One thing I don't like about gas range, and this might not be something that they all do but I understand it's pretty common, if you splash water and it gets into the wrong spot a safety feature will activate that makes all your burners continuously "light" (so the little spark doohickey activates) over and over until it dries out, even if the gas is turned off. So it just starts going click click click click click nonstop. Only way to make it stop is to cut the power.
I know it's a safety feature but it's also really annoying.
sounds very annoying. Mine doesn't do that even if it's on when water spills on it. How does the range know it's water and not alcohol or oil?
Tapwater has plenty of minerals and salts left in it to be decently conductive and even high-purity water exposed to a cooking environment is going to pick up enough impurities for some conductivity; sensors that can detect conductive water are extremely easy to make and extremely common. Pure alcohol and cooking oil are both non-conductive, so neither would set of a sensor like that.
I would think most alcohol you have near a stove (like spirits or wine or beer) would be conductive and also likely flammable to the point where a safety feature that turned on all the burners would be dangerous. I imagine it's been figured out, I'm just curious how.
Yeah, the key is having a cooling rack or something to put it on. And the stuff comes clean so easily which is nice.
A wooden cooling rack, I assume. You're not supposed to remove tempered glass from the oven and put it on a metal surface.
This is what I'm talking about when I say there's a lot of non-obvious safety issues with tempered glass, by the way. You take the hot pan out of the oven and put it on...an inactive burner because you don't have a lot of counter space and it's right there? Safety issue. A metal cooling rack? Safety issue. A metal or ceramic trivet? Safety issue. A stone countertop? Safety issue. A cloth or wood trivet? That one's actually okay. Now, you can probably get away with a metal cooling rack, but that doesn't mean it's following the safety guidelines.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
One thing I don't like about gas range, and this might not be something that they all do but I understand it's pretty common, if you splash water and it gets into the wrong spot a safety feature will activate that makes all your burners continuously "light" (so the little spark doohickey activates) over and over until it dries out, even if the gas is turned off. So it just starts going click click click click click nonstop. Only way to make it stop is to cut the power.
I know it's a safety feature but it's also really annoying.
sounds very annoying. Mine doesn't do that even if it's on when water spills on it. How does the range know it's water and not alcohol or oil?
Tapwater has plenty of minerals and salts left in it to be decently conductive and even high-purity water exposed to a cooking environment is going to pick up enough impurities for some conductivity; sensors that can detect conductive water are extremely easy to make and extremely common. Pure alcohol and cooking oil are both non-conductive, so neither would set of a sensor like that.
I would think most alcohol you have near a stove (like spirits or wine or beer) would be conductive and also likely flammable to the point where a safety feature that turned on all the burners would be dangerous. I imagine it's been figured out, I'm just curious how.
Wine and beer would just register as water, their alcohol content is much too low to be any kind of hazard and yeah, they've got plenty of contaminants to set off a sensor like that. Anything with high enough alcohol content to actually burn might not set off the sensor, but is also going to evaporate rather quickly. If the sparker does set that on fire, it's no worse than with a regular cooktop and the constant sparker is still avoiding the much, much worse scenario of flooding a home with deadly gas or turning into a big bomb.
The sensors themselves are basically just two separated, exposed wires/metal points. Anything conductive drops on them and they complete a circuit, which sends a signal to the control board saying something has been spilled. When wires dry, the circuit is broken and the signal stops.
So if it's obnoxious behavior, you could stop it early if you know where the sensors are. Probably could just lift the cooktop up, clean up the spill, then also clean off the sensor so it goes back to the "dry" state instead of waiting a while for it to dry normally.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i've always set glass dishes on a potholder sitting on one of the stove burners and it's been fine
Allegedly a voice of reason.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
my new breakfast goto I've been cooking in the morning is:
bowl of hot grits, topped with a pinch of dried chives and shredded cheddar cheese which is allowed to melt, then an over medium egg on top which also helps to melt the cheese, a piece or two of bacon broken up on top, then finally some hot sauce dripped on the side over the grits. a pretty easy to make breakfast bowl, especially when using instant grits
This is a dairy-heavy desert that I don't think I can fix. I'll pass.
Unless I rearrange the ingredients a bit, substitute the whipped cream, and....I ended up with lemon merrange pie. Huh. Still not going to make it, because I don't have an electric mixer, but that's still interesting.
Cornbread (again):
Tried soaking the cornmeal in the milk. Helped a bit, but it was still overly crunchy. I am now out of the stone-ground cornmeal. I bought more, with a more consistent and finer grind, and made cornbread with that. This version came out quite well. There's just a bit of crunch, but in a good way this time; nothing you could chip a tooth on. I'm happy with it. In the end, the lesson is to buy the cheap cornmeal, not the fancy stone-ground stuff.
Stir-fried Soba Noodles With Beef & Cabbage:
I had some carrots I needed to use up, so I replaced the (Napa) cabbage with that. It's a stir-fry. It'll be fine.
This isn't the first stir-fry I've made, so my main goal was to get more used to dealing with raw meat; my meat consumption is basically all pre-cooked stuff (diced frozen chicken, sausage, and ground beef that I cook and freeze myself), and while that's certainly convenient, getting a bit more experience there would be good, mostly in case I need to do something fancy. Since I don't go for meat-heavy dinners, I don't get a lot of opportunities for practice, but this should work well.
Final ingredients were (buckwheat) soba noodles, baby carrots, cut into matchsticks, beef bits(? I just grabbed a cheap pack of meat that was cut into sections between stew and steak size), cut into strips, green pepper, green onion, and (microwaved) peas.
The instructions called for partially-freezing the meat, and that's a very important step. These are thin strips, and I didn't freeze it long enough. (I came home from the store, put the meat in the freezer, chopped and stored the vegetables, then moved on to the meat.) It still helped, but freezing longer would have been a better experience. Also, I should have only worked on half the package at a time, leaving the rest in the freezer.
What did work well was prepping everything the night before. Getting the ingredients prepped is most of the work, and this way I could start dinner earlier.
In the end, this came out quite well, both in term of dinner, and in terms of improving my meat handling skills. My lazier version of it has rice (combining the soba noodles with everything else is a bit annoying because they tend to clump together, I don't need to wash a colander, and the soba is a bit more expensive while not providing a better experience), and chicken strips (because it's easier to just pull precooked strips out of the freezer).
Vinegar-Glazed Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts & Walnut Oil:
"Look for vacuum-packed roasted and peeled chestnuts in gourmet shops and well-stocked supermarkets". Well, screw you too, buddy. My store actually has these, (according to the website; not sure where those are hiding) but it's the principle of the matter. What kind of recipe tells me to go to a literal gourmet shop for an ingredient? Anyway, chestnuts look like an annoying ingredient that I'm unlikely to do anything else with in the future, so I'm using a different recipe, that uses ingredients I have already: https://www.delish.com/holiday-recipes/thanksgiving/a23013160/honey-balsamic-glazed-brussels-sprouts-recipe/
Though the comments talk about how there's far too much glaze, so I'm making some adjustments in that regard.
Anyway, this came out...fine. Nothing to write home about. I'd prefer roasting Brussels Sprouts.
Noodle Salad with Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette:
Like the stir-fry above, this is another recipe where I'm using it as practice for dealing with raw meat, in this case pork tenderloin. I'm mostly following the recipe as given. (Substituted sesame oil for peanut, apple cider vinegar for sherry vinegar (I swear, every single time this cookbook calls for vinegar, it's a different variety), jalapeno pepper instead of serrano, and rotini pasta instead of Chinese egg noodles. Also, using a dutch oven instead of grilling the tenderloin.)
Flavor-wise, I like how this came out, though I'm glad I deglazed the dutch oven, reduced it, and added that to the dressing; that added another layer of flavor to the dish. My biggest mistake was in not searing the pork enough before putting it in the oven. That meant it only got a thick crust on the bottom. Also, the directions I was using for the tenderloin called for 1hr 15min at 375 F, which is apparently the directions for a 160 F internal temperature. Even the USDA doesn't call for 160 F anymore, and they're the no-fun club. Still turned out all right. The lid means it didn't dry out, and I cut it into small bits for the salad, so extra toughness isn't a big deal. When I cooked the remaining half-pound, I just did 1hr, which got me 150-155 F internal temperature.
The biggest issue with this recipe is the preparation effort required, most of which is centered around the pork. If I happened to have precooked pork sitting around, it would just be a simple 20-minute, 2 pot meal. (Cook the pasta, chop everything else, mix everything together.) Instead, it takes 2 hours, and 3 large dishes. (One for cooking the pork, one for the noodles, and one to put everything in.) That's too long for a weeknight meal. (If you wanted to do this on a weeknight, I'd suggest preparing the pork the night before; there's no expectation for the dish to be served warm. Alternately, use a hard sausage or bacon or something instead; frying up bacon is a much faster process, and I think it would fit well with this dish.)
Another bit of annoyance is that my local store only had ~2lb packs of tenderloin. (Two actual strips.) My dutch oven fits one pound at a time, so half a pound was used in this recipe, half a pound was cooked and frozen for later at the same time, half a pound was cut raw into strips and frozen for stir fry later, and the final half-pound was used for a different meal a few days later.
This is the first meal I made in my new (to me) dutch oven, and I'm happy with it. The ability to go from the stovetop to the oven meant I could sear the pork on the stovetop in the same dish I used for the oven. The fact that it has a lid means I didn't need to use aluminum foil to tent it. It's just generally a good tool for the job. Downsides are not being able to dishwasher-clean it, and a general unwieldiness from size and weight.
Barley Risotto with Chicken, Mushrooms, & Greens:
...I was unaware you could make risotto with barley. Anyway, the day before, I had stopped by my parents', and went home with a few leaves of fresh kale, so I used that for the greens. I also used the pre-cooked frozen pork from the last recipe instead of chicken, added some frozen veggies I keep meaning to use up, replaced the white wine with a splash of vinegar, and added a couple bay leaves, a dash of cayenne pepper, and a dash of Worcestershire, but I generally followed the recipe.
Not really a fan of the 45+ minute cook time, which puts it just on the edge of what's reasonable for a weeknight dinner, but at least it doesn't require any actual monitoring during that time, and that's kind of just how long barley takes to cook. I put the precooked meat as well as the frozen veggies in at the 30-minute mark, then the kale at the very end.
It came out well. I usually use barley in barley soup, which is basically this, but with more water. I think I prefer the soup, but they're both good for the same reasons.
