just want to know what to do with something you just bought at the grocery store, trying to figure out the difference between German, French, and Japanese chef's knives, or not sure if a bearnaise or chassuer sauce would be better for your sous vide cooked beef, this is the place for all manner of cooking discussion and food porn of your creations.
Websites:
Cookbook Recommendations:
Online Videos:
A number of the previously listed websites have youtube channels worth checking out or otherwise frequently post them but there are also a plethora of other video channels worth checking out. Plus it's often handy to see what your food is supposed to look like at different stages.
Whether you're new to cooking and just want to know what to do with something you just bought at the grocery store, trying to figure out the difference between German, French, and Japanese chef's knives, or not sure if a bearnaise or chassuer sauce would be better for your sous vide cooked beef, this is the place for all manner of cooking discussion and food porn of your creations.
Websites:
- Serious Eats: Covers a bit of everything about food and cooking but Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab stuff and Stella Parks's articles are especially renowned for going into the science behind their techniques
- Food52: A mix of community recipes and staff written contributions. Alice Medrich is often credited/blamed with introducing chocolate truffles to the US
- The Kitchn: Obviously recipes but also a lot of stuff about equipment and kitchens as a room in the home
- All Recipes: User submitted recipes ranging from beginner to advanced
- Epicurious: Another recipe repository plus articles and roundups
- Food Network official site: Lots of recipes from the network's personalities
- Smitten Kitchen: A long time favorite of many
- The Pioneer Woman: Not as prolific, seems to have shifted to doing videos with her recipes
- Hip Pressure Cooking: Whether you're a long time fan of 15 PSI or just got an Instant Pot, this is a great resource for pressure cookers
- Chef Steps: Some stuff require a paid account but much of it available to free accounts. A great online resource for modernist cooking with plenty of uses for sous vide techniques, modernist thickeners, blenders, and other enthusiast stuff
- Ricardo Cuisine: A well known Quebec chef recommended by @Richy , previous cooking thread author who gets great use out of the 30 minute or less section on weeknights and recommends halving listed sugar amounts in desserts.
Cookbook Recommendations:
- The Joy of Cooking: Possibly the only cookbook with instructions on both Creme Brulee and how to prepare a squirrel for cooking.
- How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman: Another diverse resource by the long time writer for the New York Time's cooking section. Great for beginners.
- I'm Here Just for the Food by Alton Brown: Goes into the science behind a lot of cooking and has a good information on equipment for people just starting to stock their own kitchen. Another good one for beginners.
- Cooking for Dummies: Obviously aimed at beginners.
- The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook: Other people say it's useful so it's being included.
- Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones: The Bi-Rite Creamery's book of ice cream and frozen treat recipes. Great for anyone with an ice cream maker.
- BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts: Stella Parks's book of baking recipes released in 2017. In addition to detailed recipes and variations on many of them, it goes into the history of many popular desserts (eg, how the chocolate chip cookie was created way before Tollhouse came onto the scene)
- Modernist Cuisine At Home: Modernist Cuisine is a multi volume set aimed at professional chefs that wanted to explore modernist cooking, formerly known as molecular gastronomy. This is their book aimed at enthusiast home cooks. A lot of recipes and discussion on sous vide, pressure cooking, modernist sauces, using dry ice to make ice cream, and the like. Warning - this book will make you lust after some very expensive kitchen equipment.
- Heston Blumenthal At Home: More advanced than previously listed books and Heston is British so some ingredients need to be subbed outside of the UK, but the section on sauces alone is wonderful.
- The Flavor Bible: Not a cookbook, more like a pantone swatch book for cooking. Lists of flavors that professional chefs have found work great with others. Handy when you know you want to cook x thing but don't know what herbs and spices or side items to use with it.
- Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza: Enjoyed by @dispatch.o for delivering carb goodness.
Online Videos:
A number of the previously listed websites have youtube channels worth checking out or otherwise frequently post them but there are also a plethora of other video channels worth checking out. Plus it's often handy to see what your food is supposed to look like at different stages.
- Kenji Lopez-Alt's channel: For food science nerd goodness.
- Bon Appetit: The video channel of the magazine. They also have a website but currently its formatting is kind of a pain to navigate. Both cover food in general, not just cooking.
- French Guy Cooking : Another @dispatch.o recommendation.
