Share or Learn New Recipes / Cooking Tips

[fodroy]

i eat meat, but not nearly as often as most. about half of my friends (including my girlfriend) do not. it's not that uncommon.

[Dan-O from Five-O]

With the exception of my pulled pork, you can always delete any meat content without effecting any recipe offered up so far in a negative fashion.

Heck even the BBQ sauces have been know to sustain many a starving college student in harsh times, and no meat.

[Caravan Ray]

Here's a great recipe for pulled pork.

When I was a boy the nuns told me that would make me go blind

[bz£]

Advice that is probably more relevant here:

I resolve to bake a new cake every Monday night until I run out of money, or until I run out of new cakes, whichever comes first.

Get yourself a nice springform pan (9" is a good size; the kind you want has latches on the side and the bottom detaches) and a few cheesecake recipes. It's not that hard to make cheesecake, and they work like magic on the ladies. Highly recommended, unless you've got a fetish for lactose intolerance, or something.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

Omlettes:

Use a half shell of water for every 2-3 eggs rather than milk, for better fluffiness/lightness. Of course, if you want crazy insane fluff, substitute champagne for the water.

Spread a bit of jelly/jam/preserves/marmalade lengthwise just before you fold it (think taco for visual orientation).

The jelly/champagne omlette goes nicely with Guinness, if you're that sort of person.

Don't use margarine (or anything other than actual butter) if you can help it. Tossing a bit of honey in with the melting butter on the pan before pouring the eggs in adds a bit of weird chewy/crunch to the outside of the omlette. Sweet, and a nice counterpoint to the bell pepper-type vegetables that you may choose to add.

Less is more, with omlettes. Just in case you find yourself uncertain how much of 'ingredient X' to add...

And I third the "good knife" advice.

[Hoblit]

I totally do not aprove of the above omlette recipe.

If this were a court of law, I'd have it stricken from the record.

/brunch cook snob

[WeaselSlayer]

Jelly on an omelette!? What the fuck reality did that come out of!

[the Jazz]

Whether you like Rachael Ray or not, her sunday beef stew recipe is ridiculously good, especially with a good dark bread.

On the subject of cheesecake, here is a picture of the first cheesecake I ever made. Click to link to the recipe. Be warned, this is the richest thing ever created by man. Proceed with caution.

If you have never made cheesecake before, I cannot stress enough the importance of using a water bath, and placing a dishtowel between the cake pan and whatever pan the water is in. Also, if it says to chill overnight, do not fuck around, unless you really like pudding.

If you are not that experienced a cook, two great recipes to start out with are marinara sauce or rice and beans. There are any number of basic marinara recipes out there, and no two cooks agree on the right way to do things, but once you make it a few times you can experiment to your heart's content. I recommend never using diced tomatoes; go for the peeled italian (roma) tomatoes instead (sometimes "pomodori pelati" or "roma tomatoes"). Heat olive oil to the point of fragrance, add aromatics (onion, shallots, garlic) being very careful not to burn garlic, add tomatoes with the juice from the can, break them up a bit with your wooden spoon, and simmer until the consistency is how you like it. Add herbs and spices to taste; basil, parsley, oregano are all fairly standard choices. It will need a little salt, too; pepper is optional.

If garlic is your only aromatic, add it as the oil is heating (but before it gets hot) or it will burn in a matter of seconds. Onions and shallots have a higher water content which helps to keep the garlic from burning so quickly, so with them you can wait for the oil to heat to the point of fragrance. I like red bell pepper in my marinara sauce. Add it with the aromatics, chopped or minced as you prefer. If you don't know chopping from mincing, read this.

When you simmer the sauce, all you're doing is boiling away the water and applying heat to the remaining ingredients; so if you want to cook it longer, pulverizing the tomatoes for a smoother sauce, but it's getting too thick for your tastes, just add some water. If you like your sauce very chunky, strain out some of the juice from the tomatoes before adding them, or add some tomato paste to thicken the sauce before your tomatoes fall apart. Also, the top part of canned whole tomatoes (where the stem was attached) can be a bit hard, so I like to cut these off and puree them in a blender or food processer before adding the tomatoes.