Kumquat-carrot puree with toasted fennel seeds:
I don't think I can salvage this. I don't have access to kumquats, and I don't have a blender to puree this.
Like the stir-fry above, this is another recipe where I'm using it as practice for dealing with raw meat, in this case pork tenderloin. I'm mostly following the recipe as given. (Substituted sesame oil for peanut, apple cider vinegar for sherry vinegar (I swear, every single time this cookbook calls for vinegar, it's a different variety), jalapeno pepper instead of serrano, and rotini pasta instead of Chinese egg noodles. Also, using a dutch oven instead of grilling the tenderloin.)
Vinegar does come in a lot of varieties. A lot of them can be subbed for each other, but they do actually taste different so having a bunch can be nice. Since they don't go bad and most are pretty cheap, it's not onerous to have a variety.
That said, I think the big ones are going to be a red wine vinegar and apple cider vinegar. Balsamic is weird given that the real aged 12 years stuff is somewhat pricey and the cheap imitations are so common in the US that that's what most people and recipes are thinking of and while I'll use the real stuff in vinaigrettes I'll use the imitations if heat is involved. Rice vinegar is good if one does a lot of Asian cuisines. Sherry vinegar is nice to have but I've often subbed a mix of red wine and imitation balsamic for it.
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I made London Broil on the grill the other night. Man oh man did it ever turn out tasty.
I got a 3 lb top round LB from Publix this weekend. I marinated it in a zip top back overnight. The marinade consisted of salt, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, basil, oregano, crushed red pepper, veggie oil, soy sauce, and worcestershire sauce, water and my secret ingredient. Baking Soda.
Most LB recipes call for using vinegar, an acid instead of a base like baking soda. I don't like doing this for several reasons. Acid based marinades can actually start cooking the meat, denaturing the protein structure of the muscle fibers. They don't do anything to the connective tissues though. You see baking soda used a lot in asian dishes to tenderize meat before cooking it, hot and fast. The baking soda actually acts more on the connective tissues than the meat proteins. Raising the PH like that also aids in browning. So I took a page from J. Kenji López and used baking soda for my LB marinade instead of vinegar.
Anyway, I marinated the meat overnight. Instead of broiling it in the oven, I fired up the grill. I got my grill as hot as I could (almost 600f) and dropped the meat down for 4 minutes. Flipped, rotated 90 degrees, cooked for another 4 minutes. Flipped, another 90, 3 minutes, flipped another 90, 2 minutes. YMMV for cooking times but I have a sure-fire method if determining if your meat is done.
Take your hand and make a fist. Not a super tight fist nor a super loose, weak fist. Just somewhere in the middle. Not the sort of fist you would punch someone with but sold enough that you could quickly tense it to that point. Find the muscle that goes from your thumb knuckle to your index knuckle and press on it. That is about what you are looking for if you press on your grilled meat when it's cooked to a perfect medium rare. The tighter your fist, the more the muscle resembles well done meat.
Anyway, I cooked my London Broil to a perfect medium rare. The next key is to let your meat rest. For my part I made a foil pouch that I put the meat in, off the grill, and loosely sealed by folding the foil over. And there it sat for a full 10 minutes before I even checked it. Letting your meat rest like that is so incredibly important. It lets the meat finish cooking so you get that perfect doneness all the way through. It also allows the juices to better retained when slicing.
And finally, I cut against the grain as much as I could, and cut super thin slices. You go as thin as your knife skills can manage.
And now for the money shots. I was VERY happy with the results. It was cooked PERFECTLY.
My local Costco is selling whole pork loins for $1.99/lb, seems like a very good deal. So about $18 total. Compared to ribs or porkchop packages for $3.99/lb (keep in mind it's costco, so these aren't small packages either).
My local Costco is selling whole pork loins for $1.99/lb, seems like a very good deal. So about $18 total. Compared to ribs or porkchop packages for $3.99/lb (keep in mind it's costco, so these aren't small packages either).
Ooh. That's a really nice price... I really should go by there to stock up on meats... (A family member has a membership, yay for mooching)
My local Costco is selling whole pork loins for $1.99/lb, seems like a very good deal. So about $18 total. Compared to ribs or porkchop packages for $3.99/lb (keep in mind it's costco, so these aren't small packages either).
Just remember that pork loin is NOT the same as pork tenderloin. Pork Loin is like a beef ribeye where as pork tenderloin is like the beef filet.
My method of cooking pork these days is to brine it in pickle brine/juice leftover from when I make lactofermented dill pickles or buy fermented or vinegar pickles from the store and then sous vide it.
Tenderloin has worked decently but I think my favorite results so far have been with "country style ribs" that I'm pretty sure are the shoulder version, not the loin version.
I'm not enthusiastic about the use of quinoa. On the other hand, quinoa isn't even traditional, bulgur wheat is. And my local store carries that. So, that's one easy substitution to make. Also of interest is that the recipe calls for an entire pound of shrimp, which seems to me to be a good way to make grilled shrimp with a bit of tabbouleh on the side--You know what, I'm just going to make tabbouleh. https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tabbouleh/
This calls for more bulgur than most recipes, but my store didn't have the best parsley when I stopped by, so I didn't want to make it the centerpoint of the dish. I messed up by not salting the boiling water added to the bulgur, which made it a bit more plain than I would like, and I probably should have soaked it longer. (I started soaking it at the start of prep, then tossed it in at the end, which was about a 40 minute soak instead of the hour that the container asked for.) I also skipped the mint leaves because I don't really like the taste of just biting into a mint leaf.
I like the result, but this really needs good parsley, and less bulgur. I'm planning on making it again.
Caramel-Macadamia Tartlets:
No way I can eat this. Skipped.
Fennel Salad with Blood Oranges & Arugula:
Not only is this yet another salad, this cookbook has done a fennel salad before. Adding oranges and some lettuce leaves doesn't make this interesting. Skipped.
Spiced Pear Tarte Tatin:
Yet another desert I can't eat, that requires equipment I don't own.
Unless....
Okay, the crust is not salvageable. But the crust is also unnecessary: just serve it in a dish. Spiced pears are a fine idea, I just need something to serve them on. I'm going to take inspiration from the tartlets above, and use a custard. Dairy-free recipes for custard exist, in this case: https://www.godairyfree.org/recipes/easy-dairy-free-custard-no-tempering
I upped the recipe to use an entire can of coconut milk so I don't have leftovers (2 eggs, 3 table sugar, 1.5 table cornstarch, salt, 1 can light coconut milk, vanilla to taste), poured it into a wide and shallow container, waited for it to set, placed canned peaches on top (syrup went into oatmeal the next day), then covered with the spice mixture (1/4c brown sugar, 1 table lemon juice, 1 table ground ginger, .5 tea cinnamon, 0.25 tea nutmeg).
The end result isn't the most appetizing-looking creation, as it's white on off-white, covered in brown, so that bit needs a bit more work. More importantly, it didn't set properly. But, an unset custard is fixable. I removed the pear slices, and reheated the custard-spice mix. At that point, it turned into a reasonable desert.
I'm pretty sure the issue here was adding the wet pears and wet spice mixture to the custard, which was just a bit too much for it to handle. With that in mind....
Version 2:
Vanilla pudding or custard, prepared in the usual manner, around 2 cups total.
In a second container, mix together 1/4c brown sugar, 1 table lemon juice, 1 table ground ginger, .5 tea cinnamon, 0.25 tea ground nutmeg.
Drain and add 1 can of sliced pears to the spice mixture, then mix.
Keep the pudding and spice mixture separate until serving time.
In this case, I used Cook-n-serve Jello pudding. (This works with non-dairy milk, but you have to combine it with 1.5c instead of 3c real milk.) This actually came out properly, with a nice contrast between the simple pudding and the spiced pears. It's also a quick way to make boxed pudding a bit fancier.
Warm Lentil & Kale salad with Bacon:
I'll be following this recipe reasonably closely.
I've never done anything with bacon before, but looks like bacon keeps better after opening if cooked, so I prepared the bacon a few days in advance, splitting the pound up into three separate meals. (Egg and bacon sandwiches, this, and the rest into the freezer for later soup.)
The big changes to the recipe was cooking the carrots in a frying pan instead of roasting them, in order to drop the number of dishes (saucepan for lentils, frying pan for everything else), adding chopped red pepper, and skipping the thyme, because my thyme is a decade old. (Adding paprika and ancho chili powder instead.) It came out reasonably well, though I think the bacon was carrying the dish. Basically, "warm salad" is a bit weird conceptually, and while this is a reasonably well-executed version of the concept, I don't think the concept works. It doesn't have the heartiness of a lentil soup, but also doesn't have the lightness and crunch of a salad. This is in the middle of both options, and while it's not terrible, I'd prefer either soup or salad.
As for the bacon, it was as messy as I expected. I don't intend to buy more in the future. My feeling on it is that a spiced hard sausage can replace bacon in most recipes, while being easier to manage on a technical level, and providing a better taste. Tossing some fried summer sausage or something in here would have been just fine, and I wouldn't need to wipe down a bunch of dishes with paper towels in order to keep bacon grease out of the plumbing. (Plus it leaves my skin greasy for days.)
Not only is this yet another salad, this cookbook has done a fennel salad before. Adding oranges and some lettuce leaves doesn't make this interesting. Skipped.
I learned a recipe for this in a Moroccan cooking class. I like it a lot and making a vinaigrette with the juice of another orange pairs really nicely. It also taught me the knife skill of how to supreme citrus fruits.
I understand not wanting to do another fennel salad if you weren't keen on the first but if this and that salad were to fight it out on flavor, this one would win out.
Warm Lentil & Kale salad with Bacon:
I'll be following this recipe reasonably closely.
I've never done anything with bacon before, but looks like bacon keeps better after opening if cooked, so I prepared the bacon a few days in advance, splitting the pound up into three separate meals. (Egg and bacon sandwiches, this, and the rest into the freezer for later soup.)
The big changes to the recipe was cooking the carrots in a frying pan instead of roasting them, in order to drop the number of dishes (saucepan for lentils, frying pan for everything else), adding chopped red pepper, and skipping the thyme, because my thyme is a decade old. (Adding paprika and ancho chili powder instead.) It came out reasonably well, though I think the bacon was carrying the dish. Basically, "warm salad" is a bit weird conceptually, and while this is a reasonably well-executed version of the concept, I don't think the concept works. It doesn't have the heartiness of a lentil soup, but also doesn't have the lightness and crunch of a salad. This is in the middle of both options, and while it's not terrible, I'd prefer either soup or salad.