- Food Wishes with Chef Jon, endorsed by @Atheraal
- Gordon Ramsay's channel: @jungleroomx helps remind us that when US producers aren't using Ramsay as a British person getting upset for audience amusement, Ramsay creates videos full of information.
- VahChef: @V1m 's recommendation for Indian recipes.
- Binging with Babish: Often recreates food seen in shows and movies. His Basics with Babish is a more traditional series of videos and recipes.
Big Dookie wrote: »I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.
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Beef curry?
I'd go for chili, personally. Delicious fresh, but becomes sublime with some time in the fridge.
Edit: Also works well as an ingredient as well as a meal - you could do chili dogs, chili cheese fries, Frito pie...
Basically anything stew like, hence the recommendations for curries and chili. A pressure cooker is great for that kind of thing because you'll get to wring more flavor out of vegetables like carrots and tomatoes which have sugars that caramelize at above boiling point of water but below the maximum temperature a pressure cooker hits.
Baking absolutely goes here too. There's a lot of overlap with things like pies and other things that have a cooked part and a baked component plus I'm pretty sure we're all too lazy to maintain two separate threads on this.
The Bon Apetit website was pretty great when I regularly read it albeit not always having as much in depth info as many others. Still a good resource as part of a list though.
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I did a thing last night, similar to a larb. I'm writing it down as much for myself as anything else.
Basically, took 4 boneless/skinless chicken things and chopped into 0.5cm cubes
Sauce
2 parts fish sauce
2 parts soy
1 part lime juice
1 part palm sugar
minced thai chili to taste
Mince 3 cloves garlic and 1inch of ginger, then fry in some vegetable oil until its sweet and crispy, then set aside
Mince a shitload of thai basil, then set aside
In the same oil fry the chicken until it starts to brown, then add the sauce, cook until it thickens a bit, add the basil and cook until just wilted.
Serve over rice, with the crispy garlic back on top.
There's a thousand simple recipes to just dump in your instant pot. The trick is separating the wheat from the chaff. One of my tried and true recipes is a 5-6 ingredient chili.
2-3 lbs of choice of meat (I've used chicken, beef, or pork, all to deliciousness)
1x 28oz can of crushed tomatoes
1x can of chipotles in adobo sauce
1lb dried black beans
1 onion, diced
1.5 tbsp store-bought Mole paste (optional)
3 cups water
Brown meat in pressure cooker/instant pot, season with salt and pepper, combine all other ingredients (I puree the chipotles in half the can of crushed tomatoes, but not necessary), seal up and cook at high pressure for 1 hour. After unsealing, simmer for about 4-5 minutes to let thicken, if necessary. To really add complexity to the flavor profile, you can add 1.5 tbsp of store-bought mole paste (such as Dona Maria). By combining the chipotles and mole paste, you get 90% of the flavor of making your own ancho-guajillo-pasilla chile puree with 5% of the work.
Another one to try would be a quick and dirty beef bourguignon.
Any tips for how to serve it? (I had her grab a bunch of veggies on our last grocery run)
Also my wife couldn't find any canned Kim Chi. I thought that was a thing. I asked her to check the deli, too. I'll check another grocery store tonight.
Serving it over rice would be the traditional way to do it. Some less traditional Korean places around here also will serve it in wraps and subs.
Kimchi is more likely to be sold in a glass jar or plastic bin than it is canned. Though the best bet is probably to find a nearby Korean supermarket and they'll usually have some prepared in store in their prepared foods section that you can get for cheaper than the jarred stuff.
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pan grilled chicken and bell pepper, minced garlic and onions boiled with the broth, noodles cooked al-dente, monterey jack and sriracha on top.
I... I don't have a grill or smoker, which sucks, but the oven can be used. I just don't have a broiler to caramelize the sauce on top which kinda sucks but I'll get over it.
Sauce recipe:
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/8 cup molasses (Tbsp of brown sugar as an option)
4 cloves garlic (1 tsp of powder if you're inclined)
2 pearl onions (1 tsp of powder if you're inclined)
1 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1 tsp Liquid Smoke (optional)
3 decent sized habaneros
1/2 cup of pineapple
Blend onions, garlic, pineapple, and habaneros to liquid.
Mix everything, low heat, reduce until desired consistency is reached. Stir often.
