Cooking

I want to put the steak onto a hot pan to get that sear on the outside and uh lock in the flavor or something. But butter burns at high heats and oil doesn't add flavor like butter.

Is there a way I can get the best of both? A nice sear but still cook in butter?

Says it's a stirlon for example.

As is often the case with my meals, this was a "use it up before it turns" meal. Had some beef top round roast, jalapenos, carrots, and cabbage, plus a giant bag of oranges from my parent's tree that need to be eaten, and this is what came out.

General recipe:

• Slice beef into strips, marinate for a few hours in orange juice, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, pepper and garlic powder.
• Stir fry ginger, garlic, and onion, then add julienned carrot, jalapeno, cabbage and roughly chopped mushrooms. Don't over crowd the wok, cook in batches. I added a splash of soy and rice vinegar to the cabbage at the end to steam it at little.
• Pat the beef strips dry before searing in the wok, again working in batches.
• Cook down the marinade, add a corn starch slurry, and keep adding a little bit of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and brown sugar until it hits the right Magic Sauce™ blend of overly sweet, tangy, savory.
• Serve on rice with some green onions.

Still have more beef and more oranges, going to use the same marinade, but add lime and turn it into some carne asada for tomorrow.

[Image description: a blue bowl on a speckled white countertop. Inside the bowl is white rice and mixed sauteed vegetables, topped with small cubes of beef with a drizzle of glossy dark brown sauce, and a sprinkle of sliced green onion.]

This recipe is great to repurpose lunch leftovers for dinner. It's also relatively mess-free. Loosely based on egg-fried rice.

Amounts listed for two servings, but they're eyeballed so use your judgment.

Ingredients:

• Cooked leftover rice. 200~300g (cooked) is probably good enough. It's fine to use pilaf, just make sure that the rice is cold, a bit dry, and that the grains are easy to separate.
• Two eggs. Cracked into a small bowl and whisked with salt, pepper, and MSG. Or the seasoning of your choice.
• Veg oil. For browning.
• Water. Or broth if you want, it's just a bit.
• [OPTIONAL] Meats. Leftover beef, pork, or chicken work well. Supplement it with ham, firmer sausages, and/or bacon; 1/2 cup should be enough for two. Dice them small.
• [OPTIONAL] Vegs. I'd add at least half raw onion; but feel free to use leftover cooked cabbages, peas, bell peppers, etc. Or even raw ones. Also diced small.
• [OPTIONAL] Chives. Mostly as a finishing touch. Sliced thinly.

Preparation:

1. Add a spoonful of veg oil to a wok or similar. Let it heat a bit.
2. If using raw meats: add them to the wok, and let them brown on high fire, stirring constantly. Else, skip this step.
3. If using raw vegs: add them to the wok, and let them it cook on mid-low fire. Else, skip this step.
4. Add the already cooked ingredients (rice, meats, vegs). Medium fire, stirring gentle but constantly; you want to heat them up, not to cook them further. Adjust seasoning if desired.
5. Spread the whisked egg over your heated rice mix, while stirring and folding the rice frenetically. You want the egg to coat the rice grains, but they should be still separated when done. If some whisked egg is sticking to the wok and/or the rice is too dry, drip some water/broth and scrap the bottom of the wok; just don't overdo it (you don't want soggy rice). Anyway, when the egg is cooked this step is done, it'll give the rice grains a nice yellow colour and lots of flavour.
6. If using chives, add them after your turned off the fire (they get sad if cooked). Enjoy your meal.

I was going to share a picture of the final result, but I may or may not have eaten it before thinking about sharing the recipe. Sorry. :#

The best by date is in 2 days. I know about the water test for egg freshness so I'm not super concerned, but please give me ideas for using them up within a week or so 🥺 I've boiled a few and am planning to make some cookie dough, but that only counts for half a dozen.

Sharing this recipe since it is delicious, don't know if I'm breaking any rules here since this is my first time posting

Here's the link to their recipe.

Now normally Serious Eats is pretty bang on with their recipes, but this one has a CRAZY amount of sugar in it. I made it as directed (but using store bought puff pastry) for Mother's Day, and it was tasty but so sweet it could have been served for dessert.

This is the second time I made it, but with half the sugar. However sweet is still the dominant note, even after adding Worcestershire sauce, tart goat cheese, and more herbs. If you want to make this, seriously try using just a quarter of the sugar they ask for, and you might get something more savory.

[Image description: a circular tart made of layers of deeply caramelized cabbage in a sticky glaze. A bit of golden crust can be seen on the edges, and the tart is sitting on a wooden cutting board on a stove top.]

This is an old YT reference I've come back to several times just for a basic reference to know how to prepare a few different cuts that my family randomly brings me.