As for the bacon, it was as messy as I expected. I don't intend to buy more in the future. My feeling on it is that a spiced hard sausage can replace bacon in most recipes, while being easier to manage on a technical level, and providing a better taste. Tossing some fried summer sausage or something in here would have been just fine, and I wouldn't need to wipe down a bunch of dishes with paper towels in order to keep bacon grease out of the plumbing. (Plus it leaves my skin greasy for days.)
It sounds like you cooked the bacon and then cut it? That's going to be super messy for sure. Cutting/chopping it before cooking is the preferred method to the point where the French have a word for the kinds of chunks you cut it into.
Bacon fat is also one of the fats that should never be a risk to the drain because you strain it and store it in a pyrex or ceramic container for later use when you want extra umami in something. One of my usual weekend breakfast/brunch meals is to cook bacon and then scramble eggs in the same pan instead of using butter. Bacon fat is one of the core ingredients of southern American cooking as it added meaty flavor to various vegetables for a populace that couldn't afford meat regularly and stuck around in more abundant times because so many find it tasty.
Sausages can sub in for a lot of bacon uses for sure though. I've done a number of dishes that involve rendering sausage fat out and then cooking something in said fat and could easily swap bacon for that as well as swap the sausage for bacon in most other recipes. Definitely not all though as some already have a large volume of meat and adding sausage might be a bit much . . . though probably delicious so I think I'm going to try it next time . . . or maybe do both bacon AND sausage . . . probably a good thing I work out so much and can afford this kind of excess.
Didn't think about cutting up the bacon before I cooked it. Nice tip, though I didn't have too much trouble with cutting it up. (I only actually did that for the salad. For the sandwiches, I used half-slices, and for the soup I just tore it up.) And yeah, I saved a lot of the bacon fat, but I still had to wipe various dishes down because I can't get all of it.
I checked the salad recipe more closely, and didn't see anything exciting there. It's just the given ingredients, with a simple vinaigrette. Is your version different, or do these ingredients just work well together? (I admittedly haven't tried oranges in a salad.)
Do bacon in the oven. Get a sheet tray, lay down parchment paper that goes over the sides of the tray and do the bacon on that. No mess and almost completely hands off. The big thing is that the parchment paper provides a convenient container of sorts for holding the bacon fat in one place. Meaning it doesn't get anywhere and also makes it easy to pour it off to save it.
I do 425 for like 12-15 minutes, but you have to fiddle around a bit depending on the bacon you are using, the sheet you are using, the texture you are going for, etc, etc.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Do bacon in the oven. Get a sheet tray, lay down parchment paper that goes over the sides of the tray and do the bacon on that. No mess and almost completely hands off. The big thing is that the parchment paper provides a convenient container of sorts for holding the bacon fat in one place. Meaning it doesn't get anywhere and also makes it easy to pour it off to save it.
I do 425 for like 12-15 minutes, but you have to fiddle around a bit depending on the bacon you are using, the sheet you are using, the texture you are going for, etc, etc.
I use a similar method. Get one of those half sheet trays and a rack that fits inside of it. Cover the bottom of the pan with parchment as you indicated but put the rack on top of that and the bacon on the rack. Your bacon will end up flatter and a lot less greasy because all the fat and moisture drips down away from the meat. You can fit 1 half sheet pan in a home oven or 2, side by side in a commercial oven. I don't recommend doing a pan the top and bottom racks, even if you swap and rotate. It slows down the cooking, isn't as even and you risk spilling grease the more you move the pans.
You should be able to fit a whole pack of thick cut bacon on a single had sheet rack.
Going to second over for cooking bacon, screw using a frying pan or a microwave. Only other that might be worth a shot, but can't say one way or another, would be an air fryer.
On that note, now that I've been getting a chance to use them more often. Absolutely love things.
Didn't think about cutting up the bacon before I cooked it. Nice tip, though I didn't have too much trouble with cutting it up. (I only actually did that for the salad. For the sandwiches, I used half-slices, and for the soup I just tore it up.) And yeah, I saved a lot of the bacon fat, but I still had to wipe various dishes down because I can't get all of it.
I checked the salad recipe more closely, and didn't see anything exciting there. It's just the given ingredients, with a simple vinaigrette. Is your version different, or do these ingredients just work well together? (I admittedly haven't tried oranges in a salad.)
I'm guessing my ingredients are different. Unfortunately I can't find the recipe I learned on anymore which is a disappointment. That said, the core really was the fennel and citrus for me and I really like oranges. I almost certainly played with it until I got a balance I liked (there's a good chance the original didn't include an orange vinaigrette and I threw that in myself). I'll probably need to do some research to recreate something close to it at some point.
For the bacon, I've never had much grease on the dishes themselves. But many people do first lay the cooked bacon on some paper towels before serving to get rid of excess fat. I don't bother because I just eat whatever's on the bacon with the bacon itself and just letting most of the excess drip off a bit when removing it from the pan with tongs does enough for my needs. Mind you I've almost always bought the exact same bacon for the last 10 years so I'm super practiced with the particular brand and cut. I would endorse the oven methods mentioned by others for most people though. I'm just usually doing something specific when I use bacon that eliminates any leftover fat in the pan.
This is basically a salad with steak strips in it. I changed the salad ingredients around a bit based on what looked good at the store. (Lettuce, parsley, red onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, and English cucumber.)
My goal was both to check to see if I like English cucumber any more than regular cucumber (it's less bad, but I still don't like it), and to get more practice with cooking meat. I think the steak came out okay, but I wasn't great at removing the cartilage, and this was rather heavy in it. (I grabbed a cheap (not so much price/pound, and more that it didn't come in a 2-pack) chuck steak, which in retrospect wasn't the best cut for this, but I'm doing this to get the mistakes out of the way now; in this case, that not everything with "steak" in the name that looks like a steak is suitable for use as a steak.)
This took a while to prepare. (Hour and a half, I think. It will take significantly less time if you can chop faster, as there's almost no cooking time.) On a weeknight, I would recommend doing most of the chopping ahead of time. Also, a lot of the time is taken up by chopping various foods, and I feel there's a bit too much salad here, which are two problems that solve each other: If I did this again, I'd skip the English cucumber (because I don't like it), and the parsley (it doesn't add much to the dish).
The final result was fine, but I feel that it was less than the sum of its parts. By just serving the steak on the side, you have steak and salad, which is a classic meal. (Which is what I ended up doing with the leftovers.) What I like about a lot of one-dish dinners is that by not making meat the centerpoint you can get away with less meat and cheaper cuts. But here you basically have to use steak-quality meat anyway, and serving it on top of the salad doesn't make it go farther; it's obvious that when you get a forkful without any meat in it that you're just eating a salad, and you can't cut up the steak enough to give each forkful meat. Because of that, I'm unlikely to make this again. If you wanted to make this, I would suggest using tenderloin or another roasted meat instead. I feel that would give better results from a cheaper cut of meat. (See the "Noodle Salad with Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette" from a previous post.) Or maybe a hard sausage? Point is, not steak.
Sweet Potato & Green Chile Quesadillas with Arugula:
This is a recipe I don't think I can fix thanks to the cheese. So, I'll be trying a dairy-free recipe I found on the Internet instead: https://wereparents.com/dairy-free-baked-chicken-quesadillas/ (I guess they turn into parents on the full moon.)
My main change is in using precooked frozen chicken instead of breading and baking chicken. (Chicken, 1/2 onion, 1 can beans, 1 jalapeno, 1 avocado, 1 table lime, and 1/2c salsa.) This drastically drops the prep/cooking time. You basically put the chicken and onion in the frying pan, prep the rest of the ingredients while stirring every so often, then cut up the chicken with the spatula and dump the chicken and onion in with the rest of the ingredients when it's done. Then reuse the frying pan to fry the tortillas. With that change, this is a reasonable weeknight meal.
This actually came out well. The biggest issue I have is that I use corn tortillas instead of flour, because the flour tortillas I have access to all have interesterified oil in them, (the replacement for trans fat) which I'm dubious about. Corn tortillas, unfortunately, will break in half the instant you try to fold them. So, I'm going to experiment. Day one was the control. It went poorly as expected. Day two I rubbed a drop of oil on the section that would fold. (Both sides.) 2 of the tortillas didn't break at all, though the other two had significant breaks. On day three I was a bit more generous with the oil. This wasn't any better than just a drop of oil, though. Again, two tortillas had significant splitting, while the other two had light or no splitting. My next experiment would be to heat up the tortillas in the pan before folding them, but I'm out of tortillas. (I've seen a video about how you can just dump them in hot oil to make this work, but then it's literally dripping with oil, which I'm not enthusiastic about. I'm trying to find a method that works while only adding a minimum of oil.)
Other notes:
This has the spice level of a Mexican chain restaurant. Add some cayenne or something.
The recipe only made enough for 10 tortillas, (and those last two were underfilled) which was short of the 12 I had hoped for. I didn't put the whole onion in there, and I should have, as well as a bit more salsa. (Final two got scrambled eggs with salsa.)
This benefits from a decent spatula. I have a fish turner which I use for eggs, which is probably the ideal tool for the job.
Ginger Rice with Chicken, chard & Shiitakes:
This claims to be ginger rice, but only includes 1 teaspoon of ginger. I'm dubious that this will be enough. Other than that, with a few changes I can make this without even going to the store, and those recipes are nice to have around, so I'll be trying that version. (Yellow onion instead of green, no mushrooms, and some frozen parsley I happen to have instead of Swiss chard. I also added a bit of salt, because the recipe didn't have any.)
The rice burnt, because I put too much water in, was trying to dry it out a bit, and overshot, but I was able to save most of it. (Not the recipe's fault.) While I can taste the ginger, I'm going to try 1.5 teaspoons next time instead of 1. Other than that, this is good. There's a distinctive ginger taste to the rice, the bits of parsley give it a pleasing appearance, it's reasonable to prepare and cook on a weeknight, and doesn't require any fresh ingredients. Not the most spectacular recipe I've had, but still quite good, probably better if I don't burn it, still good the next day, and so I'm keeping the recipe around.
Roasted Salmon with Avocado-Grapefruit Salsa:
This a "slab of meat" dinner, and I don't see an obvious way to fix that. Skipped.
Fennel salad with Blood Oranges and Arugula:
On the advice of the thread, I'm giving this another shot. More specifically, I'll be giving this a shot: https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mixed-green-salad-oranges
though I'm going with a simplified version. 1 head of Romaine, one (naval) orange, 1/4 red onion, plus dressing.