One of my favorite spices is crushed red pepper. Not to be confused with ground chile pepper or crushed cherry peppers (sandwich hots), this is the stuff you often find at the pizza place next to the grated cheese. It looks like this. Before adding crushed red pepper to a recipe, rub it a little between your fingers or in the palm of your hand; this helps release the oils that make it so flavorful. A little of this will give your marinara or black beans (or whatever) a nice warm heat without flavoring it quite as strongly as chile pepper or jalapenos.

And always cook your pasta al dente!
Linguini Fini > Spaghetti
Rigatoni > Ziti

EDIT: Oh yeah, and on the rice side of rice and beans, NEVER buy an American-made rice cooker! Where rice and electronics are involved, you can't go wrong with a Japanese product. I also recommend staying away from things like "American Basmati"; rice is cheap, always buy imported Basmati, we don't have the right weather on this continent to grow good white rice. There are good American wild rices, though.

[Bjam]

My brother and I got our mum this knife for Christmas. What does she do within slicing the first potato? Slices her hand open on it. So for the rest of the day she had to wear a Disney princess band-aid over the cut.

So yes, get a good knife but also don't cut your or other's hand/arm/leg/finger/other body part. It doesn't end well.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

brunch cook

Too good for breakfast and lunch, eh? Why I oughtta...

When you wind up on the left coast, we'll get down with our inner Iron Chefs, and throw down some food, yeah?

WTF!?

My happy place, natch. (The official proper Rabid taste combo is orange marmalade and a kiss of tobasco. Half a kiss. A butterfly kiss, to be precise, in the pre-pan mix.)

[the Jazz]

For people on a budget who can't afford pro quality knives, here's a very decent block set for the same price as bjam's aforementioned Henckels knife. It even has a steel and shears. Don't buy these online though, go to a store, find a salesperson, and test the weight and balance of the knives with your own hands.* How expensive it is, or how many knives you get, is usually not the best way to determine the quality of a knife set.

*Please don't do stupid things like licking the blade or cutting your finger to test how sharp the knife is. Display models are often not sharpened, and in any case it makes you look like an idiot; just don't do it.

[Bjam]

King Cake for French extra credit. Doesn't it look appetizing? :/

[blue]

super-awesome white trash layered bean dip:

1 can of "sante fe" style beans - any canned brown beans in sauce that aren't baked beans, really
1/4 cup olive oil
8 oz velveeta
1 carton hormel chili
2 cloves garlic

put the garlic and olive oil in a blender on high till it's a sauce. add the sante fe beans and blend them until they're whatever consistency you like your refried beans to be.

put the hormel chili on the bottom of a microwave-proof baking dish, then cut 1/2 of the velveeta into 1/2" chunks and sprinkle em around. pour the beans on top, spread, and add the rest of the velveeta. microwave for ~6 minutes or until bubbly.

kids will eat this with a spoon.

[Hoblit]

super-awesome white trash layered bean dip:


kids will eat this with a spoon.

muy delicioso!

[anti-m]

Divine Cucumber Lime Cocktail

My friend Morgan has dubbed me "The Queen of the Acquired Taste,â€

[Sick and Wrong]