Ribs recipe:
Remove shealth on the back. You can trim the fat if you want to, but rib fat is fucking delicious. Rub with salt and pepper the night before, let them set in the fridge.
Next day, take ribs out 1 hour before cook time to adjust to room temp.
Preheat to 250.
Place in baking dish, wrap in aluminum foil, place them meat side down on a cooking tray. Put in oven for 2.5 hours, approx. Add a little water to the bottom of the baking dish.
Take out, open foil and remove ribs. Dump any grease. Take a little bit of the sauce and put a bit of water in it to turn it into more of a glaze than a sauce. Slather ribs with sauce everywhere, put back in oven uncovered, meat side up, for 30 minutes.
Take out, let cool for 10 minutes. Apply sauce as desired.
It's not too much of a concern I think.
I have one of those half-ovens in my studio so "screaming hot" is probably unachievable.
Personally I've been getting a lot of my recipes lately from Ricardo, a well-known Québec chef. His recipes range from really simple to rather involved, but are uniformly delicious. They're sorted by categories, and I can testify that the "30 minutes or less" category is a life-saver for weeknight dinners. One word of advice though: for his baking recipes, cut the sugar content by half. The guy must have a US-Army weapons-grade sweet tooth, to use the amount of sugar he does.
English-version website:
https://www.ricardocuisine.com/en
Does anyone have any good Indian balti or vindaloo recipes they want to share? I'm aiming for some curry this weekend but I want try something else than the tikka masala and rogan josh I usually make.
Seriously: VahChef on youtube. The dude worked as a chef in (IIRC) Dehli for years, now has a youtube channel.
Chicken 65
Fish Molee
Rogan Josh
The sauce is done as well. I used dark brown sugar instead of molasses and a bit more pineapple than they call for, because I'm aiming for a sweet/spicy sauce with savory ribs contrast in flavoring.
About 1:30 I'll pull the ribs out and let them set to get to room temp, then 2.5 hours in the oven, 30 minutes under the broiler (I found it! My oven does have one!), and 10 minutes to set.
Fuck movies... I mean, yeah this guy's great.
I've found most of the seasons to be pretty excellent, especially David Chang, Sean Brock, and the current season with Ludo. The monterey guy was quite annoying, though.
I think this is my favorite one because yeah, a lot of good cooking tips (including how to quickly ripen a fruit and how to chop fresh herbs):
Yowza.
And yet, I saw that and was like HOLY SHIT I CAN'T WAIT TO GO HOME AND CUT A RED PEPPER
edit: and also "wow what an adorable man, he acts like me when excited"
If anyone wants to watch a Ramsey show, go for either 'The F Word' or one of his Cookalong shows. They'll generally show a slightly different side to him, especially if you're used to his US shows. He can be really good, and is of course a good cook.
just eat the kiwi rind and all
My flavor palette is very sensitive to bitter and sour notes, so a kiwi with rind just makes me pucker and triggers my gag reflex, on top of the fuzzy texture always seeming a little off (I have trouble with fresh peaches w/ peel due to texture issues as well).
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I think Ramsay the Chef is probably a better person than Ramsay the Restaurant Owner.
Ramsay has fallen into the same niche over in the US as Yahtzee Crenshaw, John Oliver, Robert Irvine (well not as much anymore with his Ramsay clone show no longer in production), and others I'm sure I'm forgetting. While technically they host some sort of show or video on food, news, or video games, that's not really their job so much as being a person with a British accent getting angry for the amusement of American audiences.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
We now own a griddle. I'm basically a Benihana chef now, right? I've even made fried rice on it.
Seriously though; hash browns over there, vegetables over there (put some espelette pepper flake on there), scramble the egg in the middle, combine the veggies, put a little feta on there, fold that shit over, put it on a plate and yum.
Stovetop pans are for wimps.
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You should try French Onion soup.
My Backloggery
This is literally the only reason I buy fresh, imported Gruyere in the winter.
F-it, time to craft some glace de viande this weekend and make a batch.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Man, I should make that again. We have access to comté where we are now, although I haven't seen those gluten-free baguettes anywhere.
My Backloggery
I wish I had a proper cheesemonger withing a 30 mile drive of me, but c'est la vie.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Even just the soup itself is pretty good, especially in the winter when a lot of other vegetables aren't at their peak and warm soup is welcome.
Caramelized onions are just great in general and I'll throw them into any soup using onions when I have the time.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772