The dressing was good, especially since I have orange juice in the fridge 99% of the time, so it's not an ingredient I would need to put effort into. I think I chopped the orange too coarsely; (cut the orange like a loaf of bread, then quartered the slices) it didn't have much presence in the salad, and it was difficult to get a consistent amount of orange bits per serving. If I did this again, I'd try keeping the orange bits in a separate container and just adding them on top of the salad, as well as dividing it up a bit finer.
This is basically a salad with steak strips in it. I changed the salad ingredients around a bit based on what looked good at the store. (Lettuce, parsley, red onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, and English cucumber.)
My goal was both to check to see if I like English cucumber any more than regular cucumber (it's less bad, but I still don't like it), and to get more practice with cooking meat. I think the steak came out okay, but I wasn't great at removing the cartilage, and this was rather heavy in it. (I grabbed a cheap (not so much price/pound, and more that it didn't come in a 2-pack) chuck steak, which in retrospect wasn't the best cut for this, but I'm doing this to get the mistakes out of the way now; in this case, that not everything with "steak" in the name that looks like a steak is suitable for use as a steak.)
This took a while to prepare. (Hour and a half, I think. It will take significantly less time if you can chop faster, as there's almost no cooking time.) On a weeknight, I would recommend doing most of the chopping ahead of time. Also, a lot of the time is taken up by chopping various foods, and I feel there's a bit too much salad here, which are two problems that solve each other: If I did this again, I'd skip the English cucumber (because I don't like it), and the parsley (it doesn't add much to the dish).
The final result was fine, but I feel that it was less than the sum of its parts. By just serving the steak on the side, you have steak and salad, which is a classic meal. (Which is what I ended up doing with the leftovers.) What I like about a lot of one-dish dinners is that by not making meat the centerpoint you can get away with less meat and cheaper cuts. But here you basically have to use steak-quality meat anyway, and serving it on top of the salad doesn't make it go farther; it's obvious that when you get a forkful without any meat in it that you're just eating a salad, and you can't cut up the steak enough to give each forkful meat. Because of that, I'm unlikely to make this again. If you wanted to make this, I would suggest using tenderloin or another roasted meat instead. I feel that would give better results from a cheaper cut of meat. (See the "Noodle Salad with Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette" from a previous post.) Or maybe a hard sausage? Point is, not steak.
There are a number of cuts labeled "steak" that seem like they'd work for this but not be the stuff people normally call steak (the ribeye, strip steak, and tenderloin). This seems like it would be a good place to use sirloin, flat iron, skirt, or flank steak. Chuck "steak" is just beef chuck sliced into an individual sized portion that can theoretically be seared or grilled like a steak but the cut is still really more for stews, braises, and use as ground beef. It's basically the stores/meat industry trying to find new ways to sell an existing product which takes advantage of even people who know little of meat viewing "steak" as a fancy foodstuff. Similar happens with lamb shanks that get sliced and called "steak." That's even worse really as it's an even tougher cut of meat.
All that said, it's worth noting that Thailand is an exporter of beef so it it's going to be a more readily available meat than in some other Asian cuisines and not need to be stretched as much. There's also probably a different recipe in each household and a quick google search for Yum Nua turns up variations that involve just quickly grilling a steak as well as ones that marinate the meat and don't need it to be a tender cut out of the package.
Ginger Rice with Chicken, chard & Shiitakes:
This claims to be ginger rice, but only includes 1 teaspoon of ginger. I'm dubious that this will be enough. Other than that, with a few changes I can make this without even going to the store, and those recipes are nice to have around, so I'll be trying that version. (Yellow onion instead of green, no mushrooms, and some frozen parsley I happen to have instead of Swiss chard. I also added a bit of salt, because the recipe didn't have any.)
The rice burnt, because I put too much water in, was trying to dry it out a bit, and overshot, but I was able to save most of it. (Not the recipe's fault.) While I can taste the ginger, I'm going to try 1.5 teaspoons next time instead of 1. Other than that, this is good. There's a distinctive ginger taste to the rice, the bits of parsley give it a pleasing appearance, it's reasonable to prepare and cook on a weeknight, and doesn't require any fresh ingredients. Not the most spectacular recipe I've had, but still quite good, probably better if I don't burn it, still good the next day, and so I'm keeping the recipe around.
I'm always skeptical of any recipe involving mushrooms in a cookbook like this. None of them seem to know how to cook them long enough to make them taste good instead of bland and slippery.
Fennel salad with Blood Oranges and Arugula:
On the advice of the thread, I'm giving this another shot. More specifically, I'll be giving this a shot: https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mixed-green-salad-oranges
though I'm going with a simplified version. 1 head of Romaine, one (naval) orange, 1/4 red onion, plus dressing.
The dressing was good, especially since I have orange juice in the fridge 99% of the time, so it's not an ingredient I would need to put effort into. I think I chopped the orange too coarsely; (cut the orange like a loaf of bread, then quartered the slices) it didn't have much presence in the salad, and it was difficult to get a consistent amount of orange bits per serving. If I did this again, I'd try keeping the orange bits in a separate container and just adding them on top of the salad, as well as dividing it up a bit finer.
You really want to supreme an orange for this, like so:
This keeps the bulk of the bitter pith and fibrous membrane out of the dish. You can squeeze a bit of juice out of the bits of fruit left on the membrane too but it won't be a lot. I think I've usually gone with an entire orange in the salad when doing this just for myself but that may be a bit too much. You also have the option of using some orange zest in the dressing or as a topping if you want more flavor. Again, something you may need to play with so it's not too much.
I almost supremed the orange, I just didn't cut around the membranes after I cut off the peel/pith. Probably should have added some zest to the dressing, though. Oh well. Still good.
I was jealous of that millionaire bacon from a while up-thread and my wife wanted me to grill today so I made up some steak burgers and millionaire bacon. Three thumbs up, would bacon again. I used way more black pepper than the recipe I found called for. Do not regret.
I feel cheese is essential to a Gratin, (without it, you basically just have roasted vegetables) and I wasn't really seeing any non-dairy versions that I want to make.
Then a few days later Chef John posted a naturally dairy-free mayo-based gratin that looked pretty good: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8380474/dynamite-rice/
Something new to me is the use of canned clams. This is interesting to me because it's one of the environmentally better seafood options, while still being reasonably cheap. (Though the ones I have access to are wild-caught, which is a bit weird considering how simple clams are to farm.) I'm going meat-light by just having a single can of canned clams in here. I'm also reducing the cooking time because nothing here needs a specific internal temperature to be safe. Finally, I'm replacing the hot sauce with cayenne pepper, because hot sauce doesn't agree with me for some reason. (Also I skipped the broil step because I used a glass dish without thinking about it, and glassware isn't broil-safe.)
The biggest issue I had was that the canned clams were ludicrously underfilled; about a fourth of the can had actual clam in it, with the rest being clam juice. That might have been okay if I was making clam chowder or something, but this dish really needed the clams drained. I have no idea if this is normal, but I feel ripped off.
Other than that I'm happy with how this came out. The vinegar rice mixture is tasty even by itself, the full dish is even better, with a flavor profile that's new to me, it reheats well, and I managed to land the spice level at hot but still edible. I can see myself making this again, though I'm not sure how I feel about using the canned clams.
Lentil & Chard Soup with Duck Confit:
So, I can't get duck confit. Obviously I can't get duck confit. Why is this recommending duck confit without even a word on substitutes? I can get duck breast, but that's $16/pound. Safeway has reasonably-priced duck, but it's a complete bird, which I don't want to deal with for a single recipe. Lentil & Chard soup it is! (Beef sausage instead of duck, but that's the only substitution made.)
This is going to be rather similar to other lentil soups I've made in the past. The main new bits here are the chard and the fried baguette croutons. The chard looks similar to kale, in that it's a durable leafy green. For the croutons, that's just fried bread.
As for the results, the soup was somewhat underwhelming. I was suspicious that the recipe added both the chard leaves and ribs at the same time, and that was, indeed, a mistake. While the ribs were properly cooked, the leaves were overcooked, and would have benefited from being added later. (10 minutes from the end of cooking appears standard.) In addition, I'd recommend the use of stock instead of water, (or at least part of the water; there's 10 cups in here) the addition of a splash of vinegar, a dash of cayenne, and some Worcestershire sauce.
The croutons were good, though a frying pan was possibly not the best tool for the job. The Internet recommends baking the oily bread, and I feel that would have gotten me a more consistent result.
Roasted Broccoli with Soy, Rice vinegar & Sesame Seeds:
Exactly what it sounds like. I followed this recipe reasonably closely, only skipping the sesame seeds and substituting soybean oil for peanut.
The first attempt failed because I didn't write the recipe down, and mixed the vinegar/soy sauce mixture with the oil. This therefore came out more steamed than roasted; the broccoli was too wet by the time it ended up in the oven. The second time I actually followed the recipe and got roasted broccoli.
As for the result, yeah, it's good, though I'd recommend going a lot lighter on the vinegar/soy sauce. It calls for 1 tablespoon of each, and I'd go for 1 teaspoon, or use it as a dipping sauce or something.
I made the ginger rice again, with 1.5 tsp of ginger, and that was still too little ginger. 2 tsp next time.
So, I can't get duck confit. Obviously I can't get duck confit. Why is this recommending duck confit without even a word on substitutes? I can get duck breast, but that's $16/pound. Safeway has reasonably-priced duck, but it's a complete bird, which I don't want to deal with for a single recipe. Lentil & Chard soup it is! (Beef sausage instead of duck, but that's the only substitution made.)
This is going to be rather similar to other lentil soups I've made in the past. The main new bits here are the chard and the fried baguette croutons. The chard looks similar to kale, in that it's a durable leafy green. For the croutons, that's just fried bread.
As for the results, the soup was somewhat underwhelming. I was suspicious that the recipe added both the chard leaves and ribs at the same time, and that was, indeed, a mistake. While the ribs were properly cooked, the leaves were overcooked, and would have benefited from being added later. (10 minutes from the end of cooking appears standard.) In addition, I'd recommend the use of stock instead of water, (or at least part of the water; there's 10 cups in here) the addition of a splash of vinegar, a dash of cayenne, and some Worcestershire sauce.
The croutons were good, though a frying pan was possibly not the best tool for the job. The Internet recommends baking the oily bread, and I feel that would have gotten me a more consistent result.
Duck confit doesn't really have great substitutes. Poultry has a very different taste and texture compared to duck. Duck breast has very different properties. Even non-confit duck leg quarters have a different texture compared to dug confit. If a recipe isn't serving duck confit whole it likely wants to shred it which requires a certain texture.
