Foodies BS Thread.

Agreed. I hate wasting good tasting food like that. Looks good Ferdie! ^^^

 

Asparagus makes my pee smell funky. I love it tho.

 

If you guys like healthy food check out skinnytaste.com.
My mom recommended it to me to get ideas for supper, now I have a list of ones I want to try.

 

I woke up the other morning with a hankering for peanut butter fudge. Not wanting to drive 2 hours to Inner Harbour just for fudge, I figured I'd make my own. I've never made fudge before, nor has anyone in my family, present or past. How hard could it be? Turns out, it was pretty simple. I found a recipe and made some modifications (coconut oil instead of butter), and it turned out excellent.

I used all natural Peanut Butter and CO Maple Peanut Butter (yummy as is)


Stirring the sugary mix, waiting for boil


The waiting cooling tray


My assistant



The final product, cooling


They are very soft, but not too soft, and exactly the flavour I wanted and was expecting.

 

^^^^good job!

 

Made dinner tonight : Stuffed, Chianti braised chicken. Thigh meat chicken stuff with sausage,parsley,breadcrumbs,egg. Browned in the pot, then pancetta,onions,tomatoes,chianti,chicken stock and braised for about 40 minutes.


Browned


braised in chianti



Fresh out of the braising liquid, reduced the liquid



Plated

 

^^^interesting! Sounds good.

 

Looks awesome Tough!! ^^^

 

Gotta love that Chinese food!! ^^^

 

what can i say, i love this stuff!!!

korean bbq chicken! with peas and this time i added mushrooms

 

Looks great Ant!! Nice presentation!! ^^^

 

^^^X2. I just went to the local gourmet chef store to look for a wok. I saw an idea to make an in home smoker to use a wok with bamboo steamers to hold what you are steaming. I couldnt find bamboo steamers and the woks were really expensive so I am holding off for now. I have to find a super cheap wok since it will be ruined once I use it as a smoker.

 

Thanks mon

I'm particularly proud of the stroganoff and the tomato sausage soup...I make each of them at least once a month and the wife swears by them. Prolly took a year of trial-and-error to get them just right. Of course, that's good eatin' while you figure it out

One of the toughest things for me was getting out of the meticulous mindset of "recipes are to be followed fucking exactly, regardless!"...Now, I see them more as guidelines or general suggestions rather than hard and fast rules. Had some pretty spectacular failures along the way though.

My doctor is ecstatic ... he says I have the bloodwork of a teenage football player now...

 

The shit you should know:

The basics. First, what are you cooking with? Essentially, you really only need a few items to make 99.99% of everything you'll probably eat this year. Lets take a look at some examples.

You really only need a few pots and pans. One medium cast iron skillet, one medium nonstick, two sauce pans (a small and a medium), a larger pot for making pastas, soups, stocks, etc and a medium or large everyday saute pan. Don't go cheap here...this is one of two places where what you spend *matters*.

Cast iron is fairly straight-forward and inexpensive. The nonstick is also not terribly hard. DON'T go out and buy a set with a TV Chefs' name on it. Just don't. I looked at a couple different sales in a few stores and scored a really nice discontinued Calphalon for 39$.

The pans, I went with All-Clad. Yes, they're stupidly expensive. But there's a reason that whenever a professional chef talks about pans, and they remove the cost from the equation, 99999 out of 100000 of them use All-Clad. They are simply the best, period. Yes, you can get very good pans for much less by looking around and shopping. I'll stand by my All-Clad Classics though...I love these fucking things.

A poor craftsman blames his tools for bad workmanship. If my food is good or bad, you can blame me, not my tools.


Next up: Knives.

People take this one entirely too seriously. I mean, they get *offended* if you dis Wusthof in front of them, or _insert name brand here_. I've seen damn-near-fistfights from knife discussions in KITCHEN STORES. What the hell, people?

Anyhow, use whatever is most comfortable in your hand, and learn to take care of it. There's a couple of shows Alton Brown did on knives that are tremendously informative that should be mandatory watching, regardless if you hate him or not. American Chopper, I think the episode was. Find it online and watch it.

Personally, this is the other money item for me. I spent way too much money on my knives, I'll be the first to admit it. Between the pots & pans and knives in my kitchen, I've spent less on most of the cars I've driven before the age of 30.

But you'll get my Shuns when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. I prefer the lighter feel, the handle shape, and the sharpness. Do not take this personally. If you love your Henckels, more power to you. Or Wusthofs. Or Robert Irvine Signatures. I like the feel of the Shun, so that's what I use. You should have a good chef's knife, a paring knife, and maybe a santoku or a slicer. You don't need a 17-piece monstrousity in a custom block that costs $800+.

Once you've got these two out of the way, there's only a few things you *need*.

A good instant read thermometer. Less than $20 for this.

A small, accurate kitchen scale. I got mine for ~$25, its digital, can switch from oz to pounds to grams with one button, is tareable, and you can clean it with a soapy sponge. Plus battery operated. Essential.