This is framed loosely around some kind of mail service that specializes in shipping high quality cuts. I've never looked into it or used it myself; just a full disclosure. The person's perspective is that of a geek nerding out, not some marketing wank.

Typical USA grocery stores do not break down a side like this guy, but if you want to know the details about a cut and what you're really looking at from the details on the label, this guy breaks it all down well. In fact, I'm kinda bummed about being disabled and unable to regularly go shopping myself after seeing this video and mulling it over. This person's perspective clearly shows how your local butcher sees the meat and the potential knowledge they may have related to your culinary goals.

I followed a Jaime Oliver recipe for curry, which started with grating onion, ginger and garlic. I liked the curry, but grating an onion is a miserable job. He said that technique unlocked the onion's 'sweetness'. How much difference do you think I'd notice if I used a food processor?

So me and my dad were talking about pressure canning and how it's very uncommon. I've never talked to anyone irl that pressure cans, maybe some water bath canning but that's it. I wonder why it's so uncommon? You can get a pressure canner for less than 150$ and it's incredibly useful.

I mainly use it for stock/broth but you can use it for so many things, tomatoes, soups, chili, baked beans, stew, spaghetti sauce, etc.. Honestly, anyone who cooks whole chickens somewhat regularly should invest in a pressure canner. I cook two whole chickens at a time and use the carcass to make about 14 litres of stock. I also make beef, turkey, pork and smoked variations of these.

It's so much better than buying your stock at the store. I will admit that it is a lot of work, from start to finish it takes me about 3 days because I wet brine my chickens. But you could just buy the bones from your butcher which I have done. Just wondering if anyone else does this or reasons why you don't do it?

From Cook's Country, with a special secret ingredient:

Whisk together 1/2 cup bbq sauce (I used Stubbs no sugar added), 1/2 cup of ketchup, 1/2 cup of water, 2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard, 2 tablespoons apple cider vineagar, 1 teaspoon liquid smoke, 1 teaspoon granulated garlic, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.

The secret ingredient: 1/4 cup Kraken Black Rum:

In a 12" skillet, over medium high heat, cook 20 ounces of bratwurst (casings removed!) for 5 minutes, breaking into smaller pieces. Add 2 chopped onions and cook another 15 minutes.

Add that to the sauce bowl.

Add 2 28 ounce cans of baked beans, 2 15 ounce cans of drained pinto beans, 2 15 ounce cans of drained cannellini beans, 1 10 ounce can drained Ro-Tel diced tomatoes and peppers.

Stir the mix well and pour into a 13" by 9" high sided roasting pan.

Top with shingles of bacon, bacon slices cut into 1 inch pieces.

Bake at 350°F for 90 minutes, let stand for 15 minutes and serve!

Hello! I really, really love bok choy, but every time I prepare it it turns a little sour. My intent is to eat it as part of a simple vegetable stir fry.

I love blanching when it comes to green beans/peas, steaming when it comes to Broc/cauli, and stir fried for all else..

What is your favorite way to prepare bok choy to achieve the best crunchy-and-tender texture?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/847900

A few years ago, while we were cooking, my SO showed me a blog post about common spices and their substitutions. I thought it'd be cool to use that to make a chart we could hang on the wall.

It turned into a fun light research project, then a fun art project.

I started reading various blogs and realized that while many covered the same core spices, there were a lot of others that only one blog or another mentioned. So I started gathering them all up.

As I read about them on Wikipedia I'd stumble into their histories, and scope creep hit. I decided to add a column for interesting facts about each. (While gathering those, I was kind of struck at the disparity between them - some spices, have centuries of warfare, murder, and espionage wrapped around them, while others are so common or easy to grow that nobody seems to have stabbed anyone at all for it.)

I built it first as a spreadsheet in Google sheets while I was researching, pasted it into a poster-size libre office writer document for layout and font changes, exported that as a pdf so I could import it into GIMP. That let me make more detailed changes and add the flourishes that hopefully make it look like something that might've hung on the wall in your grandparents' kitchen.

This was a pretty casual project spread over seven months. It's got forty-some spices with descriptions, fun facts, and substitutions shamelessly plagiarized from cooking blogs and Wikipedia.

I've learned since that several spices are actually really unspecific, like what’s sold as oregano apparently may come from several different plants. So I'll say it's useful for cooking and accurate to the best of my ability, but I wouldn't reference it as a historical or scientific resources.

If you want to print it out, I uploaded the PDF here: https://jacobcoffinwrites.files.wordpress.com/2023/07/spice_list_printable.pdf

Third attempt in a year.

It's the right texture, but I'm still missing something. It's not as good as store bought, but good enough. And I'm working on improving that zest.