I've made confit with turkey legs before but it is still pretty different and something you have to make yourself whereas some nicer grocery stores will sell duck confit premade. I'm guessing the book didn't go into how to make it yourself though admittedly making it the traditional way might be a bit much for a book like this. It's one of those things where making it once makes it a lot easier to make it in the future because you can strain and reuse the fat involved and end up with additional fat from the duck used but the first time takes some more prep.
lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
It's midwinter and raining out right now.
So 'tinned food soup' it is.
tinned corn, chickpease, kidney beans, tomatoes, potatoes, plus frozen carrots and some frozen shredded chicken, all tossed with veggie broth and taco seasoning.
So, I can't get duck confit. Obviously I can't get duck confit. Why is this recommending duck confit without even a word on substitutes? I can get duck breast, but that's $16/pound. Safeway has reasonably-priced duck, but it's a complete bird, which I don't want to deal with for a single recipe. Lentil & Chard soup it is! (Beef sausage instead of duck, but that's the only substitution made.)
This is going to be rather similar to other lentil soups I've made in the past. The main new bits here are the chard and the fried baguette croutons. The chard looks similar to kale, in that it's a durable leafy green. For the croutons, that's just fried bread.
As for the results, the soup was somewhat underwhelming. I was suspicious that the recipe added both the chard leaves and ribs at the same time, and that was, indeed, a mistake. While the ribs were properly cooked, the leaves were overcooked, and would have benefited from being added later. (10 minutes from the end of cooking appears standard.) In addition, I'd recommend the use of stock instead of water, (or at least part of the water; there's 10 cups in here) the addition of a splash of vinegar, a dash of cayenne, and some Worcestershire sauce.
The croutons were good, though a frying pan was possibly not the best tool for the job. The Internet recommends baking the oily bread, and I feel that would have gotten me a more consistent result.
Duck confit doesn't really have great substitutes. Poultry has a very different taste and texture compared to duck. Duck breast has very different properties. Even non-confit duck leg quarters have a different texture compared to dug confit. If a recipe isn't serving duck confit whole it likely wants to shred it which requires a certain texture.
I've made confit with turkey legs before but it is still pretty different and something you have to make yourself whereas some nicer grocery stores will sell duck confit premade. I'm guessing the book didn't go into how to make it yourself though admittedly making it the traditional way might be a bit much for a book like this. It's one of those things where making it once makes it a lot easier to make it in the future because you can strain and reuse the fat involved and end up with additional fat from the duck used but the first time takes some more prep.
In that case, if the main ingredient of your dish is not commonly available, and can't be reasonably substituted, maybe think twice about including that recipe.
Anyway, I'm still slowly going through this recipe book, I just haven't bothered digging up this thread.
Spinach & Black Bean Enchiladas:
Enchiladas are another food that I feel doesn't work properly without cheese. Therefore, I'm basically going to grab a enchilada recipe off the Internet that's naturally dairy-free instead of trying to salvage this one, and see where that goes. https://cooknourishbliss.com/2020/05/04/dairy-free-chicken-enchiladas/
(The filling is basically beans, chicken, and enchilada sauce.)
This came out...fine. It's perfectly edible, there's just not a lot there. I made quesadillas with the leftover tortillas and filling, and I preferred that, so maybe the lesson is to fry boring foods.
I experimented more with the corn tortillas, and it turns out heating them up in a plain skillet (no oil) actually works out well. Flour tortillas would still be better on a technical level, but this works.
Creamy Brussels Sprout Soup with Maple Bacon:
There are two problems with this soup. First, I'm not interested in working with bacon again. Second, this wants a puree in a blender, which I don't own. I'm replacing the bacon with summer sausage, and I'm basically going to mash it to get the creaminess, and see how well that works. (Also going to add some carrots that need to be used up soon.) I don't see any red flags here, as this is basically a "dump everything in a pot" kind of soup now, without any special steps or problematic ingredients.
As for the results, mashing it up did not work well, because it turned the Brussels sprouts into a bit of a mess. Doing this properly would probably require preparing the potatoes in a separate pot, and mashing them there, for extra dishes. The taste is fine, but it's a bit bland, even after I added Worcestershire and a splash of vinegar. For future soups, I'm alright with tossing some Brussels sprouts in there, but I'd just use my general soup recipe.
Turkey Burgers with Radicchio Slaw:
I don't have a real exhaust system in my kitchen. I tried making burgers once, and I see no reason to make that mistake again. What I do make is fried egg sandwiches. So, I'm going to make fried egg sandwiches and add coleslaw. (Not using Radicchio, though, because that stuff's expensive; just my standard coleslaw recipe.)
The end result was basically a fried egg sandwich. The coleslaw doesn't add any obvious flavor notes (maybe a bit of celery seed?) because I already had a vinegar taste from the pickles, and any crunch was overpowered by the pickles and toasted/lightly fried bun. The coleslaw tastes fine on its own, it just doesn't add anything to the sandwich that wasn't already there. Oh well.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
tinned corn, chickpease, kidney beans, tomatoes, potatoes, plus frozen carrots and some frozen shredded chicken, all tossed with veggie broth and taco seasoning.
Giant pot of soup is go!
Giant pot of soup was a success!
I added a few slices of Havarti cheese onto mine and it got all melty and yummy.
And then I managed to inhale/swallow an entire baby potato whole.
I don't have a real exhaust system in my kitchen. I tried making burgers once, and I see no reason to make that mistake again.
What happened that went so badly you wont make burgers again? Do you not have any kind of window you can open and fan to pull fumes out if that's the issue? I've made burgers inside countless times and never bothered using the fan above the stove.
It also sounds like you're making modifications to recipes that are changing up the fundamental flavor profile or intended cooking method leading to dishes you aren't happy with. If making something for the first time I always follow the recipe as closely as possible to see once it's done if there's anything I want to change. I'd also go as far as saying maybe you should try a different cookbook as you've had very little success making anything you seem to like from it.
All those recipes that tell you to fry onions for 5-10 minutes to caramelise them? They are full of lies.
It takes 40 minimum as I am discovering
Ohhh yeah, you need an immense amount of time. Makes sense though, onions are mostly water, and you need to go at low heat so they don’t burn. Apparently you can cheat by adding baking soda. But this will affect the taste of the soup so I’ve never done it.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I wish I could grow onions worth a damn. The bulbs are always marble sized at best, they never want to get bigger.
Caramelized onions are such a lie in most recipes. There is no world in which it's a quick process. It's actually one of my go-to filters to decide whether I'm going to try a recipe I find.
"Caramelize onions for a few minutes"... nope. liar or not a cook.
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I would think most alcohol you have near a stove (like spirits or wine or beer) would be conductive and also likely flammable to the point where a safety feature that turned on all the burners would be dangerous. I imagine it's been figured out, I'm just curious how.
A wooden cooling rack, I assume. You're not supposed to remove tempered glass from the oven and put it on a metal surface.
This is what I'm talking about when I say there's a lot of non-obvious safety issues with tempered glass, by the way. You take the hot pan out of the oven and put it on...an inactive burner because you don't have a lot of counter space and it's right there? Safety issue. A metal cooling rack? Safety issue. A metal or ceramic trivet? Safety issue. A stone countertop? Safety issue. A cloth or wood trivet? That one's actually okay. Now, you can probably get away with a metal cooling rack, but that doesn't mean it's following the safety guidelines.
Wine and beer would just register as water, their alcohol content is much too low to be any kind of hazard and yeah, they've got plenty of contaminants to set off a sensor like that. Anything with high enough alcohol content to actually burn might not set off the sensor, but is also going to evaporate rather quickly. If the sparker does set that on fire, it's no worse than with a regular cooktop and the constant sparker is still avoiding the much, much worse scenario of flooding a home with deadly gas or turning into a big bomb.
The sensors themselves are basically just two separated, exposed wires/metal points. Anything conductive drops on them and they complete a circuit, which sends a signal to the control board saying something has been spilled. When wires dry, the circuit is broken and the signal stops.
So if it's obnoxious behavior, you could stop it early if you know where the sensors are. Probably could just lift the cooktop up, clean up the spill, then also clean off the sensor so it goes back to the "dry" state instead of waiting a while for it to dry normally.
bowl of hot grits, topped with a pinch of dried chives and shredded cheddar cheese which is allowed to melt, then an over medium egg on top which also helps to melt the cheese, a piece or two of bacon broken up on top, then finally some hot sauce dripped on the side over the grits. a pretty easy to make breakfast bowl, especially when using instant grits
Lemon Chiffon Gingersnap Pie:
This is a dairy-heavy desert that I don't think I can fix. I'll pass.
Unless I rearrange the ingredients a bit, substitute the whipped cream, and....I ended up with lemon merrange pie. Huh. Still not going to make it, because I don't have an electric mixer, but that's still interesting.
Cornbread (again):
Tried soaking the cornmeal in the milk. Helped a bit, but it was still overly crunchy. I am now out of the stone-ground cornmeal. I bought more, with a more consistent and finer grind, and made cornbread with that. This version came out quite well. There's just a bit of crunch, but in a good way this time; nothing you could chip a tooth on. I'm happy with it. In the end, the lesson is to buy the cheap cornmeal, not the fancy stone-ground stuff.
Stir-fried Soba Noodles With Beef & Cabbage:
I had some carrots I needed to use up, so I replaced the (Napa) cabbage with that. It's a stir-fry. It'll be fine.
This isn't the first stir-fry I've made, so my main goal was to get more used to dealing with raw meat; my meat consumption is basically all pre-cooked stuff (diced frozen chicken, sausage, and ground beef that I cook and freeze myself), and while that's certainly convenient, getting a bit more experience there would be good, mostly in case I need to do something fancy. Since I don't go for meat-heavy dinners, I don't get a lot of opportunities for practice, but this should work well.
Final ingredients were (buckwheat) soba noodles, baby carrots, cut into matchsticks, beef bits(? I just grabbed a cheap pack of meat that was cut into sections between stew and steak size), cut into strips, green pepper, green onion, and (microwaved) peas.
The instructions called for partially-freezing the meat, and that's a very important step. These are thin strips, and I didn't freeze it long enough. (I came home from the store, put the meat in the freezer, chopped and stored the vegetables, then moved on to the meat.) It still helped, but freezing longer would have been a better experience. Also, I should have only worked on half the package at a time, leaving the rest in the freezer.