Good cutting boards. I go with plastic or composite mostly, so I can run them through the dishwasher every so often. DO NOT USE GLASS/CERAMICS and DO NOT CUT ON MARBLE/GRANITE COUNTERTOPS. These will destroy your knives in short order. Literally. I have color coded boards for quick and easy recognition of what gets cut where...a veggie & greens board, a red for raw meat, a blue and a yellow for seafood and poultry, etc. Plus they're flexible plastic, so you can dump stuff into containers and the like easily.

I also have a couple thick composite boards with little juice drains around the outside, for cutting wet stuff without turning the coutertop into a mess. Also dishwasher safe.

__________________________________________________________

A quick interruption:

Listen. Cross contamination is real. People fucking DIE from food poisoning.

Read that last line again please. I'm not talking about Mozambique here, or those lovely 'mountain folk' that eat raw bobcat haunches. Here, now, in 2012, in the US, roughly FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE will die from various and sundry food issues. Consider that for a moment.

Wash your hands. Wash your tools properly, and get used to cleaning your shit up. It might save someone's life. The bacterial 'red zone' is from 40 to 140. Also: when in doubt, throw it out.

__________________________________________________________

This is getting a lot longer than I had anticipated. Sorry, I'll try to wrap this up quickly.

Next up: Salt and pepper.

I can't tell you how many places I've been and found supposed 'cooks' that can't season their food properly. Its the most basic thing in your kitchen, and it makes more difference than you would ever believe. Watch professional chefs and they season EVERYTHING. You should too. Biggest thing I see home cooks miss is this step, and you can tell in the food they make. At best it is bland and lifeless. Kosher salt or sea salt is LIFE in the kitchen. Learn it, live it, love it.

Buy local, buy in season: Buy locally grown foods/veggiebles. I go to about three local farmer's market regularly, and as much locally grown produce goes into my food as I can fit. The only real exception to this rule for me is the IQF and small service size frozen veggies in the frozen aisle at the megamart. These are often damn-near as good as fresh, and a much more viable option for our city-dwelling bretheren.

Also: Fresh herbs and aromatics are easy to grow at home, relatively inexpensive to buy fresh in the store, and make a ton of difference in pretty much everything. Use them. A lot.

Next up: STOP BUYING PREPARED FOOD ITEMS. Pretty much anything you can buy in a cardboard box or in the frozen aisle can be made fresh from its basic ingredients (often for less money)....and it'll taste better and be about 10 gazillion times better for your health. Plus, hidden pro-tip: you'll drop weight and feel better after making your own home-made food.


Last one for now:

REST YOUR COOKED MEAT. At least 5 minutes. All of it. Put it on a rack or cutting board, tent loosely with foil or fip a bowl over it, and let it sit for 5 minutes. Trust me on this. Never, ever just yank a steak off the grill and cut into it. The rare exception to this is certain preperations of fresh fish. The bigger the cut of meat, the longer you need to let it sit. A 3 pound roast gets 10-15 minutes.

Oh, and one last note: FAT IS NOT YOUR ENEMY. Only TOO MUCH of the wrong KIND of fats is bad for you. Fat is flavor. Don't hate on fat.

/kitchen nerd rant off

 

^^^awesome^^^

my wife always wonders why I yell at her for cutting on our counter top. I have 2 knives which I baby and I cringe when they are not in someones hand or in the block.

 

yea and when someone uses the blade side to scrape food off the cutting board... KILLS me.

my gf went out and bought some decent knives and the first time she used them thats what she did....

haha kills me... use the damn spine!

 

damn. XAKS got wordy. i agree with about 90% of his post. just never had the energy to type it out. i hate the trend towards the sanduku knives. i have a mix matched set. wustof mostly. 10" chef, paring, boning and a bread knife. i have been picking up a cheap chinese cleaver lately..the big flat surface makes transporting chopped bits a non issue.

allclad..all i have is a saute pan and a 12 skillet. my non stick comes from the cheap section at a restaurant supply store. non stick wears out all the time no matter how you treat it. better to wear out a $20 pan, than a $120 pan. black cast iron? you owe it to yourself, if you are a foodie to search out garage sales for 100 year old antique cast iron. they are as smooth as glass, and when seasoned will kick ass. no modern lodge can hang. look for names like Griswold. i big le cruseut enameled cast iron will change your slow cooking existence. they are that good.

my favorite kitchen stuff is half sheet pans from the restaurant supply place..and my new MVP's are some steamer trays i got my my stepdads restaurant. you can do it all with these stainless trays. i've braised huge loads my cast iron dutch oven cannot handle.

 

With the exception of my cast iron, here's my entire stash of daily use hardware...



There's pretty much nothing I can't make.

Now, there's no crock pot in here, no toaster, no food processor, that kind of thing. All of which I have.

But don't *need*.

The only requirement to go to the next level in the kitchen is the mastery of your fear. Don't be afraid to try something new. There's always leftovers if you flub it completely!

EDITED to add:

Just idle curiousity: How the hell are you folks wearing out nonstick pans? I've only replaced mine once in the last 10 years, and that was after I ruined the first one with too much heat and scratching the hell out of it with a scouring pad!

 

Nice setup Xaks!! ^^^