Kimchi sans fish sauce. Via https://www.liveeatlearn.com/how-to-make-kimchi/

So I have never had this dish! Most dishes I cook I have tasted a variant of it so I know how it should taste when I make it, but Cajun/Creole/Louisiana food in general is something I’ve never had the pleasure of trying first hand but the spices always look really tasty. Does anyone have a good recipe to share with me, with maybe some notes about how it should taste? I usually don’t cook with meat at home, so meat substitutes would be useful, but I still use chicken stock and enjoy cooking with sausages like andouille and kielbasas. I think my kitchen is pretty well stocked other than the meat bit! I do lack an instant pot, but I’ve got a Dutch oven and a slow cooker and a rice cooker, etc.

Since there was some curiosity about what a sushi-bake is, here's my own recipe for it. Sushi-bake is basically a "deconstructed" sushi roll where the ingredients are layered instead of rolled then baked in the oven. There are different variations of how it's made, so this is my take on it. Apologies if I don't have exact measurements of portions, as I just wing it and base it on the taste.

Ingredients:

• Sushi rice (regular white rice is fine if you don't have sushi rice, but add a bit more water when cooking to make it more moist).

• Rice vinegar.

• Any protein of your choice like crabstick, tuna, or salmon; shredded.

• Fruit/vegetable. Cucumber, mango, avocado, or any other ingredients you'd like to add to your sushi; sliced and cubed.

• Japanese mayo (i.e. kewpie).

• Sriracha. In my case, I used a gochujang-based hot sauce with truffle oil.

• Furikake.

• Sesame oil (optional).

• Sugar/sweetener (optional).

• Mozarella cheese (optional).

Recipe:

1. Cook sushi rice as directed.

2. Mix your protein, veggies, and fruit in a bowl with Japanese mayo and sriracha.

3. Mix the cooked sushi rice with a few tablespoons of rice vinegar and a bit of sugar (optional). I personally don’t put sugar because I find the rice vinegar enough for flavor.

4. Line a baking pan with foil. You can also do without, I'm just lazy with washing.

5. Grease the pan with a little sesame oil.

6. Add a base layer of sushi rice on the baking pan and flatten it thoroughly.

7. Add a layer of your protein/veggie/fruit mix on top of the rice.

8. Sprinkle a layer of furikake.

9. Optional: Since I like to put cheese on everything, add a layer of shredded mozarella.

10. For aesthetic purposes, draw alternating diagonal lines of mayo and sriracha, and top it off with another sprinkling of furikake.

11. Bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes.

To eat, slice it into square bites. You can eat it as is with chopsticks or a fork/spoon, or use Nori to scoop it up.

Made about two servings and a little extra chips.

Well, their fries where I live, but still.

Cake made with two ingredients - melted ice cream and self rising flour.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13617366

Based on video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7eHENYUeeg

Ingredients, translated to help:

Black beans - feijão preto | Tofu | Onion - cebola | Garlic - alho | Green bean - vagem | Zuchinni - abobrinha | Bell pepper - pimentão | Tomato sauce - extrato de tomate | Tomato (take the watery inside out) - tomate | Carrots - cenoura | Salt - sal | Black pepper - pimenta do reino | Bay leaves -folha de louro | Fried Cassava - mandioquinha | Capsicum bacattum -pimenta dedo de moça | Tabasco spice - pimenta tabasco | Chives - cebolinha | Coriander - coentro | Coco pieces - coco |

Tabasco spice

Rice - arroz | Orange slides - laranja | Corn flour

NOTE: I actually made this yesterday.

Saw this on the America's Test Kitchen tv channel and had to try it.

Ingredients:
3 to 3.5 lb pork shoulder, cubed
1 large onion, chopped fine
1 cup water
1 1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and sliced, 1/8" thick.
6 garlic cloves, peeled and trimmed
3 tablespoons kashmiri chili powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons table salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayanne pepper (optional.)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/3 cup coconut vineagar

Blend water, ginger, garlic, and spices until the consistency of thick tomato sauce.

A couple of pro-tips. Kashmiri Chili Powder is ESSENTIAL. It smells and tastes unlike any chili powder I've ever had. That smell of an Indian restaurant? Kashmiri chili powder.

It's also SUPER hard to find, I went to 2 Indian groceries and 2 international groceries and struck out. Ended up buying it on Amazon.

Same for the coconut vineagar. I found SPICED coconut vineagar, but I don't know if that's the same thing or not.

Pro tip #2 - peeling ginger couldn't be easier. Scrape the side with a spoon. Peel comes right off.

Pour over pork in large bowl.

Heat oil in dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering, then cook onion until translucent, 7 to 9 minutes.

Pour in the pork, spread into an even layer and cook until bubbling. +2 minutes.

Cover, put in 325° oven for 40 minutes.

Stir in coconut vineagar.

Cook another 40 to 50 minutes until fork tender.

Rest for 10 minutes and serve!