What did work well was prepping everything the night before. Getting the ingredients prepped is most of the work, and this way I could start dinner earlier.
In the end, this came out quite well, both in term of dinner, and in terms of improving my meat handling skills. My lazier version of it has rice (combining the soba noodles with everything else is a bit annoying because they tend to clump together, I don't need to wash a colander, and the soba is a bit more expensive while not providing a better experience), and chicken strips (because it's easier to just pull precooked strips out of the freezer).
Vinegar-Glazed Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts & Walnut Oil:
"Look for vacuum-packed roasted and peeled chestnuts in gourmet shops and well-stocked supermarkets". Well, screw you too, buddy. My store actually has these, (according to the website; not sure where those are hiding) but it's the principle of the matter. What kind of recipe tells me to go to a literal gourmet shop for an ingredient? Anyway, chestnuts look like an annoying ingredient that I'm unlikely to do anything else with in the future, so I'm using a different recipe, that uses ingredients I have already:
https://www.delish.com/holiday-recipes/thanksgiving/a23013160/honey-balsamic-glazed-brussels-sprouts-recipe/
Though the comments talk about how there's far too much glaze, so I'm making some adjustments in that regard.
Anyway, this came out...fine. Nothing to write home about. I'd prefer roasting Brussels Sprouts.
Noodle Salad with Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette:
Like the stir-fry above, this is another recipe where I'm using it as practice for dealing with raw meat, in this case pork tenderloin. I'm mostly following the recipe as given. (Substituted sesame oil for peanut, apple cider vinegar for sherry vinegar (I swear, every single time this cookbook calls for vinegar, it's a different variety), jalapeno pepper instead of serrano, and rotini pasta instead of Chinese egg noodles. Also, using a dutch oven instead of grilling the tenderloin.)
Flavor-wise, I like how this came out, though I'm glad I deglazed the dutch oven, reduced it, and added that to the dressing; that added another layer of flavor to the dish. My biggest mistake was in not searing the pork enough before putting it in the oven. That meant it only got a thick crust on the bottom. Also, the directions I was using for the tenderloin called for 1hr 15min at 375 F, which is apparently the directions for a 160 F internal temperature. Even the USDA doesn't call for 160 F anymore, and they're the no-fun club. Still turned out all right. The lid means it didn't dry out, and I cut it into small bits for the salad, so extra toughness isn't a big deal. When I cooked the remaining half-pound, I just did 1hr, which got me 150-155 F internal temperature.
The biggest issue with this recipe is the preparation effort required, most of which is centered around the pork. If I happened to have precooked pork sitting around, it would just be a simple 20-minute, 2 pot meal. (Cook the pasta, chop everything else, mix everything together.) Instead, it takes 2 hours, and 3 large dishes. (One for cooking the pork, one for the noodles, and one to put everything in.) That's too long for a weeknight meal. (If you wanted to do this on a weeknight, I'd suggest preparing the pork the night before; there's no expectation for the dish to be served warm. Alternately, use a hard sausage or bacon or something instead; frying up bacon is a much faster process, and I think it would fit well with this dish.)
Another bit of annoyance is that my local store only had ~2lb packs of tenderloin. (Two actual strips.) My dutch oven fits one pound at a time, so half a pound was used in this recipe, half a pound was cooked and frozen for later at the same time, half a pound was cut raw into strips and frozen for stir fry later, and the final half-pound was used for a different meal a few days later.
This is the first meal I made in my new (to me) dutch oven, and I'm happy with it. The ability to go from the stovetop to the oven meant I could sear the pork on the stovetop in the same dish I used for the oven. The fact that it has a lid means I didn't need to use aluminum foil to tent it. It's just generally a good tool for the job. Downsides are not being able to dishwasher-clean it, and a general unwieldiness from size and weight.
Barley Risotto with Chicken, Mushrooms, & Greens:
...I was unaware you could make risotto with barley. Anyway, the day before, I had stopped by my parents', and went home with a few leaves of fresh kale, so I used that for the greens. I also used the pre-cooked frozen pork from the last recipe instead of chicken, added some frozen veggies I keep meaning to use up, replaced the white wine with a splash of vinegar, and added a couple bay leaves, a dash of cayenne pepper, and a dash of Worcestershire, but I generally followed the recipe.
Not really a fan of the 45+ minute cook time, which puts it just on the edge of what's reasonable for a weeknight dinner, but at least it doesn't require any actual monitoring during that time, and that's kind of just how long barley takes to cook. I put the precooked meat as well as the frozen veggies in at the 30-minute mark, then the kale at the very end.
It came out well. I usually use barley in barley soup, which is basically this, but with more water. I think I prefer the soup, but they're both good for the same reasons.
Kumquat-carrot puree with toasted fennel seeds:
I don't think I can salvage this. I don't have access to kumquats, and I don't have a blender to puree this.
Vinegar does come in a lot of varieties. A lot of them can be subbed for each other, but they do actually taste different so having a bunch can be nice. Since they don't go bad and most are pretty cheap, it's not onerous to have a variety.
That said, I think the big ones are going to be a red wine vinegar and apple cider vinegar. Balsamic is weird given that the real aged 12 years stuff is somewhat pricey and the cheap imitations are so common in the US that that's what most people and recipes are thinking of and while I'll use the real stuff in vinaigrettes I'll use the imitations if heat is involved. Rice vinegar is good if one does a lot of Asian cuisines. Sherry vinegar is nice to have but I've often subbed a mix of red wine and imitation balsamic for it.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I got a 3 lb top round LB from Publix this weekend. I marinated it in a zip top back overnight. The marinade consisted of salt, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, basil, oregano, crushed red pepper, veggie oil, soy sauce, and worcestershire sauce, water and my secret ingredient. Baking Soda.
Most LB recipes call for using vinegar, an acid instead of a base like baking soda. I don't like doing this for several reasons. Acid based marinades can actually start cooking the meat, denaturing the protein structure of the muscle fibers. They don't do anything to the connective tissues though. You see baking soda used a lot in asian dishes to tenderize meat before cooking it, hot and fast. The baking soda actually acts more on the connective tissues than the meat proteins. Raising the PH like that also aids in browning. So I took a page from J. Kenji López and used baking soda for my LB marinade instead of vinegar.
Anyway, I marinated the meat overnight. Instead of broiling it in the oven, I fired up the grill. I got my grill as hot as I could (almost 600f) and dropped the meat down for 4 minutes. Flipped, rotated 90 degrees, cooked for another 4 minutes. Flipped, another 90, 3 minutes, flipped another 90, 2 minutes. YMMV for cooking times but I have a sure-fire method if determining if your meat is done.
Take your hand and make a fist. Not a super tight fist nor a super loose, weak fist. Just somewhere in the middle. Not the sort of fist you would punch someone with but sold enough that you could quickly tense it to that point. Find the muscle that goes from your thumb knuckle to your index knuckle and press on it. That is about what you are looking for if you press on your grilled meat when it's cooked to a perfect medium rare. The tighter your fist, the more the muscle resembles well done meat.
Anyway, I cooked my London Broil to a perfect medium rare. The next key is to let your meat rest. For my part I made a foil pouch that I put the meat in, off the grill, and loosely sealed by folding the foil over. And there it sat for a full 10 minutes before I even checked it. Letting your meat rest like that is so incredibly important. It lets the meat finish cooking so you get that perfect doneness all the way through. It also allows the juices to better retained when slicing.
And finally, I cut against the grain as much as I could, and cut super thin slices. You go as thin as your knife skills can manage.
And now for the money shots. I was VERY happy with the results. It was cooked PERFECTLY.
Ooh. That's a really nice price... I really should go by there to stock up on meats... (A family member has a membership, yay for mooching)
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Just remember that pork loin is NOT the same as pork tenderloin. Pork Loin is like a beef ribeye where as pork tenderloin is like the beef filet.
More fat, more flavor.
Yeah, that was definitely the case with this pork. Very tender and delicious.
I wish I could get pork loin reliably.
My method of cooking pork these days is to brine it in pickle brine/juice leftover from when I make lactofermented dill pickles or buy fermented or vinegar pickles from the store and then sous vide it.
Tenderloin has worked decently but I think my favorite results so far have been with "country style ribs" that I'm pretty sure are the shoulder version, not the loin version.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I'm not enthusiastic about the use of quinoa. On the other hand, quinoa isn't even traditional, bulgur wheat is. And my local store carries that. So, that's one easy substitution to make. Also of interest is that the recipe calls for an entire pound of shrimp, which seems to me to be a good way to make grilled shrimp with a bit of tabbouleh on the side--You know what, I'm just going to make tabbouleh.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tabbouleh/
This calls for more bulgur than most recipes, but my store didn't have the best parsley when I stopped by, so I didn't want to make it the centerpoint of the dish. I messed up by not salting the boiling water added to the bulgur, which made it a bit more plain than I would like, and I probably should have soaked it longer. (I started soaking it at the start of prep, then tossed it in at the end, which was about a 40 minute soak instead of the hour that the container asked for.) I also skipped the mint leaves because I don't really like the taste of just biting into a mint leaf.
I like the result, but this really needs good parsley, and less bulgur. I'm planning on making it again.
Caramel-Macadamia Tartlets:
No way I can eat this. Skipped.
Fennel Salad with Blood Oranges & Arugula:
Not only is this yet another salad, this cookbook has done a fennel salad before. Adding oranges and some lettuce leaves doesn't make this interesting. Skipped.
Spiced Pear Tarte Tatin:
Yet another desert I can't eat, that requires equipment I don't own.
Unless....
Okay, the crust is not salvageable. But the crust is also unnecessary: just serve it in a dish. Spiced pears are a fine idea, I just need something to serve them on. I'm going to take inspiration from the tartlets above, and use a custard. Dairy-free recipes for custard exist, in this case:
https://www.godairyfree.org/recipes/easy-dairy-free-custard-no-tempering
I upped the recipe to use an entire can of coconut milk so I don't have leftovers (2 eggs, 3 table sugar, 1.5 table cornstarch, salt, 1 can light coconut milk, vanilla to taste), poured it into a wide and shallow container, waited for it to set, placed canned peaches on top (syrup went into oatmeal the next day), then covered with the spice mixture (1/4c brown sugar, 1 table lemon juice, 1 table ground ginger, .5 tea cinnamon, 0.25 tea nutmeg).
The end result isn't the most appetizing-looking creation, as it's white on off-white, covered in brown, so that bit needs a bit more work. More importantly, it didn't set properly. But, an unset custard is fixable. I removed the pear slices, and reheated the custard-spice mix. At that point, it turned into a reasonable desert.