Sick's Special Smokey Hamburger Surprise

Brown 1 lb. hamburger in a large skillet on high heat, and drain the fat into a clean bowl. Set fat aside. Finely chop 1 green pepper, 1 onion, and 1 head of garlic (thinking it's a clove, not 6 or 7 cloves), and add to hamburger (still on high). Stir occasionally. Think about what to add next (without actually tasting the mixture) for about 3-4 minutes, while the ingredients quickly turn into hard little carbon nuggets. Tell your wife to stay away from the kitchen, saying it's supposed to smell like that. Mix in 1 small can (6 oz.) tomato paste and 1/2 cup water. Add 1 more onion, finely chopped. Remove beeping smoke detector from the wall/ceiling and place under a pillow. Add 1/2 cup water, and reduce heat to medium. Stir. At this point mixture will have an odor resembling that of a burning tire. Chase wife from kitchen, explaining that her presence will 'mess it all up'. Stir in 1 cup sour cream, 1 tbsp. paprika, 1 tbsp. salt, 1 tbsp. black pepper. Carefully fold 3-4 raw, unbeaten eggs into mixture. Wait. Increase heat to high and cover. Quickly look through all available cookbooks for casserole recipes using hamburger. Carefully place a large hardcover cookbook near hot burner on stovetop. Add one large can creamed corn and stir. Add 1 tbsp. nutmeg and 2 tbsp. hot pepper flakes. Mixture has by now degenerated into a 'concoction'. Taste concoction, recoil in disgust. Add 1/4 cup hickory smoke flavoring, stir well. Reduce heat to medium. Remove smoking cookbook from stovetop and set aside. Taste concoction and chuckle to self glumly, shaking head. Stir in 1/2 -1 cup dried Italian seasonings. Wait. Smell concoction (don't taste). Determine that at least one mistake was made (probably hickory smoke flavoring), transfer concoction to large colander, and rinse with cold tap water. Return to skillet. Reheat on high, stirring constantly. Scrape bottom of skillet with an appropriate metal utensil. Wait. Remove from heat. Serve to speechless(!) wife.

Makes 0 servings.

[fluffy]

<a href="http://www.nextag.com/challenger-chef-k ... tml">These are the best knives ever</a>. I bought a few at the local restaurant supplier about a year ago and I am still in love with them. I haven't even had to sharpen them yet (though I do baby them) and they still have a perfect edge. They cut through celery like air. They also cut through my thumb like celery before I learned to treat them with complete pious respect.

On the other end of the spectrum, I find that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is a hell of a lot better if you eschew the milk and margarine, and instead melt 1/4 cup of butter into it before adding the "cheese" packet, and then add a chunk of real cheddar and some freshly-grated parmesean, and maybe some other miscellaneous cheeses such as Jarlsberg or whatnot.

(Just because I know how to cook good doesn't mean I never cook easy, especially on busy nights.)

My favorite quick-and-easy cook-for-a-week recipe is to get a pot, sautee some garlic, onions, and shallots in olive oil, add in some meat (sausage and/or chicken) and let it cook most of the way, then add a can of black beans, a cup of uncooked rice, and two cups of chicken broth, and also whatever other spices you like (a little cumin and turmeric, for example, and maybe a sprig or two of tarragon). Bring to a boil then simmer on low for 20-30 minutes. Yum. :d

[fluffy]

Oh and you'll need a good smoker for this as well.

I like <a href="http://twothirds.org/2005/09/smoking-po ... html">this one</a>, in concept, though admittedly I haven't tried it myself. (I guess I should now that I have my own private deck.)

[Dan-O from Five-O]

I have one. It's not as clean as the one in your picture and I just used the top of my Weber for the lid. It works GREAT!!!!! After just a few uses of producing lovely pulled pork like this, the inside of the smoker is well seasoned. Instead of a hotplate, I used one of these that I picked up at a Goodwill for $5. It fits perfectly in the bottom of the smoker and works great.

[Mostess]

I like making bread and I finally got a sourdough starter going. It's kind of a pain to do 'cause you have to feed it daily, but it is so awesome. The best side effect of having to feed the starter is using the run-off to make pancakes:

1 cp. starter
1 egg
1 tbsp. veg. oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Stir it. Make pancakes. The easiest and best ones I've had. The yeast in the starter makes them much fluffier than pure soda-based pancakes.

[fluffy]

I'm too impatient to get a sourdough starter going, and I can never remember to water my plants, much less feed a "pet" which doesn't tell me it's hungry.

[j$]

Ok guys 'n' gals, I need an American's help (the first and only time I'll ever write that!)

So I am cooking a meal for 8 this weekend, and the receipe I want to do calls for 3 cups of white onions and 2 cups of ball peppers. I know cups is an american-only invention - research reveals it is 285ml (or 1/2 pint in proper.)

So me dumb, of course, but how can you have 800ml of white onions? Or do they mean the equivalent of a pint and a half, in onion form? that's a helluva lot of onions, to be getting the receipe wrong!

Translation, followed by light mocking of the chef, would be recieved gratefully.

j$