I'm pretty sure the issue here was adding the wet pears and wet spice mixture to the custard, which was just a bit too much for it to handle. With that in mind....
Version 2:
Vanilla pudding or custard, prepared in the usual manner, around 2 cups total.
In a second container, mix together 1/4c brown sugar, 1 table lemon juice, 1 table ground ginger, .5 tea cinnamon, 0.25 tea ground nutmeg.
Drain and add 1 can of sliced pears to the spice mixture, then mix.
Keep the pudding and spice mixture separate until serving time.
In this case, I used Cook-n-serve Jello pudding. (This works with non-dairy milk, but you have to combine it with 1.5c instead of 3c real milk.) This actually came out properly, with a nice contrast between the simple pudding and the spiced pears. It's also a quick way to make boxed pudding a bit fancier.
Warm Lentil & Kale salad with Bacon:
I'll be following this recipe reasonably closely.
I've never done anything with bacon before, but looks like bacon keeps better after opening if cooked, so I prepared the bacon a few days in advance, splitting the pound up into three separate meals. (Egg and bacon sandwiches, this, and the rest into the freezer for later soup.)
The big changes to the recipe was cooking the carrots in a frying pan instead of roasting them, in order to drop the number of dishes (saucepan for lentils, frying pan for everything else), adding chopped red pepper, and skipping the thyme, because my thyme is a decade old. (Adding paprika and ancho chili powder instead.) It came out reasonably well, though I think the bacon was carrying the dish. Basically, "warm salad" is a bit weird conceptually, and while this is a reasonably well-executed version of the concept, I don't think the concept works. It doesn't have the heartiness of a lentil soup, but also doesn't have the lightness and crunch of a salad. This is in the middle of both options, and while it's not terrible, I'd prefer either soup or salad.
As for the bacon, it was as messy as I expected. I don't intend to buy more in the future. My feeling on it is that a spiced hard sausage can replace bacon in most recipes, while being easier to manage on a technical level, and providing a better taste. Tossing some fried summer sausage or something in here would have been just fine, and I wouldn't need to wipe down a bunch of dishes with paper towels in order to keep bacon grease out of the plumbing. (Plus it leaves my skin greasy for days.)
I learned a recipe for this in a Moroccan cooking class. I like it a lot and making a vinaigrette with the juice of another orange pairs really nicely. It also taught me the knife skill of how to supreme citrus fruits.
I understand not wanting to do another fennel salad if you weren't keen on the first but if this and that salad were to fight it out on flavor, this one would win out.
It sounds like you cooked the bacon and then cut it? That's going to be super messy for sure. Cutting/chopping it before cooking is the preferred method to the point where the French have a word for the kinds of chunks you cut it into.
Bacon fat is also one of the fats that should never be a risk to the drain because you strain it and store it in a pyrex or ceramic container for later use when you want extra umami in something. One of my usual weekend breakfast/brunch meals is to cook bacon and then scramble eggs in the same pan instead of using butter. Bacon fat is one of the core ingredients of southern American cooking as it added meaty flavor to various vegetables for a populace that couldn't afford meat regularly and stuck around in more abundant times because so many find it tasty.
Sausages can sub in for a lot of bacon uses for sure though. I've done a number of dishes that involve rendering sausage fat out and then cooking something in said fat and could easily swap bacon for that as well as swap the sausage for bacon in most other recipes. Definitely not all though as some already have a large volume of meat and adding sausage might be a bit much . . . though probably delicious so I think I'm going to try it next time . . . or maybe do both bacon AND sausage . . . probably a good thing I work out so much and can afford this kind of excess.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I checked the salad recipe more closely, and didn't see anything exciting there. It's just the given ingredients, with a simple vinaigrette. Is your version different, or do these ingredients just work well together? (I admittedly haven't tried oranges in a salad.)
I do 425 for like 12-15 minutes, but you have to fiddle around a bit depending on the bacon you are using, the sheet you are using, the texture you are going for, etc, etc.
I use a similar method. Get one of those half sheet trays and a rack that fits inside of it. Cover the bottom of the pan with parchment as you indicated but put the rack on top of that and the bacon on the rack. Your bacon will end up flatter and a lot less greasy because all the fat and moisture drips down away from the meat. You can fit 1 half sheet pan in a home oven or 2, side by side in a commercial oven. I don't recommend doing a pan the top and bottom racks, even if you swap and rotate. It slows down the cooking, isn't as even and you risk spilling grease the more you move the pans.
You should be able to fit a whole pack of thick cut bacon on a single had sheet rack.
On that note, now that I've been getting a chance to use them more often. Absolutely love things.
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Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I'm guessing my ingredients are different. Unfortunately I can't find the recipe I learned on anymore which is a disappointment. That said, the core really was the fennel and citrus for me and I really like oranges. I almost certainly played with it until I got a balance I liked (there's a good chance the original didn't include an orange vinaigrette and I threw that in myself). I'll probably need to do some research to recreate something close to it at some point.
For the bacon, I've never had much grease on the dishes themselves. But many people do first lay the cooked bacon on some paper towels before serving to get rid of excess fat. I don't bother because I just eat whatever's on the bacon with the bacon itself and just letting most of the excess drip off a bit when removing it from the pan with tongs does enough for my needs. Mind you I've almost always bought the exact same bacon for the last 10 years so I'm super practiced with the particular brand and cut. I would endorse the oven methods mentioned by others for most people though. I'm just usually doing something specific when I use bacon that eliminates any leftover fat in the pan.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
This is basically a salad with steak strips in it. I changed the salad ingredients around a bit based on what looked good at the store. (Lettuce, parsley, red onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, and English cucumber.)
My goal was both to check to see if I like English cucumber any more than regular cucumber (it's less bad, but I still don't like it), and to get more practice with cooking meat. I think the steak came out okay, but I wasn't great at removing the cartilage, and this was rather heavy in it. (I grabbed a cheap (not so much price/pound, and more that it didn't come in a 2-pack) chuck steak, which in retrospect wasn't the best cut for this, but I'm doing this to get the mistakes out of the way now; in this case, that not everything with "steak" in the name that looks like a steak is suitable for use as a steak.)
This took a while to prepare. (Hour and a half, I think. It will take significantly less time if you can chop faster, as there's almost no cooking time.) On a weeknight, I would recommend doing most of the chopping ahead of time. Also, a lot of the time is taken up by chopping various foods, and I feel there's a bit too much salad here, which are two problems that solve each other: If I did this again, I'd skip the English cucumber (because I don't like it), and the parsley (it doesn't add much to the dish).
The final result was fine, but I feel that it was less than the sum of its parts. By just serving the steak on the side, you have steak and salad, which is a classic meal. (Which is what I ended up doing with the leftovers.) What I like about a lot of one-dish dinners is that by not making meat the centerpoint you can get away with less meat and cheaper cuts. But here you basically have to use steak-quality meat anyway, and serving it on top of the salad doesn't make it go farther; it's obvious that when you get a forkful without any meat in it that you're just eating a salad, and you can't cut up the steak enough to give each forkful meat. Because of that, I'm unlikely to make this again. If you wanted to make this, I would suggest using tenderloin or another roasted meat instead. I feel that would give better results from a cheaper cut of meat. (See the "Noodle Salad with Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette" from a previous post.) Or maybe a hard sausage? Point is, not steak.
Sweet Potato & Green Chile Quesadillas with Arugula:
This is a recipe I don't think I can fix thanks to the cheese. So, I'll be trying a dairy-free recipe I found on the Internet instead:
https://wereparents.com/dairy-free-baked-chicken-quesadillas/ (I guess they turn into parents on the full moon.)
My main change is in using precooked frozen chicken instead of breading and baking chicken. (Chicken, 1/2 onion, 1 can beans, 1 jalapeno, 1 avocado, 1 table lime, and 1/2c salsa.) This drastically drops the prep/cooking time. You basically put the chicken and onion in the frying pan, prep the rest of the ingredients while stirring every so often, then cut up the chicken with the spatula and dump the chicken and onion in with the rest of the ingredients when it's done. Then reuse the frying pan to fry the tortillas. With that change, this is a reasonable weeknight meal.
This actually came out well. The biggest issue I have is that I use corn tortillas instead of flour, because the flour tortillas I have access to all have interesterified oil in them, (the replacement for trans fat) which I'm dubious about. Corn tortillas, unfortunately, will break in half the instant you try to fold them. So, I'm going to experiment. Day one was the control. It went poorly as expected. Day two I rubbed a drop of oil on the section that would fold. (Both sides.) 2 of the tortillas didn't break at all, though the other two had significant breaks. On day three I was a bit more generous with the oil. This wasn't any better than just a drop of oil, though. Again, two tortillas had significant splitting, while the other two had light or no splitting. My next experiment would be to heat up the tortillas in the pan before folding them, but I'm out of tortillas. (I've seen a video about how you can just dump them in hot oil to make this work, but then it's literally dripping with oil, which I'm not enthusiastic about. I'm trying to find a method that works while only adding a minimum of oil.)
Other notes:
This has the spice level of a Mexican chain restaurant. Add some cayenne or something.
The recipe only made enough for 10 tortillas, (and those last two were underfilled) which was short of the 12 I had hoped for. I didn't put the whole onion in there, and I should have, as well as a bit more salsa. (Final two got scrambled eggs with salsa.)
This benefits from a decent spatula. I have a fish turner which I use for eggs, which is probably the ideal tool for the job.
Ginger Rice with Chicken, chard & Shiitakes:
This claims to be ginger rice, but only includes 1 teaspoon of ginger. I'm dubious that this will be enough. Other than that, with a few changes I can make this without even going to the store, and those recipes are nice to have around, so I'll be trying that version. (Yellow onion instead of green, no mushrooms, and some frozen parsley I happen to have instead of Swiss chard. I also added a bit of salt, because the recipe didn't have any.)
The rice burnt, because I put too much water in, was trying to dry it out a bit, and overshot, but I was able to save most of it. (Not the recipe's fault.) While I can taste the ginger, I'm going to try 1.5 teaspoons next time instead of 1. Other than that, this is good. There's a distinctive ginger taste to the rice, the bits of parsley give it a pleasing appearance, it's reasonable to prepare and cook on a weeknight, and doesn't require any fresh ingredients. Not the most spectacular recipe I've had, but still quite good, probably better if I don't burn it, still good the next day, and so I'm keeping the recipe around.
Roasted Salmon with Avocado-Grapefruit Salsa:
This a "slab of meat" dinner, and I don't see an obvious way to fix that. Skipped.
Fennel salad with Blood Oranges and Arugula:
On the advice of the thread, I'm giving this another shot. More specifically, I'll be giving this a shot:
https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mixed-green-salad-oranges
though I'm going with a simplified version. 1 head of Romaine, one (naval) orange, 1/4 red onion, plus dressing.
The dressing was good, especially since I have orange juice in the fridge 99% of the time, so it's not an ingredient I would need to put effort into. I think I chopped the orange too coarsely; (cut the orange like a loaf of bread, then quartered the slices) it didn't have much presence in the salad, and it was difficult to get a consistent amount of orange bits per serving. If I did this again, I'd try keeping the orange bits in a separate container and just adding them on top of the salad, as well as dividing it up a bit finer.
There are a number of cuts labeled "steak" that seem like they'd work for this but not be the stuff people normally call steak (the ribeye, strip steak, and tenderloin). This seems like it would be a good place to use sirloin, flat iron, skirt, or flank steak. Chuck "steak" is just beef chuck sliced into an individual sized portion that can theoretically be seared or grilled like a steak but the cut is still really more for stews, braises, and use as ground beef. It's basically the stores/meat industry trying to find new ways to sell an existing product which takes advantage of even people who know little of meat viewing "steak" as a fancy foodstuff. Similar happens with lamb shanks that get sliced and called "steak." That's even worse really as it's an even tougher cut of meat.
All that said, it's worth noting that Thailand is an exporter of beef so it it's going to be a more readily available meat than in some other Asian cuisines and not need to be stretched as much. There's also probably a different recipe in each household and a quick google search for Yum Nua turns up variations that involve just quickly grilling a steak as well as ones that marinate the meat and don't need it to be a tender cut out of the package.
I'm always skeptical of any recipe involving mushrooms in a cookbook like this. None of them seem to know how to cook them long enough to make them taste good instead of bland and slippery.
You really want to supreme an orange for this, like so:
This keeps the bulk of the bitter pith and fibrous membrane out of the dish. You can squeeze a bit of juice out of the bits of fruit left on the membrane too but it won't be a lot. I think I've usually gone with an entire orange in the salad when doing this just for myself but that may be a bit too much. You also have the option of using some orange zest in the dressing or as a topping if you want more flavor. Again, something you may need to play with so it's not too much.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I feel cheese is essential to a Gratin, (without it, you basically just have roasted vegetables) and I wasn't really seeing any non-dairy versions that I want to make.
Then a few days later Chef John posted a naturally dairy-free mayo-based gratin that looked pretty good:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8380474/dynamite-rice/
Something new to me is the use of canned clams. This is interesting to me because it's one of the environmentally better seafood options, while still being reasonably cheap. (Though the ones I have access to are wild-caught, which is a bit weird considering how simple clams are to farm.) I'm going meat-light by just having a single can of canned clams in here. I'm also reducing the cooking time because nothing here needs a specific internal temperature to be safe. Finally, I'm replacing the hot sauce with cayenne pepper, because hot sauce doesn't agree with me for some reason. (Also I skipped the broil step because I used a glass dish without thinking about it, and glassware isn't broil-safe.)
The biggest issue I had was that the canned clams were ludicrously underfilled; about a fourth of the can had actual clam in it, with the rest being clam juice. That might have been okay if I was making clam chowder or something, but this dish really needed the clams drained. I have no idea if this is normal, but I feel ripped off.
Other than that I'm happy with how this came out. The vinegar rice mixture is tasty even by itself, the full dish is even better, with a flavor profile that's new to me, it reheats well, and I managed to land the spice level at hot but still edible. I can see myself making this again, though I'm not sure how I feel about using the canned clams.
Lentil & Chard Soup with Duck Confit:
So, I can't get duck confit. Obviously I can't get duck confit. Why is this recommending duck confit without even a word on substitutes? I can get duck breast, but that's $16/pound. Safeway has reasonably-priced duck, but it's a complete bird, which I don't want to deal with for a single recipe. Lentil & Chard soup it is! (Beef sausage instead of duck, but that's the only substitution made.)
This is going to be rather similar to other lentil soups I've made in the past. The main new bits here are the chard and the fried baguette croutons. The chard looks similar to kale, in that it's a durable leafy green. For the croutons, that's just fried bread.
As for the results, the soup was somewhat underwhelming. I was suspicious that the recipe added both the chard leaves and ribs at the same time, and that was, indeed, a mistake. While the ribs were properly cooked, the leaves were overcooked, and would have benefited from being added later. (10 minutes from the end of cooking appears standard.) In addition, I'd recommend the use of stock instead of water, (or at least part of the water; there's 10 cups in here) the addition of a splash of vinegar, a dash of cayenne, and some Worcestershire sauce.
The croutons were good, though a frying pan was possibly not the best tool for the job. The Internet recommends baking the oily bread, and I feel that would have gotten me a more consistent result.
Roasted Broccoli with Soy, Rice vinegar & Sesame Seeds:
Exactly what it sounds like. I followed this recipe reasonably closely, only skipping the sesame seeds and substituting soybean oil for peanut.
The first attempt failed because I didn't write the recipe down, and mixed the vinegar/soy sauce mixture with the oil. This therefore came out more steamed than roasted; the broccoli was too wet by the time it ended up in the oven. The second time I actually followed the recipe and got roasted broccoli.
As for the result, yeah, it's good, though I'd recommend going a lot lighter on the vinegar/soy sauce. It calls for 1 tablespoon of each, and I'd go for 1 teaspoon, or use it as a dipping sauce or something.
I made the ginger rice again, with 1.5 tsp of ginger, and that was still too little ginger. 2 tsp next time.
Duck confit doesn't really have great substitutes. Poultry has a very different taste and texture compared to duck. Duck breast has very different properties. Even non-confit duck leg quarters have a different texture compared to dug confit. If a recipe isn't serving duck confit whole it likely wants to shred it which requires a certain texture.
I've made confit with turkey legs before but it is still pretty different and something you have to make yourself whereas some nicer grocery stores will sell duck confit premade. I'm guessing the book didn't go into how to make it yourself though admittedly making it the traditional way might be a bit much for a book like this. It's one of those things where making it once makes it a lot easier to make it in the future because you can strain and reuse the fat involved and end up with additional fat from the duck used but the first time takes some more prep.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Perfection.
So 'tinned food soup' it is.
tinned corn, chickpease, kidney beans, tomatoes, potatoes, plus frozen carrots and some frozen shredded chicken, all tossed with veggie broth and taco seasoning.
Giant pot of soup is go!
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In that case, if the main ingredient of your dish is not commonly available, and can't be reasonably substituted, maybe think twice about including that recipe.
Anyway, I'm still slowly going through this recipe book, I just haven't bothered digging up this thread.
Spinach & Black Bean Enchiladas:
Enchiladas are another food that I feel doesn't work properly without cheese. Therefore, I'm basically going to grab a enchilada recipe off the Internet that's naturally dairy-free instead of trying to salvage this one, and see where that goes.
https://cooknourishbliss.com/2020/05/04/dairy-free-chicken-enchiladas/
(The filling is basically beans, chicken, and enchilada sauce.)
This came out...fine. It's perfectly edible, there's just not a lot there. I made quesadillas with the leftover tortillas and filling, and I preferred that, so maybe the lesson is to fry boring foods.
I experimented more with the corn tortillas, and it turns out heating them up in a plain skillet (no oil) actually works out well. Flour tortillas would still be better on a technical level, but this works.
Creamy Brussels Sprout Soup with Maple Bacon:
There are two problems with this soup. First, I'm not interested in working with bacon again. Second, this wants a puree in a blender, which I don't own. I'm replacing the bacon with summer sausage, and I'm basically going to mash it to get the creaminess, and see how well that works. (Also going to add some carrots that need to be used up soon.) I don't see any red flags here, as this is basically a "dump everything in a pot" kind of soup now, without any special steps or problematic ingredients.
As for the results, mashing it up did not work well, because it turned the Brussels sprouts into a bit of a mess. Doing this properly would probably require preparing the potatoes in a separate pot, and mashing them there, for extra dishes. The taste is fine, but it's a bit bland, even after I added Worcestershire and a splash of vinegar. For future soups, I'm alright with tossing some Brussels sprouts in there, but I'd just use my general soup recipe.
Turkey Burgers with Radicchio Slaw:
I don't have a real exhaust system in my kitchen. I tried making burgers once, and I see no reason to make that mistake again. What I do make is fried egg sandwiches. So, I'm going to make fried egg sandwiches and add coleslaw. (Not using Radicchio, though, because that stuff's expensive; just my standard coleslaw recipe.)
The end result was basically a fried egg sandwich. The coleslaw doesn't add any obvious flavor notes (maybe a bit of celery seed?) because I already had a vinegar taste from the pickles, and any crunch was overpowered by the pickles and toasted/lightly fried bun. The coleslaw tastes fine on its own, it just doesn't add anything to the sandwich that wasn't already there. Oh well.
Giant pot of soup was a success!
I added a few slices of Havarti cheese onto mine and it got all melty and yummy.
And then I managed to inhale/swallow an entire baby potato whole.
So that was weird.
But still, very hearty soup.
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What happened that went so badly you wont make burgers again? Do you not have any kind of window you can open and fan to pull fumes out if that's the issue? I've made burgers inside countless times and never bothered using the fan above the stove.
It also sounds like you're making modifications to recipes that are changing up the fundamental flavor profile or intended cooking method leading to dishes you aren't happy with. If making something for the first time I always follow the recipe as closely as possible to see once it's done if there's anything I want to change. I'd also go as far as saying maybe you should try a different cookbook as you've had very little success making anything you seem to like from it.
Baby back ribs with my own rib rub concoction and chunks of pecan and cherry wood.
Several hours later... Basted with apple butter BBQ sauce I picked up from a local orchard late last year.
Cast iron corn bread. The edges get crispy and taste like some kind of heavenly corn bread cookie.
Plated up.
So good.
All those recipes that tell you to fry onions for 5-10 minutes to caramelise them? They are full of lies.
It takes 40 minimum as I am discovering
Ohhh yeah, you need an immense amount of time. Makes sense though, onions are mostly water, and you need to go at low heat so they don’t burn. Apparently you can cheat by adding baking soda. But this will affect the taste of the soup so I’ve never done it.
Who's fucking caramelizing onions?
Have you sociopaths forgotten that apples exist?
"Caramelize onions for a few minutes"... nope. liar or not a cook.